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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N1 29-Apr-2022 Every Day Is Caturday
« on: July 22, 2022, 04:58:42 am »
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32
XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N1 29-Apr-2022 Every Day Is Caturday
« on: July 22, 2022, 02:08:53 am »
It happened as well in a previous save (2nd month following the base appearance) but I'm going to go with the consensus of the community and hope that rng straightens out or whatever.
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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N1 29-Apr-2022 Every Day Is Caturday
« on: July 21, 2022, 11:31:02 pm »After its creation, HQ only drains 450 score per month. It's only slightly more than a vanilla base, and if you can't handle it... well, I'm not sure what to tell you. Maybe you got unlucky and angered some excavators.
Well, no, outside of max difficulty the game is fairly relaxed about straying from the "golden path" (and you don't need chateau on first month because 10 runts won't make much either way). Again, you get one big hit in April as ninja mobile fortress goes around and picks the spot for HQ, and then there's not much pressure after that (unless you get unlucky and a pacification or excavation mission is happening somewhere).
Even on JS you can make quite a few mistakes and still pull through.
I'm curious on what exactly you're doing to get such a low score. Do you like, lose 10 gals on every mission you do? Do you ignore bounty hunting? It's pretty important. Maybe you could even post a save so we could see what's going on.
I'm not losing gals; I've been save scumming ever since I started playing again. I'm basically playing with training wheels. I just started a few days ago. Last month (June) I did everything except shoot down what I couldn't plus a hidden valley and a haunted forest. Score was -300something I think. I've switched to random seeds to see what if any difference that might make.
I'm giving it another couple of months to see how it plays out. Maybe I'm griping about nothing. Here's my current game:
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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N1 29-Apr-2022 Every Day Is Caturday
« on: July 21, 2022, 04:53:46 pm »
WADR the bulk of your article is what you've just said, and what I do, which is literally how this game is played (vanilla or otherwise): Do every mission possible and research as fast as possible. What's happening here is that there is apparently exactly ONE golden path to merely survive. One MUST unlock every mission type immediately or sooner while more or less disregarding all other research. One must also immediately (or sooner) accrue well over $1.7 million in monthly bills that are most certain to go unpaid in that first few months. One must ALSO research the requisites for Chateau before any of this or else you'll go broke (see above). By "immediately" I mean in the first month. The punishment for not immediately taking that exact path is basically being rectally violated by the game from the 4th month on.
I've been hiring brainers as soon as I can afford them, and doing at least 90% missions (couldn't do the first haunted forest, for example, and didn't have peasants for the valley, but those missions are rare). On each attempt I'm up to 10 brainers before the Infamy tanks. The first month, it's anywhere from -1500 to -2400. On the following months it's potluck but so far anywhere from 1400 to -1400. I've estimated the former to be 4000 or more lost, and subsequent months to be up to 4000 with wild variability.
I think a lot of players here have played the mod through its evolution and thus were introduced to these changes gradually. When I played Piratez back in 2018 or whenever, there was no (specific, competing) sky ninja base; there wasn't a huge imperative on, for example, unlocking lokk'naar and undersea missions; one's major goals -- direct goals, not a byproduct of a meta-plan to front-load certain techs -- were to research weapons, armor, craft, and people. That's what I've been doing, and if that's the problem, it isn't one that any X-Com player is prepared for.
One little caveat is that I've saved about 1.5 mil in chips that I haven't cashed in. That will get me one extra month. I otherwise know how to play the game and have little to no problem in the battlescape. It's just the addition of this base that renders all of the other mechanics cumbersome and prohibitive. I love the sheer volume of content, but it should follow from that sheer volume that there ought not to be a perfect (or required!!) golden path to survive the beginning of the game.
I've been hiring brainers as soon as I can afford them, and doing at least 90% missions (couldn't do the first haunted forest, for example, and didn't have peasants for the valley, but those missions are rare). On each attempt I'm up to 10 brainers before the Infamy tanks. The first month, it's anywhere from -1500 to -2400. On the following months it's potluck but so far anywhere from 1400 to -1400. I've estimated the former to be 4000 or more lost, and subsequent months to be up to 4000 with wild variability.
I think a lot of players here have played the mod through its evolution and thus were introduced to these changes gradually. When I played Piratez back in 2018 or whenever, there was no (specific, competing) sky ninja base; there wasn't a huge imperative on, for example, unlocking lokk'naar and undersea missions; one's major goals -- direct goals, not a byproduct of a meta-plan to front-load certain techs -- were to research weapons, armor, craft, and people. That's what I've been doing, and if that's the problem, it isn't one that any X-Com player is prepared for.
