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

« on: May 01, 2015, 02:57:55 pm »

It does already, it tells you that thats exactly what they do with the probe. You just follow it up and find the area the head honchos are spying and take up the oportunity to raid it.

Lore so far is solid, and I like this, because most mods of various games I played had the lore thrown in a trash can. I like the subtle references to events from other X-Com games that did happen in piratez albeit in a different way. Personally I cant wait to see what happened to T'leth in this alternate universe and why the deep ones use the weapons they do. Also I kinda expect a sectoid to pop up somewhere. Cant have X-Com without sectoids.

The only downer if you can call it that, is that so far I have found nothing speaking about X-Com itself. And I think thats a shame. Perhaps there is something that I havent found out. Oh well, I can fantasise that the starting Lab is a leftover of the original X-com base and the girls run on it when they build their hideout or something.

From the pedia: "These small flying things are launched by the Empire to survey potential activity sites"

I think a lot of my confusion is coming from my first reading of this sentence. To me it implies that the Probes are meant to survey potential IMPERIAL activity sites, not that the probes survey sites with unaffiliated activity the Empire finds interesting. Sorry to split this hair infinitesimally!

I can definitely confirm that there is some lore in the pedia that concerns the fate of X-Com. T'leth, I dunno about yet. Mysteries abound!

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

« on: May 01, 2015, 01:18:17 pm »

Wha? While I may have been able to MC star gods, I never did. While I don't doubt that I benefited MASSIVELY in terms of psi resistance, I've always found psi combat in classic XCom a little cheesy, both as the giver and as the receiver. Making an alien blaster bomb themselves is amusing once, but after that it permanently destroys the sense of tension and obviates practically all other forms of weaponry. I did use it on a few base defenses, but I had a Sectopod present and would have won anyway. Mostly that was to try and capture a Raider Humungous to see what cool stuff that unlocked.

Honestly I sort of think the Dark Ones should be psi immune.

Crap, I forgot to mention an incident that I found fascinating. My first major engagement with the star gods was a pogrom. I rolled out my troops, didn't make a lot of contact, enemy phase I got three troops mind controlled and after that there was nothing left to do but cry a lot. I tried again, and had success with a VERY odd tactic. I ran out just two soldiers - and I had NO idea if they were psi-strong or psi-weak, my voodoo school hadn't gone online at this point. And the Star Gods didn't make psi attacks against anyone in the Thunderhorse. So two soldiers ran across the map, discs-o-death in hand, and went house to house and took out the entire pogrom themselves. While it was a cool moment, I can't help but wonder: is Star God psi-targeting being restricted just like explosive targeting is?

The reason I brought up LW was not to say "LW does this therefore it is obviously the one true path", more that "LW has a large player base that has been able to handle the stress of lose-lose terror missions and trap UFOs". I personally enjoy LW and recommend it to all X-com fans, but that's completely tangential to this thread beyond saying that folks can handle a few missions that don't contain a possibility of total victory.

For the Imperial Probe? Well... considering it looks like a giant mind probe, has an anemic engine, and is unarmed and unarmored, I imagine it is relatively cheap and perhaps a large psionic sensor. Considering the Star Gods hand out cruisers and heavy gunships like party favors to the Factions, they've obviously got a massive industrial base that could support throwing those probes away. My gut says that other Governor-level entities would be using such a device to psionically explore other systems in the Empire for pure entertainment purposes. I'd say it's less "spying on themselves" and more "bored elite members of the stellar empire driving psionic quadcopter". The bootypedia states they're dispatched to survey potential activity sites, so I would expect the Imperial probe to be a precursor to Star God feet touching the Earth. Are they the precursor craft to Messenger landings? I only ever remember Imperial Probes spawning Dark One and Deep One sites. To turn my confusion into a straightforward question: Is it intended behavior that all non-crackdown dark one and deep one activity is spawned by Imperial Probes?

I think the whole idea with the probe, was to use it as an 'excuse' of a ufo to follow up and actually find out the hideouts/bases/whatever it is those factions operate without having to add another base raid mission on the map. The stargods (as far as I progressed) have no presence and installations on earth, they only make rare appereances personally.

The 'problem' with melee, is that it is an answer to early problem. That is the lack of good weapons and ammo. Once you get your operations up and running and secure a supply of good munitions, via varius means ranged combat becomes again a priority. That is not to say that you forgoe melee all together, but if the enemy carries top notch gear, and you try to close the distance without reloads....yeah thats gonna end badly.

