Messages

16

XPiratez / Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread

« on: August 02, 2017, 05:05:47 am »

Generally, handle if you can get 3-5 hits off (they'll often go down with less, but it's best to be sure, and have the option to pull back if it goes badly). Axe if they have decent armour and/or you want them out of the fight asap.

You might be surprised how far a gal can run and still whallop an enemy, especially if they go full berserker (ie: nude). But yeah, if you're out in the open you're probably better off peppering them with arrows. I used to hit everything I saw with molotovs because the panic + light + damage was a great combo.

The best thing though is to keep experimenting and doing what you enjoy, don't pay too much attention to our preferences. Some people only do what is most mathematically efficient, others swear by a weapon that only works well for them because it syncs with something else they do, and others still just plain like a particular weapon for no good reason (I really like a pair of flintlock pistols even though they're among the worst weapons in the game). If you like shotguns and they're working for you, go for it.

I'm no expert with the research tree, but I'm pretty sure you'll be holding onto that small launcher for a very, very long time before you can research it.

Usually 2 people cant wipe my whole squad, that was just some bad luck. They got crit insta kills and hit every shot and then the survivors panicked.

Yeah see, this is why hovering at 50 moral is bad. It puts you one lucky shot away from unravelling your whole team.

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XPiratez / Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread

« on: August 02, 2017, 01:57:19 am »

Lethal melee weapons can cut down enemies like you wouldn't believe, and if you kill enough of the right ones in a short enough period, the rest will surrender. Decapitation strategies are particularly effective if you can locate the leaders early on.

If you're "camping your landing craft", you're basically doing it wrong. This should almost never be necessary as it's plain bad strategy and runs directly counter to how combat works. Morale drops rapidly over time, environmental effects are basically a timer, and striking enemies hard and fast is the best way to cause surrenders (which you'll almost always get even if you go all out to kill everything that moves. If you aim for it, you can get the majority of enemies to surrender by mixing kills in with your stun raids).

Honestly, at least while you're struggling with the early stage, I highly recommend dropping the difficulty a notch. You can always start again, or just edit the save file to raise the difficulty again later (it's very easy, just changing one number).

As for brainers, have as many as you can afford. People with encyclopedic knowledge of the game will probably say you can max them out in a month or something absurd, but 5 is fine early on, you can start bumping them up one or two at a time once your cashflow is reliably 100-200k over what you need to survive for the month.

I think aiming exclusively for captures is probably the biggest thing you're doing wrong, really. Especially on top difficulty, you're basically going up against forces 5 times as numerous as you and trying to punch them all out - of course you're losing. Get some killing in and things should start moving more smoothly.

Also: make sure you have lots of healing items. Even if you go entirely lethal, you'll get enemies who pass out from a combination of pain/smoke/stun, injury, and bleeding, and it's often profitable to patch them up. Musket balls actually have a secondary stunning effect, which makes them more useful than you might think even with the unimpressive accuracy.

18

XPiratez / Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread

« on: August 01, 2017, 05:27:42 pm »

I always play on the second highest difficulty setting, personally. The main effect of the highest one is to make the game more tedious after a while, as every ship is packed to the gills with enemies to root out. The regular fights become a laborious chore very quickly.

That's not a criticism of the game either, it was true of the original, and I get the impression the top setting is intentionally over the top.

Also once you get past the rough early game underdog status, having so many enemies arguably makes the game easier as you have far more guns, ammo, and captives to use.

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: July 30, 2017, 04:36:25 pm »

What are those very small flying object that don't look like ship, and are destroyed to shreds after even the weakest shot?

You can find this out if you catch one that lands, or eventually through researching/interrogating enough people in the world in general. Don't spoil every mystery for yourself!  These ships aren't a sign you're going to lose or need to prepare for anything big, so enjoy it while it lasts.

20

XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: July 30, 2017, 04:34:02 pm »

Are bows worthwhile? It's the start of a new game (new version) and I already have musket rifles and shotguns, makes me wonder what a bow can bring to the table when it's a more primitive tech

The smallest bow (not the others, but they're much more powerful in exchange) can also launch fire arrows, which have a good chance of setting targets on fire. This tends to panic them, and illuminating an area at range is really useful at night.

