Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N7 16-Dec-2023 Flying Tiger, Hidden Tentacle

[sambojin]

Now that bows use quivers, but require ammo as such, does that let me make the assumption that there's going to be some Rambo/Predator style stuff going on? Explosive arrows, flare arrows, Smoke, etc?

I, myself, am totally against it. That's an Assault Cannon's job. But I can see the use of such things. The Bow's accuracy is way too high if it gets implemented though (unless the explosions are tiny and weak). ACs/GLs do have the chance of it all going horribly wrong on the low-tech, early-tier end of things. With the correct results of it doing so.

Pebble-booms from bows might be strategically useful, but shouldn't replace actual KaBooms in gameplay.

[Dioxine]

I, myself, am totally against it. That's an Assault Cannon's job. But I can see the use of such things. The Bow's accuracy is way too high if it gets implemented though (unless the explosions are tiny and weak).

Precisely - much weaker than cannons. And ammo more limited than normal arrows. If it gets added at all, that is.

[legionof1]

If you did do special arrows i wouldn't do aoe at all. The special ammo would be more appropriate for varied dmg types. Deep ones with Chem(poison) arrows. Fire arrows doing incendiary. Screamer(morale dmg) arrows. Now historically explosives have been on arrows but the payload is minuscule and used either for propulsion assist(Korean Hwacha) or as a disbursement tool for some other agent usually some type of flammable accelerant(ignite and spread in one package.) Now maybe at hellurium/fusion tech, since we arrive at handheld fusion grenades, some aoe would be appropriate.     

[sambojin]

I could see little AoEs from bows being legit. Smoke bombs aren't exactly high-tech, and a 1-radius blast would be tactically useful. Similarly to a low damage (but regularly hitting) explosive, but only at 15-25 damage or so. Maybe less. Same with incendiary, at even lower damage (10-12? Yet it lays a small light/fire patch).

I'm cool with the whole Hawkeye/Green Arrow toolkit warrior. And with the unrealistic "unloading" of normal ammo, "loading" a toolkit arrow, and doing "that thing", it might even be fun. And hard enough to do that even if some of these things were low-tier research, it's fine, as it just gives more versatility to the weapons. Plus pack space used, and TU's wasted, just so you can "use the right arrow for the job". You might even "load" more than one of that particular type at a time.

But bows shouldn't be able to do everything without costs or hassles. Or stand on the toes of other weapons that already do those things, but have costs associated with them. Low-tier or high.

There's plenty of ways to play xpirates, and there's always ways to come back from defeat, as long as you discover them. There is vendor trash too, but that's understandable. Those weapons can kill "them", but your gals aren't just taking on basic researchers all the time, and those weapons were designed to keep their own populations in line. You're taking on the whole world, including the star gods, and taking hostages along the way, all to both profit and win.

You're probably not going to do it all with bows. Having an option to be versatile with one isn't a problem. But there's weapons and weapons.......

[Arthanor]

+1 for bow variety! Poison/acid, poison/stun, explosives and incendiary damage could all be interesting. Given the newly found arrow bug, adding a 1 tile AoE for some of these could be good, to make sure that a hit is a hit. Have the damage drop by 50% per tile and you get something quite harmless but still cool looking.

I'd agree with dropping the accuracy as well, or decreasing the range/increasing the range penalty. It's easy to get really good accuracy with bows and still be able to get multiple shots. Especially with the new rags (awesome armor!) and the stamina regen. My archers are all in rags, start with a quiver in their hand and usually two molotovs (for drones, see below). As soon as they're in a good position, they drop the quiver and start firing. So far 12 arrows has been enough. If it isn't (pogroms, maybe?), they can start looting grenades and tossing those, since enemies often carry some and archers are great throwers.

