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

[Ridаn]

I just want more consistency among "sniper-rifle-tier" weapons and I dont really see a reason why those 3 guns cant be used to reaction fire, while laser sniper/gauss sniper/superheavy 37mm rifle can be (not even mentioning stuff like rocket launchers ). When you put an Assassin suit on a gal armed with one of those 3 rifles Reaction boost would be used only offensively, and she, being a sniper, will not be on offence 99% of time - half of suit functionality lost. They are kinda in a "cannon-tier but light" for me, so I just skip them.
Python I used only for its Acid high damage ammo, and Custom Snipin Gun just to check up on that double tap (its pity for such nice gun to not be used really, although it might be just my experience) - I`m just going back for old trusty Commando Rifle for my sniping needs all the time.
If TU cost of Snap shot would be equal to TU cost of Aimed shot, yet snap shot would have a 2/3 accuracy of aimed shot (for example), then Snap shot would be used only for reaction fire.
Assault rifle styled weapon still beats it in "defensive mode" (less TU cost for snap shot, so shoots first and has more reaction shots per round) and "offensive mode" (more options, more shots/damage rolls).

I just feel that this would be more consistent and fun overall, and those weapons would see more usage. From simulationist and narrativist point of view I think it makes sense for muscle girls with superhuman reactions to snipe people who are in front of them, after they spent a turn doing nothing but staring down the scope. From a gamist pov a 70% TU (for example) snap shot wont break much, because you really need a lot of Reactions to fire 70%TU (for example) reaction shot, and enemy really have to waste most TU on doing something nasty or be really unlucky.

[Dioxine]

Yeah good point about consistency, although the Snap Shot on Gauss etc. comes from its advanced sights that track the target for you; normal Sniper Rifle lacks such sights. Still... Maybe with a heavy accurracy loss... I'll think about it.

[Alex_D]

Thanks for the pointers, these problems have been fixed. Yeah might be a disappointment, but I'm on the fence here, I could make the final mission harder/longer, but on the other hand, the player shouldn't be tormented in that last mission, he deserves better (and he can just shut the game off after landing on Mars anyway, if he knows that the final mission is tedious & long). Ideally I'd want the player to have his hardest battle 'bossfight' earlier, possibly required to get the last crucial tech, but not sure yet how one could do it.

Spoiler:

The MC helped a lot. The gals were in the Voodoo school for years, had armor that allowed them over 100 TUs, so four MC per turn per gal, multiply them by 10, that's 40 attempts per turn. The tanks were the scouters, and moving slowly and using the MC-ed enemy unit as spotter and to draw enemy fire, it kind of worked.

To get the elusive SGC, I had to wait for months, with all the cash and prime materials fully stocked, it was a game of aerial battle management, to get them down on water, so not to have to recover their vessels. The exceptions were the fighters, which since their crew is four, were used by the other bases' defense teams on board of PROSPECTORS, for training.

At the end game, almost each ground mission (except for the hunt of the SGC)  became just a slave hunt. Between MC, and the electro-whip, I managed to capture almost entire crews of downed vessels, with a handful casualties, mostly by enemy reaction fire. Prisoners were sent to each base for "conditioning" based on each base storage demands, trying to keep them with space to spare.

Oh yeah and just asking - how did you get so much money? What your bases looked like at the end? How much time it took?

Spoiler:

I think the money started to pour in based on several factors:
- After the many first months of struggle, the monthly score was consistently between 8000 to 13000. This, in turn scared the provinces so much that their monthly payments were far in excess of my monthly costs. Maybe twice or more than that. Air battles were dominated by SABRE lancer strikes (for range advantage), later switching to plasma beam, for large ammo count, albeit less range.
- The main base, expanded to have room for 15 brainers, 20 gals, and 110 runts, and their appropriate support structures, plus three hangars. Then three more bases with 10 gals and 120 runts. They become my secondary bases and storage bases. Each of these three had a PROSPECTOR to act as a transport and to provide income to offset the base maintenance. When not making ammo or something else they were making rum or chips.
- Four factory bases were built each in sequence as soon as the money was available. From the top of my head, each factory base costs about $17M to build. Each has room for 450 runts, 10 defending gals, one hangar, one storage, one hyperwave decoder, one VooDoo school, three large barracks, four small barracks, and the (3x3) factory. The hangar was at the top left corner, the access lift was on the left side, south of the hangar, south of it was the storage, west of the storage was the HWD, then the four barracks. The factory was on the top right corner  and the three large barracks were on the south. The Voodoo school was in diagonal from the hangar (so no access point). The layout was tested several times by faction assaults. Note that on each base (other than the main) was also three battletanks and three dogs. The CONQUEROR was built on one of the factory bases, after a small remodelation once the storage requirements for the parts become clear (like 160 units).
- Thus again from the top of my head, counterfeit 200$ chips created an income (before operation expenses) of 43.75$/hour/runt. So if my math is correct, (110+120x3+450x4 =) 2270 runts were making (2270x43.75x24x30 =) over 71 milliions a month. Add to this the extortion money minus the operational expenses (30M-18M IIRC), and by the end game, without selling the loot, the income is about 83M/month. This is on the highest difficulty level.