Reading Pilot00's comment: Ohhhhhh that makes some sense. It's less that the Dark Ones are operating an Imperial Probe, and more that the Imperial Probe is going to go hover over a Dark One place for sometime? I wonder if their bootypedia entry might be altered to state "The probes themselves are worthless but they may be able to lead us to something the Star Gods consider interesting..."

MAG Assault Pistol vs Eagle: I actually got nowhere near enough Eagles in my campaign to make them a regular sidearm. I think I had four. I did get my first one deliciously early, and appreciated it greatly. I don't at all dispute your point that obsolescence happens in Piratez, merely wanted to say that the invisible hand of RNG precluded your example in my campaign. I'm just arguing for more lategame ammo for pretty weapons like the CAWS and the Autogun and the LACC because I think they're pretty.

Mecha suits
- No X-Sectopods. They will be replaced with 2x2 armor suits WORN by soldiers, and equipped with custom weapons.

Hyperbole Mode: Oooh, HWP Mechasuits sounds totally awesome WAIT NO WHAT

BUT

SECTOPODS NOOOOOO ;_______;

Reasonable response: Welllllllll I'll reserve judgment until I see the mechasuits. I'll miss the Sectopods though. It was amazingly fun to get to use many of the classic X-com terror units in my PirateZ run, and I'll be sad to see my favorite of the lot go. I spent many hours of my youth mind controlling all four sections of a Sectopod in the vain hopes I'd get to keep it, and fielding the X-Sectopod in PirateZ was the first time I've been able to realize the dream.

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

« on: April 30, 2015, 02:21:59 pm »

Hey, I punched each of those imps fair and square to get my superpowered wands! Psi strength improvement went totally unused during the crafting of my strategic wand stockpile. Part of the reason I suggested strengthening Imp fireballs or adding a str-based melee to the imps was that once I had good armor, I could take however long I needed to punch them down and the real challenge was making sure they didn't wake up and wander off as I swept the map. And making sure that there wasn't a pinky demon hanging around, those things can chew right through top drawer armor.

Shame about the explosives impotency issues. Would reducing blast radius, or introducing a 200-piercing guided sabot round for the blaster launcher make it easier for the AI to handle? Additionally, shame about the AI not being able to handle widespread flamers.

The shipping bootypedia entry on the Imperial Probe was crystal clear, it was just odd that I never saw any missions officially run by the Star God faction using that ship. Just seemed to be a gameplay/story disjoint.

Spear piercing was largely a verisimilitude suggestion. If this would devalue the spear as a melee weapon due to increased availability of piercing resistant armor, I guess I'd suggest upping a pierce-spear's damage to compensate. If the spear's in an ideal place right now in terms of balance, by all means leave it be. A strength-adding alloy lance might be fun, but in general I'm a sucker for polearms because I think they look cool.

I can appreciate that with all the factions there currently are (and the need to capture specific units to progress technologically) giving the Humanists more missions would increase the RNG effects. Humanist Bombing/Pacification missions simply seemed to fit their MO.

I've been playing a lot of the Long War mod for XCom 2012, and I'm not entirely sure there'd be a riot over lose-lose terror missions. Broadly speaking, Long War reworked terror missions to always lower your score-analogue, your forces are there only to mitigate damage. As long as Gov't pogroms were explicitly disallowed in the starting two or three months I don't think it could do significant campaign damage. As with the proposed Humanist Bombing missions, though, Gov't pogroms would reduce the number of chances to snag tech-tree critical captures like the engineers, academy medic and esper, etc. Siiiiigh. But it'd be fun and a nice change of pace! Even now I'm wondering if stunning all the gov't terrorists, grabbing all their stuff, and aborting would be the way to maximally profit for minimum score hit...

On that same subject, the LW mod introduces "Trap" missions. Can't take credit for that suggestion, and again just like with the terror missions - the playerbase has adjusted to their existence. I have faith that Piratez players would be able to handle it, but I'm optimistic by nature. The explanation for hypothetical Piratez traps would be simple: "They figured out you're using a hyperwave decoder and laid a trap for you, handle it". It's no different than a first month base assault in terms of "unfair to the player" IMO. Both the landed trap and the aerial Q-ship suggestions were aimed at reducing a sense of complacency and safety that developed once I got advanced armor up, and the noninteractible swarms of Heavy Gunships flying around on Crackdown missions.

