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XPiratez / Re: XPiratez Information Compilation, Starter Guide & Weapon Spreadsheet

« on: Today at 12:02:34 am »

Several of the Piratin' Tips make it quite clear that bravery is important for voodoo defense. Also plenty of weapons with bravery bonuses. I think it's quite natural that one looks for ways to improve it. Always having bandages (&c) so you can treat the wounded is easy, but for me it hasn't translated into much of a stat increase. Deliberately drawing out missions that could be finished in four turns, just for the morale checks, feels silly. Yet here we are. Had I known about rope earlier, I would certainly have given it a try.

Back to topic: while you give the Blackmarch SMG a solid A rating, your description is not exactly an endorsement. For me, it's one of my favorite weapons (or at least used to be). More powerful cartridge than the RCF carbine though no AP bonus, much faster, but ultimately limited range. I've used it as a plinking gun, snapshots rather than autofire, as I feel that this yields more hits per TU; also, there's a decent chance that one hit will be enough. Four snapshots (or two aimed) with a comfortable 20% TU to spare.

The only clear benefit of the carbine in that comparison is it's truly unlimited range. Well, and that even a rookie soldier can get off an highly accurate shot.

The Assault SMG is even faster and more accurate, but the Blackmarch delivers 20% more buck with each bang, and that's really quite noticeable. Like Assault Pistol vs Manstopper.

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: February 18, 2025, 07:11:13 pm »

How does one even fight Star Gods? I know how to deal with shielded tanks and expect Sectopods to be similar if tougher. But the Star Gods themselves? Oh vey.

In my world, they have established an outpost quite early (month 14 or thereabouts), which receives plenty of supply runs. This give me the opportunity to try my hand at them every so often. My ranged weapons appear to be weak, my melee attacks never seem to connect, but worst of all, I can't even see the guys until I've almost walked into them.

My weapons are bound to get better with time, but I have no idea how I'm supposed to deal with their stealthiness.

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XPiratez / Re: Feedback on the "Mutant Culling" Mission

« on: February 17, 2025, 10:12:48 pm »

Technically, "overstun" is when they have more stun point than hitpoints, I believe. But the way I'm using the word in this thread here, I only mean "a few more whacks after they're already down". That, in and of itself, is not deadly.

If you see the ghost icon instead of a "Zzzz", they are losing hitpoints from being too deep under. If you only used whips and stun rods on them, they probably have a lot of HP left and can remain in that state for a long time. Not all stun weapons  are that gentle, though.

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XPiratez / Re: XPiratez Information Compilation, Starter Guide & Weapon Spreadsheet

« on: February 17, 2025, 07:06:43 pm »

Using a first aid kit also trains bravery, so work in pairs, trios, or fours and let the most cowardly one be the team medic.

Even works if you patch up enemies, which I somehow prefer to treating wounds on my team. It's a matter of opportunity, though, as you need treatable enemies AND a hand to spare AND both in proximity to each other. It has happened but you can't really plan for it.

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XPiratez / Re: XPiratez Information Compilation, Starter Guide & Weapon Spreadsheet

« on: February 16, 2025, 10:03:51 pm »

Maybe you hid it by mistake?

yes indeed, this is so.

Why would you want to use rope tho? There are better stun weapons.

The context was resources. If the runts need rope, you can't slip them a substitute.

Oh, I wasn't aware that using the rope trains bravery! I've had some of my gals dancing nekkid in the moonshine while others completed the mission very very casually.

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XPiratez / Re: XPiratez Information Compilation, Starter Guide & Weapon Spreadsheet

« on: February 16, 2025, 04:05:49 pm »

From where I am in this my first(*) playthrough, resources were/are not a problem. Chemicals, plastasteel and the likes have each become available on the market before I needed much of them. You can guess what power sources are going to be good for and that you won't need to keep very many of them.

Bounty stuff caught me by surprise. It says that Jack will pay well for Narlock Scepters, and 32k was good money at the time. However, that experience taught me about the "bounty" tab in the fencing menu and I never again sold anything from that list. So I guess that's good game design? Teachable moment, early enough so that not much harm had been done at that point?

Next are the not-quite resources like cigarettes and energy drinks. I kept a good handful of each; not out of clairvoyance, but because the game had educated me to expect a sudden demand for not just a few items, but dozens at a time.