Edit: I'd try to upload my last save game (before going to Cydonia) as soon as I get to my game computer. See attached the last savegame before I sent the ship to Mars.

[Dioxine]

Thanks for the save! It's awesome help with testing. Now, try to win without cheating (your soldiers all have VooDoo Power of 100, while the cap in this mod is at 60 ) Just kidding, it wouldn't change that much except for making Star Gods encounters much more challenging (although you could still get your Coordinator with a heavy use of Mind Probes or carpet stunbombing). Like I said MC is not balanced yet (and it's not your fault I haven't thought that somebody will be using Psi Strength Improve option, much less it won't be working as intended with my mod - this is a valuable information I couldn't get by playtesting by myself; I have PsiStrength in maxStats set to 0, like in Vanilla, which probably tells the engine to default Psi Strength Improve to vanilla value of 100 - or maybe it always improves to 100, I have no idea).

[Talhydras]

I recently caught the first few episodes of IvanDogovich's PirateZ campaign, was deeply intrigued, then decided to play the game myself. I have now finished my campaign over the course of about a week and a half of realtime.  My feedback's run over the 20000 character limit, so I'm afraid I have to break it up into multiple egregiously long posts.

-Some stats-
Gametime: Completed in mid 2603
Difficulty: 3
Tactical Skill level: Zapp Brannigan
Strategic Skill level: Geoffrey Lebowski
Savescum level: Scumlord Alpha Plus
Starting Location: The eastern shores of the Caspian Sea, hideout "Khutulun's Rest"
Psi Strength Improve On

Overall it's difficult to overstate what an enthralling experience it was. "Mutant anime space pirate babes fighting fascists for profit and booze" is a pretty much bulletproof premise, you could take that to the bank. This is the most cavernous tech tree I think I've ever encountered. How many researches are there? Based on the experience it really felt like it gave Warzone 2100's ~500 researchable techs a run for its money, and I am both impressed and terrified that there's much more planned. Thank you profoundly for making my return to classic Xcom a deeply memorable and utterly fantastic experience.

HIGH POINT: Early Trader pogroms. This was easily the game-defining experience that illustrated both how deep and rewarding PirateZ is, and how different it is from XCom. What's around the corner? Is it a GO with a bottle of booze, some drugs, and a li'l snubby? Or is it fucking Evil Robocop in powered armor with a heavy laser and a boner for murder? I had to maintain a diverse roster, with multiple different types of armor, and use every single underhanded and dirty trick in the book ("Hmm. Page one: Run at guy. Page two: Stab guy repeatedly. Short book.") The ultimate moment was, having exhausted all my heavy munitions to no effect, twelve pirates huddled in a garage while Robocop, the only survivor of his pogrom force, lazily bullseyed snakeladies in the parking lot adjacent. The plan? One pirate hammers a hole in the wall, runs up to Robocop, drops the hammer, dives away. Then every other pirate runs out in a single-file line, picks up the hammer, hits Robocop once, drops it, and makes room for the next to repeat. He goes down on the last soldier. Great enemy diversity, with all enemies being a credible threat to my pirates but demanding dramatically different responses and combined arms.

Addendum: The image of a drunk, high asshole gleefully taking inaccurate potshots at cowering, defenseless mutant civilians is some powerful stuff. I hated these guys, and it wasn't because they were frustrating to fight. I made a point to show up to each pogrom - it didn't matter that the profit margins were low. As the Dude says: "This will not stand, ya know, this aggression will not stand, man."

OTHER WONDERFUL MOMENTS: My pet Reaper, "Mr. Reaps". And storming a Star God Base with three X-sectopods whilst laughing maniacally for about a quarter of an hour.

LOW POINT: Tech bottlenecks. I spent approximately forever (actually about 12 months) awaiting an Academy Engineer. I shot them all during the early Academy Pogroms, and after that the Academy dropped off the face of the earth I had radar coverage of. I did eventually rectify the issue, but the Star God Coordinator was pretty much the first faction leader I was able to capture. Merc pogroms in early 2601 were also pretty rough too, but I had nobody to blame but myself for sticking those out.

OTHER UNWONDERFUL MOMENTS: Realizing only after Disc-o-Deathing the Star God Governator a question that you can sprint for 3 TU 3 energy. Shit. Again, my fault for not looking up exactly WHAT all the special movement options were. But it was definitely making me flashback to all those times I needed a few more Techblade hits to down a mercenary jerk... The first few months, also, felt like shipping was pretty spare on the ground and most of my missions were pogroms


BUGS / CAMPAIGN MYSTERIES :
This section is going to be brief and mostly focus on the things that confused me or seemed very buggy. On reread, maybe describing this section as 'brief' was optimistic...