I was mentioning satellites mostly out of lore curiosity. There's tons of information in the Bootypedia about what's going on on the surface of Imperial Earth, and much less about whether or not there's anything in orbit. I can imagine orbital factories, or even housing for the elites of the various factions. The Solar Governor bootypedia entry describes Faction facilities on the surface of Mars, but I have no idea if there's a thick layer of surveillance and military satellites, or if Earth's orbit is a relative wasteland.

I don't doubt that hammers are amazing, just as with the spear suggestions this was coming more from a logic/progression point of view. I can imagine a hammer being improved by being made out of sturdier materials, for example, and there's many many improvements to the one-hand melee weapons (longsword, techblade, electro sword, wolverine claws, force blades, the demon weapons, etc) and there's no improvements to the hammers. It seemed like an area with no progression, which feels weird in a game with head-crushing depth to its tech tree. Plus, Discs-o-Death on my synthsuited pirates was basically a range-11 hammer anyways...

Hm. I can see how using ammo to rotate which slughtrowers are in vogue works. My suggestions for more MAG and other ammos was generally from a consistency POV - in-universe, I can't think of any reason why PS blackmarch SMG magazines can't be manufactured, or why MAG or improved HE rounds can't be made for the CAWS. ...Actually, one thing that might be interesting is Contacts: Blackmarch being required to manufacture advanced Blackmarch SMG ammunition, representing developing improved contacts with the manufacturers and getting their insight on improved ammos. Hah! I'll bet they'd be interested in buying those blueprints from the Pirates for a pretty penny too...

I look forward to Piratez Extended!  What, uh, what is Piratez Extended?

I personally found melee an expedient solution to most problems. In the earlygame I did a lot of handcannon + cutlass/axe, then in the midgame I had a smokey-armored lasrifle sniper and RPG launcher that did tons of useful work, as well as a soldier with a Confederate Eagle. I added on a Custom Snipin' Gun sniper too, so by no means was I completely gun-free. By then my rank and file hand was dualwielding a stunrod and a techblade. There were a couple of reasons for this: I needed to be in melee range to stun people, and I needed to stun people to advance my technology and economy. Adding a techblade gave me a lethal option. A ton of my early and midgame missions were pogroms, and most pogroms have urban terrain that makes melee combat way more practical. Power armored Trader Bodyguards make melee almost necessary! There were several months that were literally pogrom -> one UFO -> pogrom and that was it, so I think it's unfair to blame my evolution towards melee solely on my scummy behavior. Terrain, tech-tree paths, bad judgment, and a high number of strong starting rookies all led me towards that composition.

I was also afraid of running out of nuclear laser clips so I was super shy about adopting laser weapons. This turned out to be pretty foolish in the long run, but that fear also pushed me towards the techblade as my source of a reliable kill. By the lategame, the stunrod got replaced with knucks, and the techblade got replaced with the Disc o' Death, and right before the end I replaced the knucks with Imp Wands which on high strength troopers is basically a plasma rifle/super knucks combo.

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

« on: April 28, 2015, 12:44:08 pm »

