Messages

1

XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: The definitive(lol, I wish), JS starting conditions guide?

« on: December 20, 2023, 01:47:30 am »

I feel like thebes is always going to be "best" even with the new base defenses, but some other ideas:

-Fuso:  Seems like cats 4 life gets catgirl platemail (well, chainmail for all intents and purposes) with this option, unless I'm missing something. It costs 250k apiece, but samurai armor seems cool and you get one piece for free.  Obviously, kinda pointless if you test with Male Touch route, though.

-Iron tribes:  I tried this out a while ago and it kinda sucked, but with the charger laser being no more, and with more early game UFOs, might be a consideration to have tons of 14mm ammo and a 450 speed +25% dodge daredevil with some Xtra armor slapped on. 

Kind of a pity that the relevant research costs are so high, though. Necroparts recycling needs Tools and Blades which has a ton of reqs.  Something like 80 brainer days of stuff you don't need immediately to finally research it.

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XPiratez / Re: Last bastard mode

« on: June 28, 2023, 05:48:52 pm »

Piratez_Globals.rul:

bughuntMinTurn: 15 <---- number of turns
bughuntMaxEnemies: 2 <--- won't activated unless less than or equal to this amount
bughuntRank: 0 <--- actually no idea, I haven't seen rank counting for bughunt but might be missing something
bughuntLowMorale: 70
bughuntTimeUnitsLeft: 35

3

XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: February 17, 2022, 12:33:25 pm »

If we're talking non-jack sparrow late game missile strikes, at that stage its better to just build the defenses in each base.  Eventually, they will stop hitting your base for the month and your defenses will stick.  Check this for more details, put defenses in every base:  https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,8460.0.html   vulcans/sams are pretty attainable by that point

Basically, it's the event is a 50/50 chance each month to barrage one of your bases a few times (I've seen 1-6 barrages, so I have no clue what it's supposed to be by this point), and the 50/50 chance each month only shuts off when you uncover a lot of the technocracy plot stuff.

4

XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: February 13, 2022, 12:32:20 am »

I agree, theban is best on higher difficulties.  It looks pretty bad on paper until you try it:  the peasants you get are actually near max stat peasants with aqua armor (gold shields).   You make up for it pretty quickly since the gold shields are are great for full capture on scientific experiments.  Also, the high stat soldiers and he grenades you get make doing an early landed very doable.  If you survive even one runabout or freighter that you wouldn't have it more than pays off the loss in infamy.

Also, when you get legion armor, these gals also have a ridiculous 19 night vision, better than chainmail armor against guns, and functions top notch in all weather.  Though you have to wait until you have a library for it.

Some other starts that made sense to me:
-Romanica (good males start)
-Iron tribes
-Hidden expanse
-Nordfederation

Rogue fields sounds interesting just for the country tech if you're going males route, for early QUAD.  But it's a crapshot when you get both beastmen and human citizens for social hierarchy.

Turan sounds cool, although I think that start gets you a hefty 777 capitatory tax from the starting continent bonus.


Regarding weed:  Weed is typically better.  One hidden detail you need to account for is base defense and base construction.  Paying X dolaros for plantations gives better income than X dolaros in weed plantations.  BUT building 2 weed plantation bases is better than building 3 plantation bases.

Unfortunately, this falls apart with almost any amount of difficulty sell price modification.  Even on blackbeard (90% sell price) it's hard to say what's better.  I've also had a hard time justifying plantation bases in the ninja update, although I'm not very good at defending against ninjas cheaply.

5

XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: February 09, 2022, 03:33:29 am »

@requiem, sadly gas chambers are not particularly useful I've heard:  Pretty much every dangerous or enemy you want to capture in a base defense has choking resist.  Everything burns, though

Here's a jack sparrow setup I tried out.  5 OC radars for early game raid and missile immunity.  excessive prison and vault space for hoes and recon expeditions (the smaller prisons will be built over, though).  Main base has harvester for missions, pachyderm for space missions and landings.  Side base has a car for Bandit warehouse/aircar race, and jetbike for easy early game ships and tailing ships, and a hangar on the way for a blowfish for sea missions.   No dedicated garrison in either base, the extension base just has 2 pilots.

I don't think the radars defenses was worth it, since I needed 10 million before building the second base which meant only 2 hangars for more than half a year, and I had to ransom a bunch of my hoes.  Plus I'll need to raise another 5million for a third base.

On the other hand, that run is still kickin'

6

XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: February 07, 2022, 11:10:01 pm »

Brainers are a bit of a conundrum in that if you're experienced, they will pay for themselves quite quickly, if not, they will utterly tank your economy.  I would recommend doing what ultimoos says, and first get bounty hunting, cunning and 50 runts in burrows before ballooning your brainers unless you know exactly the research path you're taking.