Unrelated comment:
I just started a new game and although I think separating STR_SECTOID and STR_SECTOID_NONCOM to distinguish the roles is a good idea, they new combat race make for a boring/tedious first encounter. In most fights, all you get are personal armor dudes and flying drones. No academician, no medic, no engineer. So in a sense, no soft or valuable target. Spam molotovs on drones, deal with the armored ones however you can (ie rush to bombs, buy a HMG and a few flamers + melee for breaching UFOs). I've seen a few explorers but they're not all that common either.

It was a lot more fun starting with the wide range of units, where the armored guys would feel like the big threat, instead of the norm, and the soft target tempted you to risk capturing for interrogations. Now I don't bother to stun except for 100% safe explorers. This change, ironically, has made my game a lot safer for the gals.

I also noticed that their weapons selection is quite different. I've got CAWS, LACC and Light Cannons in the first month, but I am yet to see a sniper rifle. The upgrade from hunting to scoped was kind of a early game breakthrough for my gameplay, giving a first "sniper" weapon and I quite enjoyed that. By oppositions, cannons are both stronger and more useless, since it takes a lot longer to be able to get ammo for them.

I think the ideal 1st month of Piratez for me would be a mix of both STR_SECTOID_NONCOM and STR_TRADERS_NONCOM. Maybe a ~2 months long "business as usual" mission that represents shipping standard shipping on the planet. This would allow the starting player to encounter the two main factions of the world and a variety of units. Having lots of varied units is one of the main strength of Piratez, I've "only" seen 2 units on more than one mission so far: drones and osiron. Otherwise, 1 cyberdisc and the gang from a bandit pogrom, once each. I've got a spartan pogrom coming up now and I'm looking forward to it for variety, which isn't quite how it should feel. I used to dread all pogroms.

With traders and academy, you would get the basic building blocks of your early tech, like the Aye-Phone, Leather/metal armor, scoped rifle, and  "civilian units" would give some potential for interrogation (the urge to capture and interrogate being another central and cool feature of Piratez). Now, in late February, I still haven't seen a trader and I feel like leather armor would be quite a breakthrough! And there's been no VIP to bag so that whole side of the game is missing. It feels more like "running the gauntlet" and trying to make it through to the fun stuff rather than like before, when the variety of encounters and objectives was overwhelming and fun.

I do know it was intended to change the early game and this might just be a side-effect of other changes (splitting races between normal and non-com), but I thought it was worthy of mention because it feels significantly different.

[sambojin]

There are better "auto-have" researchable armours straight away. For stats or actual armour, even if it is a few research topics away.

I'll start another playthrough, but you might have just gotten RNG'd. Where did you start? While missions and factions are pretty random, having radar coverage of a few earth factions and plenty of cities does tend to help (afaik. probably very wrong. RNG again).


And yeah. On the bows, a 1-tile radius just makes <CTRL>shooting a square possible. Saves that whole "What capt'n? Arc? Yep! LoS too? What? Nah...." thing from happening with researchable (and thus apparently more useful) arrows. Just shoot beside them.

Also gives incendiary arrows plenty of "flare" value, as well as pinpoint smoking doors, pyramid-hill entrances, etc. 1-radius blast makes them a lot easier to use, for targeting or tactical use.

Like a mortar, but worse if you miss, because you might actually miss. But not as bad when you hit your own with explosives, and easier to use for fiddly stuff.


I'm pretty sure that's why all the other heroes like Hawkeye/Green Arrow. No unexpected deaths due to overpoweredness (unless he's using that specific arrow against them. Kryptonite/Hellerium-boosted WTF-arrow, etc).

[legionof1]

Rags?? blegh. Gym suits are a mere 2 very fast techs away, have accuracy bonus for archers, more inventory, no stress modifier, and stamina and energy recovery bonus. 

[Arthanor]

The starting mission is a research mission crewed by the "STR_SECTOID" race (being the first defined, it has a 100% chance to be picked), which is comprised of security guards and drones most of the times, sometimes explorers and cyberdiscs. You are certain to encounter that in your first month.

