Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N9.7.7 12-Sep-2024 Second Coming

[EricPhail]

Is there anyway to make the game ignore sea/zerog/mansions with respect to who had what equipped last?  I find it so tedious to restore everyones equipment afterwards that I strongly consider skipping undersea missions entirely.

I run every gal with her own setup usually, sea missions are often run by a secondary base's squad which run smaller ground missions as my primary team is already very strong.

[ivandogovich]

Is there anyway to make the game ignore sea/zerog/mansions with respect to who had what equipped last?  I find it so tedious to restore everyones equipment afterwards that I strongly consider skipping undersea missions entirely.

I run every gal with her own setup usually, sea missions are often run by a secondary base's squad which run smaller ground missions as my primary team is already very strong.

Not at this time. There are the loadout templates that can help (F5/F9) but these are for individual soldiers, not craft, and don't include armor.  This however, might work for you.  You could name each template by your Gal's load out: "Brunhild's Gear", "Ivana's Fire Kit" etc.

I find it more convenient to keep a couple extra teams geared up for the Sea or Zero-G.  Mansions, I may just swap one of them over, or swap over my main strike team.

[EricPhail]

My Templates are usually just the name of the soldier in question.  ZeroG involve putting a combat team on my Kraken (on that note is there a quicker way to move rare weapons from one ship to another) and are still newish for me so more fun, Mansions provide a decent loot return plus my A Team has templates so they are alright.  But Sea missions... Change Armour, launch, equip, tedious mission, naff loot likely (~200 personal armour parts several times now), then fix armour and gear for general work, ugh (If it weren't for the fact that I know shadow orbs can found there I'm not sure I'd bother).

Dedicated Sea team, I'll try that next time (think I'll change all their first names to Scurvy)

Is there actually an aquarium/use for the fish from certain undersea missions?

[ivandogovich]

I had one of the most dramatic fights in my XPirateZ career the other day.  Just started second year, using a Pachyderm, got some arena fireball launchers, some slug throwers, etc.  Haven't seen a lot of Major Faction activity (Aside from Govt) and saw a Gunship go land in Africa.  Sent the Pachy to check it out.  Upon landing, I discover we are in Pink Desert facing Academy Security sporting all manner of Gauss, with CyberDiscs and Drones.  Ack!

Ok, the Snipers in the Top Floor are able to dish out solid punishment with the Slug Throwers, and we start grinding through the Carapace Armored dudes.

My rear exit is blocked by a Cyberdisc on overwatch and I find out that Arena Fireball Launchers only seem to piss of them rather than drop them, and have some tense moments trying to recover some casualties before I can dispatch it with a Recoil-less Rifle.   The interesting side effect of this is that the resulting explosion blew open a huge chunk in one of the 1 tile high hills between my LZ and the enemy ship.

With my troops so hard pressed, the battle settled into a stale mate of sorts.  Bunkered up in the Pachy I could kill all I could see from the top door, but the terrain was too open to allow for anything but a suicide rush toward the enemy craft.  I was able to take some cover behind the cratered hill, but was at the mercy of Pink stun attacks in random locations. 

A patrolling Cyberdisc on the far side of the map sparked a long-range duel, that finally dropped it with another Recoilless Rifle round.  But by this time, wounds, smoke, and heat was causing intense stun issues.  I rushed a gal to the crater, and she dropped into it hoping to use it as a foxhole.  She's immediately pinned down by an Esper with a Gauss Sniper rifle, but somehow manages to dodge all the round tearing up the dust around her (she actually seemed to shrug off 3 hits for zero damage, thank you RNGesus!).  Though I desperately need an Esper to open up some techs, the battle is to desperate to allow all but the most cursory of capture attempts.

By now my troops are dropping to accumulating stun damage and I'm running through my stocks of Painkillers, and lugging rum and O2 around trying to keep in fighting trim.  The battle continues to rage, and I find that my FoxHole has become a trap.  I try blasting my way out with Custom Blunderbuss bursts, and explosives.  I finally run an auto-axe up there, and am able to cut our way out, but by this time, I only have two effectives left.