* Nobody ever blaster bombed me. There were several opportunities to do so, namely on the cruisers I downed and of course in my hideout defenses, but they never seemed to do so. This is a problem because once I developed X-Sectopods, I could use one to mop up an entire hideout assault force.
* Blaster Bomb addendum: What truly weirded me out about the experience with the enemies being blaster launcher shy was that they had no problems doing Suicide Rockets from RPGs on pogroms, or suicide grenading me from time to time. They really seemed to struggle with grenades too, actually - Guild Securities used them VERY effectively in my early months, and then almost everyone entirely forgot to use them ever again for two straight years.
* Similarly, tanks were often gunshy. The first tank I encountered was on a Mercenary Pogrom right next to the Bonaventura and thus in my smoke grenade cloud. I ran out and wailed on it with melee for three straight turns, and all it did was drive around. This was especially odd, as later I encountered one during a Humanist Pogrom that had zero compunctions about shooting me right in my smug face.
* Tank addendum: The humanist tank that was unimpressed additionally did not appear to be traversing its turret. The howitzer shells definitely were coming out of the back of the turret. I really wish I'd kept a savegame of this, because I went from "haha, it's just a silly little tank" to "WAT" at warp speed.
* Rounding out the theme of enemies not doing things, Mercenary Captains seemed extremely shy to deploy their melee attack (which is supposed to be badass and scary according to the ingame bootypedia).
* I encountered significantly more Dark Ones than I did Deep Ones and Smugglers - all of my imperial probe missions were Dark Ones themed, and in early 2603 they started flying crackdown missions and launched several hideout assaults. To be clear: I do not view the low density of Deep Ones and Smugglers as a problem, it just struck me as odd that the Dark Ones were in such high representation compared to those other two factions. In fact, I never had any missions with deep ones and smugglers!
* Academy Explorers seemed to be available to research repeatedly, despite me filling out my Countries list. Is something happening here that I don't understand?
* Many of my >100% shots seemed to miss their targets. This led me to eventually phase out ranged combat almost entirely out of frustration. I noticed this effect increased dramatically with range and as I got further above 100% hit chance. In some cases, I think it was intentional: Star God Coordinators seem to have a very high chance for weapons fire to simply slide off of them, and I'm okay with that, but I was frustrated with things like a pest control manager that just can't be hit no matter how many times I reload with save scum on.
* While I got their research info from a Gun Almanac, I never once encountered an Autorifle. Millions of Machineguns, X-Com Rifles, Battle Rifles, Homefront Rifles, LACCs, CAWS, etc, though.
* I was never able to stun an Armored Beastmaster, they always popped their armor even when I was using exclusively stun damage. I was worried I'd need to somehow capture Armored Beastmasters to preserve their unique armor.
* The blackmarch SMG bootypedia entry describes it as a scarce weapon, yet it is purchasable at will from the black market.
* I'd really appreciate it if the bootypedia entries for each weapon named what each type of ammunition was. Over time it became unclear to me which was which.
* Panzerfausts seemed uneconomical to me in the earlygame.
* My first base raid was an army of ratmen. I think I spotted one other bandit mission. This was actually a problem as I accidentally killed all the academy engineers I met in the earlygame and didn't meet any more until early 2602. Had that been the academy I think I would have finished the game several months earlier.
* Now that sectopod corpses are required to build sectopods, I'd like to point out that it is unclear from the bootypedia entry alone whether robot disassembly gives you a corpse or not.
* I never encountered, up till shipping-600, a Star God Messenger ship. The vast majority of shipping was heavy gunships and cruisers.
* From a lore point of view it's a bit odd that special deep one and dark one missions are spawned by imperial probes, and that the empire itself never seems to launch these probes.
* I'd love to know ammo counts per craft weapon - the single shot Avalanches and three shot Lancers were surprising to me.
* I'd also love to know the TU cost and accuracy of HWP weaponry. The X-Sectopod's amazingly generous 12-tu, long-ranged autoshots only laser took me completely by surprise. Does the HMG cyberdisc have a 90% tu cost on its shot like the soldier version? I dunno without building one!
* How come spears aren't Piercing?
* A gray civilian goomba-stomped me, instantly KOing one of my hands. What? How? Hunh? What?
* I was getting my ass kicked by Sway Local Gov't missions until I went to the UFOpaedia website and learned that what I REALLY needed to be doing was shooting down each of the starting craft, and that doing ground assaults (While profitable in the extreme) on the cruisers afterwards was irrelevant.
* Do Humanists make their Hanabus, or do they contract the Guild to build them? Are the Hanabus using cloaking devices to fly under the radar as well, or are their craft sanctioned in some way? I'm surprised the Humanists never launch Pacification missions.
* The Dragon craft describes itself as being as big as possible to fit in the hangar. But the Conqueror is considerably larger, which makes the earlier comment about the Dragon a bit odd. Also, the Dragon's a tiny, lightning-fast dogfighter in Freespace. It's odd to convert it to a pocket battleship
* I've heard reference to a Mercenary Commander being unnecessary to capture to complete the game but never encountered one and couldn't find one in the files. Are these the same as Mercenary Captains?

