Messages

31

XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99G2 - 4 Jun - Shipwrecked Summer

« on: July 07, 2017, 04:28:07 am »

Yup electric lasso is just rubbish. I tested it on my own girls in uber outfits and after 4 hits it did 0 - ZERO - stun damage (this was in 99G1, haven't used it since). Stun baton, handle, leather whip is much better. I made a mod that reduced its time unit cost but it's still useless - I think if the electric lasso was made into an arching weapon with more reliable damage it would be worth carrying into battle

And Gauss Weapons aren't really superior weapons. Even after unlocking them and I still use the cheap 37mm Rifle and Heavy Slugthrower. What you really want to target is manufacturing hellerium munitions, specifically LC-HEAT rounds. 90 plasma damage per shot, 3 shots per round, good accuracy - that's something that very few weapons can beat
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Btw... I've found 2 bugs.

The first is a sprite glitch which makes it look like the lower body of girls on a road disappear It might just be the colour or something and not actually a glitch, nothing major.

The second bug didn't exist in earlier version. Mutated reaper acid spit attack accuracy seems to be stuck at 0%.

Oh and love the new music btw!

32

XPiratez / Re: heyyy Freak Out!: PSA about freak gal type.

« on: July 07, 2017, 04:06:41 am »

I find rocket launchers a little slow and I've had bad experiences with friendly fire. On average you'll need 1.5 rounds per shot for 160 damage? Also, girls with jetpacks only get 1 shot off it due to lack of space for rockets.

Compared to LC-HEAT that does 90!!! plasma damage per shot with fair accuracy and can be shot 3 times in a single round. The damage output is unrivaled by lots of late game weapons.

I guess if you have 6 to 8 girls with rocket launchers you can just blast low skilled creeps away but it doesn't really take away reaction fire risk, especially if you have an off-map miss. I tend favour use of arcing weapons like mortars and grenades to blast people I can't reach while my firing line lays a trap for enemies. It's much slower but I find it safer, even against heavily armoured enemies.

One weapon that has had a big change is that the neural whip. It no longer affects mechanical enemies. Previously you could 1 shot cyberdiscs and academy drones. Now it's useless against them. I don't really understand why it doesn't affect Cyberdiscs which has no damage modifiers vs mind. Academy drones now have a 0% damage mod vs mind so that's understandable.

...And yeah, melee is just overpowered! Vibro-axes can kill almost anything in 1 hit and cost only 14TU per swing.

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XPiratez / Re: heyyy Freak Out!: PSA about freak gal type.

« on: July 06, 2017, 02:14:15 pm »

Hey thanks, I didn't realise 99G2 was out till I read your post! Looks like I'm over a month behind :p

Hopefully the changes don't affect my weapon and gear choices too much. Is LC-HEAT (Plasma) still top of the food chain for mid game?

Gonna upgrade later and I'll keep freaks in mind. Haven't unlocked it yet though.

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XPiratez / Re: The most unusual moments at your campaigns

« on: July 06, 2017, 03:47:35 am »

Hah reminds me of my first and only Deep One terror mission. Surrounded by a million creeps and lobstermen covered by fartbags that can instant kill a girl. I had to resort to my super cowardly strategy of laying mines near the ramp of my Shadow Bat and end turn with my girls up the ramp  I spent like the first 6 turns running out, laying mines and taking pot shots, running back and waiting for those fools to walk up

If you think that was bad look at the last mission I got \/ \/


Incidentally, I've found out that the neural whip can 1-shot KO, if you're lucky, cyberdiscs but they may not survive the subsequent blast. Your girl will definitely take blast damage as well Old version nevermind

35

XPiratez / Re: The most unusual moments at your campaigns

« on: July 05, 2017, 12:12:48 pm »

I had something very similar happen once, also on a superhuman beast hunt with nomad spawns. It was in a ratman village map.

The entire front of the map only had 6 enemies. The rest of the nomads were in an open field at the back - like more than 15 of them I think. They were confused and kept walking left and right but they didn't leave the field.

My grav girls armed with arena fireball launchers and mortars had such a good time - it was a fiery massacre

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XPiratez / Re: Moding Question: Where to begin?

« on: July 03, 2017, 08:28:42 pm »

You are right. I couldn't find anything on the UFOpedia that says Lasers have 34% AP but it's there in the rules. However, you are not accounting for the fact that all the weapons I've mentioned except the CAWS have AP as well. For example, LC's have up 30% AP.