One little caveat is that I've saved about 1.5 mil in chips that I haven't cashed in. That will get me one extra month. I otherwise know how to play the game and have little to no problem in the battlescape. It's just the addition of this base that renders all of the other mechanics cumbersome and prohibitive. I love the sheer volume of content, but it should follow from that sheer volume that there ought not to be a perfect (or required!!) golden path to survive the beginning of the game.
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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N1 29-Apr-2022 Every Day Is Caturday
« on: July 20, 2022, 04:27:09 pm »The ninja hideouts themselves are practically farmable, which can offset the score negatives of ninja activity from the main base. A convoy with three HMGs can take care of the jetbike interceptors as long as it's not close enough to the main base to be covered by proper fighters. Though they are very dodgy, so remember to pay attention to who you have in the pilot slot. High accuracy gals manning those guns is a must. Bump those up to 2x25s and you can take care of ninja fighters pretty easily.
Once you're on the ground, scum it up. Smoke the hell out of your landing site and snipe from your little armored APC fortress (there are some flaws with this, a bad landing site can fuck you). The top hatches let you poptart. Pop up through the hatch, shoot a ninja, pop back down. Kill all the little minigun turrets with indirect fire weapons like a grenade launcher (you should have at least one from survivalist camps), javelins or hand grenades.
Once you've mostly cleared the map, you can focus on those 14mm turrets. Many schools of thought on how do deal with them. A ton of mortar shells with eventually do it. Acid Cannonballs can eventually wear down the armor. My personal strategy is flamethrowers, since fire bypasses armor and they reaction disrupt. I've even killed one with a hammer before, though you need a plan to deal with the reaction fire first. RPG's and Recoilless Rifles are not great options. Since they're direct fire and very slow, you're pretty much guaranteed to lose a gal to reactions every shot. You could probably kill one with enough molotovs if you were willing to take all day.
Remember to bring a hammer or pickaxe to crack the hideout gates and you're golden. Easily a thousand points in score and a bit less than a million bucks in loot.
Yeah that ain't happening for another 6 months. No HMGs, no mortar, no acid balls, no grenade launchers. Six gals with Tommys (or more with the convoy; they'll still die) just aren't going to pull this off. The sheer volume of all the necessary research makes it so that I (a) don't have enough air power to shoot down much of anything, (b) can't get the battlescape weapons researched fast enough while also trying to research air power, (c) get jacked at random for 3k or more infamy in a month and thus can't make enough money to do shit for shit. I'm in the 7th month on this attempt and my cash just got chopped in half AGAIN because
I'm a Superhuman Ironman X-Com "veteran." I played Piratez a few years ago and this problem didn't exist. I'm attempting this on John Silver and I still think it shouldn't. I had annihilator armor, Marsec laser rifles, and the huge spacecraft (forget the name). Yes, I want it all back.
This isn't just a case of being off to a slow start or a steep learning curve. It's unnecessarily prohibitive. I've restarted four times and the results are the same. Around May I start hemorrhaging infamy just because the mod maker seems to think that new players should be hamstrung arbitrarily before even being close to having the ability to fight back. "Barely playable" would be my assessment of the completeness of this monolithic mod.
All I want to do is stop the stupidly massive infamy hits (the ones that consistently penalize more than the available monthly missions can possibly provide). So before I go through and bork the whole game trying to fix this one glaring blister on the ass of this otherwise fantastic mod, does anyone know how to stop the stupidly high infamy hits caused by the sky ninjas? In the files I mean. I've lost interest in trying to counter this. Otherwise the mod is great, but this aspect really spoils the fun. Might disable missile strikes too, depending on how likely they are to completely ruin an otherwise well played game.
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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N1 29-Apr-2022 Every Day Is Caturday
« on: July 19, 2022, 02:26:23 am »isn't that just the ninja base?
If it only happens once, I can deal with it, I guess. Still sucks to lose 600k in an unavoidable way. Probably too early to take them on with sprayguns and smoke grenades. Oh well.
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XPiratez / Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N1 29-Apr-2022 Every Day Is Caturday
« on: July 19, 2022, 12:04:22 am »
Assuming I was doing fine all month, why would I suddenly drop to -2000 Infamy? It was around +2000 on the previous month. Something "hidden" is hitting me for around THREE TO FOUR THOUSAND INFAMY IN A MONTH. This has happened three times now, twice on the previous playthrough. It's May. If I have to cheat to make it stop happening, I will. This kind of arbitrary punishment feels game breaking. What do?
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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions
« on: October 13, 2019, 02:27:11 am »Funily enough, you should get some so long as you clear DR X's lab.
Aha!
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XPiratez / Re: Codex Popularity Poll
« on: October 12, 2019, 07:33:33 pm »
The Fortuna goes above and below. I like a ship that can do both.