Plus some of your people will have naturally high throwing skill and poor shooting skill, so bows help make them useful. Bows are also quick to fire and don't need you to kneel to get decent accuracy, so they're very mobile units who can often fire at a large area of the map. And even once bows lose some of their edge, they remain useful against some weaker targets, and having a few people who can chuck grenades well is always handy.

21

XPiratez / Re: [Suggestion] Hands exhaustion/boredom mechanics

« on: July 26, 2017, 10:57:40 pm »

Just got to chime in here... I'm completely NOT a fan of this idea.  This will only lead to player exhaustion/boredom.

nthed. I'm exhausted and bored just reading about it. Troop deployment/rotation is already very micro heavy, there's really nothing to gain from this. You could approximate an effect like it by simply not building (or assigning hands to) training buildings. That way only those who got their swords wet would advance anyway.

22

XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: June 28, 2017, 08:12:39 pm »

I think I've seen all the vanilla aliens accounted for in this mod, so now I gotta ask:

Where are the floaters and mutons?  There are reapers but the race that used them in the original are only a pedia article; it's arguably the same with snakemen, but at least they still have a legacy in the form of mutant lamia and of course those damn chryssalids.  Mutons don't even get a pedia mention, but at least their body type is reused on many other units (mainly mercs).

I just assumed the star gods stopped making floaters. They were a lot of work in return for poor soldiers that even conventional Earth weapons took down easily. They weren't bright enough to take much advantage of flight, and anyone can make a cheap grav harness anyway.

23

XPiratez / Re: Selling civilian crafts

« on: June 06, 2017, 06:32:13 pm »

Yeah, I think if need be you can even consider the 'small engine' selling for 100k to be an abstraction. Maybe a few bits of scrap metal would come from it too, but even in the early game, sitting around a downed craft hacking away at it for long enough to get scrap wouldn't be worth the risk of discovery.

Pirates travel light, loot and scoot is the order of the day.

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XPiratez / Re: Why not instant grenades?

« on: June 05, 2017, 09:09:45 pm »

Timed grenades can generally be thrown a lot further, and have a wider range of functions.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99G - 9 May - Close Combat Carnage

« on: May 17, 2017, 09:55:48 pm »

Makes sense to me. First thing you're gonna do in a fight is try to push someone's gun out of the way if you manage to get that close. "Melee failure = guarantee burst of gunfire to the face" is a big and common flaw of turn based shooters.

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XPiratez / Re: Help me git gud, question thread

« on: May 17, 2017, 09:49:34 pm »

I would definitely recommend retreat. You're pirates, not zealots, and the Star Gods are supposed to be scary. Skirmishing and cutting your losses are perfectly natural tactics.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99G - 9 May - Close Combat Carnage

« on: May 13, 2017, 05:39:51 am »

Ha! Ridiculously simple. Nice one, thanks.

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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99G - 9 May - Close Combat Carnage

« on: May 13, 2017, 05:36:14 am »

I'm getting an odd problem in the new version. Everything seems to play okay, but a lot of the flavour text (mission briefings, menu items, alien containment, country names (except pirate straits), etc) is reverting to the original xcom text. I've installed it the same way I always have in the past, and tried reinstalling everything. I'm guessing I missed something?

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

« on: April 18, 2017, 09:54:13 pm »

I agree that the codex/craft choice thing needs work. I'm not even sure which one I picked in the end, they all seemed equally meaningless without foreknowledge of what each item gained actually does. I'm not sure what variant of the bonaventura I got either, since I have nothing to compare it to, and all the stuff it gave me seemed pretty redundant. I just wanted a decent ship, not flipping a coin over what powers I'd get 50 game hours later.

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

« on: April 15, 2017, 04:17:10 am »

Its not a fast investment either

That's precisely why it's bad. It's a long term investment that you've built with the express purpose of tearing it down.

The "it would just be empty space!" argument ignores the fact that filling that empty space costs you 1.5million and takes 10 months before it makes anything back. Yeah, sure, it'll make you money eventually, but downing a single civilian aircraft a month will make you more than that.

How you play is up to you, obviously, and I hate the obsession with "optimising" in games, but you're framing this scheme in a really weird and blinkered way.

Separate note, really, but I've never had 8 bases. I rarely have more than 4 for long, as I hate base defence, and it seems like you get more of those the more bases you have.