Messages

46

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: May 02, 2019, 05:02:01 am »

Might be an OXCE issue, but the Light Sniper Rifle has a listed damage of 0-0 if you hit CTRL+M. Holding ALT in the inventory screen shows the damage range normally. Maybe CTRL+M isn't taking 2d100 rolls into account? The gun is definitely hitting hard.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - J14 - 29 Apr - Saints and Sinners

« on: May 01, 2019, 07:25:03 pm »

Dogs are cheaper for the suicide tactic

If you set up for it, yes. Sometimes you're just choosing between losing a gal and losing a gal and taking eight attackers with her. Also one rookie peasant vs. multi-million dolero base that would take months to rebuild isn't much of a choice.

Ok, it didn't occur to me that moving facilities was called teleporting. This definitely has consequences in the game play.

Yeah, base design is tricky. Being able to build new structures over old is very helpful, even if you have to shuffle personnel around sometimes.


@VodkaBear: Check out Painbringer SMGs. They're a ways up the conventional research, but they're fairly accurate, decently hard hitting, and provide good autofire. I just got them, and I purchased one for all my peasants on base defense. I'm still throwing grenades into the lift turn one and/or dog blitzing, but those guns look like a good backup for the inevitable bughunt.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - J14 - 29 Apr - Saints and Sinners

« on: May 01, 2019, 01:49:39 am »

Another way to defend is suicide bombing. I start my peasants with all their grenades armed, because they generally can't spare the time to prime anything once the fight starts. This lady started in a horrible position that she was not going to survive. She had three live frags. So she cleared out the lift turn one.


Speaking of grenades, has something (intentionally) changed in J14? I can no longer purchase frags on the black market. The research is still done, and I am currently researching HEs to see what happens.

Edit: Apparently they're locked by Contacts: Gun Emporium now...

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XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: April 30, 2019, 07:02:05 pm »

Thank you for the reports everyone, I fixed every issue mentioned for the J14 release (except those minor map/tile weirdness and hardware/software issues which I know nothing about).

I was just coming to report that J14 generates a proper .cfg/doesn't do whatever weirdness J13 was doing on a clean install. All good, and thanks!

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - J14 - 29 Apr - Saints and Sinners

« on: April 30, 2019, 05:41:53 pm »

Thanks for update, Dioxine, glad you keep developing the mod so far.

Bunch of assorted questions:
1. How you guys protecting your hideouts? For now I keep peasants + loknaars at every base but it's actually a lot of save-loading, as they really lack of combat experience and I still have no access do guns like lasers to mitigate low skill. I've just grabbed a few lasers and gauss weapons but as I remember there a lot to research before I can use them and produce ammo. I have better weapons for gals, but they too heavy/skill dependent for others.
2. Dropship. I'm still using sub as my main troop carrier(jokes on me) because of 8 places. I have access to Snake but 6 places way too small for me. I keep researching all necessary things to build mine, but there still a lot of things to do until it ready, how do you manage this? (oof, just finished some new landed ship formed like "*" raid with 4 loknaars against guild with plasma, totaly not the experience I want to repeat).
3. Casino coupons - is there list of what can be redeemed from it? Also I only have redeem option for copper and iron, and no for others - is it right?
4. Cannot see an option of 50-150 damage randomness instead of 0-200, can it still be tweaked? I even want it to be 75-125, or even less.

1) I start out with peasants and attack dogs. If you're just being raided by the academy or some other low level guys it's more than enough. Get some grenades on the peasants (NOT black powder bombs, most of them can't muster the 50TUs 45TUs (J14) to throw one unless they move one tile or less) so that they can actually get killls. Militia training and armor helps, as does actually taking them on missions (and not getting them killed) if you can swing it.

2) Joining the Mutant Alliance gives you the old Skyranger which can help with deployment until you work out how to rebuild the Brainers' ship (Menacing Hull). You will be expected to stop pogroms at that point, but being able to bring more gals to a fight means you can stack the odds in your favor, or bring loads of peasants and just do what you can, casualties be damned. Like in the original game, just showing up and immediately bugging out if it's something you can't handle still counts as trying, you just lose the ~500 points for all the civilian casualties, which can be made up. Even if you have to retreat, every attacker you kill offsets some of this. I recently got the Spartans on a horrific map with wide open sight lines everywhere and had to retreat, but still managed to capture a few weapons and get the score to about -200. X-Piratez is pretty good about grey areas in victory and defeat.

3) Haven't built one yet, wasn't in the previous versions I played

4) If you poke around the ANAL screen (or read some of the summaries), you'll see that damage rolls are a function of weapon types now. Most projectile weapons roll 0-200, most melee weapons and explosives roll 50-150. Some weapons roll 0-100+0-100 (gives them a bell curve which means roughly half of the time they will roll their displayed power, and deviations become less likely the more extreme they are).