[Talhydras]

SUGGESTIONS:
* It'd be nice to know explicitly which weapons can be used 1h without accuracy penalties.
* Slower, accurate alloy halberd after Techblades.
* Inspired by the Suicide RPG guys I mentioned in Pogroms, I'd recommend replacing the RPGs from the Pogrom weapon table with flamethrowers. Think the egg-burning scene in District 9.
* Additionally, thinking about Wikus van der Merwe from District 9 counting up aliens on his clipboard, I strongly feel that Governments should launch pogroms too or have some personnel present on the scene. It's my understanding from the lore that they're partially culpable for the Pogroms (do they provide mutant census data to the Star God regime?), and some more than others might actively relish the opportunity to punish restive Mutant communities. Amusingly a government pogrom would be a lose-lose for the Pirates, and I think this is a good thing. I loved how fucking desperate my early Pogroms were (and became again when the damn Mercs came out), and adding in the occasional government pogrom might be a fun way to add a new dimension of desperation.
* I have no idea how shotgun-style weapons work right now, if spread is something you can control, but I was thinking about the 6+ round autoshots, and wondering if those could be condensed. Imagine if instead of firing 25 rds, the minigun fired 5 5-rd spreads with tight grouping. If this didn't negatively change weapon performance, I think it'd be a nice way to make the long bursts a little less time consuming.
* Increase Gauss projectile speed. It seems a bit odd that the hypervelocity rounds from the gauss weapons travel much less quickly than the Custom Snipin' Gun's projectiles.
* Improve cutting resistance on top-end enemies (tank, mercenary captain, sectopod spring to mind). Once I started pushing up to high base strength values and equipping strength enhancing armor, there seemed to be very little need to deploy anything more powerful than the techblade. Blood axes, electro-swords, and hell-blades all seem to me to be solutions looking for a problem. Once I started laying down 155 power cutting attacks, everything died in short order and I totally phased out firearms.
* In particular, I might recommend introducing some midtier concussive melee weapons beyond the hammer. I did not seem to encounter anything that provided it past the Pipe or the Ballbat. Perhaps an alloy hammer? Maybe the shock-a-fist could be converted from plasma to concussive damage, or lead to a Power Fist? This would go along with increasing armored fighting vehicles' resistance to cutting damage, and perhaps reducing their resistance to concussive slightly so elerium grenades and rockets are more efficient then hitting it with a techblade six times.
* Replace the Machinegun with the Autorifle completely (it's just so pretty!)
* Improve church armor slightly across the board. Their energy resistance is really cool, but they died like chumps to the piercing weapons I was picking up all throughout fighting the raiders and researching slugthrowers. Outside of their lids and one memorable and deadly Bomber mission, they seemed pretty tame as adversaries. I say: more rockets, more fire.
* Improve Dark One fireball strength or add plasma vulnerability to midtier armor. Or, add a melee attack to Cacodemons and Imps so they can still threaten people out of clothing-tier. Demons, Barons of Hell, and the odd zom with a BFG or RPG were scary, the vast majority were impotent.
* Or, up the incidence of UAC plasmaguns and BFGs in their ranks. While it was always fun trying to stun them all to make the COMPLETELY AWESOME demon weapons, they could never hurt me and I never got enough UAC weapon materials to actually ever field a plasma gun or a BFG for more than one, single, mission. So sad :C. Imp wands more than made up for it though, providing me with FAR AND AWAY the best belt-slot item. This kind of ties into my early observation that 45+str cutting damage and +30 str armor on top of experienced hands solved all my problems, leaving the 88+str blood axe and 100+str acid hellblade superfluous statistically.
* I unlocked Advanced Firearms when I was sitting on stocks of ~100 sniper gauss and gauss musket clips, so while they were all really cool weapons, I found them mostly superfluous by the time I got there. I'm not sure exactly HOW I unlocked them, but they came out about 18 months after I got the custom snipin' gun. I think these could really stand to be pushed up a bit, but I think it was through Higher Learning?
* It feels like a lot of firearms get left behind as advanced ammunition comes out. Blackmarch SMG and RCF carbine don't get any PS magazines. CAWS also could stand an upgraded munitions IMO, along with the Assault Grenade Launcher. MAG sniper and Custom Snipin' Gun rounds would be awesome too, as would MAG-piercing rounds for the LACC and CAWS.
* LACC-HE rounds can't break wooden picket fences. I really wanted to embrace such a beautiful weapon, but that seemed like a sign that I really needed to just stick to my techblades.
* There are three craft lasers, and one craft gauss weapon. Right now Gauss in general feels extremely underdeveloped compared to the plethora of laser weaponry and slugthrowers.
* Academy Hazmat suits could stand a few plastasteel inserts to give them some better protection. They look impressive but they're deathtraps. The Academy must go through lots of Explorers.
* I observed four main tiers of enemy armaments: slugthrowers (landed small UFOs, freighters), lasers (some UFOs and pogroms), gauss (most warships, enemy bases), and plasma. I don't know how much control can be exerted here, but I strongly feel like the slugthrower and laser tiers need to improve once the Pirates start fielding advanced armor or those missions become cakewalks I can't mess up. I might humbly recommend reducing under armor to the point where elerium grenades can still offer serious damage, or have them upgrade from slugthrowers entirely to lasers eventually.
* To clarify on the above: Brute Armor and especially Harbinger Armor and Annihilator Armor renders pirates almost invincible. Brute in particular was my go-to suits and only failed under sustained heavy or sniper gauss fire, or plasma rifles+. I'd recommend pushing up the brute armor laser vulnerability as well, though if you add any battle laser or MP-lascannon toting enemies they'll dish out enough damage to keep me afraid. I suppose another option might be increasing the incidence of Canister Launchers.
* More daily business! I got into a weird state where I swear every other ship flying from 2601 to 2602 was a Heavy Gunship.
* What happened to Earth's satellite network? I would assume it's destroyed or defunct, but does anyone in 2600 maintain or operate satellites? Is there still international communication between phone lines? Or is that handled by the Traders?
* The only weapon disassembly components I was ever low on were heavy power couplings. I think there could stand to be a far higher consumption of the other energy weapon components, as I had stocks of 100s and 100s and 100s of them. I didn't do a lot of energy weapon crafting though - When I really wanted to be using nuclear lasers I was totally blocked on research progress (no Acad engineer), and so I worked around that until I got to Discs of Death, and those rendered most ranged weapons outside of a dedicated sniper and a dedicated rocketeer obsolete. Techblades tided me over in the meantime for hard targets like mercs.


