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Topics - Torchwood

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Ever since M5, X-Piratez added the ability to customize the personality of you, the captain. This feature is cool, adds flavor and meaningful decision-making to the earlygame, and dreadfully undocumented. For this reason, I have created this assorted collection of low-spoiler insider knowledge to help you make your choice.

- The Fundamentals
Your identity as a captain is defined by two crucial principles: Ideas and Aspects. These characterize the captain's convictions and personality. In-game, they mainly affect what random events they get, good or bad. A laid-back captain might get a free tech for being studious, but negligence could cause a bad event, while a more proactive captain might get lucky and find treasure. The basic four captain types all have three ideas and three aspects. Here's a brief overview:
Ideas:
MIGHT: Hierarchy is as simple as "who can beat up who". The enactments and lessons of power.
PRIDE: You are great and deserve great things. Embrace your inner awesomeness.
VISION: Strive for greater purpose to achieve true change. Deny the naysayers who call such things cray-cray.
FAITH: Hope springs eternal, perservere through hard times. Conquer the threat of nihilism.

Aspects:
LEWD vs AX-CRAZY - How open you are towards strangers. Lewd is more friendly and inclined to make friends, while the ax-crazy captain trusts nobody and is more likely to engage in violence and exploitation.
TROUBLESEEKER vs BOOKWORM - The captain's outgoingness. Would you rather go outside and seek adventures in the wide world, or adventure in a good book?
PIG-HEADED vs DAYDREAMER - conservative or progressive? Would you rather stick to tried-and-true tradition, or try out something new and innovative but untested?

During the first month, you will be given a choice of five different captain types:

-- Jackass
Ideas: Might, Pride, Vision
Aspects: Ax-Crazy, Troubleseeker, Daydreamer

This is the captain of choice for those who want to be the top dog of the top-apocalypse, willing to do whatever it takes. The Jackass captain gets what she wants by being the meanest, toughest bitch around.
Becoming a jackass will make your game more intense. This captain type is characterized by its signature facility, the dungeon, a more compact and cruel prison that can be used to create slave halfwits (and ironically, give you a good reason to capture worthless lowlifes alive) and train gals, ogres and damels with high voodoo power and bravery to become sadomasters. The downside? Just having a dungeon attracts more retaliation missions, so you'd best be prepared for uninvited guests to your hideouts.

-- Dumbass
Ideas: Might, Pride, Faith
Aspects: Lewd, Troubleseeker, Pig-Headed

The Dumbass is a wasteland rockstar, adored by friends and feared by enemies. She's got no formal edumentation and is addicted to gambling, but who cares when the world loves you so much that serendipity is your tier 3 sub? Choose this captain if like having dumb luck, randomness and hilarious, occasionally asinine shenanigans.
The biggest downside is a weakness in early-midgame resarch - you cannot build analytics rooms. Instead, you do your analytics in a VIP club, a facility unlocked through a path-unique event chain. Getting and building training facilities such as dojo, onsen and especially luxury spa will help you succeed.
For better or worse, you have less need for personal databases and can spend most of them on scamming and spoofing to get cash and glamour.

-- Soreass
Ideas: Might, Vision, Faith
Aspects: Ax-Crazy, Bookworm, Pig-Headed

Do you hate getting screwed by RNG? Do you always assume and prepare for the worst? Is your favorite game Deep Rock Galactic? If the answer to most or all of those is yes, then Soreass is the best choice for you. On this path, most of the bad RNG events are mitigated and their harm reduced or eliminated entirely. However, good RNG is also mitigated, as secret passages are collapsed and visitors driven away with gunfire.
Mechanically, soreass is all about home defense. Only a soreass would build both  plastacrete bunkers to fortify the hideout, in addition to earlier access to anti-air facilities - you can make flak tower kits from necroplane parts and weaponize radars into irradiators. Those things are expensive maintenance nightmares, but for the soreass, reliable defenses are worth it.
Your other unique gimmick is bulk mining - you can mine and crush ten big rocks at the same time to get precious gems more efficiently. But beware - if you dig too deep and too greedily, you'll be putting those home defenses to the test sooner than you think.

-- Lazyass
Ideas: Pride, Vision, Faith
Aspects: Lewd, Bookworm, Dayreamer

Just because it's the post-apocalypse and you're running an organized crime syndicate doesn't mean you have to be an ass about it. At least, that is what the lazyass believes. Choose this if you want a chill experience, a captain who would rather watch Flash Gordon with friends than molest local villagers.
The lazyass captain gets the unique ability to build hotels, which effectively function as a sidegrade large prison/onsen with less space but monthly income and crew refreshment. Pretty nice since you only need glamour instead of a flak tower kit. Besides, those courtesans have been making money for us so diligently, they might at least get some decent lodgings for it.
Lazyass is a choice choice if you don't want the downsides of the other paths, as it doesn't have any major weaknesses other than lacking Might, which is slightly bad for event RNG.