As for weapon accuracy, what is displayed as the shot accuracy is the chance to hit assuming the gal's sum of the relevant statistics is 100. It's the inherent accuracy (or lack thereof) of the weapon itself.

So the rotogun's 25% here means it is a hideously inaccurate weapon. So even if you gal has 100 firing, 35+65 only equals 25%. This is the sort of weapon where skill doesn't matter much. It just sprays lead, you hope it hits something. (Note also that many superheavy weapons have a kneel multiplier of 200%, requiring you to stop and brace the weapon if you really want to hit something. When something looks wonky, check the ANAL, not all of a weapon's properties are spelled out in the description.)

A shotgun with a shot accuracy of 125% or so is a very accurate weapon. It causes your firing skill to count for more than its base value, and thus you can get up to a 100% accuracy without having 100 firing. Being able to get over 100% is very helpful because it gives you room to take environmental penalties and still have a good chance to hit. I have a gal with phenomenal skills with a hunting rifle, to the point that her aimed shot is 180%. This is very significant because it means she has 90% to hit things SHE CAN'T EVEN SEE. She's that scary good at shooting when you put a stable, accurate weapon in her hands.

For the most part, the huge variety of weapons is partially just random chance as to what arsenal you have to work with, but also a matter of finding the right gun for the right gal. Some guns, like sniper rifles, DEMAND high skills or they're useless. Others like shotguns can basically be used by anyone, even a peasant can hit something. Some weapons actually scale off of bravery or other unusual stats which can make them good choices for certain gals. Some weapons sum two or three stats to get their final accuracy value, and if the multipliers on them are not equally divided (like Firing*50% + Throwing*50% + Bravery*35%) you have opportunities to break 100% even without breaking 100 in any stat.

- Fix: Security Corridor no longer counts as Casino

Wait, they were shooting craps in the corridor? Where was my cut?!

[Spoiler]

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - J13a - 29 Mar - Casino Royale

« on: April 27, 2019, 01:17:59 am »

You can read "trapped" monster hunts by the weather-forecast.

Spoiler:

Spider-/Bloodhound-/Scorpionhunt all operate with the "Hot" environment penalty.

If the forecast for those missions is "temperate" it's a trap 100%. Exclusions still exist so prepare for each monsterhunt like it's an ambush and always do these missions with daylight.
Ambush factions use fire-weapons to light up your squads countering night-ops armors advantage.

I thought that temperature was determined by terrain type on the geoscape? Or is it mission specific, and the missions can only spawn on appropriate geoscape terrain?

I've definitely seen missions that stated that the weather was a factor, and yet the actual mission had no weather effects, and I've had missions that said nothing about weather, yet had weather effects. I've taken it to be a possibility, but you have no perfect information, which is fair enough and in keeping with UFO generally telling you nothing and letting you work it out on your own.

In any event, the three traps I encountered were an academy outpost overrun by zombies, a castaway distress signal which was answered by zombies, and a hunt which was a sky ninja trap. None of them were carrying flame weapons. I've also learned to only hunt in daylight because monsters have really good night vision and generally ludicrous amounts of TUs.

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XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: April 25, 2019, 03:18:28 am »

I can't use my Gatling Cyberdiscs.
When I want to load them onto a transport it says that I need the ammo. Which I have. Popup has another name for it though, maybe that is the problem?
I can't build a non advanced clip either.

They don't show up in base defence missions either, which are why I built them in the first place.

Edit: Ok, so the non advanced ammo works. I can't produce it yet, as I am lacking a power plant.
Just changing the compatible armor in piratez.rul to the same as the laser car armor isn't enough, it seems.

Weren't HWPs completely retooled, or did that only apply to tanks?

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - J13a - 29 Mar - Casino Royale

« on: April 25, 2019, 03:15:30 am »

Dumb me, I saw "-" sign but didnt took into account. So it seems pretty good choice for small interceptors hosting bases to fill it with plantations until better income recipes and workshops itself researched.

They also don't require any upkeep or staffing and provide fairly open combat areas, in addition to being relatively cheap to set up.



Loving the trap missions so far. It's great that you can't assume that every mission will fit its usual parameters.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - J13a - 29 Mar - Casino Royale

« on: April 19, 2019, 11:51:23 pm »

Still really enjoying the rebalance of the early game. The choices are interesting, and not always what I assumed. I was expecting the Male Touch/Gals are Superior option to be more along the lines of "fine, you want dudes, here, pick this option", and yet it was a genuine choice with consequences, and staying the course as in older versions wasn't the "right"  path. The slavery/employment difference makes a big deal as well. In previous runs I always kept slaves because it was free storage, and the only other option was money, which wasn't generally the issue. Now that you literally have to choose between paying a fair wage or the lash, it's a whole different matter, and another consequence which I suspect will crop up again in the future.

