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

[Abyss]

What is CLC? Charger Laser? (it only needs Heavy Couplings indeed). And what has super-rare Impaler to do with this? What has score for downing crafts to do with this (should it be lowered?) Collect your thoughts and focus, man, because I cannot follow your rants

I suppose that hence Craft Laser Cannon (CLC) tech is aquired before the Nuclear laser weapons tech, it must burn hellerium with every charge.
Not as much as plasma beam, but probably 1/2 or 1/3 per shot.

The main suggestion below the entire text was: Since you do aquire CLC's, the overall globe score allows you to skip battlescape mission for months (years, eternity), even the -2500/-1000 points ones with the severe positive score at the end of the month. 

I also think that battlescape craft/score balance is thoroughly designed, so I did not suggest to change it anyhow.
Main alarm comes from the point where you find yourself with high-tier weapons (XG) and Harbinger Armor, doing nothing but research and manufacture (with incremental growth of the funding too). This, in part, leads to the gap when there is no actual need in middle-high armor and firearms (Juggernaut Suit + Master Craft parted weapons).

It is pretty clear that most of the enemies are already taken and inprisoned by the moment (Minors, Guild, Academy and some Mercs).
 
CLC is comparable to the Ripper (?) cannon in terms of DPS, so it is implied that CLC should be Hellerium-fueled OR maintained with any other additional cost of expluotation. Otherwise it is a balance-deforming weapon.

What do you actually mean with "honest comparison by numbers"? I think it is pretty clear topic of discussion for what is mentioned above.

UPD:
To take down a Heavy Freighter you need roughly 250 Ripper Rounds, which equals $210K in resources (top trained gal with all maxed stats, or 350 rounds for a medium one ~$350K)
Making the equal score of 5000 points worth $700K - $900K spent on ammo resources + manufacturing time.

UPD 2:
How do you get out from the pool in the Luxury Spa?   

[Dakkdakk]

Did I simply miss it: the gap between Human power armor (140 front armor) and, say, Doom 2 armor (48 front armor) is not yet replenished with some sort of mediocre and high-end carapace armor?
Was always looking on the govt and humanists super-troopers and wonder why won't I just strip them down to pants 

Gotta agree, there is a pretty huge gap between the best human armors, while gal armors are pretty numerous and with well streamlined progression. Even in the early game there is a sizeable gap between human clothing (which isn't even armor) and piroman, then it progresses up to doom 2, and then there's a huge gap to testudo, though I guess you could use the loader suit, but the loader suit sucks :v

[Zippicus]

To take down a Heavy Freighter you need roughly 250 Ripper Rounds, which equals $210K in resources (top trained gal with all maxed stats, or 350 rounds for a medium one ~$350K)
Making the equal score of 5000 points worth $700K - $900K spent on ammo resources + manufacturing time.

I'm not sure why you think there needs to be some kind of cash/score balance.  And how do you factor in stuff like looted weapons and ammo ?  You've essentially got the same argument going there, no cost attacks for x amount of score.  And really by the time you're downing heavy freighters, cash should have long since stopped being an issue.  Hell I normally try to splash those into the ocean since they're a pain in the ass to deal with on the ground.

[Abyss]

I'm not sure why you think there needs to be some kind of cash/score balance.  And how do you factor in stuff like looted weapons and ammo ?  You've essentially got the same argument going there, no cost attacks for x amount of score.  And really by the time you're downing heavy freighters, cash should have long since stopped being an issue.  Hell I normally try to splash those into the ocean since they're a pain in the ass to deal with on the ground.

Not actually defined things in terms of cash/balance. But you are right, I consider this to be essential.
Say, you start to bring down supply ships and other crap when your income is $0,6-0,9M, and HF's when your income is roughly $1,2-2,0M. Then it makes sense. You consider whether to spend your funds on this mission or not, not only in terms of the battlefield.

I believe that literally few of us didn't abuse the strategy which I described above.
You definitely have to choose if you are going to produce the cannon rounds/missiles OR chemicals for the income. Ammo-free weaponry makes you literally bereft of this.

though I guess you could use the loader suit, but the loader suit sucks :v

Yep, sorry, forgot that the Loader is Hoomahn too.
But I want to strip the government guys too much, the armor is sexy. Isn't it fair?