SUGGESTIONS (IMPRACTICAL/SIGNIFICANT AMOUNTS OF WORK):
* In the vein of HWP Merc Commandoes and Attack Dogs: Purchaseable Mutant Alliance snakeladies and Apocalypse-style sectoid hybrids. In game they'd be unlocked after making contact with militant parts of the Mutant Alliance - all those pacification missions must be targeting someone after all. The Sectoid hybrids could offer some early or midgame voodoo. The snakemen hybrids are just for fun. Looking at UFOPaedia, they would have good smoke, acid, and fire resistance and perhaps good health. You could introduce a couple of tiers of equipment for them, too, via incremental upgrades akin to the path to building Annihilator armor. For example, Gray M.A. Resistance Psion + Tactical Suit + Laser Pistol = Elite M.A. Resistance Psion, Elite M.A. Resistance Psion + Assault Armor + Laser Rifle = M.A. Resistance Ghost. This suggestion is designed to circumvent the problems with mapping every pirate armor type to the different morphologies of these unique troopers, and that you can't access their inventory.
* In a similar vein, "Mutant Alliance Volunteers" might be recoverable rarely from Terror sites and, in a very long duration workshop project, trained up to the first level of Mutant Alliance troopers.
* This also reinforces the narrative of the recruitable pirates all coming from the fast-improving Uber strain.
* Synthsuit and Brute armored Reapers. I was sad to retire my first HWP, a Reaper imaginatively named "Mr. Reaps", that had about 20 kills and served as an invaluable bullet sponge and mascot for our forces. It'd be impractical and irresponsible in-universe, but is anything too much to ask for such a faithful comrade to serve a little longer in the era of Mercenaries? Besides eating Soylent in the hideout, I mean.
* Add a power-armored Academy Security - perhaps it's based on X-com Flying Armor, but with some plates pulled off so he's not as tough? Academy was extremely nasty to face in the earlygame on Pogroms where they fielded up to four Cyberdiscs, but once I could handle those there wasn't much to fear except the occasional lucky psi attack from (I believe) the Provosts. Another idea might be an extremely up-armored Drone or Cyberdisc. I GREATLY ENJOYED the enemy diversity on Trader Pogroms - the biggest challenge and most exciting missions by far for me in my playthrough were early Trader Pogroms. It could be a pest control manager in the next room, or it could be (as I described them to my friends), a power armored member of the "Fun Police", packing a heavy laser. Once I had advanced armor and a reliable one-shot-kills-anything weapon, and was going up against less diverse factions, the tension of exploring and the surprise of contact was greatly reduced.
* Similarly, I might recommend dedicated Heavy Weapons soldiers for mercs and humanists, Demolitions experts for traders - perhaps called Redecorators or Remodelers? They'd serve a Tank Hunting purpose and have something that can make 90+ armor pirates still feel fear. These would be low reactions, high accuracy troops with good health, stamina, and personal or personal+ armor. MP-lascannons, rocket launchers with antitank warheads, blaster launchers, all with a sidearm if they can be told how to use them.
* To dovetail on the above: The merc roster feels a bit thin, hence the suggestion there. They might also get access to discs for slightly squishier flying shenanigans, or even gauss tanks? Similarly, some rank-and-file purple-faced mutons might be a good choice for expert troops. Perhaps pull in the Berserker from XCom 2012? 100% of merc enemies are super high-HP, accurate sniper bastards. It'd be neat if they had some different threats. I'd love for the mercs to include a few synthsuited sectoids, or perhaps XCom Apocalypse-style sectoid-human hybrids for a little psi support. Or they could bring in snakemen for slightly squishier threats?
* It'd be neat to give Humanists loader-suit troopers to even up their firepower and durability disadvantages inherent with being squishy humans without Star God support. Wolfenstein 3d's Mecha Hitler, perhaps? A mortar or grenadier trooper would be great, too, the Celatid was a unique threat and I'd love to see more indirect-fire enemies.
* The Star Gods should (at a risk of being repetitive) also be a bit more diverse I think. I realize part of the challenge is that they're interchangeable, faceless avatars of an alien god, but it'd be nice for the old wimpy sectoids to come back... and with some major teeth. Extremely potent versions of the Church force field, high power armor-piercing plasma pistols, small launchers with shaped fusion armor-cracking charges... and of course, extra psi.
* If possible, Raiders should hijack government or maybe even guild ships from time to time. It'd be a fun way to diversify from their space winnebagos, and of course depict their raiding shenanigans
* Do Raiders go on Pogroms? I'd justify it as them punishing a rival raiding clan's population.
* Raiders live out in the wilds, perhaps some of them tame various mutant wildlife like Reapers. If there are still any Tasoths, they might be able to team up with some of them.
* Trap/bait missions. On the decoder it looks to be another freighter, it lands and it looks like another freighter, but inside it's twenty chryssalids, or ten Trader power-armor troopers. Or a sectopod and a Star God Guardian serving as an observer to make sure that the Guild or the Academy doesn't squander this generous loan that they've requested to deal with the pirate scourge. To quote monty python: RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!
* Similar vein to the above: What about a Q-ship? Low-flying, large ship with a freighter's transponder, heavy shielding and armor, and a cargo entirely of powerful weapons. A little FU from the Guild later on. They would figure out pretty quick you're using hyperwave decoders to pick your targets when you refuse to fight all those Heavy Gunships with the Bonaventura, so having them start running false flag ops makes perfect sense to me. Plus this would really help diversify the otherwise repetitive Crackdown missions IMO.
* 37mm Rifle, Precision Laser, Gauss, and eventually proper Plasma Cyberdiscs. The flying chassis makes an ideal platform for sniper weapons - I was quite surprised (and a little disappointed) to never build a proper plasma-armed, Star God-issue cyberdisc.
* In a similar vein, I was surprised at only one variant of Sectopod (and held off on building any for a while in the hopes of unlocking more variants). Gausstopods, Star God-issue superlaser sectopods, and gatling plasma would be fun. Similarly, one armed with a baby Obliterator Cannon would be pretty sweet. I realize this is way, way, way too many HWPs. I just really love discs and sectopods! The X-Sectopod is so awesome it honestly doesn't really need a weapons upgrade. But... sectopods!
* Laser and Gauss variants of the starting Hand Cannon. There's a researchable heavy plasma pistol, and of course the special smuggler pistol, and the ES Laspistol, but the niche of "extra-large 1-hand weapon to kill tough guys I can't sword" niche feels like its dominated by the hand cannon, then the magnum, then the confederate eagle with mag rounds... A pocket lascannon, basically a laser pistol that can burn its battery in a single murderous blast might be a lot of fun. Maybe a pocket Gauss shotgun, designed for high-ranking officials to kill a single charging assailant, by releasing a cloud of hypervelocity flechettes?
* Improved fighter UFOs with long range, high damage weapon that's a missile. This makes it so you can't just plasma beam your way to victory all day erry day and fusion balls have a role.
* Alternate Canister Launcher ammunition. Improved stun, perhaps, or perhaps an extremely strong incendiary effect?


