Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N8 28-Apr-2024 Labyrinthus Noctis

[Mathel]

Demon Rituals (Small creatures only) mission is useful because it spawns the Avenger armor.

It is a Lokk'Nar only armor that translates fully into the Shadowrealms, allowing you to field a decently shielded unit with a strong melee attack without much tech.

[Vakrug]

Also, as i understand it, the game generates a finite amount of missions, so every new crap mission type you research detracts from the amount of actually good missions you'll get. So not only did you waste research to unlock a crap mission, you'll also detract from good ones.

That is really upsetting if true.

Like, take zombie bait. What's the actual point of researching it? I'd much rather game generates an academy mission for me...

I guess this is a way to get live/dead fire zombie. Are you sure this mission removes academy missions?

Underground missions. So i spend research to have to maintain a compliment of lokknars that are useless for every other mission type? Why would i do that. Demon god altars only give you dream library

Oh, not only that! In fact Demon god altars is the best underground mission which makes efforts worth it.

Metro can absolutely fuck your crappy small units and wipe the entire contingent along with all your gnomes.

I also agree that metro missions are too hard. In fact I was able to complete only regular ones (without radiation, pollution and psychedelics). And without laser drill it is very easy to get isolated rooms.

Cruising counsellors. Awful mission, isn't difficult just extremely bloody annoying. And it gives you... a counsellor(useless for research), and maybe some thralls, if you're willing to spend an our stunning every last unit. The loot would be worthwhile, if the mission didn't take 200 turns of flying around that awful ship level. Then again, i can get the same amount of cash from any other mission type. Oh and ALSO you have to buy and sell a rail pod for it.

Useless in research? Aren't counsellors required to lure Gudrun? Also, you are probably doing this mission wrong if it takes 200 turns. You can only bring 1 gal, but this doesn't mean that you must be alone. You can bring many parrots with you.

Mansion invasions, guild rep mansion - okay loot, but i can get same loot from a normal mission, and without the restrictions bullshit.

Really? Aren't "illegal uranium" is what you are after? Also normal mission with ~4M loot? I don't think so.

Highway star - does anyone actually ever research this? A restricted underwater mission with gnomes specifically... why would i do that to myself?

The only good purpose for that bike is to win land races, in my opinion. Also it is not so valuable as "Shark" to loose.

Highway house - a crappy mission that only serves to get the ability to shoot down civilian cars early

Ehhh... Aren't that enough reward?

UAC missions - no good loot, the level has explosive barrels on your spawn. Again, if it had some decent loot, but it's just crap

Again, not only crap. Noteworthy are "Zeerust Carbine", that is hard to get otherwise, and XENFORCER. But the likelihood to loose all squad is high.

why would you build a casino, when you can build a factory instead?

Strange comparison... You cant use neutronium chips is factory...

Or why would you hoard chips to invest in a mint, when applenomics are so much better?

First of all, you don't need to hoard chips to invest in a mint. In fact, mint is the reason you don't hoard red chips to unlock casino and other stuff. And applenomics is not more profitable than Obsidian and Gold chips production, I checked.

lasers that everyone carries by month 8

Pocket Las-Charger?

In the end I can agree that balance is not the strongest part of XPiratez. It is variety that makes it great.

[Solarius Scorch]

There are no fucking "mission slots", will you people drop this dumbass myth already?!
Seriously, who's coming up with this shit? And why do people believe it? That's beyond me.

[Delian]

Also, as i understand it, the game generates a finite amount of missions

Wrong. The more missions you research, the more will be generated at the start of each month. That's because most mission scripts in this mod set the useTable: false, which means that, unlike the original game, they are generated independently of other missions and can appear unlimited times. Of course, they also set executionOdds, so there's randomness in whether they appear or not. Proof? In the original game, only 1-2 missions were generated at the start of a new month. But in xpz, even the first month already generates 10+ missions.

[Juku121]

There are no fucking "mission slots", will you people drop this dumbass myth already?!
Seriously, who's coming up with this shit? And why do people believe it?

