XPiratez Information Compilation, Starter Guide & Weapon Spreadsheet

[Zesty]

re: weapons

Scoped Magnum is incredibly good for its range since it can work as a generalist weapon unlike most other onehanded weapons. Shielded chainmail or plate is practically invulnerable to most return fire and with good stats can hit 100% accuracy at like 30-35 tiles. There's also the precision pistol which is fairly similar, slightly weaker, but comes with a much more convenient 12 round magazine

Tommy feels like the best early game SMG for training newbies. 35 + 65% acc is as good as you're gonna get outside shotgun range and 3x snap is amazing for training reactions. If you're lucky you can find and research one in month 1. 50 ammo is also a lot even with your higher rate of fire.

Not sure why you like the Coach Gun so much. I find it has a very limited period of usefulness before getting Heavy Shotguns. 30% spread on the Coach Gun ammo is worse than 25% on the Heavy Shotgun, 4 shots per reload vs. 7, and vastly better ability to punch through weak armor. Only reason I wouldn't hand the heavy shotgun out is if its to peasants or lokknarr who can't carry it.

re: starting locations

Having tried a few, California for the catgirls just beats everything. $375k debt is nothing, your priority early game is getting soldiers to run missions. As long as you're able to run extra missions (and catgirls can safely run a LOT of extra missions early game at night with absolutely no risk once you've got camo) you'll make that deficit up in 1 or 2 good hauls. Hiring 8 hands would have cost you $400k anyway and they'd be far less capable. Then once you have Night Ops you can transition your Ubers into handling night missions while the cats take over the increasingly important air game in Piranhas and let you hit a tier or two above what you should be able to take down with their better stat lines. Also the debt goes down with difficulty, lol. Should be SS tier and almost required for Jack Sparrow.

re:codex

Codexless is absolutely not a challenge run. If anything its the best early game choice by far. Codexes require a lot of research and base development and time and the rewards are actually pretty minimal for the early game. Codexless means getting to sell your drill and hull for +1 brainer immediately. Getting the Dutchman quickly with 11 capacity and proper doors is the greatest powerspike you can receive to make the early game easy and to survive what would be catastrophic spawns. The only competition is the Harvester from the Peasant Revolution path and that IS an actual legit challenge run. Sci books are also most likely putting you at least 6+ months ahead of the research curve since otherwise Libraries are such an absolute pain to wait for.

If you don't have the dutchman, the Airtruck is really the best transport in terms of layout and defensibility for a long time. I'd take it over the Fortuna or El Fuego any day and only take the Metallo or Bonaventura on account of their much higher crew cap once I have tanks researched to draw fire. And tanks are a fairly long ways off.

Re: General tips

Sell one starting corridor, keep the other. Rush the mess hall and build it over the security corridor for a time and money discount equivalent to selling it. This can be enough time savings to get !Warehouse Wars! in month 1, which is very good for your development. I also recommend selling the starting vault to buy a brainer. You really shouldn't need more space than that for a long time.

Also on the topic of building replacements, build plantations ASAP everywhere for the cash and then you can build over them later with 2x2s like hangars or large living quarters. This makes you a tidy profit in the meantime, give you a $100k discount on the eventual facility you want, and put you about half a month in build time ahead of the curve when you've just finished researching those facilities and want them up ASAP. No reason not to spam out new bases with plantations once you're able to and then replace them with other things when needed. Done well your end of month maintenance can end up negative, lol. Won't stay like that for long once you unlock more brainer slots but the money snowball is real.

[Amoebka]

Airtruck should be your research priority number 1 in the early game anyway, and Dutchman is absolute crap in comparison. It has open windows everywhere, and you start right next to them. The whole map will reaction fire on you before you get to lifts anyway. Airtruck also lets you camp inside on the second floor plugging the lifts, making melee enemies in mixed lists trivial (raider/necro bloodhounds, narlok chupacabras, etc). Dutchman doesn't, because then you will get shot through the windows.

No codex also means no shadowtech cars, which severely gimps early to mid airgame, forcing you to research elerium-powered crafts, and that takes ages.

Codex rewards are also not even remotely "minimal", lay down that Cali crack you started with. Agressor armor + rayguns or 3 free super-lunatics are crazy good.

[Zesty]

Airtruck should be your research priority number 1 in the early game anyway, and Dutchman is absolute crap in comparison. It has open windows everywhere, and you start right next to them. The whole map will reaction fire on you before you get to lifts anyway. Airtruck also lets you camp inside on the second floor plugging the lifts, making melee enemies in mixed lists trivial (raider/necro bloodhounds, narlok chupacabras, etc). Dutchman doesn't, because then you will get shot through the windows.

Turn 1 drop smoke and you're pretty fine really even if your reactions aren't good. You should go for Airtruck anyway, but Dutchman isn't competing with Airtruck, it's competing with the Airbus you have to put up with for 6 months before you get the Airtruck and it makes Airbus look like a bad joke. Airbus to Dutchman is like a 300% improvement to combat performance while Dutchman to Airtruck is like a 50%.

No codex also means no shadowtech cars, which severely gimps early to mid airgame, forcing you to research elerium-powered crafts, and that takes ages.

Ehh, I'm ambivalent. Maybe I'm spoiled by unhittable cats on piranhas/jetbikes.

Codex rewards are also not even remotely "minimal", lay down that Cali crack you started with. Agressor armor + rayguns or 3 free super-lunatics are crazy good.

Aggressor armor is barely an upgrade from Scale armor that you can have well before the codex gives rewards, and scale with shield is arguably better. Rayguns are meh, no RoF to compete with short range weapons and not enough range to compete with rifles. 3 free ubers is good but you can still have a dozen ubers trained up on your own before then. There's a reason why Cali/catgirls are so good, running extra missions early lets you scale exponentially faster and by the time codex rewards are available you're able to equal or surpass them soon. All I have to do is make like $500k-$1M a month extra in early months, funnel that into extra soldiers, extra bases, doing extra shootdowns, gaining extra XP, investing in extra brainers, and the advantage snowballs.

[eharper256]

I'm not going to input much into this, but it sounds like that's severely optimised play, which is not really the focus of this guide, but rather to give tips to newbies who may be coming in, and they're usually used to Nu-X-COM, or have only played the original.

I have experience with both Nu-X-COM and the older games from when I was a kid, but many don't even have that, and this guide is mostly formed of all the surprising things I've learnt that aren't too obvious. When I recommended XPZ to a couple of people on my discord, they found all these tips tremendously handy, and EVEN THEN they nearly always Game-Over'ed due to negative Infamy, losing their early gals, or Bankruptcy within early months, when playing difficulty 2.

Cali is a great start, and it's A-Tier for that reason, however, Catgirls are very fragile for newbies to operate, and the debt is difficult to handle when they can't make a profit on more debt-free starts.

I will stick to No-Codex being quite a challenge run in a similar fashion. Frankly, I used Big Birds for the first six months for capacity; speed is mostly irrelevant early as a site won't expire as long as it's targeted. Moreover, it works exactly like a classic skyranger, so it's a bit of a comfort pill for newbies. And then you can indeed run cars or Buckaroos.

[Amoebka]

Speaking of catgirls. Something the guide should probably mention, is to never, NEVER go catgirl recruitment without a codex. It is impossible to get assault clone catgirls or the best catgirl armor (termicator) without one. Don't ask me how I know