Now, the numbers here by itself don't say much so I've constructed a simple model to judge weapon effectiveness and here is what I found:

See CompareTbl.png for the ranks of low-tech weapons and Eurolasers vs 100 armour and 25 armour.


-Against 100 Armour the HvyLas wins out on virtue of 7x autofire, it's snap shot performance doesn't dominate however.
-Eurolasrifle straight out loses to Heavy Slugger and AC-AP. When compared on Snapshots Eurolasrifle loses out to LC-AP as well.
-Euro MarkLas is just useless, lol! It doesn't even outperform LC-AP's damage band (which is the chance of doing at least 1 damage to a target)

-Against 25 Armour the AC-AP is king. In this regard you can pay an extra $665,000 for an EuroHeavyLas which boasts 0.4% less damage
-Comparing Snapshots, CAWS outperforms the ER-LASRIFLE by roughly 12%.



So my point here is that you are paying outright about 10 times as much for weapons that do not outperform low tech guns. Then there are the pogrom missions that cost you 1000 points per month which translates into tens of thousands of dollars in lost bonuses! And in my current playthrough I unlocked gauss weapons 2 months after finishing eurosyndicate deal (what a joke!)

Also, despite not shooting down or raiding any govt ships, I was attacked by govt forces. I suspect that this is retaliation for the euro-mission I was on. This means that your base gets attacked anyway.

Eurolasers are simply not worth the money or effort. It's a lot of pain for a paltry reward (This really is like the GTA5 Abigail Mission where you spend hours looking for submarine wrecks and she gives you $10 as a reward!)

So yeah, I think it's reasonable to buff these weapons so that it's worth the heavy cost.

37

XPiratez / Re: Moding Question: Where to begin?

« on: July 03, 2017, 02:48:54 am »

I think you're mistaken on those points, lasers don't have innate piercing as far as I can tell - only rifles with piercing and no stat bonuses get 15% AP

That usually means piercing weapons tend to outperform lasers against heavily armoured troops.

When facing off against guys in power armour, carapace armour or tanks accuracy isn't as important as raw damage and AP because if you can't overcome the base armour you'll do no damage. And if an enemy has laser resistance it makes the already low base damage even less likely to wound

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XPiratez / Re: Moding Question: Where to begin?

« on: July 03, 2017, 12:54:01 am »

You make a good point. Euro lasguns should be buffed so that they're worth the trouble. I'm thinking either making them inexhaustible, or ignore X% armour, or a damage boost (simple or stat based).

Right now they really don't outperform LC, AC or CAWs.

The base defense should be spaced out to maybe once a month or once every 2 months until you've been attacked at least a couple of times, this way players won't get killed from 4 attacks in 1 month.

In the end, if you take the eurocontract early on, the payoff (losses) for reneging should be better than staying in. If you're already late in the game then it wouldn't matter much.

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XPiratez / [MOD] Break Euro Deal & Eurolas Rebalance

« on: July 02, 2017, 11:51:12 pm »

BH Lawyer Mod & Eurolasgun Rebalance Mod
========================

Engage Lawyers to Break Euro Deal Mod:

(A library is required for every step.)

1. Research: Engage Lawyers
    You'll need to have researched a live Govt General and the Eurosynd Deal

2. Hire Lawyers from the black market.

3. Build a case through the manufacturing screen
    You'll need a lawyer for the case

4. Have your brainers research the case after it's built. When done *NEW* eurosynd missions should stop appearing
----

Like real life, cases will take lots of cash and time. It will take $25 million and cost you 3000 points in total to renege on the eurosyndicate deal, so be prepared.

*Please note that while I have tested this there may be bugs that I missed. I'm still pretty new to modding so bad shit might happen!


As I learn more about modding this game I might expand on this and add stuff like renege retaliation missions and more uses for lawyers.


========================================
About the ES-Las Rebalance Mod: The goal here is to make ES weapons viable by slightly tinkering with the weapon stats to raise the utility of ES Las weapons to the level of Gauss Weapons yet retain its Piratezy flavour. My goal isn't to make ES weapons replace Gauss. You'll find that the base damage remains unchanged. It will be a strict side-grade - a different tool but one that will be just as effective.


You may ask, "...why tho?" and "is it really needed?" I feel the answer is yes! Here's my reasoning:

By the time you've unlocked gauss weapons you would have collected over a hundred gauss guns. Gauss weapons practically pay for their own research and you won't even have to manufacture a single one! On the other hand, ES weapons are not found in the wild and it would cost between $10 to $24 millions to furnish a large squad.