SUGGESTIONS:
* It'd be nice to know explicitly which weapons can be used 1h without accuracy penalties.
* Slower, accurate alloy halberd after Techblades.
* Inspired by the Suicide RPG guys I mentioned in Pogroms, I'd recommend replacing the RPGs from the Pogrom weapon table with flamethrowers. Think the egg-burning scene in District 9.
* Additionally, thinking about Wikus van der Merwe from District 9 counting up aliens on his clipboard, I strongly feel that Governments should launch pogroms too or have some personnel present on the scene. It's my understanding from the lore that they're partially culpable for the Pogroms (do they provide mutant census data to the Star God regime?), and some more than others might actively relish the opportunity to punish restive Mutant communities. Amusingly a government pogrom would be a lose-lose for the Pirates, and I think this is a good thing. I loved how fucking desperate my early Pogroms were (and became again when the damn Mercs came out), and adding in the occasional government pogrom might be a fun way to add a new dimension of desperation.
* I have no idea how shotgun-style weapons work right now, if spread is something you can control, but I was thinking about the 6+ round autoshots, and wondering if those could be condensed. Imagine if instead of firing 25 rds, the minigun fired 5 5-rd spreads with tight grouping. If this didn't negatively change weapon performance, I think it'd be a nice way to make the long bursts a little less time consuming.
* Increase Gauss projectile speed. It seems a bit odd that the hypervelocity rounds from the gauss weapons travel much less quickly than the Custom Snipin' Gun's projectiles.
* Improve cutting resistance on top-end enemies (tank, mercenary captain, sectopod spring to mind). Once I started pushing up to high base strength values and equipping strength enhancing armor, there seemed to be very little need to deploy anything more powerful than the techblade. Blood axes, electro-swords, and hell-blades all seem to me to be solutions looking for a problem. Once I started laying down 155 power cutting attacks, everything died in short order and I totally phased out firearms.
* In particular, I might recommend introducing some midtier concussive melee weapons beyond the hammer. I did not seem to encounter anything that provided it past the Pipe or the Ballbat. Perhaps an alloy hammer? Maybe the shock-a-fist could be converted from plasma to concussive damage, or lead to a Power Fist? This would go along with increasing armored fighting vehicles' resistance to cutting damage, and perhaps reducing their resistance to concussive slightly so elerium grenades and rockets are more efficient then hitting it with a techblade six times.
* Replace the Machinegun with the Autorifle completely (it's just so pretty!)
* Improve church armor slightly across the board. Their energy resistance is really cool, but they died like chumps to the piercing weapons I was picking up all throughout fighting the raiders and researching slugthrowers. Outside of their lids and one memorable and deadly Bomber mission, they seemed pretty tame as adversaries. I say: more rockets, more fire.
* Improve Dark One fireball strength or add plasma vulnerability to midtier armor. Or, add a melee attack to Cacodemons and Imps so they can still threaten people out of clothing-tier. Demons, Barons of Hell, and the odd zom with a BFG or RPG were scary, the vast majority were impotent.
* Or, up the incidence of UAC plasmaguns and BFGs in their ranks. While it was always fun trying to stun them all to make the COMPLETELY AWESOME demon weapons, they could never hurt me and I never got enough UAC weapon materials to actually ever field a plasma gun or a BFG for more than one, single, mission. So sad :C. Imp wands more than made up for it though, providing me with FAR AND AWAY the best belt-slot item. This kind of ties into my early observation that 45+str cutting damage and +30 str armor on top of experienced hands solved all my problems, leaving the 88+str blood axe and 100+str acid hellblade superfluous statistically.
* I unlocked Advanced Firearms when I was sitting on stocks of ~100 sniper gauss and gauss musket clips, so while they were all really cool weapons, I found them mostly superfluous by the time I got there. I'm not sure exactly HOW I unlocked them, but they came out about 18 months after I got the custom snipin' gun. I think these could really stand to be pushed up a bit, but I think it was through Higher Learning?
* It feels like a lot of firearms get left behind as advanced ammunition comes out. Blackmarch SMG and RCF carbine don't get any PS magazines. CAWS also could stand an upgraded munitions IMO, along with the Assault Grenade Launcher. MAG sniper and Custom Snipin' Gun rounds would be awesome too, as would MAG-piercing rounds for the LACC and CAWS.
* LACC-HE rounds can't break wooden picket fences. I really wanted to embrace such a beautiful weapon, but that seemed like a sign that I really needed to just stick to my techblades.
* There are three craft lasers, and one craft gauss weapon. Right now Gauss in general feels extremely underdeveloped compared to the plethora of laser weaponry and slugthrowers.
* Academy Hazmat suits could stand a few plastasteel inserts to give them some better protection. They look impressive but they're deathtraps. The Academy must go through lots of Explorers.
* I observed four main tiers of enemy armaments: slugthrowers (landed small UFOs, freighters), lasers (some UFOs and pogroms), gauss (most warships, enemy bases), and plasma. I don't know how much control can be exerted here, but I strongly feel like the slugthrower and laser tiers need to improve once the Pirates start fielding advanced armor or those missions become cakewalks I can't mess up. I might humbly recommend reducing under armor to the point where elerium grenades can still offer serious damage, or have them upgrade from slugthrowers entirely to lasers eventually.
* To clarify on the above: Brute Armor and especially Harbinger Armor and Annihilator Armor renders pirates almost invincible. Brute in particular was my go-to suits and only failed under sustained heavy or sniper gauss fire, or plasma rifles+. I'd recommend pushing up the brute armor laser vulnerability as well, though if you add any battle laser or MP-lascannon toting enemies they'll dish out enough damage to keep me afraid. I suppose another option might be increasing the incidence of Canister Launchers.
* More daily business! I got into a weird state where I swear every other ship flying from 2601 to 2602 was a Heavy Gunship.
* What happened to Earth's satellite network? I would assume it's destroyed or defunct, but does anyone in 2600 maintain or operate satellites? Is there still international communication between phone lines? Or is that handled by the Traders?
* The only weapon disassembly components I was ever low on were heavy power couplings. I think there could stand to be a far higher consumption of the other energy weapon components, as I had stocks of 100s and 100s and 100s of them. I didn't do a lot of energy weapon crafting though - When I really wanted to be using nuclear lasers I was totally blocked on research progress (no Acad engineer), and so I worked around that until I got to Discs of Death, and those rendered most ranged weapons outside of a dedicated sniper and a dedicated rocketeer obsolete. Techblades tided me over in the meantime for hard targets like mercs.