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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions
« on: October 12, 2019, 07:05:05 pm »
So I have a game in which I finally unlocked Adv. Laser (up to Custom Lasgun and MP Lascannon) and Gauss clips, but it took well over 2 game years due to postponing the Mutant Alliance. I also never went after Dr. X (tending to push what seemed like "endgame" things until later) After looking at the tech tree and the various moneymaking schemes, I was wondering if I might enjoy rushing the Mutant Alliance/Higher Learning path sooner. I have a new game getting close to the Codex choice and knocking out early MA reqs. Pretty sure I'm going to stick this game out and try to get some minting/casino action as early as possible.
I realized that I will have to find at least 3 Industrial Scanners again, and a few other lucky things that I had accumulated in the previous game. However I would be able to do things like Dr. X sooner and can avoid blowing at lot of cash on needless things early on (like that six-figure pile of Euro LP clips).
So...
Is this worth it? My other game seemed a little stale, but in hindsight this seems like it will take a looong time to get close to where I was. Will I really be getting a head start on Act 1, or just pushing the game to Act 3 sooner?
Where are ALL the Industrial Scanners? Spoilers pleeeez
Also, what is the latest version of OXCE that had TheBiggestRipOffEver? Where can I find that version?
I realized that I will have to find at least 3 Industrial Scanners again, and a few other lucky things that I had accumulated in the previous game. However I would be able to do things like Dr. X sooner and can avoid blowing at lot of cash on needless things early on (like that six-figure pile of Euro LP clips).
So...
Is this worth it? My other game seemed a little stale, but in hindsight this seems like it will take a looong time to get close to where I was. Will I really be getting a head start on Act 1, or just pushing the game to Act 3 sooner?
Where are ALL the Industrial Scanners? Spoilers pleeeez
Also, what is the latest version of OXCE that had TheBiggestRipOffEver? Where can I find that version?
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XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports
« on: October 12, 2019, 05:18:21 pm »Did you install properly? Because at least sea missions work for me.
Fixed.
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XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports
« on: October 10, 2019, 11:10:57 pm »Did you install properly? Because at least sea missions work for me.
I reinstalled last night. Started a new game though. Maybe i should go run the other one for a bit and see if it worked. Unfortunately I didn't save the last 0-g mish. I had changed the default in the .rul for the time being since I had plenty of those armors.
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XPiratez / Re: Bugs & Crash Reports
« on: October 09, 2019, 07:30:10 pm »
I just downloaded J17A and space/sea missions are not recognizing my space suits and chillers. Defaulting to pods & topless no matter which armor I equip.
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XPiratez / Re: A thread for little questions
« on: June 07, 2019, 02:38:31 am »TYVM ALL, PPL:)
For Marsecs, the R-Rifle sounds like a deal to me. I have these in all of my bases and assault ships (with a lot of ammo - mandatory for all weapons in my case) Yao can carry this one and a SuperMagnum or an EuroSyn Laspistol plus grenades and a Shokafist... Yea, this looks nice enough. I suppose that an Autolaser could also be used? Hit from behind? Dunno. I always face them frontally. Dunno why, maybe my tactics is just like that. I could change it no prob - I like changes. Could a Recoilles Rifle also punch through a Merc?, BTW?
My default mid-game loadout is anti-armor. It includes 3-5 frontline Junkmasters with ES laspistols and either axes or pikes, backed up by 3-5 in Tactical, Hover, or Sniper with ES laspistols and RRs with 3 shots each. I also currently have a Freak Gal in Hover with 97 strength and an anchor (easily over 200 damage) which she can carry with an ES pistol.
The axe inflicts more raw damage, but the pike has 60% armor reduction, a 3 tile range, and snap shots allowing it to destroy terrain. The RR obv kills armor reliably. Nothing survives the anchor. ES Laspistols can whittle Bodyguards down but should be applied to the rear armor if possible. Two of the hovers (or snipers) usually also have fireball launchers, which leaves them a bit overweight until they get to sniper positions and drop either their RR or fireball launcher. Everyone carries a Smoke, a Hallucinogen, and a WP grenade. 1-2 Tactical or Snipers can carry Surgery Kits (hovers lose the extra RR shells). Junkmasters carry water and the anchor-gal carries beer for energy.
I keep plenty of other equipment on board: Hand cannons, rocket launchers, M-Lasers, and so on, but at this stage in the game, the above loadout works everywhere (on Earth, above water). Its main weaknesses are that the ammo is expensive and you aren't stunning much. Remember, though, that the RR can be used to bash some skulls in a pinch, and the Junkmaster gauntlet does great damage.
I found other heavy weapons like the LC and LACC to be more cumbersome than I prefer. Everything listed above was an evolution of pragmatism, trying lots of things and applying Occam's Razor. It works in Jack Sparrow.