[Dioxine]

Making new armors is by no ways easy, so it'll take time. Nothing is for free, and working on Jack Sparrow being more entertaining means no work on more important things.

Also, HF's with such a tiny income? Interesting, $2M income is achievable by month 2-3 easily...
Big score for downing big ships is there so you can ignore ground missions you don't like; a reward for upping your air game and reduction of workload in mid-late game.
For now, I gave a decent buff to Gauss and a minor nerf to Lascannon.

[Abyss]

Making new armors is by no ways easy, so it'll take time. Nothing is for free, and working on Jack Sparrow being more entertaining means no work on more important things.

Also, HF's with such a tiny income? Interesting, $2M income is achievable by month 2-3 easily...
Big score for downing big ships is there so you can ignore ground missions you don't like; a reward for upping your air game and reduction of workload in mid-late game.
For now, I gave a decent buff to Gauss and a minor nerf to Lascannon.

Thank you.

How do you get the income of $2M by the month 2-3 with protection payments increment of 3-10%?
I see, you've meant the overall income. I generally speak in terms of gov's payments only.
 
As for the overall Jack Sparrow balance I thought it is being calculated automatically, giving buffs to the armor and quantity of the enemies in the BF compared to the Blackbeard, which you do actually balance.

[Dakkdakk]

You can easily rack up 2mil if you're successful on every mission and sell the valuable stuff you get, like engines, money purses and bags + the infamy bonuses you get every month. Infamy bonuses are what you're looking for, since they'll always be far larger than whatever increase in income you get. Its not terribly hard to get +1mil bonuses, just make sure to rack up your score on the easy missions that give lots of score, like death and taxes.
Most D level bounty hunter missions also give lots of score for very little effort.

Making new armors is by no ways easy, so it'll take time. Nothing is for free, and working on Jack Sparrow being more entertaining means no work on more important things.

Also, HF's with such a tiny income? Interesting, $2M income is achievable by month 2-3 easily...
Big score for downing big ships is there so you can ignore ground missions you don't like; a reward for upping your air game and reduction of workload in mid-late game.
For now, I gave a decent buff to Gauss and a minor nerf to Lascannon.

I understand Dioxine, don't worry about it. I can't donate just yet, but I'll make sure to do it once I got myself some extra cashmonies so I don't end up donating pennies. I actualy had a decent amount on my paypal recently but I cashed it before I got approved on the forums.

Game is fine as it is, IMHO, I just mentioned the human armor gaps since its the first time I actualy started using slave soldiers seriously. The early peltast -> piroman/tac vest gap is by no means unbearable large, just larger than the gap between gal clothing -> warrior armor. The only signficant gap, IMO, is the doom2 armor -> testudo.

[sanyaskillpro]

Hell I normally try to splash those into the ocean since they're a pain in the ass to deal with on the ground.

I actually like the ship design. Probably the most fun ship to breach. The safest place is actually on the ships roof, because enemies can't access it and it's high and wide enough so you're pretty safe if crouched. Usually i try to rush the roof with flyers filled with bombs and then start unloading into the windows.

[Dakkdakk]

Continuing the human armor late game gap: the doom2 -> testudo gap is kinda annoying mostly because by then you're constantly facing human enemies using some variation of carapace armor, and it feels odd lore and gameplay wise that you can't at least craft similar armor, or even just strip down hostages that wear them to get a damaged version which you can then repair, though that would take creating two armor variants for every armor, which is annoying, so just being able to craft them from the same materials you get from dead/interrogated enemies would be fine.

[Dioxine]

Doom mk.2 armor is better than any carapace, tho...
Also I'm working on defender variant for humans already (this is to fix weird stuff where Mil Transports carry around armor for Ubers...).
Also "makes sense lore wise" doesn't mean I can just conjure it from thin air.

Also as in "free" I did not mean money, donations are always welcome although they cover maybe 10% of my expenses at best (depending on how you assume a normal hourly wage is). So donations by themselves do not influence my decisions in any significant way. Not free as in time and energy wasted, not used towards making more interesting stuff.

[Abyss]

You can easily rack up 2mil if you're successful on every mission and sell the valuable stuff you get, like engines, money purses and bags + the infamy bonuses you get every month.

I'll bring it back: only govt funding is evaluated in terms of stability and straight (as I believe, plus-minus) correlation of funding and tech, and thus missions occurence too. Not specifying infamy bonuses either.

