Messages

16

XPiratez / Re: Stuff I'd love to see in XPiratez!

« on: August 04, 2018, 01:55:25 pm »

Well if you farmed supply ships by accident, you're in a minority

Does it even constitute farming if you have to flee the field most of the time, tail between your legs? I never found a solution to the guy launching a nuke when turn 1 concludes.

I think this is a mentality issue. Most video games today are structured that you will nearly always face a situation that you can solve/win.

Maybe ... then again, I don't feel like I'm falling victim to the tropes of modern video games all that much. Franky, I feel most of them stink.
But what's so bad about having a possible solution when facing a situation? Even in the original X-Com you usually had some means to deal with situations most of the time. Autocannons and especially Heavy Cannons could down Mutons and the likes, and I'm pretty sure orchestrated rocket launcher fire could take down Sectopods. Advancing to flying armor and plasma weaponry was mostly a good thing because it made throwaway battles much easier/faster, whist you still needed to be on your toes in more difficult encounters.
In XPiratez, so much stuff is just useless. And it's gotten much worse. In the 2016 version, I remember going from bows to gyro stabilized smartguns as my mainstay weapon. This time around, by that time projectile weapons are generally outdated and/or there are better alternatives. My main gripe really are the over-armored enemies, Marsec Bodyguards, Hovertanks, Sectopods, Guild Masters, Zombie Troopers. Even gear supposedly specialized to deal with such enemies MASSIVELY underperforms.
Everything else I've seen so far is fine and dandy by my standards, with the possible exception of Star God Guardians and their PSI.

As for tech itself, I agree the tech tree viewer is a tremendous help (once you realize you're supposed to guide your research using it), but there are just sooooo many research opportunities and it's often non-intuitive how to get things.
IIRC ,the 2016 version didn't have the trophies/favors/tokens mechanic, which the game doesn't make clear on how important it is.
I think I already had the deliverator or something by the time I finally got around to unlock the Skyranger. Unlocking Back to School is very intricate.

17

XPiratez / Re: Stuff I'd love to see in XPiratez!

« on: August 04, 2018, 01:10:35 pm »

That is complete bullshit my friend and you know it. Farming Supply Ships does not count as normal experience.

I actually was not aware of this (that I was "farming supply ships") since I have no full hyperwave decoder coverage (getting there), but in an unsurprising turn of events you are correct. Within those constrains, I am still correct, but yeah, not nearly as bad this way.
Kinda funny that there are few (and worse armed) bodyguards in the actual base (I discovered it and took it down meanwhile).
I was also able to took down this guild guard with slugthrower and laslock shotgun fire. Find myself relying on that more and more often now, I gave one to a lot of gals as a sidearm since it's so versatile.

18

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: August 03, 2018, 08:43:59 pm »

Yeah, that fixed it, thanks FG. Weird.

19

XPiratez / Re: Stuff I'd love to see in XPiratez!

« on: August 03, 2018, 08:43:02 pm »

It'd be a-ok if we only saw one of 'em guys once in a new moon, but even medium sized vessels sport half a dozen or more of them.
Conveniently parked in a corner of the map with a cannon that shoots nuclear warheads when turn 1 ends.
Sorry, you just cannot sell this to me as good game design.

I did try this same mod a year and a half ago, but since then difficulty has been dialed up to a point where I have a hard time enjoying the experience. Have the design fundamentals changed since then?

This is not the first and definately not the last mod to go this course. You have a hardcore audience that sticks with the mod all the time, and not just ties it once every two years like I do. For those players, the utter chaos that is research in XPiratez is not an issue, because they have hindsight and know which things are important when. And ridiculous enemies are not that much of an issue either, because chances are there ARE weapons somewhere in the research tree which at lease increase survivability of your own gals, but that does not help at all the new player that is clueless about those things.

That's why the notion of the mod at least telling you what you should be researching or should have researched at certain intervals.
Another option would be to have more gating, i.e. you transition between enemy types only at a time when you are reasonably prepared. The earlier version of XPiratez had a huge issue in that Mutant Progroms would far too often spawn with Star God Guardians, against which you had no chance early on. This time around, I only faced those guys in a single progrom (of about 20 now), and I just legged it. Their psi is also way overpowered, but since these are probably end game enemies, that might be ok. I'm still struggling to get a voodoo infrastructure going and thus cannot say anything about that.

20

XPiratez / Re: Stuff I'd love to see in XPiratez!

« on: August 03, 2018, 07:36:40 pm »

hE

At least in your example you sound like your expecting to rapidly kill one of the top 15 sturdiest enemy units types with weapons that barely exceed there armor in avg damage. Alot of the more difficult foes take several gals at once or multiple turns to kill. Once everything starts getting armored and shielded your rarely gona one shot anything even with the strongest late game tools. This is by design, if you want one shots and quick tactical battles this is the wrong game for em.

