Messages

61

XPiratez / Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread

« on: August 14, 2017, 08:56:47 am »

Thanks, I might get hover armor in the meantime then

Is there a way to force my people to panic? My new pilot has been stuck at 80 bravery for months and I want to level her up. I don't want her running around naked for missions tho she's too valuable to lose, could it be there is an item or armour that can force a panic in her?

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XPiratez / Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread

« on: August 14, 2017, 12:30:19 am »

Thanks! I've been trying guardian and it's pretty amazing, especially love the night and thermal vision. I would like power armor tho since I loved the 57mm rifle and it's a bit too heavy without power armor

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XPiratez / Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread

« on: August 13, 2017, 10:26:36 pm »

Well I'm now unlocking a lot of tech that needs power armor parts and laser weapon parts, but I haven't been seeing anyone with laser weapons or powered armour. I do get shot at frequently with light cannons, rocket launchers, recoilless rifles (spartans, screw them!), las pistols but no proper military grade las weapons and rarely any power armour guys. Just how am I supposed to find them?

I'm still having problems with my bases. Lost 2 more but it seems like I'm making a bit more money than I'm losing and close to getting hyperwave decoders in every base. Just upgraded to guardian suits and the light cannons have totally replaced shotguns now. I've unlocked Nightmares and I'll start manufacturing them when I have the cash. However the best craft weapon I can produce is lascannon and medusa rockets which I lack the materials to manufacture and the best I can actually make/buy is 50mm cannon and seagull rockets. I'm afraid even if I scrape together the cash for 4 nightmares equipped with 50mm cannons and seagull missiles I won't be able to splash things like crackdown gunships or higher without some kind of tanking support I think

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XPiratez / Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread

« on: August 12, 2017, 11:07:40 pm »

Thankyou. This is a shame, that base was fairly well developed but at least they didn't detect any bases the last 2 months. All my other bases will have 5 hideout shrouds by the end of the month so hopefully I'll lose no more than 2 bases a year after this

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XPiratez / Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread

« on: August 12, 2017, 10:54:55 pm »

AHH!

I need help. I just noticed a craft on a direct course to my south america base moving at 7500. Of the ships I have researched the only one that can move that fast is a boarding torpedo. I assume this is a crackdown ship but could it be it doesn't know about my base yet or is it guaranteed to be a base attack? What will happen if I dismantle the base for money before it hits, will it crash the game or something? Is it even guaranteed to be an attack or could it be searching?

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XPiratez / Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread

« on: August 12, 2017, 10:51:18 pm »

That's a nice picture thank. It looks like a nice ship but the doors only open on one side, fast enemies could easily run around and attack

I take a very slow and methodical approach to gaming. I don't mind staying in the landing craft for most of the mission if it gives me better results. It does get boring eventually, and I end up leaving the landing craft but then get punished heavily and reminded of why I was playing it safe to begin with. No matter how careful you are being there is the risk of reaction fire if you miss or fail to kill, enemies shooting you as you try to approach into melee range, enemies positioning themselves so they can rush you next turn but if you go out to melee them then you won't have the TU to get back into cover, blind spots where enemeis could be but if you go to check then you'll burn too much TU and energy, enemies who are positioned looking out of windows but positioned farther back in the room so you can't see them at first but you can still take reaction fire if you move onto certain tiles.

I'll generally try to get armor that protects me against enemy attacks almost completely and then play it more loose to save time. If I'm reasonably sure I can't be hurt much (low grade lasers such as reticulans, guild security with AP shotgun ammo, the risk of taking shots to the back from a building I haven't fully explored) then I'll advance but play it cautiously, letting my energy recharge, staying in full cover when I can, maintaining a perimeter line and then sweeping the map so as to avoid attacks from behind etc. But still, there are missions with things like mid tier laser enemies, dogs, red dogs, zombies, any spartans, church exalts, ghouls with the chem shotguns, humanists on progroms with their plasma guns etc where I will play it extremely safe and usually attempt to kill everything in sight unless it is a unit type I am searching for and really want to have. I'll camp the landing craft and completely level the landscape