[Zippicus]

I'll bring it back: only govt funding is evaluated in terms of stability and straight (as I believe, plus-minus) correlation of funding and tech, and thus missions occurence too. Not specifying infamy bonuses either.

Government funding is fairly subjective, it's essentially performance based.  It's not really something you can rely on to be stable and consistent due to the random nature of missions.  Generally speaking as long as your infamy is high it will increase but factions can do missions that can cause governments to lower your funding or stop funding you altogether, and if it's outside your radar range you can't do anything about it.  The protection racket is definitely one source of income but I'm not sure it's anything you can use as a baseline, again due to the random nature of missions.  And Infamy isn't exactly the same as a base score of accomplishments.  If you shoot one guy you're score may go up or down depending on who you shoot.

It seems like you're thinking about this like the vanilla xcom where we play the global heroes saving the world (or apparently not in this case, since the aliens won in the pirates universe).  In pirates we're outlaws, barely tolerated by local governments mainly because we're causing problems for the 5 major factions.  The local government will turn on you and try to murder you along with everyone else if you piss them off enough.  You can play the game just fine with everyone hating you.

[Abyss]

The protection racket is definitely one source of income but I'm not sure it's anything you can use as a baseline, again due to the random nature of missions.

Generally speaking, yes. In terms of one month. But for the wide statical sampling there is general growth of 2-5% for each month before the unlimited ammo CLC's and 7-10% right after. 

It seems like you're thinking about this like the vanilla xcom where we play the global heroes saving the world (or apparently not in this case, since the aliens won in the pirates universe). 

Please, you had it lost during the topic, I was arguing against the free superscore, not against anything else you've just mentioned. It's my 3-th playthrough with Jack Sparrow/Ironman throughout different versions. Within this tread I point something that I think to be challengebreaking.

And! I do not estimate myself as the tactics genious, so basically I believe this stuff breaks the challenge for any other guy who plays Piratez

[Zippicus]

Generally speaking, yes. In terms of one month. But for the wide statical sampling there is general growth of 2-5% for each month before the unlimited ammo CLC's and 7-10% right after. 
Please, you had it lost during the topic, I was arguing against the free superscore, not against anything else you've just mentioned. It's my 3-th playthrough with Jack Sparrow/Ironman throughout different versions. Within this tread I point something that I think to be challengebreaking.

And! I do not estimate myself as the tactics genious, so basically I believe that this stuff breaks the challenge for any other guy who plays Piratez

I guess I'm not seeing that growth you're talking about since I rarely shoot down any ships at all, so I'm essentially going 0 cost from day one, it always seemed more efficient to me so that's what I did.  More loot, more captives, etc.  That kind of ties in with what you're talking about here, I'm always at what you're referring to as "free superscore"  but really that's just a drop in the bucket cash wise to me.  I make way more cash from captives, loot, and goods production than I ever will from the infamy bonus, it's always been just that to me, a bonus.  Infamy has always been something to me that doesn't really matter as long as it's positive so I can keep playing.  I get that you see some sort of problem with lascannons, so I would suggest that you not use them if they bother you that much.  I play just fine without lascannons (not because I think they're OP, but because I think they suck), you can too.

[Dakkdakk]

Downing ships does help but its still a small thing in comparison to what some missions can give you. Take for example the goblin zaxx d level bounty mission in which you have to blow up a red barn. Due to the sheer amount of (useless?) stuff you get from that mission, you can get +800 score from that mission alone, which is one of the easiest missions in the entire game, with the only easier one being the aircar race one, as long as you have a fast vessel that the mission allows.

And yes, while the missions are pretty much random, you can get loads of score just from missions and research alone without shooting down any ships. Hell, I only very rarely shoot down any ships, and my score is always above 2k, sometimes way more depending on what missions I get.
Really though, the amount of money you make through infamy is a secondary source of income at best once you get your alcohol production going, and probably even before that. You won't need those ship engines for a long time, and you can't do anything other than sell money chips for an even longer time, so already you're getting loads of cash with the loot you get on missions.

In short, can you get loads of free score and substantially increase your income by downing smaller ships with the charger laser? Certainly. Does it beat a factory base pumping out alcohol and other goodies nonstop? Nah. Money stops being part of the challenge at that point anyway, with the actual challenge being not getting murdered by mercs, star gods, etc.