Ever since M5, X-Piratez added the ability to customize the personality of you, the captain. This feature is cool, adds flavor and meaningful decision-making to the earlygame, and dreadfully undocumented. For this reason, I have created this assorted collection of low-spoiler insider knowledge to help you make your choice.
- The Fundamentals
Your identity as a captain is defined by two crucial principles: Ideas and Aspects. These characterize the captain's convictions and personality. In-game, they mainly affect what random events they get, good or bad. A laid-back captain might get a free tech for being studious, but negligence could cause a bad event, while a more proactive captain might get lucky and find treasure. The basic four captain types all have three ideas and three aspects. Here's a brief overview:
Ideas:
MIGHT: Hierarchy is as simple as "who can beat up who". The enactments and lessons of power.
PRIDE: You are great and deserve great things. Embrace your inner awesomeness.
VISION: Strive for greater purpose to achieve true change. Deny the naysayers who call such things cray-cray.
FAITH: Hope springs eternal, perservere through hard times. Conquer the threat of nihilism.
Aspects:
LEWD vs AX-CRAZY - How open you are towards strangers. Lewd is more friendly and inclined to make friends, while the ax-crazy captain trusts nobody and is more likely to engage in violence and exploitation.
TROUBLESEEKER vs BOOKWORM - The captain's outgoingness. Would you rather go outside and seek adventures in the wide world, or adventure in a good book?
PIG-HEADED vs DAYDREAMER - conservative or progressive? Would you rather stick to tried-and-true tradition, or try out something new and innovative but untested?
During the first month, you will be given a choice of five different captain types:
-- Jackass
Ideas: Might, Pride, Vision
Aspects: Ax-Crazy, Troubleseeker, Daydreamer
This is the captain of choice for those who want to be the top dog of the top-apocalypse, willing to do whatever it takes. The Jackass captain gets what she wants by being the meanest, toughest bitch around.
Becoming a jackass will make your game more intense. This captain type is characterized by its signature facility, the dungeon, a more compact and cruel prison that can be used to create slave halfwits (and ironically, give you a good reason to capture worthless lowlifes alive) and train gals, ogres and damels with high voodoo power and bravery to become sadomasters. The downside? Just having a dungeon attracts more retaliation missions, so you'd best be prepared for uninvited guests to your hideouts.
-- Dumbass
Ideas: Might, Pride, Faith
Aspects: Lewd, Troubleseeker, Pig-Headed
The Dumbass is a wasteland rockstar, adored by friends and feared by enemies. She's got no formal edumentation and is addicted to gambling, but who cares when the world loves you so much that serendipity is your tier 3 sub? Choose this captain if like having dumb luck, randomness and hilarious, occasionally asinine shenanigans.
The biggest downside is a weakness in early-midgame resarch - you cannot build analytics rooms. Instead, you do your analytics in a VIP club, a facility unlocked through a path-unique event chain. Getting and building training facilities such as dojo, onsen and especially luxury spa will help you succeed.
For better or worse, you have less need for personal databases and can spend most of them on scamming and spoofing to get cash and glamour.
-- Soreass
Ideas: Might, Vision, Faith
Aspects: Ax-Crazy, Bookworm, Pig-Headed
Do you hate getting screwed by RNG? Do you always assume and prepare for the worst? Is your favorite game Deep Rock Galactic? If the answer to most or all of those is yes, then Soreass is the best choice for you. On this path, most of the bad RNG events are mitigated and their harm reduced or eliminated entirely. However, good RNG is also mitigated, as secret passages are collapsed and visitors driven away with gunfire.
Mechanically, soreass is all about home defense. Only a soreass would build both plastacrete bunkers to fortify the hideout, in addition to earlier access to anti-air facilities - you can make flak tower kits from necroplane parts and weaponize radars into irradiators. Those things are expensive maintenance nightmares, but for the soreass, reliable defenses are worth it.
Your other unique gimmick is bulk mining - you can mine and crush ten big rocks at the same time to get precious gems more efficiently. But beware - if you dig too deep and too greedily, you'll be putting those home defenses to the test sooner than you think.
-- Lazyass
Ideas: Pride, Vision, Faith
Aspects: Lewd, Bookworm, Dayreamer
Just because it's the post-apocalypse and you're running an organized crime syndicate doesn't mean you have to be an ass about it. At least, that is what the lazyass believes. Choose this if you want a chill experience, a captain who would rather watch Flash Gordon with friends than molest local villagers.
The lazyass captain gets the unique ability to build hotels, which effectively function as a sidegrade large prison/onsen with less space but monthly income and crew refreshment. Pretty nice since you only need glamour instead of a flak tower kit. Besides, those courtesans have been making money for us so diligently, they might at least get some decent lodgings for it.
Lazyass is a choice choice if you don't want the downsides of the other paths, as it doesn't have any major weaknesses other than lacking Might, which is slightly bad for event RNG.
-- Others
If you choose none-of-the-above captain, you will get up to two additional chances to get a captain personality. The second set give you one aspect and two ideas, the third set either one idea or nothing but some first month score. They are less flavorful than other choices and abscence of ideas can still lead to some event RNG, so I won't cover those in great detail.
Sumarry:
All in all, I don't think there's a right or wrong choice when it comes to captain type. Pick whatever suits you, but be aware that choosing a codex that is connected to an Idea your captain lacks will make your game more challenging, see my post regarding the Chaos Saint.
Amendment: Thanks to Dioxine for feedback + corrections. I should point out that any captain who has the Ax-Crazy aspect can build irradiators - which means Jackass, Soreass and the Cunning Captain (from the list of secondary option) can do it. Furthermore, anyone with the Bookworm aspects can learn how to make an improvised flak tower kit with necroplane parts - i.e. Lazyass, Soreass and Educated captain.