Old boots! I cleaned out the lot of them. Felt a little bad about it, but they took up so much space.... however when the time came, there also were a few events (not quite random, I suppose) to give me more boots. So it was all good.

The only thing that really bit me was rope. You cannot make or purchase a simple piece of rope, would you believe it? Rare loot, too, and no event to help me out, either.

I'm not sure what (if any) of that needs to be included in the guide. Not selling things that might come in handy later is just common sense; Bounty items in particular are just a special case.
--
(*)strictly speaking this is my second playthrough. First time around I had my Hideout in Cleopatra's realm, and the negative 2000 score from a successful base defense sent me into a death spiral.

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XPiratez / Re: Feedback on the "Mutant Culling" Mission

« on: February 16, 2025, 11:44:53 am »

The Rod of Bliss is a) a melee weapon that does daze damage (and not a very good one at that) and b) a medikit that reduces the subject's freshness. Being a medikit is how it bypasses the enemy shields. But draining energy seems to be a pretty roundabout way of keeping an enemy down.

For most human-type enemies, stun recovery seems to depend on current health and freshness. So hurting their freshness ought to keep them down for longer. They will also recover less energy / TU / morale, so are less capable of causing trouble if they get up again. But for all that, I still think if you want someone out of the battle, it's much better to overstun them instead.
(someone please correct me if I'm wrong)

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XPiratez / Re: Feedback on the "Mutant Culling" Mission

« on: February 13, 2025, 06:19:40 pm »

I just shot down a big ship of the Eridians (too bad I can't prevent the culling that way). I've been using mostly Lasguns/Adv during the battle, and indeed: the Eridian's ability to get up again is uncanny.

*checks stats*
Oh, they recover 10HP per turn. So one has to either overstun them, or kill them dead.

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XPiratez / Re: Feedback on the "Mutant Culling" Mission

« on: February 13, 2025, 01:20:13 am »

Oh, I've got one of these coming up! I've seen the first scouts for that mission.

the acid rain is cherry on the top that all but makes sure I'll suffer some losses.

How so?
I had some dealings with ghouls lately, the mission description informed me about noxious fumes(?) and acid rain. I issued smoke gear and yellow overcoats and that apparently was sufficient protection.
Will Mutant Culling have a more aggressive atmosphere? What even are the effects of acid rain?

now I’m stuck searching for the last remaining [alien]

Many mission enter a "bug hunt mode" after a while, where all aliens' locations become visible on the minimap. Not sure if this one is an exception.

Aliens that have been stunned previously don't strictly have to be dealt with again; at least they don't prevent the mission from finishing. Once you put down the last fresh fighter, all who have previously been unconscious will instantly surrender. That doesn't stop them from picking up weapons and continuing the fight in the mean time, though.

I'm not aware of a toggle to turn off that behavior. Keeping downed enemies down is part of the Piratez experience: manacles exist for a reason (though personally, I only ever tried to use them once. Way too much effort.)

As greattuna said, you can attack prone enemies with ranged weapons. Don't even have to stand right on top. Things get tricky if there are other objects nearby: if the enemy is lying next to (e.g.) a wall, you likely end up attacking the wall instead. In the worst case you have to pick up the body and put it in a place where there can be no misunderstandings.

A few additional beatings with a whip make sure that the enemy stays down for many turns. If whips even work on the enemy in question, that is. But nevermind the details, you get the idea.

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: February 12, 2025, 02:25:52 pm »

How does one down small "craft"? Like Roving Bands and Bogeyman Swarms? So far I've always blown them up, no matter how small the weapon. I use them for pilot training, and just now one of them actually crashed. That was a big surprise, I didn't know that such an outcome even was possible. But now that I've seen it, I want to do it again, on purpose.

Also, what is adequate protection for cold weather? So far I either change into furs or just accept the health damage. But I have an inkling that there might be ONE SIMPLE TRICK that I missed.

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: February 12, 2025, 02:25:34 am »

In general, in which moment award's bonuses/maluses are calculated?

Just from loooking at the stat screen, there are three different values on display:
-the initial stats
-the current value of the "soldier as such" (matches what is stored in the savegame)
-the effective value including the effects of clothing and commendations.

You can easily change the latter by changing clothes. Camo Paint on a Gnome is a stark example, -30 bravery. I expect that your idiot's Vskill is going to remain at zero until the combination of learning and clothes makes up for the negative value from the commendation.