Way before "unlock gauss research" finishes you would have found very cheap and very good guns and/or ammo that are as good as or even better than vanilla ES guns. This makes the ES deal a purely detrimental choice. In fact ammo like AC-GAS, AC-AP, LC-AP, Magnum Chem, Super Magnum Mercury boasts damage to TU values that are as good as or exceeds ES las-weapons. Hell, once you've researched Hellerium munitions, the LC-HEAT is so powerful that it matches the Guass Musket's average damage output (and you'll probably unlock it like 12+ months before you unlock gauss).

So because there are too many good choices that make ES las weapons weak in comparison, the ES Deal becomes a choice that has no redeeming qualities.


I believe that if a player decides to sink so much money, effort and risk into a set of weapons, they should receive a justified payoff. No other equipment choice in the game forces the player to sacrifice so much - I love this as a game mechanic - so this mod is here to make that choice a viable one.
------------------------------------------------
BH ER LasMod Changes:

All ES Lasguns have improved armour penetration.
All ES Lasguns have a chance to set enemies on fire (I'm thinking of the lasers in Crusader: No Remorse/ No Regret, or C&C Obelisk of Light, how cool were they!)

ES Heavy has an improved clip size. The damage output of this weapon is already very high, increasing its AP to 40% puts its damage band inbetween the Gauss Musket and Heavy Gauss with full auto-fire. It also sets people on fire more reliably than other ES weapons.

ES Markslaser is now more like a scout's precision rifle. You can move plenty before firing in either aimed or auto mode, or stand and deliver and fire twice in each mode. The auto-fire x2 (pulse) mode and duo aimed shots raise this weapon's average damage to a respectable level. Clip size remains the same so watch your ammo!

ES Lasrifle now boasts an increased clip size and you can fire off 1 more shot in each mode per turn. This allows you to plink away at targets. While each individual shot may be far weaker than a Gauss Musket, the combined average of shots delivered by the ES Lasrifle should match that of the GM in a single turn, in fact, on double auto-fire you might exceed it! This is true even against targets in power armour.

ES Pistol. Improved clip size. Ahhhh... pistols have a funny place in Piratez so I didn't change it much. There are a lot of pistols to choose from in this game but 2 or 3 of those make the other choices obsolete (including ES Pistols). I mean when you have mercury super magnums that can accurately deliver 18% more total average damage than the Gauss Musket vs 25 armour, why choose anything else? And Super Magnums are cheap as chips!


Hope you find this mod useful. 

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: July 02, 2017, 06:15:31 pm »

I found my first base about 6 months in, near my own base!

I'm playing on Jack Sparrow difficulty so maybe all the spawns are accelerated

By my first year and a half I took out 4 bases, each time capturing a Guild Master.


BTW guys, does anyone know how to break Eurosyndicate Contracts? I just went on my first pogrom and had -750 score.

I tried not to kill anyone but there was a clump of 5 enemies in a small alley intersection and my mortar girl was bored

I captured a govt general but I don't think I need him

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: July 02, 2017, 04:53:46 pm »

Where are those boom guns?  They're the only things keeping me from battle lasers.

I found a bunch in Merc ships and Guild Bases

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: July 02, 2017, 02:00:01 pm »

If you can reliably handle mercs without deaths you probably have the gear/tech and skill to win the game immediately, even if it will take ages to actually end the campaign.

What?! I severely over-estimated the difficulty of this game then. My first encounter with Mercs was around 12 months in. They landed and I only had sniper rifle, aqua arrows, Battle-Rifles, a couple of CAWs, military shotguns and mortars. My girls were in warrior outfits and TAC armour.

It was a really tough battle. I only won by throwing down my guns and putting on my shockafists and picking up my barbarian ax and cattleprods. My mortar girl pounded them from a distance while the rest set up traps and moved forward. My early game strat revolved around capturing as many people as I could so all my girls had high melee. Took me many hours to win the mission without losses (I do save scrum because I don't want to throw weeks of progress away)

After researching Mercs and discovering their weakness subsequent encounters were much easier. I broke out the rare lasguns and adv clips and fartbags whenever Mercs come to visit and manage to capture their large ships and fend off their terror missions without too much trouble. They even left behind half a dozen vibro-axes for me and gave me enough material to build synthsuits for all my girls.

