Messages

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!

« on: April 13, 2017, 05:28:57 pm »

Plasma Pistols against church? One way it's tough luck considering the faction encountered and a lucky star for you to manage to penetrate church-matrons and priests anti-plasma suits. At least church has a higher change of masspanic and end the mission through surrender.

Considering Plasma realy deep inside the techtree I guess you got realy "realy" lucky in capturing academy provosts to get one for research and another one for interogation.

Could you link your current save-state to the attachments plz? I want to check your strategy
You can have mine in exchange.

Church are definitely resistant to lasers but plasma seems to power through whatever they have.
Adding a save from June 2602.

I did get lucky on Provosts.  Academy built a base in Dec '01 right after I unlocked small launchers.   I bagged a provost and two espers with one stun bomb.    Then Academy decided to build another base right next to my main base and I managed to capture almost every craft involved, including 3 frigates and a cruiser - which had another provost.  And of courrse then I raided the base which had an unusually low crew: one provost, one cyberdisk, and a bunch of Osiron/Explorers/Drones.  By contrast, first base had provost, two espers, four cyberdisks and a boatload of others.

I hoped to find a Cardinal in that church mansion, but it was just one reverend...

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XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: April 13, 2017, 06:27:22 am »

To my knowledge Marsec Bodyguards are the only one with power armor on there get one free list. Even then there are ~10 items on that list. Death assures progress on a critical component of play.

Worst comes to worst, if game adamantly refuses to give you Marsec Bodyguards or such, you can order a pair of them from Mercs at 3.5mil a pop.   First one you need to research, and then you can rob the second one for his stuff, power armor parts included.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!

« on: April 13, 2017, 02:01:26 am »

I got my first mansion(church) shortly after unlocking plasma.   Went in with plasma pistols.  It was a bloodbath.   Over in 10 turns.   Did not even bother with doors.  Plasma goes through walls like they are not there.

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XPiratez / Re: keep getting discontinued. any tips?

« on: April 12, 2017, 04:48:02 pm »

About fuel:  once you expand and gain good coverage and have a faster craft, you should have no problem shadowing other ships and seizing them landed.   Doing this is going to get you lots of Hellerium.
Hellerium can also be bought in a pinch at 20k a unit.   Manufacturing it is insanely inefficient.   Runt hours can be much better applied elsewhere (i.e. medical supplies will net you 40k in the time needed to make one unit of Hellerium).

P.S. If you post a recent save I could run the research analyzer to check what critical techs you might be missing.

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XPiratez / Re: keep getting discontinued. any tips?

« on: April 12, 2017, 03:58:33 pm »

You assemble/purchase a weapon.   Then you add this weapon onto a craft in the Vessels section, provided said craft has the proper slot to hold it.   Starter craft (airbus) has no weapon slots so you cant arm it.

Crazy Hanna is an insanely useful contact.   Here is the prerequisites list:
Advanced Weapon Rumors: unlocked by researching any advanced weapon used by major factions.  I recall I got a Laspistol off a priest in a temple raid that gave me this.
Personal Computer: dropped by most civilians
Academy: research any Academy captive.
Traders Guild: research any Guild captive
Contacts: Merchants : unlocked by 'Cunning'
Superconductive Wire : Spring Cleaning/Researching
Explosives Summary:   Easiest unlock is regular HE grenade.
Heavy Weapons Summary:  can be tricky cause you will mainly see heavy weapons on pogroms.  Unless you can score one on a Humanist, DOOM or Spartan pogrom, your best bet is researching Gun Almanachs.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!

« on: April 12, 2017, 02:38:56 am »

I am in progress of writing an external utility that modifies savefile, equipping a craft for specific mission type (armors and equipment)   What you describe ought to be fairly simple.   If I find the time, I can share the C++ code. I use a Cygwin terminal to compile and run them.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!

« on: April 12, 2017, 01:27:34 am »

Question of the day: where do I find Blood of Life? I want that vampire armor.

Blood of Life = zombies.   Good luck getting the gems though...

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!

« on: April 12, 2017, 12:23:49 am »

There's definitely more than one way to skin a cat, but it looks like you got lucky in that the game RNG did not decide to slam-dunk you with a high-pointer alien mission out of your coverage - the way it apparently has done to the OP.   It tried to black-ball me in August'01, but thankfully I was ready.

Month 18, 8 bases, 100% hyperwave coverage, close to 90 hands with 3 active teams keeping busy.  70 brainers on payroll and the list of available techs is still almost 100 long.   If you run out of research it generally means you missed out on some key drops/captures cause shipping bearing said drop was out of your range.  Or sold a captive who could cough up vital tech due to lack of space.   