With too little ability to launch a ship assault and all our grog gone, my last surviving trooper is able to hang on until enemy morale collapses completely, and my battered team is able to pull out with an incredibly hard fought victory.

[legionof1]

Yeah for whatever reason the fireball launcher's direct attack is pretty ineffective vs cyberdisks. However if it sets it on fire it only takes 4ish turn to burn to death just like other incendiaries.

[RSSwizard]

Yeah for whatever reason the fireball launcher's direct attack is pretty ineffective vs cyberdisks. However if it sets it on fire it only takes 4ish turn to burn to death just like other incendiaries.

Its pretty quick to fire and if you have two of them that means potentially up to 6 blasts for one turn, more practically at least 4. The thing is its got a hell of a blast radius, so even if you've got a pistol in the other hand you're almost guaranteed to hit (except intervening cover that eats it)

So against a cyberdisc thats effectively 16 hits, and then it burns for 4 more on the following turn. I killed my first one with that in 2 turns.

[ivandogovich]

Yeah, makes sense.  The trouble I was having was the disc's superb reaction fire decimating my fireball shooters.

[Devon_v]

What causes major score penalties these days? I've not yet contacted the mutant alliance, I'm running missions, and yet my score in September just keeps plummeting. I complete research, finish missions, check my score. I'm being credited for my victories, then a few days later everything I've gained and more just gets wiped out. I was at -1000, clawed my way back up to -800 in a few days, and then end of the week I'm -1500.

According to the charts there's about 500 units of activity in the Dark Dominion which I have no coverage over, which is by far the most this month, but is there something they could be doing that the game somehow expects me to be stopping?

Edit: For that matter, does anyone know how OXC actually stores the monthly score? I went digging in the save to see if I could find the source of all the bad juju, but all the game seems to save is the various monthly activity values that make up the graph. I tried changing some of the alien activity values to see if that was what influenced the score but while it changed what the graph displayed as the current level of activity, it did not impact the total score. Searching around the forums and Google has people offering all sorts of suggestions as to how score is stored, and a post from Warboy basically saying that he won't tell.

I don't mind losing because I did something wrong. Losing because the RNG did something on the other side of the planet that I can't even know about sucks.

[Scorrpio]

I got to say that the game might need some attention with respect to early game balancing, specifically as to when faction activity picks up.   I have done detailed analysis of research tree and drove straight for the key techs, and went for the most optimal money making manufactures.  Even so, I just barely managed to get enough bases/coverage to not run the campaign into ground.   I got a negative score in August, but by mid-September I had four bases with hyperwave decoders, and was able to clamp down on all that jazz.   But that was version F3.  With the research and manufacturing changes made since, I highly doubt I would be able to scrape by financially.   

[Devon_v]

I got to say that the game might need some attention with respect to early game balancing, specifically as to when faction activity picks up.   I have done detailed analysis of research tree and drove straight for the key techs, and went for the most optimal money making manufactures.  Even so, I just barely managed to get enough bases/coverage to not run the campaign into ground.   I got a negative score in August, but by mid-September I had four bases with hyperwave decoders, and was able to clamp down on all that jazz.   But that was version F3.  With the research and manufacturing changes made since, I highly doubt I would be able to scrape by financially.

Four bases? I have 1 and a half and I'm trying to afford outfitting an air force. Chateau seems to take forever to make now, while maintenance sucks away more than your protection racket is worth. I mean bases cost a million, which is about what you can make in a month once you get Chateau, but then maintenance eats a quarter of it after wiping out your protection money completely.

Is the game meant to be playable at all blind, or are you supposed to have the strategy guide in your lap at every step of the way? No sarcasm, legit question.

Edit: Apparently the solution is to give yourself research points. They add to score in a straight 1:1 ratio.

Edit: Edit: Wow. It took the factions all of three days to drop -500 on me in October. How are you supposed to combat that?

Edit: Edit: Edit: And -1000 at the end of the week. I think something's broken.

[greattuna]

Re: fireball launcher: the reason it can't really down a cyberdisk is that it only deals standard incendiary damage to it unlike the fancy white phosphorus stuff. That's why I was carrying Willie Petes in previous campaign: they can deal massive damage to most armored units.

