[TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.9.j - 9 May - Holiday Edition

[Imeryak]

As a bonus the hammer can make holes through walls rather easy.[/spoiler]

Not just that, hammer can hit target on level above and beyond. You can even hit armored bastards through lift shaft. Weapon of choice for power-armored troops.

[Dioxine]

Specially for the most hardcore players who catch doom demons, the relevant research branch is well underway. You wanted it, you get it. With this finished and some more fixes the next version will be up.

[Imeryak]

And don't complain if Smugglers don't appear very often... their missions are about as likely to come up as Cargo Freight or Passenger Ferrying.

Sorry but i will complain about that. Simple because you need new smugglers weapons to progress in technology research. And if all major races has a plenty of missions that give you a good chances to get what you need from them, the smugglers has only two, with one of them very rare.  If gods of random number generator hates you, you can easly do not meet not a single smuggler within a few years.

[niculinux]

Nice 0.82 update. I see in bootypedia blunderbuss, hand cannon and boarding gun, but these are ultimately supposed be researchable weapons, not buyable ones, right?

[Dioxine]

1. Well I can't really make them *more* likely to come up than Freight, and this will only get worse with more factions/missions. This is an unavoidable with abundance: it takes a lot of playing to see everything. But the expanding armory is a problem indeed. You can eventually get these weapons from Data Disks, but this isn't enough, as the Data Disk has a huge array of stuff that can come up randomly. I'll try to spread these new weapons around more ships, also, I'll add a new item that yields you random weapon data when researched. EDIT: some weapons research will also be available through interrogating Raider Bosses.

2. Every weapon that is on the base at the game start is in the Pedia as well, even if it's unbuyable.

[Dioxine]

0.83 is up, with a lot of updates, most important being:

- Freighters carry loot
- Some Doom research tree added
- VooDoo Rod has a max range of 16, which should finally balance psionics

Enjoy.

[Imeryak]

Bugreport!

And a crew was from pogrom mission - bumossaurs, reapers, bodyguards etc.

[Dioxine]

The wrong crew was because of game-in-progress (the old race name stayed by the Terror crew, while freighters use a new race name). Freights spawned following months should host the correct crew. The wrong cap "R" was in fact an indicator, but I'll remove that, it looks simply like an error to the player.

[Edrick]

I must say I like the game more and more after each update. However...
- Bug: using version 0.83 with the latest nightly build, I get palette problems in any battle: everything is purple and black-coloured. Strangest of all, it seems this only happens in the area near my ship.
- Moar bugs: the game crashes when I try to do anything with Large Living Quarters or Large Vaults, that is, trying to look at their Bootypaedia entries or building them. Only thing I can do fine is researching LLQ, but there is a crash as well when clicking View Report.
- Sprites: while I adore the sprite changes on laser guns, I think the Heavy Plasma Pistol sprite looks like a Plasma Holdout sprite, and not like the “most powerful handgun in the universe”.
- Sprites: the Electro-Sword sprite could be improved by working on the Tesla Cleaver sprite from Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. While that game is a disgrace to the Fallout name, at least it might have a reason for existing.
- Sprites: Again, the Vibro-blade looks... odd. Possibly working on the Ripper sprite from Fallout (either the FO1/2 or the FO3/NV should do the trick).
- Sprites: Stun Grenade. A base to work towards could be the Plasma Grenade from Fallout 2. It looks something like a flashbang, doesn’t it?
- New item: Recreational Drugs (AKA heroin shot). Smugglers carry’em, useless for your crew (they are recreational drugs, not combat) and sellable for a pretty penny. Sprite could be the Empty Hypodermic from Fallout 2.
- Weapon balance: why adding Aimed Shots which are lousy anyways to inaccurate weapons, like the Holdout or the Spraygun? Weren’t it simpler before when you only got Snap Shots?
- Bootypaedia: when will we get a text for the Star God Coordinator entry? Aren’t our minds ready for the revelation yet?
- In-game world questions: what the hell is an Ethereal doing on a Smuggler ship! Ethereals give me nightmares and you put them side-by-side with Han Solo? Is it a rouge Star God, or Smugglers are really controlled by Star Gods or... ? Also, how do Psionics work in-world? As, you learn about VooDoo from an Esper and magically you get a bunch of VooDoo doctors, Gandalf-esque, knocking to your door looking for employment, magically equipped with blueprints to build labs for them? It sounds a bit too random to me.

