Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N10 24-Nov-2024 Aurora's Dawn

[mercy]

The Horde:
■Expeditions miniMOD■
(Highest difficulty/ironman)
A mixed mob of peasants in amazing hunter attire, Hands + Founding Übers storming an Academy Outpost.
52 soldiers.
Earlier I tried 3 Founding Übers + 24 Peasant Hunter Archers, but we were massacred and I could only kill 1 drone + ~a fifth of the enemy forces.

I tested 40-44 in XCOM-Files and it was still not too boring. I'm planning a playthrough equipping only looted weapons, bows, melee lighter chop-chop, six shooters.  Unfortunately the beginning Hunting Bow appears to be [almost] useless against giant beetles and totally useless against Academy Drones.   So there have to be six-shooters, because muskets and flintlocks right at the beginning suck major arse regards TU usage & reload. A lot of our better looted weapons are already out of ammo. So I equipped what is left. This way anything they loot or eyeballing eagerly in the hands of the enemy remains a MustHave™©℗® Epic Weapon!! 

It's very satisfying to start as a beggar in rags, KO an enemy, take his weapon and kill the next enemy with it!

[Rince Wind]

If you don't mind producing simple things like molotovs, then those drop drones really well.

[mercy]

If you don't mind producing simple things like molotovs, then those drop drones really well.

Really? I never thought machines will fall for simple fire??   But then I only have a couple Molotovs, since cannot produce them yet.

You were right!! One shot from a Molotov brought the last drone down! Excellent advice!

[krautbernd]

BLOODHOUND QUESTION

Does anybody know, from ** where ** was the bloodhound image taken from?  Which game?  It looks familiar.

Haven't played xpiratez, but if it is the same as in XCF i'd say it's probably the Hell Hound from Blood.

[mercy]

Necropirate race question:

In one of my previous runs - right near game begin - I encountered the fantastic Necropirates. They had big guns and limb chop-chop weapons equipped. Since then I was itching to encounter them, but never succeeded through multiple new games. IIRC they were wearing long coats and looked like bandits.  What is the usual Necropirate race?   I'm trying to search my previous saves for necropirates, but all I find is the race "Cannys" and they don't have long coats and don't look bandit-ey at all.. 

[wolfreal]

Canny is the race for necropirates. Depend of the map, it spawn canny gals or necropirates.

[mercy]

Kryptonite to my 52-soldier Expedition miniMOD:
(Highest difficulty/ironman)

Our weapons: spiked SMGs, grenades and crates of violence.

versus

Three Singer Zombies, Chryssalids and many simple zombies turning into Chryssalids..

During the campaign many brave and cowardly souls were lost from the original 52. What remained: I thought, arming a 27-member, able-bodied mixed mob of peasants & Hands with SMGs, grenades and crates of violence will be enough to put down those boring 3 or 4 zombies that usually came against us ** before **.. at near game begin. I was expecting a boring, short battle. I thought it usual to see a maximum of 5 enemies or so...  and then this:




Squad-wipe.. multiple times over: badly thrown crates of violence and grenades decimating my gals, gals going berserk and killing their teammates carrying lots of live-explosives.. those exploding in one place, desintegrating half a dozen nearby teammates.  Then came the super-infectious zombies...



Because I put so many soldiers on the battlefield the zombies loved this situation! They salivated at seeing so many warm, living bodies and just walked over to us  and scratched my gals killing them and created more zombies! This was a total catastrophe. 
Soon it was a full-blown zombie invasion! I brought their army to them!



Not to mention Chryssalids could only be killed, when:
1. their zombie bodies are killed,
2. so they transform into themselves
3. then they must be put down by grenades - because SMG bullets just bounced off their chitin armor.
4. when they are finally put down down and "Zzz"-sleeping
5. then they must be killed with a grenade.



But the zombies just were making more and more of themselves from my peasants... So I loaded back earlier saves dozens of times, just to see, if they are beatable.   
The smoke was so thick everywhere that enemies couldn't be seen from a safe distance at all! The zombies must have been grinning and were happily sneaking around in the thick smoke and biting my soldiers to death so easily.  This was a very depressing battle, a fatal response to my mob-tactics and my the last insane survivor was frequently panicking, until she was torn apart by a zombie coming from behind!

[Ethereal_Medic]

My Advice: Don't use smoke-cover against zombies.
They have natural sense of 40 so they simply know where your squad is hiding/lurking around.

[mercy]

My Advice: Don't use smoke-cover against zombies.
They have natural sense of 40 so they simply know where your squad is hiding/lurking around.

Thank You for the advice! I see now, it will be crucial to check the analysis section for each researched monster.

CONVOY HWP GETOUT SPACE FIX:

I'm currently testing this simple Convoy fix, where often enough my Convoy's starting position were placed in the upper or lower right corner of the map and only 2 spaces were left between the back of my Convoy and the edge of the map resulting in the clusterFCK that my HWP-s, Boozesaurs couldn't get out. Now they hopefully will!

[mercy]

Raiding a landed Government Ship:

Super-tasty laser weapons they had. The Government Security guard with the glowing green visor looks amazing!! On the third try it wasn't a squad-wipe and I got the guys + lasers. But of course all that 'never before seen tech'-loot had a rather hefty price:




Interstellar Mercenaries:
Then a new ship landed! Because we have no craft weapons, nor ships capable of carrying weapons, just a convoy, we swooped down onto this new landing with our vehicles souped up with nitro. Found Interstellar Mercenaries!  They had Gauss Weaponry + exotic tech. Of course we couldn't win, despite the fact that my Horde consisted of 70 Gals carrying either beers only - these were the cannon-fodder and the strong girls had Anchors and succeeded to vanquish 9 mercenaries, a shock trooper and a Captain among them! But of course no matter, how many times I put back the carefully backed-up saves, it was a squad-wipe.




So we resorted to running for our lives with some exotic technology hauled into the APCs:  from the 70 Gals, only a handful remained:




This was the haul: everything else the girls carried toward the APCs were lost, when the super-cool-looking Interstellar Mercenaries massacred them, like cattle.






What's curious is that there is another landed ship!  Did the super-cool looking mercenaries land again? We will soon find out!
They were Interstellar Mercenaries!
Currently they are the only thing I'm running from!

Also I found it curious, now that I can't attack any ships, they are merrily flying around with the government and mercs doing landings. But in earlier games, as soon as I started to harass ships in the air, these super-cool landings never took place!
So this was a strange silent era of ambush in our development.

[Eddie]

I discovered a pretty nice weapon combination: hammer + grav harness.
If you fly above your target and hammer down, you don't need to pass a cqc check. You then get a near 100% hit chance, even if your melee sucks. You get a melee monster without the need for actual melee skill, since the hammer only needs strength for damage.

[Dakkdakk]

O yea, thats pretty much the best way to deal with lobstermen during deep one pogroms and that one bounty mission. It also works with chainsaw type weapons, IIRC.

[Iazo]

The disadvantage being that you use a grav harness and a weapon which eats 35% TUs as opposed to fixed costs.

[Rince Wind]

Lobstermen die to axes just fine, and Wands of Airlessness (and all other choking damage) are their nemesis.

[mercy]

Armored Gnome capture?

I have completely surrounded an Armored Gnome with Cattle Prod wearing soldiers and I shocked her with multiple Gals during 3 or 4 turns, yet she seems immune to shock damage in her super-heavy armor.  She only goes down, when I successfully fry her with Fusion Torch.   Is there any way to take this girl hostage?