I then also got a "STR_SECTOID" "Survey", which I guess would qualify as getting RNG'd (yet again the same combat faction) and the bandit pogrom I mentioned (that was fun!). For my 2nd month I have the continuing research mission, a raider pogrom (meh, not a huge fan of raiders, but they're variety!) and spartans doing a military supply in South America (where I don't have coverage, planning on buying a pigeon soon). My base is on Creta, so I can cover Europe, North Africa and the Middle East with my radar (lucky, since that's where the survey happened to be!).

The above is mostly a long explanation as to why I don't think "STR_SECTOID" are an enjoyable race for the 1st mission. Before races got split, the first mission was crewed by a mix of academy units and that was more enjoyable. Simply defining STR_SECTOID_NONCOM before in the alienRaces would make them run the first mission instead and re-establish the previous early game experience. On the flip side, I've got a lot of grav units from the drones, and those are sometimes quite rare.

As for "early game armor must haves", it's been a while since I played early game so I don't know. I don't use smokey much, grav harness is cool for heavy support but doesn't help the front lines, tac vests are expensive and warrior needs a decent soldier given the TUs and Stam reduction. So a fair chunk of my gals are still in rags/scout/adventurer, which is cool (more use of the early armors!) but after ~2 months now and still looking forward to leather/metal armor, it's a bit weird...

Re: gym suit
Probably, I just never paid attention to how I got it in my previous playthrough and I try to mine the research tree only when I am getting frustrated. Rags are working fine for archers, but you made me dig and it is indeed quite accessible. Still not much of a survival upgrade for the frontlines though (but better than rags, granted).

[legionof1]

yeah pretty much dick helps the front line for a long while. The first upgrade i try for is guerilla if only for the large inventory and pierce reduction. Actual armor increase has to wait for something like revenant, Mesh or sythmuscle suits. The compound penalties on the Tac armor line of TU, stamina, and recovery, are not in my opinion worth the 10-20 additional mostly front armor. Gauss and plasma are still one shot kill potential. Moderate power(mid 30's) gunpowder weapons can still pen your front armor even with pierce reduction. Heavy pistols are also still a very credible threat. About all that Tac armor really offer over 20 armor outfits is the ability to take shotguns to the face. Buts so do the armors i mentioned above and they have there own advantages beyond raw armor which is the tac line only strongpoint.

The only useful armor in the tac line is the hover solely because its very early flight with a weight bonus allowing things like HMG's commanding altitude. But even the hover has issues in heavy direct fire support since the pack spaces are taken, limiting a user to 2x1 ammo and and max 4 if they are vertical rounds like rpg's

[Arthanor]

I'm using the grav harness right now on snipers. It works better with my way of playing than smokey. I'd rather make a cloud of smoke on the enemy and see them come out than smoke myself and have to go look for them. Or if I do go, then there's only one cloud to clear at a time, so the odds of missing something to then get surprised are pretty small.

I do use the Tac Vest right now on valuable enough breachers to try to reduce the chance to get killed. Gals get injured, it just happens, but they shouldn't get repeatedly hit and minimizing the chance of getting killed in few hits is paramount to me, to get the gal back eventually and keep getting more XP. Not getting hurt is even better, but not getting killed is a great step imho. The Tac Vest isn't great at it, but it helps at a relatively low cost (stats and resources wise). The Tac Armor will significantly increase a gal's survival chances against conventional and (low tier) laser weapons.

Gauss and Plasma will mess you up (Plasma less so if you have mesh, but I never got a good life insurance armor against Gauss, let alone a injury proof one). Against those, you're better off with very light armors and trying to manoeuvre to not get shot. And fielding a few non-valuable pets/gals at the front to take the shots.

I agree on the Guerilla outfit. It works quite well for midfield gals, although warrior can work too against basic weapons if you are willing to move slowly and have good enough guns to play the shooting game (no meleing in warrior...). I use warrior on my "valuable midfield shooters" as it protects life better than guerilla against basic grenades and guns. Right now I'm still waiting to encounter spartans so can't make guerilla any ways..

