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Released Mods / Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.9.g - 24 Apr - Crewed fighters

« on: April 30, 2015, 09:00:26 pm »

Hey, I ran into a bug, but not sure if it's a bug with this mod or OXcom.  Don't remember exactly how it went, but I had just built a new base and had bought a bunch of gear and shipped more over to it, which filled up all its storage.  I got the "Fence your stuff away!" popup screen like you get when you overflow your storage with loot from a mission, but there was nothing in it, and I could not exit out of it.  Had to quit the game and reload.  I THINK there was some strange interaction that made it say "Oh you're filling up this base's stores too much" even when the base had no gear in it yet.  Tried to reproduce it in a test game and couldn't, though.

Edit: So far my the best/worst name I'd gotten was probably Pussy Fingers...

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Released Mods / Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.9.g - 24 Apr - Crewed fighters

« on: April 29, 2015, 10:16:41 pm »

- I think melee-only approach only works for heavy-savescumming game. The destructive potential of melee is unmatched, yet often you'll get into no-win scenarios when rushing headlong, like previously unspotted extra enemies or unexpectedly painful reaction fire.

Possibly.  There are things you can do to minimize the danger, which basically amounts to "don't take chances", much like playing the Long War mod for XCom Enemy Within.  Spot an enemy and want to nab him in melee?  Send a scout forward to make sure there's nothing behind them, then have them either run back into safety or pop smoke.  Stage your strike team of 2-4 heavy hitters around a corner near the target.  Wait a turn; honestly, the AI is pretty darn dumb, and the chances they'll wander around the corner and shoot you in the face is low.  Even if they do, they're hitting your front armor, so your odds are decent.  Now that everyone is in place, peek around the corner to make sure they're still within reach, which is usually the case as they seldom wander that far.  Dash out and sword them in the back.

It's hardly foolproof, but boy is it fun.  Even better is when your team is on the other side of a wall, and you sledgehammer through it to ambush someone Kool-Aid Man style.  And of course it can still lead to horrible screw-ups, which is where even more fun happens.  One of the awesome things about PirateZ is it gives you a million and one tools to creatively solve the problems you've gotten yourself into, if only you're crazy enough to use them.  I will have to try a less save-scummy game on a harder difficulty sometime now that I have some clue what I'm doing, and see how it works out.

Of course this only works on maps with corners... the first few merc missions were really painful partially 'cause there were a million of them, on a wide open map, and they're pretty good shots and have good reactions.  Melee really isn't the right tool for that job.  Then I got nuclear lasers and ended up in a similar mission, and cackled gleefully as I mowed all the bastards down.  (Might want to check out the numbers for the Scorchy laser pistol; it always says it has a 40-50% chance to hit, but I don't think I've ever missed a single shot with one.  Anyone else notice this?  I'll do more testing.)

Thanks for all the kind words on the writing!  Any suggestions and/or critiques are welcome, I'll throw it into the fanfic forum when I get the chance..  It's kind of an amalgam of several base defense missions, and has some artistic license --the missions I did were all rookies, but I wanted an experienced hand in the story to contrast "lightning-fast, heavily-armored death machine that slits three guys up without breaking a sweat" versus "rookie who might land a grenade sort of close enough to hurt something maybe".

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Released Mods / Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.9.g - 24 Apr - Crewed fighters

« on: April 28, 2015, 09:02:22 pm »

Well I haven't even finished my playthrough yet, but:

Did another smuggler raid; have much more sympathy for EatThePath now.  If you see Public Enemy, just carpet bomb him with grenades and missiles.  He's not worth the trouble.

Holy crow mercenaries go down like CHUMPS to mind control.  On the one hand I like this, on the other it kind of trivializes one of the more dangerous enemies.  Two half decent voodoo witches had pretty much an entire heavy gunship crew, including the captain, dropping all their weapons and casually sauntering out into the open to be 'processed' by Team Power Mace.

Also I, uh, wrote a thing, so I might as well post it here: https://wiki.alopex.li/TheBattleForBooze .  It'll give you a security certificate warning, just click on through it.

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Released Mods / Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.9.f - 20 Apr - Nuclear Fuel fixed

« on: April 24, 2015, 09:37:32 am »

Like that guy from Mythbusters said: kids, what is the difference between science and f*cking around? Noting things down.

As a scientist, I salute you sir.

Even if I could make them visible from close-up (and I can't, the dirty trick I'm using doesn't allow for such control), it'd kinda defeat the whole purpose. They need to attack in melee, else they expose their position by shooting; if they'd be visible from close-up, they'd be intercepted by Reaction fire on the final approach and killed. Just like with B-2 bombers, you need multiple detectors lined up because these things are visible only from certain angles Inverse-crescent formation seems to work very well. About the Pedia: if you managed to capture one, you already know what to expect, amirite?

Catgirls aren't that dangerous any ways, with how poorly armed they are (unless the Smugglers retaliate with a home invasion, hehehe), he had the very rare misfortune of meeting Public Enemy Obi-One: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l58DwSWk3e0

That's fair(ish).  I can certainly understand having to deal with dirty tricks.  Another of eatthepath's problems was that he ran into them while still early tier and had them murdering two squad members a turn wholesale.  Meanwhile I was wearing tac armor when I met catgirls and one of my pirates got moderately inconvenienced by a full turn of point-blank attacks.  That's the nature of the game sometimes.  One of the thing that's hard for gamers in general is to know when to retreat, since most games spoonfeed you difficulty increases, XCom included, but there's only so much one can control that.

I mention the pedia entries 'cause they often do tell you useful things about what to expect (like don't try to melee catgirls, explains why it took nine stunrod hits to take one down).  First time I met mercs I got utterly destroyed by them, but managed to capture one and run away...  and researching that one guy told me what they were vulnerable to and made it possible to fight them much more effectively next time.  "Oh by the way these guys are invisible" just seems like a pretty big omission.  But, oh well; I'm nitpicking one entry for one unit.

(Also, yes, fistycuffs are perfect.  Early game, a useful backup if you can't pack a handle or stunrod.  Late game, when Tawny Britches or whoever rounds a corner to come face to face with a cyberdisk, she just smiles and pulls out the knucks...)

Excellent work, and I look forward to what insanity the future holds.

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Released Mods / Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.9.f - 20 Apr - Nuclear Fuel fixed

« on: April 24, 2015, 06:42:32 am »

Amazing mod.  Sketchy as heck, but I can have flying power armored doom soldiers running around loaded to the gills with explosives, carrying a stun pistol in one hand and a tricked out auto-aiming magnum in the other with my entire operation being funded by illegal booze sales, so, I'll roll with it.

And the tech tree.  My gods, the tech tree.  Holy crap.  How do you do it?  What kind of mind could conceive of such a thing?  What dark force of madness did you make a pact with to make that work?!

Ahem, moving on.  I noticed at one point that I can apparently buy a Deathchaser from the black market for $10,000... then sell it back for $1.65 million.  Doesn't seem like this is the intended behavior; fencing aircraft, while lucrative, usually doesn't quite have those kinds of margins.  I started with version 0.9.d and later upgraded to 0.9.f, if that makes any difference?  Deleted the resources folder before I did the upgrade, though.  A friend of mine reports the same phenomenon.

Also I'm a friend of eatthepath and had to listen to him going through catgirl hell, so I'm curious.  It just seems a very odd mechanic that people can only be seen from one angle; is there no way to make it so you just have to be close to them to see them?  I'm not hating, I didn't have that much trouble with smugglers (partially 'cause I knew what to expect).  But the fact that this proclivity is nowhere mentioned in the bootypedia entries for catgirls or smugglers in general only makes it more mysterious.