SUGGESTIONS (IMPRACTICAL/SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF WORK):
* In the vein of HWP Merc Commandoes and Attack Dogs: Purchaseable Mutant Alliance snakeladies and Apocalypse-style sectoid hybrids. In game they'd be unlocked after making contact with militant parts of the Mutant Alliance - all those pacification missions must be targeting someone after all. The Sectoid hybrids could offer some early or midgame voodoo. The snakemen hybrids are just for fun. Looking at UFOPaedia, they would have good smoke, acid, and fire resistance and perhaps good health. You could introduce a couple of tiers of equipment for them, too, via incremental upgrades akin to the path to building Annihilator armor. For example, Gray M.A. Resistance Psion + Tactical Suit + Laser Pistol = Elite M.A. Resistance Psion, Elite M.A. Resistance Psion + Assault Armor + Laser Rifle = M.A. Resistance Ghost. This suggestion is designed to circumvent the problems with mapping every pirate armor type to the different morphologies of these unique troopers, and that you can't access their inventory.
* In a similar vein, "Mutant Alliance Volunteers" might be recoverable rarely from Terror sites and, in a very long duration workshop project, trained up to the first level of Mutant Alliance troopers.
* This also reinforces the narrative of the recruitable pirates all coming from the fast-improving Uber strain.
* Synthsuit and Brute armored Reapers. I was sad to retire my first HWP, a Reaper imaginatively named "Mr. Reaps", that had about 20 kills and served as an invaluable bullet sponge and mascot for our forces. It'd be impractical and irresponsible in-universe, but is anything too much to ask for such a faithful comrade to serve a little longer in the era of Mercenaries? Besides eating Soylent in the hideout, I mean.
* Add a power-armored Academy Security - perhaps it's based on X-com Flying Armor, but with some plates pulled off so he's not as tough? Academy was extremely nasty to face in the earlygame on Pogroms where they fielded up to four Cyberdiscs, but once I could handle those there wasn't much to fear except the occasional lucky psi attack from (I believe) the Provosts. Another idea might be an extremely up-armored Drone or Cyberdisc. I GREATLY ENJOYED the enemy diversity on Trader Pogroms - the biggest challenge and most exciting missions by far for me in my playthrough were early Trader Pogroms. It could be a pest control manager in the next room, or it could be (as I described them to my friends), a power armored member of the "Fun Police", packing a heavy laser. Once I had advanced armor and a reliable one-shot-kills-anything weapon, and was going up against less diverse factions, the tension of exploring and the surprise of contact was greatly reduced.
* Similarly, I might recommend dedicated Heavy Weapons soldiers for mercs and humanists, Demolitions experts for traders - perhaps called Redecorators or Remodelers? They'd serve a Tank Hunting purpose and have something that can make 90+ armor pirates still feel fear. These would be low reactions, high accuracy troops with good health, stamina, and personal or personal+ armor. MP-lascannons, rocket launchers with antitank warheads, blaster launchers, all with a sidearm if they can be told how to use them.
* To dovetail on the above: The merc roster feels a bit thin, hence the suggestion there. They might also get access to discs for slightly squishier flying shenanigans, or even gauss tanks? Similarly, some rank-and-file purple-faced mutons might be a good choice for expert troops. Perhaps pull in the Berserker from XCom 2012? 100% of merc enemies are super high-HP, accurate sniper bastards. It'd be neat if they had some different threats. I'd love for the mercs to include a few synthsuited sectoids, or perhaps XCom Apocalypse-style sectoid-human hybrids for a little psi support. Or they could bring in snakemen for slightly squishier threats?
* It'd be neat to give Humanists loader-suit troopers to even up their firepower and durability disadvantages inherent with being squishy humans without Star God support. Wolfenstein 3d's Mecha Hitler, perhaps? A mortar or grenadier trooper would be great, too, the Celatid was a unique threat and I'd love to see more indirect-fire enemies.
* The Star Gods should (at a risk of being repetitive) also be a bit more diverse I think. I realize part of the challenge is that they're interchangeable, faceless avatars of an alien god, but it'd be nice for the old wimpy sectoids to come back... and with some major teeth. Extremely potent versions of the Church force field, high power armor-piercing plasma pistols, small launchers with shaped fusion armor-cracking charges... and of course, extra psi.
* If possible, Raiders should hijack government or maybe even guild ships from time to time. It'd be a fun way to diversify from their space winnebagos, and of course depict their raiding shenanigans
* Do Raiders go on Pogroms? I'd justify it as them punishing a rival raiding clan's population.
* Raiders live out in the wilds, perhaps some of them tame various mutant wildlife like Reapers. If there are still any Tasoths, they might be able to team up with some of them.
* Trap/bait missions. On the decoder it looks to be another freighter, it lands and it looks like another freighter, but inside it's twenty chryssalids, or ten Trader power-armor troopers. Or a sectopod and a Star God Guardian serving as an observer to make sure that the Guild or the Academy doesn't squander this generous loan that they've requested to deal with the pirate scourge. To quote monty python: RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!
* Similar vein to the above: What about a Q-ship? Low-flying, large ship with a freighter's transponder, heavy shielding and armor, and a cargo entirely of powerful weapons. A little FU from the Guild later on. They would figure out pretty quick you're using hyperwave decoders to pick your targets when you refuse to fight all those Heavy Gunships with the Bonaventura, so having them start running false flag ops makes perfect sense to me. Plus this would really help diversify the otherwise repetitive Crackdown missions IMO.
* 37mm Rifle, Precision Laser, Gauss, and eventually proper Plasma Cyberdiscs. The flying chassis makes an ideal platform for sniper weapons - I was quite surprised (and a little disappointed) to never build a proper plasma-armed, Star God-issue cyberdisc.
* In a similar vein, I was surprised at only one variant of Sectopod (and held off on building any for a while in the hopes of unlocking more variants). Gausstopods, Star God-issue superlaser sectopods, and gatling plasma would be fun. Similarly, one armed with a baby Obliterator Cannon would be pretty sweet. I realize this is way, way, way too many HWPs. I just really love discs and sectopods! The X-Sectopod is so awesome it honestly doesn't really need a weapons upgrade. But... sectopods!
* Laser and Gauss variants of the starting Hand Cannon. There's a researchable heavy plasma pistol, and of course the special smuggler pistol, and the ES Laspistol, but the niche of "extra-large 1-hand weapon to kill tough guys I can't sword" niche feels like its dominated by the hand cannon, then the magnum, then the confederate eagle with mag rounds... A pocket lascannon, basically a laser pistol that can burn its battery in a single murderous blast might be a lot of fun. Maybe a pocket Gauss shotgun, designed for high-ranking officials to kill a single charging assailant, by releasing a cloud of hypervelocity flechettes?
* Improved fighter UFOs with long range, high damage weapon that's a missile. This makes it so you can't just plasma beam your way to victory all day erry day and fusion balls have a role.
* Alternate Canister Launcher ammunition. Improved stun, perhaps, or perhaps an extremely strong incendiary effect?