[niculinux]

0.83 is up, with a lot of updates, most important being:

- Freighters carry loot
- Some Doom research tree added
- VooDoo Rod has a max range of 16, which should finally balance psionics

Enjoy.

Wow the screenshot attached the the 0.83 annonucement reminds me of jagged alliance!!!

A random idea: how about (even in the future) to add a new faction: the survivalist , and ulta racinst one against mutants, that appears only on mutant progroms? they could use only firearms weapons, also should have no more than 4 units type. May sound kinda easter egg...

[Dioxine]

First of all, thanks for support!

- Bug: using version 0.83 with the latest nightly build, I get palette problems in any battle: everything is purple and black-coloured. Strangest of all, it seems this only happens in the area near my ship.

Dammit. This is beyond my power; I'm using a build about a week old, and no issues like this. I couldn't fuck it up even if I tried, it has nothing to do with the ruleset, and the graphic files are the same as always. Try an older build or wait until the devs fix it.

- Moar bugs: the game crashes when I try to do anything with Large Living Quarters or Large Vaults, that is, trying to look at their Bootypaedia entries or building them. Only thing I can do fine is researching LLQ, but there is a crash as well when clicking View Report.

This shouldn't happen - there were issues like this but not lately, and it certainly works on 0.83 for me, I'm during extensive testing. Try deleting Resources/Piratez and installing 0.83 again, or disabling other mods which modify the base facilities (if any are in use).

- Sprites: while I adore the sprite changes on laser guns, I think the Heavy Plasma Pistol sprite looks like a Plasma Holdout sprite, and not like the “most powerful handgun in the universe”.
- Sprites: the Electro-Sword sprite could be improved by working on the Tesla Cleaver sprite from Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel. While that game is a disgrace to the Fallout name, at least it might have a reason for existing.
- Sprites: Again, the Vibro-blade looks... odd. Possibly working on the Ripper sprite from Fallout (either the FO1/2 or the FO3/NV should do the trick).
- Sprites: Stun Grenade. A base to work towards could be the Plasma Grenade from Fallout 2. It looks something like a flashbang, doesn’t it?

I'll give these sprites a rework, and thanks for the suggestions. While I like the vibroblade as it is (not ruling out adding the ripper somewhere though), the rest, well. HPP (credit to Rockfish) requires some serious buffing but at least it's no longer a laspistol with some blue flashy bitz. Sword is indeed too generic and the Tesla Cleaver seems close to what one should expect here... The stun grenade, well, it might be ugly but still my child, my first sprite done from 0 pixel-by-pixel I'll work on it a bit more now, as my skill is better now.

- New item: Recreational Drugs (AKA heroin shot). Smugglers carry’em, useless for your crew (they are recreational drugs, not combat) and sellable for a pretty penny. Sprite could be the Empty Hypodermic from Fallout 2.

Yeah why not, I'm not sure yet that Smugglers should be drug junkies... but they could smuggle drugs none the less.

- Weapon balance: why adding Aimed Shots which are lousy anyways to inaccurate weapons, like the Holdout or the Spraygun? Weren’t it simpler before when you only got Snap Shots?

That was my initial logic, but these weapons turned out to be so crappy that adding the option to actually hit something beyond 15-tile range seemed fair. So far I'm rather pleased how it worked out (these aimed shots are an emergency, but an Aimed shot, however crappy, has the beyond-sight range) but we'll see how it turns out after more testing, you couldn't possibly have checked how they behave in battle and how they influence early gameplay in such short span of time

- Bootypaedia: when will we get a text for the Star God Coordinator entry? Aren’t our minds ready for the revelation yet?
- In-game world questions: what the hell is an Ethereal doing on a Smuggler ship! Ethereals give me nightmares and you put them side-by-side with Han Solo? Is it a rouge Star God, or Smugglers are really controlled by Star Gods or... ? Also, how do Psionics work in-world? As, you learn about VooDoo from an Esper and magically you get a bunch of VooDoo doctors, Gandalf-esque, knocking to your door looking for employment, magically equipped with blueprints to build labs for them? It sounds a bit too random to me.

Yeah he's a rogue Star God (notice how he's called... ugh right it's impossible unless you stun/panic/MC him) and on 0.83+ (in case of game in progress, the missions are updated within a few months) should appear very, very rarely, certainly no longer on butter-and-bread generic missions... Also I should perhaps change the color of his robes to reduce the shock effect.
Also, no there is no mystery, just someone needs to write those texts and I was so far too lazy to do it. Especially with the texts that require a lot of thinking. Good point with the voodoo thing though, as the mod is making more and more sense when taken together, quick and dirty solutions begin to show through. The descriptions and perhaps even the research tree will be adjusted to have more rhyme and reason.
In general, while this may happen sooner, I can only promise all the descriptions finished on 1.0; game mechanics always get the priority.