SUGGESTIONS (IRRESPONSIBLE/SILLY):
* Usable Craft Weapons in tactical missions. Let's see that mercenary commando survive the Bonnie's dorsal 50mm cannon!
* Short workshop projects that take one Pirate Armor and one of any other type of armor, and outputs a version of the second armor with a Tricorn. To round off the suggestion with an irresponsible UI upgrade, separate this into Personal Armor Decoration. So you know who the officers are! Who doesn't want to still be wearing a tricorn over their Synthsuit? A poofy shirt might work, too...
* Sectopod turbos! A research that bumps these adorable waddling death monsters up to 80+ TUs!
* Cyberdisc drive improvement! Unlocked by researching Hovertanks to bring Discs up to Hovertank+ speeds, as its a similar drive but without the extra mass of a turret!
* Can explosions be directional like shotgun blasts? If so, Claymore mines!
* And claymore swords!
* A "Neon Sign" building. It is available early and is the opposite of a Mind Shield; it makes it easier for a particular base to be located by Retaliation missions.
* Lids with grav units?
* Fusion proximity mines!
* I personally don't really like the shoulder guns on the X-Sectopod. I much prefer the classic, sleek look. Buuuut, that's just my personal preference.
* Firmly in the category of "Pie in the Sky": It'd be really cool if every shot in a burst was fired more or less at once, with perhaps a .25-.5s delay, so that the sound of the miniguns and so forth would be contiguous. It'd make determining what actually happened during the burst harder, but it was still a wish I had.