-- Others
If you choose none-of-the-above captain, you will get up to two additional chances to get a captain personality. The second set give you one aspect and two ideas, the third set either one idea or nothing but some first month score. They are less flavorful than other choices and abscence of ideas can still lead to some event RNG, so I won't cover those in great detail.

Sumarry:
All in all, I don't think there's a right or wrong choice when it comes to captain type. Pick whatever suits you, but be aware that choosing a codex that is connected to an Idea your captain lacks will make your game more challenging, see my post regarding the Chaos Saint.

Amendment: Thanks to Dioxine for feedback + corrections. I should point out that any captain who has the Ax-Crazy aspect can build irradiators - which means Jackass, Soreass and the Cunning Captain (from the list of secondary option) can do it. Furthermore, anyone with the Bookworm aspects can learn how to make an improvised flak tower kit with necroplane parts - i.e. Lazyass, Soreass and Educated captain.

2
Do you wish to be flawless and transcend the weaknesses of your mortal flesh? Or do you want to tests your X-Piratez skills with some high-risk high-reward midgame missions? X-Piratez has just the right thing for you: The Chaos Saint Challenge.

How do you become a Chaos Saint? Simple. All you need to do is have all four ideas at the same time.

This is achieved by picking any of these captain/codex combinations:
Lazyass + Red Codex
Dumbass + Gray Codex
Soreass + Gold Codex
Jackass + Green Codex

Once your codex is awakened, the journey towards sainthood begins. If you are not ready, you should hold back on researching VooDoo and prepare first.

Be warned, this is not recommended for beginners. Furthermore, it is highly recommended you branch out and do not rely on gals if you wish to become a Chaos Saint.

(SPOILERS AHEAD - you have been warned! Do not read further if you don't want spoilers!)

But what exactly does Sainthood do?

First, you cannot get gifts from the Demon Gods. Ordinarily, if you have the right codex and/or a personality aspect that pleases a particular shadowmaster, you have a chance to get a gift from them. Instead, you get a different kind of gift: Your saintly aura has 2 chances per month to attract a new recruit, someone much more competent than your average hire - high end options like human heroes, gnomes and girl-guides are possible.

Secondly, and most importantly, the witch quests are enabled. These missions are much easier if you've seen them before and know what equipment to bring, and have experience winning difficult missions without the power of ubers. It is possible to handle most of them with midgame tech, if you are prepared. All of them have a few things in common:

-Gals and vehicles cannot be used. You will need to rely on other soldier types and train them well. Peasants work well, since can partake in all but one of the missions.
-There is no escape, and your craft does not appear on the map. So you could just roll up with big convoy, if you can deal with the following:
-You have 48 hours to attend, this cannot be extended by targeting the site. If the mission despawns, you get a 500 score penalty.

Now, good news. Other than score, the witch quests are highly lucrative in terms of loot. Possibilities include enough lasguns to arm a platoon, rare high-end VooDoo materials.

On a tangential note, I have reasons to believe Dioxine really wants players to try dumbass+gray. It's got some events unique to that path.

3
Ran into a curious issue playing OpenXCom 7.5.3, XPirtaez M5.2.1. Simply put, the fire extinguisher code does not seem to be working properly.

Simply put, while fire extinguishers in weapon form (i.e. item with aimed shot cloud and limited ammo) work as intended, putting the isFireExtinguisher effect into an instant grenade like XPiratez' foam grenade does not work properly - while they put out ambient fires, burning people keep burning.

Frustratingly, this issue was not present in OpenXCom 7.0, when I played XPiratez L10.

In XPiratez, this has some implication to mid-lategame play - advanced weapons start a lot of fires and being able to quickly put out burning soldiers becomes important. Needless to say, an ethereal battleship is not a good place to find out your premier tool do this doesn't work.

To make things even weirder, changing the item to behave like a normal grenade does fix the issue. But I would prefer not to resort to this.

Made a few screenshots to illustrate the issue. In order - after lighting the test craft on fire, before throwing foam grenade, after throwing foam grenade, after using fire extinguisher.

4
XPiratez / Updating version M save files to N1
« on: April 17, 2022, 08:34:23 pm »
Hey everyone, this thread used to contain a submod I've made to slow the ninja base spawns.

Upon further examination. I've made some unfortunate discoveries. My attempt to make a mod was a failure - simply put, I've changed a few numbers locally in the piratez_factions.rul to push some of the spawns back, and thought making a seperate .rul file with the changes to missions could achieve the same effect. I was wrong, and followup testing revealed my approach did not work.

I cannot in good conscience release something that doesn't actually work as advertised, so I've removed it. I'd fix it, but with the release of N1, it is no longer necessary.

In consolation, please find attached later, instructions on how to update a running game to N1.