And my point about power stations was simple math.   Same money to lay down a factory + support would pay for itself in less than a month and score you around 28M monthly after that building tanks.   Plus it gives you an insane manufacture capacity at the drop of a hat.   

I would agree that breakneck expansion at max efficiency is not exactly 'in the spirit'.  Them Gals are a bunch of fun-loving pirates, not an industrial machine.  But it looks like the way the game is now, taking it easy and taking your time doesn't fly. 

Now if it were up to me, and engine could support it, I would eliminate the protection money at start, and maybe fattened those civilians and criminal types a bit with extra chips.   And same way as pogroms do not carry ignore penalty until you do Mutant Alliance, so you can choose when to talk to with local governments.   I.e. let them factions run wild in Australia untill you are ready to set up a base and offer protection services. 

But as things stand now, if I followed you above post guidelines in my current campaign, I would have walked the plank in Sep'01.   

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XPiratez / Re: keep getting discontinued. any tips?

« on: April 11, 2017, 07:25:54 pm »

First off, you don't need to shoot down a lot if the craft - a lot of them tend to land someplace.   By minimizing the intercept window and shadowing the craft in geoscape, you can launch a ground assault as soon as they land.   This way you get the most loot.

Many crafts, you will get cannon parts, which, with proper tech, you can assemble into cannons.   And you will also get ammo 'magazines'.   These you need to disassemble.   Then you have ammo that you can use.

You can buy some weapons and ammo with proper contacts.
25mm cannon/ammo : Crazy Hannah
30mm cannon/ammo : Military Suppliers
50mm ammo : Crazy Hannah
Spike rocket launcher/rockets : Crazy Hannah
Ramjet cannon/ammo : Rogue Fields
Charger Laser : Mutant self-defense forces
Seagull launcher/missiles : Smugglers
Meteor launcher/missiles : Human/Reticulan alliance.

Dropped from crafts, you can also get gauss cannon parts(assemble into cannons) and gauss magazines (disassemble into rounds).  Also Plasma Spitter parts from bigger faction ships (i.e.raid a landed cruiser during a base build) or Plasma chargers from Reticulan ships. 

For the most part, these are short range and weak and only good for taking out lighter ships (civilians, transports, freighters etc)  Ramjets are decent if pricy, same goes for Seagulls.  Charger lasers are only useful to disassemble into parts.  Better stuff you need to manufacture.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!

« on: April 11, 2017, 01:19:05 am »

Problem is, high point-giving researches are not that easy to come by either.   Definitely not with the cost of brainers.  When infamy bonus was 500 per point, brainers kinda-sorta payed for themselves, but that has been cut almost in half.   And the high pointers are typically the 'fluff' and the 'socials'.  Sure, you need those too, but most weapon/armor/ship tech is low points.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!

« on: April 10, 2017, 11:50:07 pm »

I got to say that the game might need some attention with respect to early game balancing, specifically as to when faction activity picks up.   I have done detailed analysis of research tree and drove straight for the key techs, and went for the most optimal money making manufactures.  Even so, I just barely managed to get enough bases/coverage to not run the campaign into ground.   I got a negative score in August, but by mid-September I had four bases with hyperwave decoders, and was able to clamp down on all that jazz.   But that was version F3.  With the research and manufacturing changes made since, I highly doubt I would be able to scrape by financially.   

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XPiratez / Re: Help me git gud, question thread

« on: April 10, 2017, 11:10:36 pm »

You don't.  You get only one and the Codex you pick determines your access to certain crafts, armors and voodoo branches.

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XPiratez / Re: keep getting discontinued. any tips?

« on: April 10, 2017, 07:58:27 pm »

To me, it looks like early months, enemy activity is concentrated around your starting area.  But after first 6 months, enemies go global.   One way to track this is by daily charts checks: activity in regions/countries.   New alien missions are generated at start of month, and the bulk of multiwave missions happens during the month after.  What this means is you can expect you first heavy negative in August.  What this means is you need to work real hard on setting up more bases and getting more coverage.   And you want hyperwave decoders for this.   Tech-wise, you can get them rather early if you get your hands on an engineer.  But money-wise...   with better moneymaking early game manufactures nerfed into the ground, getting the funds necessary is going to be tough.

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XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports

« on: April 09, 2017, 03:19:16 am »

Actually, some captive researches will.   I remember standing over my first Marsec Bodyguard bleeding on the ground, deciding whether to heal or kill.  Took him alive, researched him and got powered armor tech as free bonus.

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XPiratez / Re: Help me git gud, question thread

« on: April 08, 2017, 01:45:33 am »

A high melee gal with fuso sword can be quite effective.