Piratez also has an extreme level of luck in the first half year.  Some campaigns you'll get multiple landed freighters before february giving you millions of dolaros per landing and infinite supply of craft ammo.  Other times you will literally get no missions at all.  You can theoretically have an unwinnable campaign on captain kidd even.  Europe and thebes (north africa) starts are better for more landings IIRC

So honestly if you're getting crushed under brainer maintenance, might just want to restart.

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XPiratez / Re: Does anyone know how to disable missiles?

« on: February 07, 2022, 08:56:52 pm »

Difficulty:  Only on jack sparrow, they come way before you're equipped to deal with them.  You can either shell out 5 million per base in grossly inefficient OC radars or just ride out hell until you have more cost efficient base defense.

With time:  your first strike is always a weak, next ones are all the same strength.

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XPiratez / Re: Does anyone know how to disable missiles?

« on: February 07, 2022, 10:12:39 am »

Maybe theres just something wrong with being exactly 0 speed :/  <100 is slow enough that a radar should pick em up before they hit.

You can always reset the execution odds up higher once you've got missile defense up.  5 SAMS/lasers - 1/2 a sam per luxury barracks is good enough.

You could also just mod your base defense facility of your choice to have 1000 attack and 100% hit ratio and just build one in every base.

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XPiratez / Re: Does anyone know how to disable missiles?

« on: February 07, 2022, 08:07:08 am »

In factions.rul

Jack sparrow:

Cntrl-f AuroraGamesStart and AuroraGames, change both executionOdds to 0.

late game: technocracyFirstStrike and technocracyStrike change both executionOdds to 0.

Alternatively, to allow shooting them down, change STR_VESSEL_MISSILES_1 anf STR_VESSEL_MISSILES_3 (lower speedMax probably)

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: February 04, 2022, 08:34:16 am »

STR_CAPTAINS_LOG_01: true
       STR_PERSUASION: true
       STR_SAT_NETWORK: true
       STR_PIRATEZ_HIERARCHY: true
       STR_CHRONICLES_001: true
       STR_NO_CIVILIAN_TRAFFIC: true
       STR_CONTACT_SMUGGLERS: true
       STR_BIKINI_PRODUCTION: true
       STR_MEIDO_OUTFIT: true
       STR_ONSEN: true
       STR_PLOTTING: true

Captains log 1
persuasion
earth's sattelite network
the social heirarchy
pirate traditions
*no targetting civilians*
contact smugglers
bikini production
maid outfit
onsen
plotting

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: February 04, 2022, 06:36:17 am »

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=7877.0

This is super old, and has some outdated advice regarding selling buildings, but it's decent.  Someday when I'm not feeling lazy I'll make a new one.

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XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: February 04, 2022, 02:31:59 am »

You'd have to program an exception to consumer goods for the contraband thing, probably not worth it.  If it were added, should probably also add it for gold/silver/alenium which are supposed to be the hoarder currencies.  Probably liabilities as well, so selling rocks and paying taxes isn't easier.

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: February 03, 2022, 11:40:31 pm »

Most of the score loss is from ninjas, although yeah being able to shoot down the bandits is very handy.  I initially thought score loss was unmanageable when first starting the ninja update, but the dips in score are mostly temporary:  every time ninjas make a base you get a massive infamy hit, but not much on the off months.

So yeah, being able to shoot things down is very nice but not critical.  Unlocking missions is still the best way to increase infamy.

That said, here's actually a lot of way to get cheap ammo weapons, heres some more ways not mentioned:
-Do every underwater mission you can (aside from jellyfish and sharks).  If you get 2 sonic oscillator parts then you can make yourself a nice cannon-tier weapon
-Grey codex starts with a few shots of phantom bolts, which you can use to shoot down a wasp or megapol car with an airspeeder.  These always have 25mm cannons as loot iirc.
-Red codex starts with lil-ilya.  Although it's not cost effective to shoot down thunderbolts  and civilians with spike rockets really.  It's a little dicey shooting down a wasp/megapol in an aircar with lil ilya, but it... should be doable?
-Jack's 30mm cannons prize gives you cannons
-Light craft weapons allows you to make them from scrap, although you should probably be rolling in 30mm/50mm parts (crafted with the very simple craft weapons assembly) by then so it's mostly redundant these days.

14

XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: February 03, 2022, 03:49:45 am »

In L series I would've said choose anything except jack sparrow your first game.  But ninjas very suddenly become a big thing midgame in M series.  If it's your first time I would start on john silver.

As a comparison, Blackbeard is around the same difficulty currently as jack sparrow in L9 and earlier.

Captain kidd is a tutorial, has missing features.

15

XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: February 02, 2022, 12:36:35 am »

If you sort by soldier type, castaways and escaped lunatics are under the same type (1), and I think hired hands are under a different type.  So I doubt there's any difference besides the condemnation.

You can find the stats in piratez.rul.  Just cntrl-f "soldiersPerSergeant" and below that shows all the stat caps of everyone.  There's really not a whole lot of difference between ubers.  The hands page on ufopaedia is possibly the only page that's still somewhat accurate.