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

[Dioxine]

That was fun to read

Answering your questions!

- Yes, this is a game where you need to read. I know, strange thing in these new times, so it's even more uplifting you took that to your heart!
- Melee weapons with STRENGTH: YES add FULL Strength score to their damage. I think your spreadsheet might need some tweaking
- UFOs: Size doesn't matter all THAT much. Those smalls and mediums you have encountered are lean, mean beasts - there are larges which are much less dangerous.
- Cyberdisc: feed them full of lasgun blasts, they will come down. Or send in a Hammerer, although Str 50+ is a must! Or buy RPG's and other heavy hitters next time - if you have the cash
- To kill heavily armored enemies, you need dedicated can openers. Normal firearms are only intended to use against enemies up to Personal Armor tier. Lasguns equalize this a bit since almost all heavy armors take extra damage from lasers.
- Handguns are indeed often more powerful, while rifles specialize in long-range fire (as it's nigh-impossible to hit anything at long range with a pistol).
- About the loot: armored corpses are indeed immune to smaller grenades, but the loot has varied armor values. Some guns are really tough (you need a direct hit with a Dynamite pack to break a Gauss gun, for example), others will be blown to pieces. Data Disks and other documents are VERY fragile though
- A Frag Grenade has about a 80% chance of bringing down a Personal Armor, but it really can't do much against Powered Armor.
- There is not a single TRUE WAY of playing. In my recent campaign, I'm doing well with Colt45/EP ammo + Blackmarch SMG + Sniper Rifle + Grenade Launcher, with substantial use of Frag Grenades and I was doing well (naturally, melee is a must, even if it's just a single Hammerer - someone needs to take on these Power Armors).
- Yes, they're all Dead. I think that sums up their tactical significance
- Final Advice: Fire ignores all normal armor. Of course, some armors are fire-proof...

PS. I will try to compile some quick fixes today & tomorrow so you have the best and latest for your LP (since they'll only be fixes, they won't break ongoing game - also Piratez Mod is very resilient to new versions). And don't forget to use today's Nightly! Without it, melee doesn't work very well

[Ridаn]

- Final Advice: Fire ignores all normal armor. Of course, some armors are fire-proof...

Oh yeah, at first I was like - what those Molotovs are even good for? Then took a drone out with a single throw. Feels nice.
Taking out Tanks and Cyberdiscs with Heavy Flamers is fun too.
And that new GL ammunition is just awesome during nighttime or when you have to burn jungle down.
Willie Pete is weird though, I used it as an alarm system a couple of times and thats pretty much it.

edit: I just MCd a Dark One with UAC Plasmagun - gun has no ammo (its turn 2, he didnt have a chance to shoot) and all he has in inventory is Broken BFG Battery.
I know that getting BFG is somewhat tricky (never got one), so I did I broke something by MCing him, or was he broken from the start?
Mission is Atrium of Anguish.

edit2: found another guy, he actually wields a BFG, but has no ammo. All he has in his inventory is UAC Weapon Documentation.
Same mission.

[clownagent]

I captured a bunch of "living" drones but I cannot research them and selling them gives "0" credits.
Is this intended?

[Ridаn]

I captured a bunch of "living" drones but I cannot research them and selling them gives "0" credits.
Is this intended?

As far as I know - no. They should die and drop some antigrav thingie.

Resarching live Imps, Cacodemons, and Pinky Demons (and probably Hell Barons) leads to a placeholder Bootypedia pages (Imp - Arcane, Pinky Demon - Arcane etc), while researching corpses opens up "proper" pages, which were added later. Old placeholder ones should probably be removed?

[Dioxine]

edit: I just MCd a Dark One with UAC Plasmagun - gun has no ammo (its turn 2, he didnt have a chance to shoot) and all he has in inventory is Broken BFG Battery.
I know that getting BFG is somewhat tricky (never got one), so I did I broke something by MCing him, or was he broken from the start?
Mission is Atrium of Anguish.