As it is, I tend to agree that the Tac Armors and Heavy Armors seem to take a while for what you get. But actually looking at them (gah! Gotta stop doing that..!) the Tac Armor isn't that hard to get and it is not a bad armor. Heavy Armor is quite a bit harder to get, only plays a niche role and isn't fireproof anymore (it used to be  ) so I'm not entirely convinced by it. I'll have to see what the alternatives are by the time I could research it.

And that's the main point in Piratez, sometimes things don't come properly and you've got to make do.. Leather/Metal are good for that and help the frontline in the "everyday raids" without costing much stats wise so I'm quite looking forward to it. In my new game, there seems to be a lot of making do...

[sambojin]

This is probably deserving of an early-game tactics or research thread.

All I have to add is that all armour is worthwhile, as are all outfits. Starting with 20 all-round armour, and with all vendor scrap weapons being 30 damage or below, means that everything is a good boost from semi-survivable upwards. It might not be great against plasma/laser/gauss/explosive/grenades, but even 25-35 armour does amazing things against half of the early weapons you'll face. And you'll be facing at least a few of these enemies in most missions for a very long time.

I like the inventories now being side-grades, or at least something to think about for virtually any armour. Does it fit that gal's role?

Strength, TU and stamina are the most regularly upgraded stats with experience, so early armour really is a choice. And you've always got runt duds, brainer coats, gym suits or nude, really early on, so stats aren't a problem. No matter where your research goes.

Actual early armour doesn't need a huge boost due to the weakness of so many weapons, and it tends to immortalized gals against most things once you get up to "real armour". Nothing but the big guns will scratch them. Yet you've got homegrown or blackmarket options to ding the hell out of their's. But those early game options still look worthwhile using sometimes, depending on the gal and the role she's playing on the battlefield.

[legionof1]

You and me have different opinions of valuable Arthanor. The only gals i treat with extra care are the fire support unit(archers, snipers) since without them killing most things is quite hard for a long time. Everyone else is reasonably expendable until the armor actually means something.

As far as Gauss defense your best option is pierce reduction and not raw armor. Gauss have big base values so even small percent reduction hit them quite hard.

70 base on pistol for example vs 80% armor(guerilla) only averages 56 minus 20 base armor gives 36 hp damage. Not happily survived but doable even with raw swabbies.

Musket at 85 base drops to 68, minus base armor:48 hp. Swabbies are probably dead, but vets are likely still here.

Sniper has accuracy and TU cost problems limiting its usage in ai hands. Your dead if they shoot you anyway. Only the very last tiers of power armor have a chance of mitigating this because of the power bonus.

Heavy eats everything the gals can field along with 90% of everything you can fight. Bio armor can maybe shrug a burst on front or side armor but the multiple shots are not in the defenders favor as far as mitigation. 400 potential damage on median burst-up to 800 on max dmg rolls. Only lobstermen reliably survive this kind of punishment.

[mercy]

I'm so planning to play your MOD after v1.0! Fantastic work!

[new_civilian]

here something weird... (see picture)

May I also have a proposal: Why not use the FASTRAMP fix for the Bonaventura? It is just a tiny mcd-patch that corrects/fixes the ramp-TU-usage.
I attached an example rul-file for your convienence.

hf! and thx

[sambojin]

STR_RUNT_CORPSE also appeared on the black market after my second downed ufo. Yep, lost a gal (and a parrot) already. I did however get 3 gauss pistols.

Zero $ sale..... She was worth something, dammit! About 25k for the next one all told
The next mission will need the pistols more than her though (large ufo, landed. Just got my prods, nothing else researched/produced. Wish me luck).

Edit: Nevermind.... Early guild security, with shotguns. Flamed, grenaded and even prodded a few. Not the right ones, but not a problem. Lotsa hellerium though. Yay.