I know it's not a fun playstyle to watch and probably not how the game was intended to be played, but there's always a certain amount of luck involved, and a catastrophic failure can sink an entire campaign and all the hours sunk into it which is something I would very much like to avoid. I've lost my fair share of XCOM 2012 LW games that I've learned to play cautiously and leave very little to chance since it sucks to lose tens or even hundreds of hours of gametime and have to give up or start over

The shadowbat does indeed have elevators. I think they're technically ladder but they function like elevators with my character levitating up and down them. There is one on each wing and they allow a 360 degree vision range around each wing, only issue is it can be hard to see under the craft and enemies can approach unnoticed using buildings or tree for cover

67

XPiratez / Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread

« on: August 12, 2017, 05:25:55 pm »

But if I kill a bodyguard, grab his corpse and bring it into the ship and retreat, will I get the power armor parts, or do I have to finish the mission?

Btw does anyone have any recommendations on defensible ships? I try to keep my people alive and the most effective way to do it I find is to engage the enemy from my ship

I've been using the Shadowbat but I have a few issues with it:
Glitch means I can bring 7 people max
Can't see underneath the wings from on top of them, meaning enemies can stand under and surprise me if they can fly (church exalt. Chrysalids or dogs running into my ship with their high TU)
Landing ramp let's me see in 3 direction, but the one we cant see is a bit of a blind corner that we need to step around in order to see around and can result in me being ambushed. Staircases on the ramp slow down our movement stepping in and out, and require people on the stairs to crouch in order to see through the door
Requires 4 people to effectively block the doorways (2 if only the stairs) and this leaves me terrified of AoE weapon reaction fire
Control room blocks vision from the wings meaning a flying enemy can hug the small blind spot on the back and ambush

But it has quite a few advantages too:
4 people can fire from the doorways without moving, 2 can fire from the elevators moving only up and down.
Elevators give a high up (level 2) vision of the battlefield from the very beginning and make it easier to connect with arcing explosives over a long distance without risk of return fire
Inner staircase is a strong chokepoint, allowing us to camp the elevator rooms, enemies coming up the stairs have to burn a lot of TUs, we will hear the doors opening if there aren't other sliding doors
Fairly spacious inside, I can keep people spread a bit if I need to
Can keep a couple of people in the control room and bring them down if an enemy comes inside, less risk (saved me from an exalt massacre when they came in though the elevators, these 2 survived)
Can stand on the wings and block the elevators, renders dogs, werewolves and lids ineffective
Well lit outside (night is more of an obstruction to me than the enemy)
Inside favors melee (usually my advantage)
I don't think vehicles can get up the stairs since they're pressed against the doors, means we can bait infantry inside while leaving tanks, reapers, cyberdiscs etc outside
Item pile is nowhere near the doors, not so likely to be vaporized by explosives
The control room as an obstacle means we can fire at enemies without reaction fire by launching grenades over the top of the control room

Does anyone have suggestions on other good defensive ships? What I really would like is:
1) Around 10 people
2) Bigger ship, means we can spread out more and camp positions effectively in the event that we need to lure enemies inside to melee them
3) More elevators
4) Better vision all around
5) High and broader rooftop with elevator access, means we can keep a mortar up there permanently and not have it fired upon except by flyers

I really doubt there's actually anything better than this, the shadowbat is a total deathtrap and if not for the glitch it would be extremely OP I think. Just wondering if anyone has any other good defensive suggestions. Or maybe pics of the ships on the battlescape?

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XPiratez / Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread

« on: August 12, 2017, 03:10:04 pm »

Well I knew they blew up since it happened in the previous version I played (2 versions ago). But the mission didnt auto-end and I was free to mop up

Can I go to those missions, camp the base til the last turn and wait for a power armor guy to get close and then jump out, cut him into pieces with axes and tech blades, then drag his body into the ship and get power armor parts that way? Does the corpse count as the power armor loot or does it take a successful mission to get the power armor parts? If so then the only other thing I can think of is to try to capture 2 of them, research 1 and then enslave the other for the parts as loot.