Nothing is amiss, you just haven't found all the pieces of this puzzle yet.

I captured a bunch of "living" drones but I cannot research them and selling them gives "0" credits.
Is this intended?

Ugh you weren't supposed to be able to capture them alive, but the "mechanical" flag disallowing that is hardcoded I will make a workaround.

@Doom creatures:
The "Placeholders" are waiting for proper text. This will be made at some point when I will return to the dark ones/dark magic arc (Liber Occultis, and Deep Ones will be a part of that). Probably not before OXCom Extended - pretty much everything in the Dark Ones arc is a placeholder. You're getting fat points for those research-alives though, and access to demonic weapons (in their placeholder form, naturally, as full form is impossible without using OXCom Extended).

[Dioxine]

EDIT: the screenhot about what i wroted above, i managed to get it a 1/2 fraction of second before game crashed 
It appears to happen with blunt and cutting weapons, o far i tryed only axe and dagger.

Found & fixed the issue. This was the same issue that was causing missing ranks and (hopefully!) map crashes (although I won't bet on it).

[VodkaBear]

Sorry for stupid question but I can't find out, what problem in. I've downloaded openXcom, installed original eng version(yes correctly maps overwriting maps, etc) over in data folder of openXcom, renamed soldiername to soldiername,1 installed unpacked piratez with replacing. Then when I trying activate piratezPlanet xcom restarts and throws error like "blah-blah error reading blah-blah at line 0", sorry I cannot give it full and correctly right now. Any guess what I've messed up?

[Ridаn]

Sorry for stupid question but I can't find out, what problem in. I've downloaded openXcom, installed original eng version(yes correctly maps overwriting maps, etc) over in data folder of openXcom, renamed soldiername to soldiername,1 installed unpacked piratez with replacing. Then when I trying activate piratezPlanet xcom restarts and throws error like "blah-blah error reading blah-blah at line 0", sorry I cannot give it full and correctly right now. Any guess what I've messed up?

I think you need a nightly.
https://openxcom.org/git-builds/
Grab a latest one and unpack into your openxcom directory.

[VodkaBear]

Okay, thanks, probably that is, I start to remember I already faced this problem before in very earlier versions of piratez and similar answer was given, stupid me.

[Dioxine]

Version 0.9.a is up, and together with yesterday's Nightly, it should fix most trouble which was plaguing this mod lately. Contains little new stuff, mostly fixes, updates, enhancements.

[ivandogovich]

Ok.. After a complete squad wipe in the Commercial District... O.o   so many tiny rooms, 3 story buildings all over the map... enemies camping on the top floors and losing one gal for every CyberDisk I tackle....

I restarted the mission from the intercept.  I tried to work it to land in daylight, but still got a pretty dark Railyard map.  This time, no crashes.  Smooth as silk.   This yard was VERY Open with one multi story storage building, one passenger lounge, a couple mechanic garages and one LONG building running the entire West side of the map.   Lots of open space and kill zones.  Drones and Cyberdisk are hardest to deal with as they are flying.  Finally downed two disks and a handful of drones and personal armored humans.  Only about 1/3 of the crew left with the Long building left to clear.  There is at least one Cyberdisk trapped in there and a couple humans.  The disks can't get out because the double doors are blocked.  And my scavenged RPG didn't take it down with two shots.  Only one soldier left, I'll have to abort or wipe.

I've downloaded, set up the new 9a.
My routine is:

• Rename old Piratez folder, create new one
• Copy in New Nightly (mar 31)
  
• Copy in original assets from Steam version
  
• Copy in Piratez 9a
  
• Copy in MAPS, ROUTES, TERRAIN from terrain pack 3.4.1.

Though I'd really like to successfully finish a pogrom before I start the LP, I think I'll start it tonight.  I've basically played and lost 3 Pogroms and two small ufo sites now, so I have a tiny idea about how the game works over all.