I always enjoyed this mod for it's atmosphere and world building, but felt that the game itself was kinda shoehorned into it. That is so not the case anymore. Gameplay and the world feel so in tune now, it's so much more intuitive why something happens, or what you need to do. The extra narrative hand holding at the start and the push into "heroic swashbucklers" rather than "bloodthirsty pirates", plus making it clear that the Mutant Alliance has a hand in things from the start really gives the early game focus. Also I dunno if I just gitted gud, but combat feels a LOT more fair early.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - J13a - 29 Mar - Casino Royale

« on: April 16, 2019, 01:41:44 am »

Overstun is rarely a problem anymore, assuming your not inflicting large amount of hp dmg, almost everyone recovers 9% of current stun in addtions to recovery from health. So it pretty rare to lose someone you have only done stun to.

Yeah, I've noticed that stunning enemies is a lot more consistent, and they don't die all the time because one of my gals is too strong. The only issue sometimes is when they get back up and somebody reaction fires them even though they're harmless and will surrender once it's all said and done.


Cover I find is fleeting. Automatic doors are your friend. I "won" a lokk'narr rodeo by hiding in my aircar and having my dog check sky ninja positions until my one gal who can totally cut their heads off could dash out, get a kill, and hide again. Everybody died, but I got like 14 points and a bunch of swords. The ninja were standing out in the open and the pirates were striking from concealment.

Also cats are cool. Fantastic night vision, light up the targets with fire arrows, and fire away without retaliation.

Edit:

Query: Is the ghost icon on a unit an indication of overstun damage?

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - J13a - 29 Mar - Casino Royale

« on: April 13, 2019, 02:59:20 pm »

Rodeos suck until well into the mid game, the rats are pretty accurate and flintlock pistols with 42 base dmg are not fun.

Last time I played it was always wooden fences, and the claustrophobic environments weren't hard to deal with using shotguns. The wide open sight lines just favor the side with the numerical advantage too much to bother with right now.


The new night vision as default view is also lovely, really makes taking advantage of the gals' natural abilities not feel like a chore . Also the MMB "look" function is so nice for threat assessment.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - J13a - 29 Mar - Casino Royale

« on: April 13, 2019, 04:04:52 am »

Whelp, picked up a pair of peasants, have two castaways on the road to recovery, and successfully completed a night raid on the Cult of Sirius. I'm really enjoying the early game balance, it feels like there's a lot more you can do, and there are more outs to horrible RNG. Peasants aren't great, but they can handle a ball bat alright, and they make capable medics, which frees my gals up to focus on the fighting. I did have to abort a ratman rodeo on account of the filthy bastards building their whole place out of chain link fences, and that was just too much incoming fire.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - J13a - 29 Mar - Casino Royale

« on: April 13, 2019, 01:50:44 am »

20 seems likely, that's also what Firaxis' XCOM uses. (Or it might be 21 actually)

One way to check it would be to see how far a gal can shoot a long arm before she hits the 50% no LOS penalty.

Edit:
Did a quick check. Daytime visibility is at minimum 34 tiles, and that was just the point were the map ended. Perhaps day camo interacts with smoke and other LOS limiting effects, or at least means that if you're on the opposite end of the map, they might not be able to see you.

Attack dogs have a vision range of 30 tiles.

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XPiratez / Re: Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - J12 - 24 Feb - Wetworks

« on: April 11, 2019, 08:00:58 pm »

Anal bum cover.

This campaign is off to a great start. All my gals are weaklings who can't shoot straight and as a result they're all wounded. Also Polly died. Maybe I'll last long enough to start recruiting, I think I've almost got access to dogs.

I did have a multi side battle (see, I didn't say three-way!) between necropirates (thought they were ratmen at first, woops) and some castaways, so once the brainers figure out how to ask people to help out, they might...help out.

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XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: April 11, 2019, 05:24:00 am »

the options file is not included in the package, it is however generated as part of startup if one does not already exist. The default generation could be flawed thou, perhaps retaining options that no longer exist(options cleanup happened recently), or pathways that are no longer valid(common and standard folder now operate as compressed zips.)

Perhaps so. But curiously the surely equally outdated one generated back in F4 corrects whatever the issue is with generating a new one. Perhaps that has something to do with the Geoscape buttons being wonky. I understand they got some sort of a graphical facelift, and something is presumably not pointing them towards the data they're looking for.