Thanks for reading!

[ivandogovich]

"* A gray civilian goomba-stomped me, instantly KOing one of my hands. What? How? Hunh? What?"

Its a feature, not a bug.      - Its actually the way the devs handled two units ending up on the same tile, usually from a falling unit landing on one below.  The player's unit in this situation is knocked out.  (Can even happen to HWPs  )

Thanks for the great write up!  I have very little idea of what it all means, but I think I'm quite a bit more scared to death, and just as leery of trying to rely on anything ranged for a long time.

[pilot00]

"* A gray civilian goomba-stomped me, instantly KOing one of my hands. What? How? Hunh? What?"

Its a feature, not a bug.      - Its actually the way the devs handled two units ending up on the same tile, usually from a falling unit landing on one below.  The player's unit in this situation is knocked out.  (Can even happen to HWPs  )

Thanks for the great write up!  I have very little idea of what it all means, but I think I'm quite a bit more scared to death, and just as leery of trying to rely on anything ranged for a long time.

I can confirm that too. Its a "loan" from the original not the mod though. I had it happen to me when a sectoid KOed a powerarmored guy of mine like that.

Speaking of civilians and stun. I stunned a snake lady with a fisty kuff, and I got possitive score as a hostage for it, but naturally no captive.

BTW I run into the same "problem" with the >100% accuracy. 145% (base hand accuracy 96 I think or so) with a custom snipper. The target was in a cave entrace and i loaded about 20 times not hitting once. I dont know if its an elevation bug though or due to the guy having extreme cover.

Oh and raiders do go on Pogroms. Its rare though.

[Dioxine]

Wow, such a post. Almost qualifies for a place in the "credits" section. I'm amazed and grateful! 500 techs though, it's too generous, I'm sure I don't have more than maybe 300 research topics

I'll try to adress your issues & questions one by one, if possible.
- Blaster impotency: This is an OXCom thing. Can't do anything about it. As a consolation, I might add I was blaster-bombed only once (for 1.5 years of playing OXCom), in a test mission, when the AI unit with Blaster Launcher was presented with a nice group of 3 targets within his DIRECT LOS.
- General enemy grenade/explosives/tanks impotency issues: the root cause for all of these is another OXCom engine thing, and I can't discuss it for political reasons. The gist is, this is not by my design or choice, I can't do anything about it, and you have to live with it, at least for the time being.
- General enemy faction appearances, enemy-related tech bottlenecks, no Raider pogroms etc: Blame/Praise Gods of Random. It's likely be very different on another playthrough, Raider pogroms have actually a quite high chance of happening.
- Not sure what's going on with Academy Explorer research, possibly a minor glitch.
- 100%+ shots missing: they will miss if you fire at impossible angles, this is again caused by how OXCom works. You aim by eyes, but fire from shoulder level. BUT a 100%+ shot with a more or less clear LoS should almost never miss, and it doesn't as far as I can tell from my experience. Unless new Nightly builds changed that.
- All Imperial Probes belong to the Star Gods, is the Pedia entry unclear about it?
- Piercing damage would discount Spear as a melee weapon. There are lots of piercing-res armors, much less cutting-res.
- Goomba Stomp: allowed for AI, disallowed for player-controlled units unless by random panic movement. That's another OXCom thing, we have to live with it.
- Humanists make their own Hanabus just like the player does with his ships. They don't have the resources to regularly fly Pacifications with Bombers and Heavy Gunships (and I don't want them to cut into appearances of Academy so much).
- Merc Commander pertains to Merc Captain.
- Useless research: yeah it happens, precisely because there are few bottlenecks. Advanced Firearms are very good if researched early enough. Same thing for many other techs.
- Weapon handedness vs. accuracy penalties: useless for now, as melee weapons do not take 2-handed acc penalties. Slated for Piratez Extended.
- Govt & Pogroms: Nah the Govts of this age are too concerned with their fight for survival (ie. real wars at hand & other direct threats that force to have a reality-based economy) to make war on their own populations. Wikus could survive in the Trader's Guild (which, just like his corporation, lives mainly off theft), but the struggling and poor Govts have such inefficient people shot or hanged. NONE THE LESS, a 'radical sector' of a Govt launching a Pogrom is passable, but boy, this lose-lose situation would piss off so many players
- Flamethrowers are fine & dandy but the AI cannot understand the idea of Maximum Range, hence I don't want to add too many of them.
- Mid-tier hammers? The basic Hammer is already top-tier, borderline OP but I don't want to replace it
- General melee weapon awesome power: slated for Piratez Extended, right now there is only so much I can do about it.
- Adding late-game enemies, late game weapons: I would very much like to, but implementation is extremely complicated. I cannot, for example, change Pogrom or Crackdown weapon loadouts at whim, I'd have to design a whole alternate mission, not sure if it will even work etc.
- Hire-able mutants, upgradable tanks/reapers, general tanks extravaganza: planned for the future, work-intesive.
- You can increase the bullet speed from the Options menu if minigun firing etc. takes too long. No, shotgun pellets are meant for shotguns and do not work like autoshots, not at all.
- Trap missions: yeah I have things like these planned, both like you've described and other variants, but I'm concered a bit about players' outrage about it (a bug, they shouted, and unleashed a ragequit).
- Satcom network: sure, a spacefaring civilization has an easy access to satellites. And easy means of shooting them down if non-sanctioned. Not sure what you were aiming at?
- Hellblades etc. aren't meant as normally-used weapons, you just were lucky to get them (and used Psi-improvement cheat )
- Firearms are phased out in a certain pattern. Good ammo comes for shitty weapons precisely to force you to switch from previously-best weapons when new ammo is researched.

