Messages

31

XPZ Strategy/Tactics / Re: Piratez starting guide for new players

« on: April 18, 2016, 03:51:42 pm »

Isn't that what gold transports are?

(And eventually, of course, you need a way to shoot down the hotrods with faction leaders, although that's more about speed than firepower.)

32

XPiratez / Re: Can I remove the fist weapon from Mercenary Commando?

« on: April 18, 2016, 03:46:11 pm »

Being able to hire Mercs (and pay a hefty price every month instead of only once) could be a cool feature for when you really need something mean to join your team and money isn't much of an issue.

Which brings the question: Are we going to see male Ubers, hybrids or other types of soldiers eventually?

Well, technically there's the superheroes...  I'm not sure they count, though.

The fact that the pirates are all-female is sort of a plot point at this point (and referenced constantly throughout the game), so I can't imagine the core definition of the team is going to change.

33

XPiratez / Re: Suggestions on how to improve the mod

« on: April 18, 2016, 03:44:34 pm »

I recommend you play on at least difficulty 2.  The lowest difficulty, in X-Com, halves the armor of all enemies, which dramatically changes gameplay and defeats the purpose of many enemies, weapons, tactics, etc.

34

XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: April 18, 2016, 12:54:32 pm »

Unsure if typos should be reported in this thread, but "Activities:  Political" is listed on the research screen as "Activities:  Politiical", with an extra 'i'.

35

XPiratez / Re: questions about item stats

« on: April 18, 2016, 08:23:11 am »

The best way to balance would be to limit the number of flags on a mission. There was a discussion about such a game mechanic concerning blaster launchers. I think it didn't get implemented so far. Maybe this could be done via the environment setting? Count the number of flags and convert all but one to something else.

Is perpetual TUs even possible?  I think Eddie was just talking about using two flags to keep both user's Morale up, not their TUs.

36

XPiratez / Are Academy Engineers male or female?

« on: April 17, 2016, 03:35:14 am »

Just a minor oddity I noticed while reading the faction Bootypedia entries:

The general Academy section says it's all-female, and the Osiron section says all the males in the Academy are in Osiron, but the Academy Engineer description says they are "normal guys in light armors."

37

XPiratez / Re: Suggestions on how to improve the mod

« on: April 17, 2016, 03:09:40 am »

I don't see a huge difference. Everything on the Bonny isn't on the Blackmarket screen, thus you're not using it if it's sellable.

Belatedly:

This is unfortunately not true.  When the screen comes up after a mission due to lack of space, for some reason everything on the Bonny is shown as available to be sold.  Not only that, items your gals are actually equipped with will be included.  (I found this out the hard way when I accidentally sold the Cattle Prods I was using.)

I assume this is because when a ship is out, it's no longer considered valid storage space, and somehow everything in it is dumped into your base?  Or maybe it's a quirk of the fire-sale-due-to-space screen.  In any case the effect is the same; when you're low on space, it's very easy to accidentally sell items you are actually using.

38

XPiratez / Re: Tech Tree questions

« on: April 16, 2016, 12:30:04 pm »

Have you gotten the "Back to School", "School Graduation", and "Higher Studies" research projects?  Those are the core ones that lock off major portions of the tech tree.  Check the requirements for whatever the next one is on the tree viewer and figure out what you're missing.

Note that if you have "Plotting" but not "Pillow Book", then the next step is to manufacture a Pillow Book (which requires a Library) and research it.  Many people get stuck here.  You can continue to create and research pillow books to get a wide variety of techs.

Diplomacy is also vital (you'll need it for School Graduation), since you need it to interrogate and break people, necessary for many research paths.

You might also look at the requirements for "Laser Weapons Construction" and figure out what you're missing from there, if that's what you're aiming for.

Also note that there are many weapons you will never be able to assemble (you're, ultimately, pirates, not an international government organization.)  I don't think there's any way to ever be able to build your own personal-scale Gauss weapons, for instance.  You're pirates; some things have to be looted.

39

XPiratez / Re: XPirateZ Squad Analyzer (Help Wanted)

« on: April 15, 2016, 10:03:40 am »

I think the only real solution is to list all the top weapons for your situation sorted by average damage, and let the player pick from them.  There are too many variables to completely automate selecting a single best weapon.

There's considerations like clip size, reload time, size / weight of ammo, range, etc.  The best the algorithm can do is point people generally in the right direction rather than giving them a single clear "optimal" choice.