Heh, see, this is why I wrote initially I realize it's a pipe dream. There's always people wearing the "deal with it" glasses and no matter how crazy something is, they'll defend it with "go join the other toddlers if it's too much for you".
Do I expect to be able to kill an enemy the game literally throws at me by the dozen in one shot? I certainly do not.
Do I expect him to fall if I use the best tools available to me with a dozen gals, all concentrating fire on that one enemy? I certainly do.

21

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: August 03, 2018, 05:25:34 pm »

Any details? Version, savedata, logs?

Oh, sure - sorry. Version is 0.99J4.
In the log it just says it's missing those strings.

[03-08-2018_12-24-24]   [WARN]   STR_VOICES_OF_THE_DEAD not found in en-US
[03-08-2018_15-26-32]   [WARN]   STR_NEC_001 not found in en-US
[03-08-2018_15-26-32]   [WARN]   STR_ESOTERICA not found in en-US
[03-08-2018_15-26-34]   [WARN]   STR_VOICES_OF_THE_DEAD_UFOPEDIA not found in en-US
[03-08-2018_15-31-36]   [WARN]   STR_EXPEDITION_RESEARCH_UFOPEDIA not found in en-US
[03-08-2018_15-32-38]   [WARN]   STR_SHAKEUP_CEREMONY not found in en-US
[03-08-2018_15-33-18]   [WARN]   STR_SLAVE_ARMOR_LEGION_UC not found in en-US
[03-08-2018_15-33-18]   [WARN]   STR_PEASANT_ARMOR_LEGION_UC not found in en-US
[03-08-2018_15-33-32]   [WARN]   STR_PEASANT_ARMOR_LEGION_UC_UFOPEDIA not found in en-US
[03-08-2018_15-38-49]   [WARN]   STR_QUADCANNON_UC not found in en-US

What do you need from the savefile?

In which file should the strings be? In mods\piratez\language\en-US.yml ? Cause this file does not contain those strings...

Display language is set to English (US).

22

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: August 03, 2018, 04:35:26 pm »

I suddently started facing missing strings every now and then.
For example, currently it's STR_ESOTECICA and STR_NEC_001 in research projects - I just researched STR_VOICES_OF_THE_DEAD.
I can also buy STR_EXPEDITION_RESEARCH on the black market.
I think the first ones I encountered were STR_PEASANT_ARMOR_LEGION_UC and STR_PIRATE_SWASHBUCKLER_UC.
Can I do anything to fix that?

23

XPiratez / Re: Stuff I'd love to see in XPiratez!

« on: August 03, 2018, 01:52:48 pm »

It all about the right tool/damage type for the situation rezaf, getting through the game with only one weapon for all situations is not the way its designed.

It's not about wanting to use "one (type of ) weapon". I have a pretty broad range of stuff, starting with Bows and some projectile smallarms (I never use them, really) to Laser Pistols, Rifles and then Assault Lasers, all sorts of grenades and explosives, Mortars and Bazookas, still some Shotguns (the Laslock Shotgun is especially versatile) and a couple of melee and stun weapons (I also hardly ever use)... I trew out most other stuff, because most of it just is pretty useless.
I just mentioned the Assault Laser because at least it CAN bring down those enemies in the end. I would expect specialized weapons to do their job - noone should survive being hit in the face by an anti-tank rifle. Sadly, X-Com has no physics, otherwise the victim should be killed by being thrown around alone, but ... yeah, this weapon is regularly shrugged off by Marsec Bodyguards.
The Heavy Slug Thrower sounds like it should have some oomph, but it reliably underperforms despite massive TU consumption.
Grenades? Mortar fire? Explosives? Specialized projectile weapons? None of that stuff works.
I CAN work my way around it 75% of the time, but it just server to drag out missions.

And this is just one area of the mod. I really love that there's so much stuff in XPiratez (even though not all of it suits my taste), but there should be much more "gating". I should not have the Stone Axe, Javelins, some Musket variant, a Laser Rifle and a Plasma Pistol all available as research projects at the same time. $0.02 and all, sure.

Btw., NuXCom is great for one playthrough and then forgettable. (Xenonauts is just X-Com but not quite as good, and who needs that?)

24

XPiratez / Re: Stuff I'd love to see in XPiratez!

« on: August 01, 2018, 10:40:30 pm »

A menu or pop up that shows:
Things you should have researched.

Seconded. I would have never thought I'd ever say such a thing, but there's just too much stuff in XCom with XPiratez, much of it of questionable usefulness.
Some guidance on what you should be researching when would be a good start.