I honestly believed they were an early-mid game encounter and signaled that tougher foes were coming. I thought it would be like Impossible Long War where the enemies would just steadily ramp up and if you teched wrongly you'll just be unable to win missions later on.

Eventually I ran out of lasgun clips and needed a good laser replacement quickly - so I rushed for eurolasers.

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: July 02, 2017, 12:15:47 pm »

On the point of laser weapons being absent...

Ah I wish I had known about the heavy downsides of Eurosyndicate deal earlier. Anyway, that's in the past now. I immediately sunk $9 million into Euro-las weapons to patch the "tech gap" in my force. At that point unlocking gauss weapons was at least 4 to 6 months away for me.

In my game I go on all the missions I can. That means landed guild ship missions. Mercs for some reason stopped visiting. I cannot shoot down every churchship I encounter, and they rarely land so maybe that's why I don't seem to face enemies carrying las.

I decided to rush for lasers after encountering Mercs for the first time and thought that enemies from that point would become increasingly difficult but it seems that other enemies after them were far inferior. On my recent first encounter with The Dark Ones I expected to be trounced but to my surprise they were carrying shotguns and crappy revolvers and shit like that. My girls just waddled up to them with vibro-axes and shockafists and cut them to little bits.

IF ONLY I HAD KNOWN THAT I DIDN'T HAVE TO WORRY

No matter though, Eurolas weapons are pretty good. They just barely supersede the incredible OP weapon that is CAWs (for like a million times the price) but they have better range and good auto-fire. I think CAWs are just too strong in general and they make other tech choices redundant.

All part of the fun of a blind play, I suppose. This game is full of surprises and really doesn't follow mainstream conventions such as "investing years and millions and lives in specific tech research is supposed to give you an upgrade - not a sidegrade."

Still, at times with long difficult, out of the way tech path leading to rubbish worse than things I already have or tech with no clear advantage, I can't help but feel I'm being trolled by the game.

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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions

« on: July 01, 2017, 12:27:34 pm »

I hope there are more lasgun drops - I have like 150+ gauss weapons and maybe 300+ gauss ammo but only 9 lasguns and about 20 adv lasgun clips

I probably will unlock gauss weapons before I can get my hands on strong laser weapons.

It's kind of like low-tech musket/cannon weapons that becomes obsolete before research is done because you get far better conventional weapon drops early game. Except the tech-lag last for like 4 months.


I've been trying to get the euro-lasguns but research seems to be very out of the way, luck driven and unreliable. Good Las weapons feel like vapourware until after superior gauss becomes unlocked.

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XPiratez / Re: [MOD] Lobbers use Throwing & other rebalances UPDATE 2

« on: June 25, 2017, 11:32:03 am »

As for the actual topic of this thread: The first couple of times I saw the thread I wondered "why would lobster-men use throwing weapons?" ...      I get it now. I don't really have a strong opinion about mortars and such though. I almost never use those weapons.

Hmm you're right, maybe I should change the title of this thread.

As for mortars, they're really fun. I brought one to try it out and now I never leave home without it (unless in an underground mission). It's slightly on the overpowered side for fire support.

Your mortar girl will be near the ship the entire mission - you can give her a grav harness and put her on the roof of your craft (when she needs more ammo just go back in and pick it up). Here's what happens... your scout girl or parrot goes out - spots an enemy - calls for fire support - BAM dead enemies!

I'm testing bravery training with demo charge type weapons in my mod now - basically when there's a blood ritual or something I equip my girls with grav harnesses and drop HE Charges on werewolves. It makes bravery training a lot less of a pain in the ass - a lot simpler.

But this is my opinion coming from a exceeding limited time to invest playing. Spending an extra few minutes to account for bravery unique status on every mission adds up, and in my view is unnecessary. Having a subset of weapons, even a very small one, train such a valuable stat, encourages load-out diversity while not getting in the way of the meat of the tactical game.

I feel the same way as the game goes later - base management trying to juggle so many different components, items, prisoners, research, slaves or rob, manufacturing, training is taking a lot of time. I have to write everything on a piece of paper every few missions to transfer things from base to base. It becomes a bit of a bureaucratic grind as the game goes on. It was a problem present in UFO Defense but the number of items in this game grows the problem exponentially.

Not to mention missions where you have to spend like 15 minutes looking for the last 2 enemies at night but you have to becareful because they're armed with heavy gauss. Most missions - since I found like 400+ hellerium grenades before I unlocked them - I just blast everything open from turn 1 onwards. Make holes everywhere.