Anyway, Thanks for the awesome mod, Dioxine!  Your LP vids were very instructive too, even though the version is a little out of date.   ~Cheers!

[Ridаn]

You do not really have to 100% complete starting Pogroms, grab whatever you can (lasguns, sniper rifles, heavy cannons) and run
If you can stun some high ranking dude and make a run for it with no significant losses - its a win.

edit: woah, that new sniper rifle got some weird requirements. Looks intersting, though.
Super Shotgun is pretty cool too, I wasnt fan of shotgun weapons before, but this one actually kills stuff so can be used to set up ambushes (with doggies as a bait).

Wish there was a Death Realms Arena weapon set
Stuff like Unreal Flak Cannon, Quake 3 Gauntlet, Doom Chainsaw and so on.
There is already a BFG for a start. And Unreal Redeemer is pretty much a Blaster Launcher mechanically.

[niculinux]

Wish there was a Death Realms Arena weapon set
Stuff like Unreal Flak Cannon, Quake 3 Gauntlet, Doom Chainsaw and so on.
There is already a BFG for a start. And Unreal Redeemer is pretty much a Blaster Launcher mechanically.

I don't know that death arena stuff, but there is already a chainsaw, the doom 2 chainsaw, if if look closely to the sprite Absolutely agree on flack cannon and some more mad max-fallout style weapon . And, at least, one from the following:

ruger mini 14 ver auto with folding stock (a team weapon!!!)



Classical ruger mini 14:



As for rest, hope 1.0 will be the final version, Dioxine may want to work to some other total conversions? That would be superultracolll!!

[Dioxine]

I am very excited for this LP, naturally, ego tripping & stuff I wish you good luck Ivan (you're going to need it!), and I'm awaiting first episode eagerly

Your order of installation seems flawless so I can only hope that the luck holds and there won't be any crashes I haven't encountered any since removing that bug, but I've only played 10 missions or so, might be I was lucky.

Never heard about the Death Realms Arena, but naturally, Unreal and Quake are almost as close to my heart as Doom is Their problem - unlike Doom, Duke or Shadow Warrior, their assets were in 3d Although my skill at pixel art has evolved to a point where I can probably just draw any weapon from scratch, with an image as reference.

About less exotic weapons - I don't know if there is a place for a Ruger-esque weapon between RCF Carbine and Hunting Rifle. Naturally this has never stopped me, nobody said you have to use all the weapons available - some are mostly as assets and art exercises. Otoh I don't want overloading the game with XX-th century weapons (The very fact they exist at all is because the progress of human civilization basically ended in XXth century in Piratez universe).

It is unlikely I will make more TCs, even though I have ideas for them - simple physical reasons, as I am working on this one for 1.5 years already, and it'll probably take me a year or more yet to call it finished. But there are other modders who undertake similar "a very different game" projects, like Hobbes, and look how the existence of Piratez (and Xeno Operations Mod) took months away from his production cycle just because he could just take a huge portion of its assets instead of creating them from scratch. I'd also keep and eye on the War of Shadows, this TC looks very promising so far.

[Hobbes]

It is unlikely I will make more TCs, even though I have ideas for them - simple physical reasons, as I am working on this one for 1.5 years already, and it'll probably take me a year or more yet to call it finished. But there are other modders who undertake similar "a very different game" projects, like Hobbes, and look how the existence of Piratez (and Xeno Operations Mod) took months away from his production cycle just because he could just take a huge portion of its assets instead of creating them from scratch. I'd also keep and eye on the War of Shadows, this TC looks very promising so far.

I'd disagree simply on the point of me creating a 'very different game' since that isn't my intention, although it surely can seen through that viewpoint by others. But I completely agree that Piratez and other projects really enable other modders because of the ready to use assets they provide.

And one last thing: every artist wants to keep adding to his work since it is never perfect. But with this kind of projects you really need to define a level of perfection where you will say: it is finished, the rest are details.