SUGGESTIONS (IRRESPONSIBLE/SILLY):
* Usable Craft Weapons in tactical missions. Let's see that mercenary commando survive the Bonnie's dorsal 50mm cannon!
* Short workshop projects that take one Pirate Armor and one of any other type of armor, and outputs a version of the second armor with a Tricorn. To round off the suggestion with an irresponsible UI upgrade, separate this into Personal Armor Decoration. So you know who the officers are! Who doesn't want to still be wearing a tricorn over their Synthsuit? A poofy shirt might work, too...
* Sectopod turbos! A research that bumps these adorable waddling death monsters up to 80+ TUs!
* Cyberdisc drive improvement! Unlocked by researching Hovertanks to bring Discs up to Hovertank+ speeds, as its a similar drive but without the extra mass of a turret!
* Can explosions be directional like shotgun blasts? If so, Claymore mines!
* And claymore swords!
* A "Neon Sign" building. It is available early and is the opposite of a Mind Shield; it makes it easier for a particular base to be located by Retaliation missions.
* Lids with grav units?
* Fusion proximity mines!
* I personally don't really like the shoulder guns on the X-Sectopod. I much prefer the classic, sleek look. Buuuut, that's just my personal preference.
* Firmly in the category of "Pie in the Sky": It'd be really cool if every shot in a burst was fired more or less at once, with perhaps a .25-.5s delay, so that the sound of the miniguns and so forth would be contiguous. It'd make determining what actually happened during the burst harder, but it was still a wish I had.