Meanwhile I'm working towards mercenary contacts, I remember last version you could buy marsec bodyguard captives, I'll buy 2 if I have to tho it would suck up a lot of cash

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XPiratez / Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread

« on: August 12, 2017, 02:20:51 pm »

Thankyou for the excellent info! I think I will try to get a SG leader from a smuggler ship like last time. I had no idea interceptors could take down large and v large vessels even in groups of 4. I'll make a push for shield generator. If I can get a lot of barracudas with 1 s gen and some 50mm cannons it should allow me to swamp and deal with the small ships at least like fighters I think. All the other L guns are gated, I need power armor parts for school graduation and I'm just not seeing any power armor enemies anywhere. Fortunately a base was finally built (eurasian autonomy left me, I guess family ties doesn't count for sway local gov that started before I finish the research, probably just stops the mission from happening in future). I'll try to get the base supply ships, camp for 20 turns and finish the map, see if I can find any power armor guys among the survivors of the explosion.

I can already make refineries and have quite a few, I'll switch over to chemical production, thanks!

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XPiratez / Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread

« on: August 12, 2017, 10:36:55 am »

Well there's not really enough space to squander imo. Main base I am thinking of deleting some building to build a large barracks so I can delete 1 more barracks for the CPU core which I will eventually need, but then I need to get a study room from somewhere and might have to delete a workshop or a dojo, which would be awful since a training base certainly isn't on the horizon and my main base is one of the few which can currently produce medical supplies

I gave it some thought and the game might still be salvageable. If I can make a push for nightmare and produce one then I can shoot down the majority of crackdown ships. If I build 4 shrouds in my medical base, and I transfer all my troops and equipment to any base that has crackdown ships appearing nearby then even if a crackdown occurs my A team will be there waiting for them.

Only question is where I am going to get surgery units from to replace my lost base and finish my other manufacturing bases. I might need to build something else that doesn't require such rare materials. Any idea what else is profitable? X-Grog seems to barely pay for the maintenance of each base and runts, and with a tiny profit on top of that, I can't run a decent sized army off of that profit or replace any bases that I do lose

Did some digging. Barracuda isn't far off, has higher damage soaking, is faster and has an additional light weapon. It loses missiles but missiles are currently too expensive. If I push for that and make two of them they can probably put out enough damage to drop the smaller enemy craft. Only 1 pilot each required so my hunter-killer pilots can handle them. I'll be pushing for nightmare when I finally get powered armor parts. Any ideas on what is good to handle the bigger crafts? I was thinking of using the kraken or crab for tanking. Kraken is twice as tough and crab is 50% faster and more likely to actually reach the battle. I'm not sure what to use as my primary damage dealer tho since I don't think light weapons will do the damage and missiles are too few, perhaps a heavy weapon focused ship? The dragon has 4 HW slots but is a long way off, the Kraken is very close with 1 less HW slot and very tough so able to do some tanking.

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XPiratez / Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread

« on: August 12, 2017, 01:16:36 am »

Well I don't see many armoured enemies. Shotguns can handle ratmen, researchers, GOs, spartans, humanists etc in 1-2 shots with even low aim, and are accurate at halfway across the map with high aim. The only enemies I can't really take out with them are osiron security, marsec operatves, guild security, marsec wolfmen/pigmen, etc but I do 90% of my killing with GLs

Usually I have 2 GL people in the lifts and 4 shotgunners at the doors. The shotgunners open the doors and shot at anything low armoured, killing quite a few. The GLers go up the lifts, fire grenades at anything while prioritising heavy armour and dangerous weapons then go back down the elevator. This ensures that the only fire the enemy gets is the odd reaction fire and with our armour we're usually ok. If I'm afraid they might hit hard such as with heavy machine guns, recoilless rifles, rocket launchers, laser guns or cellatids then I spot the enemy and fire a grenade over our ship control room, and stay aware of how is faced towards us and away from us so I know who can possibly reaction shot, especially if I miss or fail to kill

If the enemy is refusing to step into range then I swap one of my grenadiers into a mortar and start shelling where I think they are til they come out or I get them, when they're down to 2 left I get bug hunt mode and can just shell where the minimap tells me they are until I get them. While I go for 100% captures on civvie ships or easy maps like church, warehouse wars, scientific experiments etc, the other maps I usually turn into a smoking heap of rubble, you don't even want to know what the pogrom maps look like when I'm finished with them!