Once again, sorry for incosistences and sudden balance changes, but while fully playable and considerably bug-free, this is still an experiment/wip none-the-less... and the validity of new solutions can often be judged only through testing.

[Voiddweller]

Question: Is it possible to make psi strength stat add to weapon damage? I thought about psi projector kind of weapons, just like bows draws it's power from strength stat. Also why fuso knives do not have same mechanics? Well i changed it myself, but it seems very convenient for a throwing knives damage potential to depend on a strength stat.

[Dioxine]

1. I wished it was possible, but it is not.

2. Fuso Knives do not use Str because of balance issues. They'd be too weak in the hands of Str 10 soldiers and waaaay to powerful in the hands of Str 100 end-game monsters. I wanted them a weapon that doesn't rely on sheer power but speed. Reality-wise, that pretty high Power 40 represents the knife hitting a weak spot. It doesn't work on brute force principle.

btw 0.83.1 update posted that does away with a couple of bugs

[Voiddweller]

2. Fuso Knives do not use Str because of balance issues. They'd be too weak in the hands of Str 10 soldiers and waaaay to powerful in the hands of Str 100 end-game monsters. I wanted them a weapon that doesn't rely on sheer power but speed. Reality-wise, that pretty high Power 40 represents the knife hitting a weak spot. It doesn't work on brute force principle.

Well, endgame monsters have a lot of firepower anyway... And fixed TU cost weapons, like melee of that uber bows have unfair advantage over regular ones, tbh i just completely switched to bows, cos they are accurate in hands of my girls, can shoot 3-4 times in a turn if they wear leathers or grav harness, do not need any ammo, have ballistic trajectory and very powerful. Cheap, lightweight and no research needed as well. I just thought fuso knives can be a good mid-range direct-fire weapon using same mechanics. Damn, it feels like commanding a ninja girl squad already, you can actually add more ancient weapons, like slings and spears XD
Also, i suggest to make more self-sustained guns, like euro-syndicate weapons use no ammo for example, they are expensive enough for that. I have looted ships for months, and still haven't seen any ranged weapons that works without ammo, except crossbows and bows, and it is weird actually how that stuff can work without arrows and bolts. Anyway, i guess when i will actually get some lazors with infinite ammo, those lazors will be useless anyway due to the low dmg...
And you can make a plasma mortar as well, with unlimited ammo, but slow to fire, like using 90% TU. Can be very heavy too. I think i can draw some art for that.

[Dioxine]

Valid point about the bows. Expect them to lose their special advantage soon But not before a researcheable, Str-dependant equivalent will be added (same with throwing knives). I've already explained why bows and crossbows have unlimited ammo:
1. loading them with quivers would look super silly and unrealistic
2. loading them with separate arrows would allow to carry only a few arrows, and would also look a bit silly
It is assumed they *do* have ammo but the ammo is rolled up with the weapon and basically unlimited (it's not difficult to carry 30 or so arrows, and you won't usually use more) and too cheap to count $$$ or anally use workshop time (the runts produce it basically for free). But perhaps I should up the weight of these weapons to reflect that, and maybe also add a quiver to the weapon inventory picture?

Slings and spears will appear along with the Deep Ones.

Eurosyndicate Lasrifle is an extremely potent weapon, somewhat competitive even with the end-game guns (and the bows). In time, its high cost is pocket money and unlike most good weapons, it is readily available at the store. Besides it is simply too powerful for an Earth tech to have unlimited ammo. In general, I don't want too many unlimited-ammo weapons unless in the late-mid to end-game, when the challenge of getting ammo could turn into tedium. As for the unlimited-ammo lasers, well, they get better damage than the basic ones, but don't have a Lascannon and the heavy laser equivalent, while more dextrous, weighs a ton. The lasers will be up for rebalancing anyway (unarmored and lightly armored targest will get some resistance, while heavily armored stuff will be generally laser-susceptible).

Mortar with unlimited ammo sounds very OP, unless it's end-game, heavy and not nearly as powerful as Fusion Explosives. Although I never say no to new graphics (at the very least, I want to make a better, faster - yes 85% is fast for a mortar as you can reload - more accurate mortar but firing same ammo as the normal one)