Thanks for reading!

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

« on: April 28, 2015, 12:42:59 pm »

I recently caught the first few episodes of IvanDogovich's PirateZ campaign, was deeply intrigued, then decided to play the game myself. I have now finished my campaign over the course of about a week and a half of realtime.  My feedback's run over the 20000 character limit, so I'm afraid I have to break it up into multiple egregiously long posts.

-Some stats-
Gametime: Completed in mid 2603
Difficulty: 3
Tactical Skill level: Zapp Brannigan
Strategic Skill level: Geoffrey Lebowski
Savescum level: Scumlord Alpha Plus
Starting Location: The eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, hideout "Khutulun's Rest"
Psi Strength Improve On

Overall it's difficult to overstate what an enthralling experience it was. "Mutant anime space pirate babes fighting fascists for profit and booze" is a pretty much bulletproof premise, you could take that to the bank. This is the most cavernous tech tree I think I've ever encountered. How many researches are there? Based on the experience it really felt like it gave Warzone 2100's ~500 researchable techs a run for its money, and I am both impressed and terrified that there's much more planned. Thank you profoundly for making my return to classic Xcom a deeply memorable and utterly fantastic experience.

HIGH POINT: Early Trader pogroms. This was easily the game-defining experience that illustrated both how deep and rewarding PirateZ is, and how different it is from XCom. What's around the corner? Is it a GO with a bottle of booze, some drugs, and a li'l snubby? Or is it fucking Evil Robocop in powered armor with a heavy laser and a boner for murder? I had to maintain a diverse roster, with multiple different types of armor, and use every single underhanded and dirty trick in the book ("Hmm. Page one: Run at guy. Page two: Stab guy repeatedly. Short book.") The ultimate moment was, having exhausted all my heavy munitions to no effect, twelve pirates huddled in a garage while Robocop, the only survivor of his pogrom force, lazily bullseyed snakeladies in the parking lot adjacent. The plan? One pirate hammers a hole in the wall, runs up to Robocop, drops the hammer, dives away. Then every other pirate runs out in a single-file line, picks up the hammer, hits Robocop once, drops it, and makes room for the next to repeat. He goes down on the last soldier. Great enemy diversity, with all enemies being a credible threat to my pirates but demanding dramatically different responses and combined arms.

Addendum: The image of a drunk, high asshole gleefully taking inaccurate potshots at cowering, defenseless mutant civilians is some powerful stuff. I hated these guys, and it wasn't because they were frustrating to fight. I made a point to show up to each pogrom - it didn't matter that the profit margins were low. As the Dude says: "This will not stand, ya know, this aggression will not stand, man."

OTHER WONDERFUL MOMENTS: My pet Reaper, "Mr. Reaps". And storming a Star God Base with three X-sectopods whilst laughing maniacally for about a quarter of an hour.

LOW POINT: Tech bottlenecks. I spent approximately forever (actually about 12 months) awaiting an Academy Engineer. I shot them all during the early Academy Pogroms, and after that the Academy dropped off the face of the earth I had radar coverage of. I did eventually rectify the issue, but the Star God Coordinator was pretty much the first faction leader I was able to capture. Merc pogroms in early 2601 were also pretty rough too, but I had nobody to blame but myself for sticking those out.

OTHER UNWONDERFUL MOMENTS: Realizing only after Disc-o-Deathing the Star God Governator a question that you can sprint for 3 TU 3 energy. Shit. Again, my fault for not looking up exactly WHAT all the special movement options were. But it was definitely making me flashback to all those times I needed a few more Techblade hits to down a mercenary jerk... The first few months, also, felt like shipping was pretty spare on the ground and most of my missions were pogroms


BUGS / CAMPAIGN MYSTERIES :
This section is going to be brief and mostly focus on the things that confused me or seemed very buggy. On reread, maybe describing this section as 'brief' was optimistic...