Anyway I picked Superhuman because I did UFO defense on superhuman ironman and I didnt think it was very hard past the first 2 months. I did the last build of piratez on 3rd difficulty up to when I was making the conqueror and grinding mercs for synthmuscle parts. It really wasn't that hard but I didn't get half as many crackdowns, it took much longer for the crackdowns to begin, and I didnt need surgery units to make medical supplies so it was simple enough to replace lost bases

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XPiratez / Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread

« on: August 12, 2017, 12:34:41 am »

I didnt think auto crackdowns would be at 18 months, I was expecting it to be more like 3 years in or something. My plan was to garrison my manufacturing bases with troops from the training base, I was going to build the workshop bases first, use the money to buy the training base, then ship the new troops to those bases and use the money to buy good gear for them. There were people on some topics saying it's ok to skip missions so I figured that time wasn't THAT short and I would be ok for a while

I'm still at hunter killer sadly. I don't know of any armor that's strong vs plasma and since it's base damage is very high I would need something with both high armor and high plasma resistance I think. I have about 8 well trained troops left and another 10 training in the 2 dojos I have in my main base. I do have hundreds of slaves but I heard they're really bad as fighters. Basically I've been in the middle of building my business empire, discovered that surgery rooms require surgery units that I can't buy now, and then lost one of my only 2 manufacturing bases with the crackdowns having already begun. I have a hunter-killer but there's very little it can actually shoot down. Sway local govt missions started this month but I managed to finish family ties so at the very least they can't kick the govts out from under me, but it seems like I'm rapidly heading for a situation where either all my bases except my main base will be taken out and I'll be crippled for income permanently, or my main base will be taken out if my 8 defender armor elites and 8 halfway trained soldiers armed with heavy shotguns, axes, recoilless rifles and advanced GL can't stop them

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XPiratez / Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread

« on: August 11, 2017, 11:52:45 pm »

There was no one at the base so it was taken without a fight. The more troops you have the more wages you must pay them, plus they need equipment. Unless I have my med supply bases setup I can't afford the wages since the more troops you have the more exhorbitant their weekly wages become due to the way ranks work in this game. The idea was to just put a hideout shroud down and avoid making too much aggro, only shootdown ships if they have something I need and try to wait til they are far away from my base before I shoot them down. It was a deep one crackdown which is strange because I haven't seen any deep ones in this game so far and definetly didnt shoot any of their ships.

I can't pick up surgery units right? Alien bases are well beyond me and the aliens still haven't built any. I hope the ships that carry surgery units aren't the v large ones full of tanks, power armor, chrysalids, cyberdisks, psionics etc

Man, it's like 3 crackdowns a month, I have a feeling I'm supposed to have top tier ships and be preparing for the final battle by now, maybe I took too long and should've done more of the missions, rushed the medical supplies tech, gotten my production bases and built a research base

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XPiratez / Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread

« on: August 11, 2017, 11:07:39 pm »

Damn, it's sep year 2 and the crackdowns have started. They targetted my first medical supply base and wiped it out, I have another one being constructed but that's a large portion of all the money I have made this game gone and it never even got chance to pay me back. If I'm about to start losing a base every month now I might have to restart

The worst loss was the surgery units. It takes 3 to make a surgery room now, and I haven't had any scientific experiments missions for half a year I think they might have permanently stopped. Will I never get any more surgery units now?

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XPiratez / Re: Getting trashed lol. New question thread

« on: August 11, 2017, 08:24:59 pm »

Now that you mention it I captured a humanist instructor during a pogrom. We locked him in one of the elevator rooms with one grenade launcher girl blocking the lift and wounded girl blocking the door. We carried him into the room and woke him up so that he wouldnt die from system shock since I really wanted that guy. Anyway halfway through the mission I noticed he was gone from the room. We cleared the rest of the map and never saw him. I had my grenadier deliberately looking away from him and my wounded girl too so he wouldnt waste time moving during enemy turn but it seems as if wires came down from the ceiling and dragged him into the hull to be devoured while our backs were turned >.>