Having played in 2016 and now again, I would also like to see some amount of reason return - I DO realize this is probably a pipe dream, though.
Armor values are excessive - WAY better than the tanks you can build - probably much later then when you first encounter such enemies.
Projectile weapons seem utterly pointless now, every enemy has hitscan skills and shoots you across the map with a pistol whilst your gals fumble around helplessly with a sniper rifle. And the only enemies you can kill, even with the very expensive and research intensive later guns, are completely unarmored ones you might easily dispose of with hunting bows.
I'm currently at a point in the game where I encounter mostly the academy, and many missions start with a Marsec Bodyguard with a Nuke launcher in some corner of the map. That's no fun.
In my last mission, I had one run out of ammo or something (at least he ceased shooting) and I took him down with Assault Lasers. He ate 12(!) FULL magazines. There were some misses, but cmon.

Anyway, since that is not going to happen, some guidance on what you should research when would be gravy.

25

XPiratez / Re: A new experaince(Campaign reports and museings)

« on: July 31, 2018, 07:37:15 pm »

I feel this thread is kinda enlightening in how even veterans of the mod experienced enough to set themselves pretty ridiculous goals like "no ranged weapons" can struggle with some of the basic design decisions. Maybe some of them ought to be adjusted?

Nobody likes topic spammers, so it's always a hurdle to open up a thread like this, especially for a green player whose experience is somewhat fresher. Maybe there should be an AAR subforum especially intended for such reports - I know I saw something like that in other game forums.
I'd leave my impressions here, but I don't wanna hijack legions thread. 

26

XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: July 27, 2018, 05:05:11 pm »

Not sure on the Skyranger, but the Deliveratior and Metallo both have global reach.  I can't look at the bootypedia right now but I think you're missing 0's on the end of those numbers.

I'm not, have a look yourself. From how I understand the addendum on ohartenstein's post, it might be a bug, though.

Do you know what these "range" units mean?  Or have you actually tried these transports?  I can guarantee you that these are not ridiculously low; they use a different formula for maximum flight range since they require an item to refuel as compared to the battery-powered craft.

Do I know what "range" means?

[ S ] the distance that a vehicle or aircraft can travel without having to stop for more fuel:
short-/medium-/long-range airliners

Seriously, though - that's obviously what I was missing, that range doesn't mean range in this case. No, I haven't acquired any of those craft yet, I'm still at a point in the game where I have to put some serious consideration in what to purchase. Thanks for the clarification, I will not numbers let me be discouraged from getting one of these asap.

Edit: These numbers are correct, they just mean something different than what you are assuming they mean.  And before you ask, this will be changed/fixed fairly soon, just had a discussion about it today.

That's great to hear, I think I'm not the only one that might be confused by this way of presenting things.

Thanks again for the head's up, much appreciated.

27

XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: July 26, 2018, 10:30:38 pm »

What's it with the ridiculously low ranges of most transports? They are so low they're borderline useless.
300 for the Skyranger? 210 for the Deliverator? 320 for the Metallo that looks like an interstellar transport? Really?
At this pace, why not just make them stuff you can build in your base next to the Workshop and Power Station?
Surely I'm missing something here...

28

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: July 23, 2018, 05:49:49 pm »

Not sure if I just had very bad luck, but on 2 of 4 Infested Cellar missions generated so far part of the cellar was unreachable and thus the mission could not be finished.

29

XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: July 22, 2018, 07:22:32 pm »

There are 2 key things to keep in mind when fighting things like guildmasters, that have both significant shields and high armor. Shields need to be removed first before you can deal with the underlying armor and this is most efficiently done by shotguns(highest dmg for TU spent) or emp grenades(250% dmg). Once you have knocked down the shields, then you can apply armor destruction. Make sure the "glow" animation is gone before you try the armor breakers or they are just wasted.

Another noteworthy things about shields is that Bio type damage bypasses them and usually has significant armor penetration. A gal with good stats can kill guildmaster and such in a few hits with the poison dagger. Impalers are also very effective.

Other more mundane high power melee can do the job if you get rear hits with high stat gals. Early on the spear and pike would be most effective followed by axes.

I did try to whittle away the shields, but I cannot be absolutely sure. I think I'm going to have to fall back to an earlier save and be better prepared.
Thank you very much for the tips, very much appreciated.

30

XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: July 22, 2018, 02:33:41 pm »

It isn't really that easy to get toe to toe with a guildmaster without being shot to pieces in the approach, but I did try some melee weapons. However, I shipped most of the low-tech stuff to a storage base, so I don't currently have the likes of axes at hand any longer.
An axe will hurt an enemy who shrugs off a bazooka without breaking a sweat?