Re: early game: lol, I may have ended up in worse situation than you all. November December of the first year, and I only just researched workshop. Why? Because:

1. Tons of interrogations, and they're still not quite exhausted, and
2. I've got no idea what I'm supposed to research to actually progress, and that's with spoilered tech-tree on hand. Tons of loot is piled up on you, and discerning between things that are immediately important and things that are important, but should be kept for later, is not easy.

I'll admit that it's mostly my fault, since I want to research everything from my prisoners before I start selling them, but if I just keep them, prisons get overcrowded very quickly.
Even then, I think I can last at least a few months more: I have these fancy "world lore" and "activites" tech on hand, and they give a lot of score. I am also laying the foundation of the industrial base to keep my budget in black. Hopefully it won't be invaded by the crackdowns later on...

[Ethereal_Medic]

In the early stages (year 1-2 - depending on difficulty) you have to sell captives to boost your income.
Civilians got a lot of stuff to be squeezed out of them and every single small ship-engine is worth 100k that adds up quickly once you can fuel a shark jetbike / battery-hunting craft. If your game runs poorly with many wounds you either invest in more hands or focus on maxing out your extractors/workshops. I build 3 extractors in the early game to get as much workforce as possible.

Goal 1 is to have some sort of armor better than warrior and decent firearms. Throwing will be outclassed quickly but remain usefull for grenades.
Goal 2 is to get x-grog [m] and capitilize on this.
Goal 3 will be maxing out brainers usually.
With the main base fully brainforced, it'll be a long way till you get the refinery up and running to make loads of dosh by selling extracted chemicals.

Between those cornerstones, bad/good things will happen.
Mentioning the jumping in enemy difficulty it's a rollercoaster and can be jump between cakewalk and immediate retreat (hello stargods-terror-mission in October 2601...)

[Scorrpio]

Problem is, high point-giving researches are not that easy to come by either.   Definitely not with the cost of brainers.  When infamy bonus was 500 per point, brainers kinda-sorta payed for themselves, but that has been cut almost in half.   And the high pointers are typically the 'fluff' and the 'socials'.  Sure, you need those too, but most weapon/armor/ship tech is low points.

[sinisteragent]

Is there already an innate boost to succeeding in a generated early mission? If not, a small guaranteed bonus to bringing down watchtowers/churches/warehouses/etc could help, much like how in vanilla you get an automatic "command centre destroyed" bonus for killing everyone in an alien base.

[desert]

What causes major score penalties these days? I've not yet contacted the mutant alliance, I'm running missions, and yet my score in September just keeps plummeting. I complete research, finish missions, check my score. I'm being credited for my victories, then a few days later everything I've gained and more just gets wiped out. I was at -1000, clawed my way back up to -800 in a few days, and then end of the week I'm -1500.

I dealt with this too, and believe that the scoring formula does not produce the sort of early-game incentive or play that Piratez may intend. Unless you play it like XCom, or like a typical tech-blitz strategy game. Definitely feels more like world domination than casual piracy in that way.

It was also discussed on Page 12 of the "git good" thread on the front page of the subforum here. The cheat solution is to either increase mission/research score values in your save file, or to decrease enemy activity for the current month. Each country/region has its own activity item, with subitems for each month. These are demarcated with dashes in the formatting.

Balance is an interesting question, small and large, as well as playstyle. I am in September of my second year, just bought my first airship other than the starting craft, and added on my first new fighters a few months ago. Relying on loot (50 missions?), I have 2 bases, 10 hands, 7 researchers, 25 runts, and a net worth of around $10 million, double that if you count treasure reserves. At first I funded myself by mining Hellerium, but the vintner's business is a mint...ner's business. I could retire from piracy now and start an LLC to produce and market my wines.
In combat, melee is super strong, with axes and maces smashing right through power armor (no muskets for that mission, at least). Thrown rocks can wipe out almost any unarmored (<25?) enemy in short order. 75%+ hostages in a given battle is always a good target to aim for.