5
Ritual of Rebirth: A guide to the New Post-Apocalyptic Person
    
Version M4 brought an exciting new feature to X-Piratez: The Peasant Revolution. When faced with the choice between embracing gal supremacy or male touch, you can now take a third option focusing which is centered around the common peasant. Can the most humble class of soldiers prevail against the challenges of post-apocalyptic earth? To help you survive, this path offers some extremely desirable techs early on. One of them is the wondersome ritual of rebirth, a human analogue for the gal shakedown ceremony. It costs nothing except for three bottles of moonshine and a five day leave for the reborn soldier, making it easy to apply in large qunatities.

Upon getting reborn, the soldier loses:
25% of their current TU, Stamina, Health, Reactions and Strength
50% of their current Firing, Throwing, Melee, Freshness and VooDoo Power

And gains:
10-20 TU
10-30 Stamina
5-20 Health
5-20 Reactions
15-40 Firing
15-30 Throwing
5-15 Strength
15-40 VooDoo Power
15-40 Melee
15-35 Freshness

In addition to base stat changes, the Revolutionary award itself also gives a stat boost: +5 TU, +5 Reactions, +10 Bravery, -10 Freshness. Like all condemnation-based changes, this does not affect stat growth, which means those stats can be overcapped. Quite helpful, since TUs and Reactions are the two categories where human soldiers are far behind Uber gals, and the extra bravery helps with keeping morale up in long missions, operate weapons that scale with bravery, perhaps even become competent drivers - remember that vehicle weapon accuracy is 50% bravery.

So, if we take a freshly recruited peasant, not even looking at her initial stats, how much will she change? Here are the possible ranges to base stat changes, not taking the award bonus into account:

TU: -4 to +7
Stamina: -8 to +15
Health: -5 to +11
Reactions: -6 to +10
Firing: -3 to +25
Throwing: -3 to +15
Strength: +0 to +11
VooDoo Power: *See summary
Melee: -3 to +25
Freshness: -22 to +5

Note that average results are more likely than extreme ones - the max roll on the post-revolutionary change assumes the recruit had a min roll on initial stats and a max roll on transformation gains, and vice versa.
 
Summary: There is little reason to not just immediately rebirth every peasant at the moment of recruitment. The stat changes are biased towards improvement, and if you follow up with militia training you can get an adequate soldier who can shoot straight and set a spear in just a matter of ingame weeks. Only freshness is badly affected, but peasants have plenty to spare.

The sole exception to this rule is VooDoo power. Rebirth tends to average out a soldier's VPWR, which is good for those whose power is low, but high. Check the attached graph for details: It shows the soldier's VPWR, with the pre-rebirth value on the x-axis and the post-rebirth value on the y-axis - the blue line is the lowest result, the red line the highest, the green is the average. Not depicted on the graph is the unfortunate fact raise VPWR above the stat cap, 69 for peasants and damsels, 70 for male soldiers. If you want a peasant psi specialist, consider not rebirthing those whose VPWR is high - given that VooDoo implements are taxing on freshness, you might prefer a higher reservoir to get more mind control attempts out of your psion.

Damsels can also be reborn. Their starting stats are not listed in the 'pedia, so feel free to use this data mined from the rule files as a reference:

TU: 45-60
Stamina: 40-70
Health: 30-35
Bravery: 50-70
Reactions: 40-60
Firing: 30-45
Throwing: 30-40
Strength: 10-15
VooDoo Power: 20-69
Melee: 30-40
Freshness: 40-70

Range of changes when rebirthing a freshly recruited damsel:

TU: -5 to +9
Stamina: -8 to +20
Health: -4 to +13
Reactions: -10 to +10
Firing: -8 to +25
Throwing: -5 to +15
Strength: +1 to +11
VooDoo Power: *See summary
Melee: -5 to +25
Freshness: -20 to +15

Stat caps are the same as a peasant.
Summary:
Mostly the same as peasants, but it's worth noting that you get a chance to improve bad VPWR, which means better odds of getting a damsel who qualifies for magicienne, which makes recruting them more worthwhile if you're on the peasant path.

The revolution is not female-exclusive. Male soldiers can be reborn as well. Here's the change ranges for a male recruit:

TU: -5 to +9
Stamina: -8 to +20
Health: -6 to +12
Reactions: -8 to +11
Firing: -18 to +22
Throwing: -8 to +15
Strength: -5 to +16
VooDoo Power: *See previous
Melee: -15 to +27
Freshness: -35 to +20

Summary: Less useful compared to rebirthing peasants, as it has a nasty habit of deleting present existing skills. Harder to train up due to lack of easy followup trainings. Still, having a few soldiers around who can operate heavy weapons without a levitator is always useful.

That's all there is to it. If you haven't given the peasant revolution path a try, I'd highly recommend it. It's a very fun experience, imagine X-Com Files except you a transport that'll turn car-driving X-Com's agents green with envy, or playing IG in the 40k mod, except you still get to keep a limited Space Marine contingent around :)

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