I wasn't able to answer to every question, it'd take too many hours, but everything has been noted. Thanks again, and try the game on Walter Sobczak difficulty level (known as the 'world of pain')

Oh and Ivan, I REALLY don't reccomend dumping ranged weapons, I do rely almost exclusively on them, using melee only when ranged would fail. You need top-tier armor to make melee a more or less safe option.

@Pilot00: if you really stunned a civilian, you'd get a double negative score. Not sure what happened there.

[pilot00]

BTW    Dioxine, since you are full on to it, and I assume it is too time consuming to make this great thing even greater, I cant help with actual modding but if you need any lore, text, ideas, I would be happy to help. It might help lighten the load and it would make feel returning something back as a thank you.

[Dioxine]

Oh thanks but the actual major workload is production of graphic resources (and to a much lesser degree, UFO maps), writing stuff is more of a reward than a problem, and it takes very little time actually.

[pilot00]

Np, I understand.

[icefox]

Well I haven't even finished my playthrough yet, but:

Did another smuggler raid; have much more sympathy for EatThePath now.  If you see Public Enemy, just carpet bomb him with grenades and missiles.  He's not worth the trouble.

Holy crow mercenaries go down like CHUMPS to mind control.  On the one hand I like this, on the other it kind of trivializes one of the more dangerous enemies.  Two half decent voodoo witches had pretty much an entire heavy gunship crew, including the captain, dropping all their weapons and casually sauntering out into the open to be 'processed' by Team Power Mace.

Also I, uh, wrote a thing, so I might as well post it here: https://wiki.alopex.li/TheBattleForBooze .  It'll give you a security certificate warning, just click on through it.

[pilot00]

Well I haven't even finished my playthrough yet, but:

Did another smuggler raid; have much more sympathy for EatThePath now.  If you see Public Enemy, just carpet bomb him with grenades and missiles.  He's not worth the trouble.

Holy crow mercenaries go down like CHUMPS to mind control.  On the one hand I like this, on the other it kind of trivializes one of the more dangerous enemies.  Two half decent voodoo witches had pretty much an entire heavy gunship crew, including the captain, dropping all their weapons and casually sauntering out into the open to be 'processed' by Team Power Mace.

Also I, uh, wrote a thing, so I might as well post it here: https://wiki.alopex.li/TheBattleForBooze .  It'll give you a security certificate warning, just click on through it.

I run into the "problem enemy" too for three encounters now. Its way more easy to deal with them than carpet bombing everything with explosives:

Solution 1) Smoke granades and heavy armor. If you have access to power suits or heavy tacs once the feline makes her appereance have your girl tank her attacks. On your turn pop a smoke grenade (or stun grenade if you have one). She wont last more than 2-3 rounds if you want a live one. Just captured one as I type this with a smoke grenade. I was lucky since she had some cat paws (whatever that is) as a weapon and though she did a million attacks it cant (it appears) not even chip the paint from power armor.
Solution 2) Blunderbuss with HE ammo. Once you divine her location take a few steps back and CTRL fire her. She wont last more than 2 shots and her parts will fly everywhere.

I admit I crapped my pants a bit when I noticed an invisible thing was hitting me, but then I remember that I had explosive ammo (area of effect) on a low TU cost scatter weapon and that smoke on this mod is OP.

[eatthepath]

The cats are relatively small potatos compared to obi-wan, really.