* Nobody ever blaster bombed me. There were several opportunities to do so, namely on the cruisers I downed and of course in my hideout defenses, but they never seemed to do so. This is a problem because once I developed X-Sectopods, I could use one to mop up an entire hideout assault force.
* Blaster Bomb addendum: What truly weirded me out about the experience with the enemies being blaster launcher shy was that they had no problems doing Suicide Rockets from RPGs on pogroms, or suicide grenading me from time to time. They really seemed to struggle with grenades too, actually - Guild Securities used them VERY effectively in my early months, and then almost everyone entirely forgot to use them ever again for two straight years.
* Similarly, tanks were often gunshy. The first tank I encountered was on a Mercenary Pogrom right next to the Bonaventura and thus in my smoke grenade cloud. I ran out and wailed on it with melee for three straight turns, and all it did was drive around. This was especially odd, as later I encountered one during a Humanist Pogrom that had zero compunctions about shooting me right in my smug face.
* Tank addendum: The humanist tank that was unimpressed additionally did not appear to be traversing its turret. The howitzer shells definitely were coming out of the back of the turret. I really wish I'd kept a savegame of this, because I went from "haha, it's just a silly little tank" to "WAT" at warp speed.
* Rounding out the theme of enemies not doing things, Mercenary Captains seemed extremely shy to deploy their melee attack (which is supposed to be badass and scary according to the ingame bootypedia).
* I encountered significantly more Dark Ones than I did Deep Ones and Smugglers - all of my imperial probe missions were Dark Ones themed, and in early 2603 they started flying crackdown missions and launched several hideout assaults. To be clear: I do not view the low density of Deep Ones and Smugglers as a problem, it just struck me as odd that the Dark Ones were in such high representation compared to those other two factions. In fact, I never had any missions with deep ones and smugglers!
* Academy Explorers seemed to be available to research repeatedly, despite me filling out my Countries list. Is something happening here that I don't understand?
* Many of my >100% shots seemed to miss their targets. This led me to eventually phase out ranged combat almost entirely out of frustration. I noticed this effect increased dramatically with range and as I got further above 100% hit chance. In some cases, I think it was intentional: Star God Coordinators seem to have a very high chance for weapons fire to simply slide off of them, and I'm okay with that, but I was frustrated with things like a pest control manager that just can't be hit no matter how many times I reload with save scum on.
* While I got their research info from a Gun Almanac, I never once encountered an Autorifle. Millions of Machineguns, X-Com Rifles, Battle Rifles, Homefront Rifles, LACCs, CAWS, etc, though.
* I was never able to stun an Armored Beastmaster, they always popped their armor even when I was using exclusively stun damage. I was worried I'd need to somehow capture Armored Beastmasters to preserve their unique armor.
* The blackmarch SMG bootypedia entry describes it as a scarce weapon, yet it is purchasable at will from the black market.
* I'd really appreciate it if the bootypedia entries for each weapon named what each type of ammunition was. Over time it became unclear to me which was which.
* Panzerfausts seemed uneconomical to me in the earlygame.
* My first base raid was an army of ratmen. I think I spotted one other bandit mission. This was actually a problem as I accidentally killed all the academy engineers I met in the earlygame and didn't meet any more until early 2602. Had that been the academy I think I would have finished the game several months earlier.
* Now that sectopod corpses are required to build sectopods, I'd like to point out that it is unclear from the bootypedia entry alone whether robot disassembly gives you a corpse or not.
* I never encountered, up till shipping-600, a Star God Messenger ship. The vast majority of shipping was heavy gunships and cruisers.
* From a lore point of view it's a bit odd that special deep one and dark one missions are spawned by imperial probes, and that the empire itself never seems to launch these probes.
* I'd love to know ammo counts per craft weapon - the single shot Avalanches and three shot Lancers were surprising to me.
* I'd also love to know the TU cost and accuracy of HWP weaponry. The X-Sectopod's amazingly generous 12-tu, long-ranged autoshots only laser took me completely by surprise. Does the HMG cyberdisc have a 90% tu cost on its shot like the soldier version? I dunno without building one!
* How come spears aren't Piercing?
* A gray civilian goomba-stomped me, instantly KOing one of my hands. What? How? Hunh? What?
* I was getting my ass kicked by Sway Local Gov't missions until I went to the UFOpaedia website and learned that what I REALLY needed to be doing was shooting down each of the starting craft, and that doing ground assaults (While profitable in the extreme) on the cruisers afterwards was irrelevant.
* Do Humanists make their Hanabus, or do they contract the Guild to build them? Are the Hanabus using cloaking devices to fly under the radar as well, or are their craft sanctioned in some way? I'm surprised the Humanists never launch Pacification missions.
* The Dragon craft describes itself as being as big as possible to fit in the hangar. But the Conqueror is considerably larger, which makes the earlier comment about the Dragon a bit odd. Also, the Dragon's a tiny, lightning-fast dogfighter in Freespace. It's odd to convert it to a pocket battleship
* I've heard reference to a Mercenary Commander being unnecessary to capture to complete the game but never encountered one and couldn't find one in the files. Are these the same as Mercenary Captains?