Messages

226

XPiratez / Re: How does 'choking' damage work?

« on: April 23, 2016, 11:14:05 am »

So resistance affects choking effects in much the same way as other damage types. Fair enough. I assume that armour affects it as well.

But how can I tell which choking weapons are going to do damage (ie. remove health points) and which are going to stun? Apparently smoke only stuns, but poison gas does damage. What about the choking ammo for other weapons? Is there any way to tell what is going to happen without trying out every weapon?

227

XPiratez / How does 'choking' damage work?

« on: April 23, 2016, 07:27:07 am »

I'm a confused about how choking damage works. Weapons which list their damage type as "choking" seem to do all sorts of different things. I'd like to get a better understanding of what's going on so that I can decide if the choking-type ammo for grenade launchers and mortars are worth building...

Smoke grenades are listed as 60 choking damage - but they apparently don't take away any health, and they have a relatively small stun effect.
Poison gas grenades are listed as 50 choking damage; but the description also mentions that they do damage. I'm not sure if the damage mentioned in the description is additional damage, or just the damage from the choking part.
Tear gas is listed as 50-choking, but the description also talks about a heap of other special effects; again, I'm not sure how the 50 power choking damage is related to all the rest of the effects.
Rope does some about of choking damage, and the description doesn't mention stunning... but apparently the 'damage' done by ropes does in fact stun enemies. Sometimes enemies die from rope, but I suppose that's due to the special effect mentioned in the description.


In short, I basically have no idea what choking damage does, or what it means. With other damage types I feel like I can do a few easy calculations to work out if it is going to be effective; but with choking damage I have no idea what any weapon will do until I try it. For example, will the choking ammo for the mortar kill my enemies, or stun them, or just make a huge cloud of smoke which doesn't significantly damage or stun anything?

228

XPiratez / Re: gameplay mechanics question: ammo clips, dropped items

« on: April 10, 2016, 02:19:29 pm »

While we're on the topic of losing clips and such - I've got a question.

I'm a bit confused about which items are consumed when used. I understand how ammo clips are consumed; but I'm unsure about everything else. Does it work the same way for alcohol and bandages? What about med-kits?

I'd just assume it works the same way for everything; but I'm pretty sure that throwing stars are not consumed unless you use the entire stack. So that makes me doubt other things as well.

I've been avoiding using med-kits unless I really need to, because I don't want to 'waste' them with just one use... so I tend to use bandages instead, which are cheaper. But if med-kits are not consumed from a single use - then I should be using them instead!

So, are throwing stars the only exception to the rule? Is there any way to find out that kind of stuff without having to carefully test it?

229

XPiratez / Re: Manufacturing for money ?

« on: April 10, 2016, 02:13:41 pm »

Lots of things can be manufactured for money. One way to get a sense of how much money you'll make is to set it to build an endless amount with auto-sell turned on - the manufacturing job screen will tell you how much money it will make per month.

Generally working, X-Grog is a good default option; but there are some things with special requirements that are worth a lot more. Most of the home cooked food and grog is pretty profitable...

230

XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.98B - 31 Mar - I Can See My House From Here!

« on: April 09, 2016, 03:45:04 pm »

That depends on you, but usually you should be able to recover from virtually anything. You can remake\buy\loot weapons, retrain gals, remanufacture\repair armor, and replace the trusty ol' boat with a pachyderm, skyranger or manufactured ship. Though it might kill your game if you lose yer boat on first month, because you have nothing to cushion the fall, and the loss of laboratory, should it happen, is permanent.

Before xPiratez, I was playing Long War, the mod for X-Com: Enemy Within. If the player suffers a major loss in LW, you can still rebuild, rebuy, and retrain - but you still lose the game. You lose because the aliens keep getting stronger while you rebuild. In fact they get stronger even faster than they would otherwise, because you aren't raiding their bases and shooting down their ships. So although you can rebuild after loss, if the loss is big enough then it can put so far behind that you no longer have strong enough tech to shoot down UFOs... and so you lose the game.

That's the kind of thing I was worried about happening when I was defeated by the merc ufo in xpiratez. My thinking was roughly this: if missions like this are going to become the new normal, then I can't afford to lose this - otherwise I'll have to restart the game.

Maybe I'll try to play without using saves from now on, and just see how it goes. If I have to restart, then it won't be so bad anyway - because it's an excellent game! I kind of look forward to trying a different early-game tech path.

231

XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.98B - 31 Mar - I Can See My House From Here!

« on: April 09, 2016, 01:21:45 pm »

This mod is great. I've only started recently, but I've been playing a lot and enjoying it thoroughly. I like the game is rich with detailed lore which is fully consistent with the other xcom games.

I've got a minor bug report (rereport, really); and a minor question.

The question is kind of a philosophical question about the intended way to use saves and such. Essentially what I want to know is whether players are expected to play on after taking a massive loss, or should we just reload and retry.

I recently encountered a mercenaries for the first time in a landed UFO mission. It was brutal. I didn't really know what I was up against, and so I quickly lost most of my crew before realising that I wasn't well enough equipped to win the fight. Up until then, I'd basically just been playing on through whenever something bad happened, but this time I decided to reload and not take the mission. I'd kind of like to know if the game is designed in such a way that I'd recover from taking a big loss, or if a big loss would mean the start of a slippery slope towards ultimate defeat. I mean, if I lose a heap of valuable equipment and most of my best trained hands; is that something I should play on from?

Found a small bug, dont know if its relevant since you already work on the extended edition, but might be worth checking if it replicates there too:

When you try to ship slaves from one base to other (all types of slaves) and you click on the arrow the numbers change to -random number (etc -256) on both columns. If you give the order to proceed you pay the cash but no actuall transfer takes place.

Cannot fix that but it's actually good, slaves shouldn't be possible to transfer for a good number of reasons.

As a brief follow up on this: when trying to transfer slaves, the number of slaves being transferred is shown to be negative; and so the cost is also negative. This means that xcom actually gains money when attempting to transfer slaves. As pilot00 points out, the transfer doesn't actually take place, but the player can just keep trying to transfer over and over again to get infinite money. If it can't be fixed, then I guess that's just too bad. I just through I'd raise the issue again because the bug is a bit more harmful (exploitable) than originally described.

232

Released Mods / Re: [TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.9.j - 9 May - Holiday Edition

« on: April 09, 2016, 01:02:14 pm »

Found a small bug, dont know if its relevant since you already work on the extended edition, but might be worth checking if it replicates there too:

When you try to ship slaves from one base to other (all types of slaves) and you click on the arrow the numbers change to -random number (etc -256) on both columns. If you give the order to proceed you pay the cash but no actuall transfer takes place.

Cannot fix that but it's actually good, slaves shouldn't be possible to transfer for a good number of reasons.

As a brief follow up on this: when trying to transfer slaves, the number of slaves being transferred is shown to be negative; and so the cost is also negative. This means that xcom actually gains money when attempting to transfer slaves. As pilot00 points out, the transfer doesn't actually take place, but the player can just keep trying to transfer over and over again to get infinite money. If it can't be fixed, then I guess that's just too bad. I just through I'd raise the issue again because the bug is a bit more harmful (exploitable) than originally described.

By the way, I've only recently discovered this mod, and I think it's really great. Thanks for the good work.

[edit]
I just noticed this was the wrong thread.  I didn't realise that there was a different thread for older versions. Sorry about that. I'm playing 0.98B.