The spikey SMG didn't seem worth making when I got it; IIRC there were better guns available in the market. But calling someone an idiot for using it is harsh. It's not that bad.

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: February 10, 2025, 08:21:50 pm »

Stun batons work great for me.

I used cattle prods at first, but but never loved them because slow and unwieldy. At some point I noticed the baton's damage bonus, checked my gal's stats, and gave it a try. I get three dings out of them in the time it takes to prod someone once -- this certainly helped. Next thing I noticed was that it trains not only melee, but reactions as well. Suddenly all my gals had 100+ reactions.

It's a "don't leave home without it" item and I successfully use it on everyone not wearing power armor: academy medics and engineers, guild engineers, church priests and matrons. Even lobstermen! It's one-handed and small and often good enough. By the time I could have a lasso ready, the baton has already done the job and is back in the holster.

However, lately I run into opponents where the baton is no longer enough. I had high hopes for the poisoned dagger: "Stun damage modifier: 100%" it says. I thought it would do a lot of stun on top of the HP damage, but that doesn't seem to be what's happening. I had my second encounter with MERCs the other day and it typically took some 3-5 stabs of the poisoned dagger to put them down. Most of the time, the final blow was also fatal. So I guess the poisoned dagger is much less stunning than I thought it would be. Looking around for alternatives, I don't see any. What to do?

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: February 08, 2025, 11:17:42 pm »

If the goal is to just capture droids than cattle prod and electric lasso will do well doing that.

Will do, but not well.

What worked well was the reticulan electrogun, of which I only had one, and one clip. The victim got up again and needed to be put down a couple more times, but that was a comparatively minor issue.
*checks files* oh, it regenerates a flat 20 stun/turn, no questions asked. Yeah, that explains it.

And then it just happened that three gals could gang up on the last droid. Stun batons (not cattle prods) were a disappointment, either because they were too weak or because the opponent's dodge was too god. Lassos fared better, but it still took, like, 12 hits? More than I could deal in a single turn. That could have ended very badly, with three gals standing around a still functional droid during it's turn. I lucked out but cannot recommend that approach.

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: February 08, 2025, 06:18:29 pm »

Pirating Tip #102: "Bio damage doesn't need a lot of kinetic force to be delivered, while Electricity goes through the path of least resistance. Thus both these damage types effectively halve target's armor value."
Is that an inherent property of the damage types, or is it just that bio and electrical weapons usually have 50% armor efficiency written into their stats?

Context is that I'm trying to capture T-801 combat droids: armor 40-50 depending on side, 50% resistance to electric damage.
I have Blackmarch SMGs with EP bullets, nominal 35 electrical damage. No information about damage range, so I guess it's 0-200%? Also no information about armor effectiveness.

As I understand it, the armor's resistace and the electrical bonus should cancel each other, leaving me with a 0-70 damage roll against 40-50 points of armor. That ought to lead to actual damage being done with about every third hit. Doesn't seem to happen, though.
So, I guess my understanding is wrong?

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XPiratez / Re: is it really that much or am I doing it wrong?

« on: February 07, 2025, 09:19:02 pm »

What they say above. The required researches for that event to fire, as I mention in my guide, are:
[...] Stop Targeting Civilian Traffic.

Yeah, that's the one that didn't seem urgent to me.

As I said, I have a lot of research topics, and the backlog seems to get longer with every month. I can no longer claim to really "manage" anything: Items near the top or bottom of the list have a much greater chance of getting attention than something hiding in the middle of the stack.

...is that part of the usual XPiratez experience?

EDIT: sounds whiny, and yes, it is
The kind of research I do now is rather boring, plate mail and kustom guns and jet planes. Which might have been exciting a year ago, but now are inferior to what I already have, Maybe that means that I have chosen my priorities well and got the good things first. Still, it seems like I have to cover all the boring stuff as well before the excitement can resume. Judging from the number of topics and current rate of progress, I'm looking forward to six months of not much notticeable progress. Is there a way to skip this?

I've occasionally checked the tech tree for dependencies, but by and large have managed to not spoil myself about future events. On the one hand, I'd like it to stay that way. On the other... if there is a Tome of Much Knowledge to be found on the Moon, please tell me how to get there quick.