Like, it's gonna say that Fusion Torches are an amazing weapon against armored opponents early on, isn't it?  Because if you do manage to get next to someone at the start of your turn and use one, it has ridiculous damage output and perfect accuracy!  Unfortunately...  most tanks don't just sit there and let you get next to them with full TUs.

40

XPiratez / Re: How do you use Night Vision to your advantage?

« on: April 15, 2016, 09:57:23 am »

Shouldn't most enemies in night missions have their own personal lights, logically-speaking?

Or are they all just blundering around in the dark?

41

XPiratez / Re: XPirateZ Squad Analyzer (Help Wanted)

« on: April 15, 2016, 01:06:09 am »

Don't forget to include weapon size in the tables.  Sometimes you want a 1x1 backup weapon that can fit on your belt for going up against specific enemies.

(Although there's also the ammo expense or availability...  I mean, is it just going to tell me that the BFG is the best weapon for everything?)

42

Suggestions / Show number of TUs to reload a weapon next to its inventory slot.

« on: April 14, 2016, 12:13:22 pm »

When you pick up an object on the ragdoll screen in the battlescape, it will show the TU cost to move it to each possible location (eg. your backpack, your belt, your hands, the ground, etc.)

However, this is misleading when it comes to reloading ammo.  If I have a gun in my hand, it will list the TU it would cost to move that ammo to my hand if my hand were empty, which isn't actually what I pay if I click there (and reload.)

Therefore, when you have a weapon in your hand and are moving ammo, I think the TU cost for that weapon's slot should show the total TU it will cost to reload that weapon with ammo from whatever location you're taking it from -- that is, the total TU cost you'll pay if you click there.

43

XPiratez / Re: Suggestions on how to improve the mod

« on: April 13, 2016, 11:58:03 pm »

EDIT:
And yeah, I absolutely agree that the market should 'heat up' if you're selling too much, leading to a drop of the prices, but it would require new engine code (and not a simple one). Depends if anyone wants to code such a thing.

I don't actually think that would improve the game.

Here's the problem:  It would effectively mean that in order to make decent income from manufacturing, you'd have to constantly micromanage it by changing it to whatever is profitable at the moment.  It doesn't strike me as an "interesting" decision (because the correct choice is always just to sell whatever makes the most profit), it'd just be annoying busywork.  It'd effectively push the game even further into being Grog Sales Simulator, because now the player would have to spend significant amounts of time managing their sales empire...  which isn't really good for a pirate mod.  Basically, the grog situation is thematically odd but isn't a huge deal from a gameplay perspective, whereas implementing a detailed economy would cause non-pirate-y stuff to intrude into gameplay more often in a way that isn't very fun.

I'd just leave it as it is.  My experience is that a single raid on a landed frighter can get you on the order of $1.5 million, even before you consider selling hostages.

However...  while this is an engine improvement and not an X-Pirates improvement, it might be useful to have the option to sell things from the loot screen.  That would make it easier to say "I don't want these things that I just looted" and right-click to sell all the ones you just got, rather than having to go through your entire inventory back at the base to pick them out.  (And if you want to eg. keep enough guns for your gals but don't need any additional ones, it's a pain to constantly sell the excess -- whereas if you could sell them from the loot screen, it'd be easy, because you could just right-click the up arrow next to the guns you looted to sell all of them while keeping the ones you already have.)

44

OXCE Suggestions DONE / Re: Custom mission and monthly ratings

« on: April 13, 2016, 11:37:24 pm »

An alternative suggestion:

When your funds are negative, the timeframe is locked at 5s and cannot be set to anything faster.  This would be the only penalty for having negative funds.

This makes it easy for the player to sell stuff from any base (including base facilities), and even gives them a chance to raid any existing wrecks or the like if they have some easy way to raid stuff for cash.

The only problem, I guess, is that someone who has completely lost the game due to lack of funds might be tempted to try and continue at 5s, since it might not be clear that you're not supposed to do that.  (And that the appropriate response if you can't scrounge up the funds is to give up.)  Maybe replace the faster time buttons with a "give up" button or something.

45

XPiratez / Re: Hostages, again

« on: April 11, 2016, 11:47:20 pm »

Also, remember:  If you're actively researching someone, they don't take up prison space.  Therefore, rather than having all your researchers focus on one thing, you're better off assigning one researcher to each hostage as soon as they arrive, ensuring there's enough room for more.