Because the original game did have the mission tables, which - while not exactly 'mission slots' - were close enough? And someone not familiar with Piratez internals could quite justifiably think the same underlying mechanic was carried over.

Granted, some playtesting (or just playing) would put an end to this impression, if you paid attention.

[cheeen]

I've looked at the sources, and the game seems to be spawning finite number of missions per region. You also get more rng checks per missions types.

So, while you will get more missions overall as you unlock new ones, at some point crap missions may be taking up slots for the good missions. I'm not sure from sources, 'cause the engine is typical OOP spaghetti, but from looking at the save file for my old campaign and for this one, it does seem that crap missions take up slots.

[cheeen]

There are no fucking "mission slots", will you people drop this dumbass myth already?!
Seriously, who's coming up with this shit? And why do people believe it? That's beyond me.

Can you explain how GeoscapeState:4037 works? There are region slots there. Seems like more mission types would exhaust the list faster. If missions are pure rng, how come you get sameish amount of them per month?

[Delian]

Because that's how rng statistics work. If you throw a coin 100 times, then the most likely outcome is the most average one, that is, 50 tails and 50 heads. It's possible, but unlikely that you'd get 60 tails and 40 heads. But again, that region list is only used by missions that have useTable set to true, which most missions do not.

Trivia: In N7, the starting month of the game can generate anywhere between 7 and 38 missions, on average 15.8

[Solarius Scorch]

Can you explain how GeoscapeState:4037 works? There are region slots there. Seems like more mission types would exhaust the list faster. If missions are pure rng, how come you get sameish amount of them per month?

The number of regions is limited, but most missions do not use their tables; perhaps none.
Instead, missions are spawned from missionScripts. And I honestly don't think that the same region can't be chosen twice. If I'm wrong, I'll eat a whole lemon.
Not sure about the sameish amount of missions per month, would need to examine the missionScripts, and right now I'm kind of too lazy to do that.

[Juku121]

Instead, missions are spawned from missionScripts. And I honestly don't think that the same region can't be chosen twice. If I'm wrong, I'll eat a whole lemon.

AFAIK, it mostly can. With one exception: if you use multiple triggers for the same deployment with 'objective: 3', you can only have one such mission per month per region specified (or the default list of eligible regions, if nothing is specified). And most missions nowadays seem to be the 'fake' terror missions with 'objective: 3'.

Not too bad if you have plenty of regions in the list. Kinda bad if the list has two regions and there are 8+ triggers. Means pure script-and-probability-based mission counting will be off, too.


Also, base defences called from scripts with 'targetBaseOdds' can also only target a base no more than once per month.

[yuriski]

Maybe I am just stupid, but: If the game technically can go on forever, how could it have a finite amount of missions?

And if it's about the amount of missions that can spawn each month: Duh? A month has a finite amount of days, so of course there can only be a finite amount of missions.

[Juku121]

No, the question was about a finite and fixed amount of mission slots. Which could get filled with trash missions instead of the stuff you actually want.

This is fortunately not how the game works, but the old table-based mission generation was somewhat like that. But most Piratez missions come from mission scripts and are largely independent of one another.


Also, while the game could technically go on forever, your computer or other device (or your body ) will most likely give up before 2200. And you can only have a finite number till then, the exact number depending on how hard you nolife a single game of Piratez.

[Mathel]

And if it's about the amount of missions that can spawn each month: Duh? A month has a finite amount of days, so of course there can only be a finite amount of missions.

There is nothing preventing multiple missions from appearing in the same game second. Which means an infinite number of missions could spawn in a single month. (Well aside of the fact that attempting to spawn that many missions would crash your computer.)

The only way you could reach all of them though is, if they were base defence missions. Any other missions require a craft to get you there, and every craft takes at least a minute to take off from the base, which would limit you to 8*7*60*24*31 = 2 499 840 missions outside your own bases, if they all spawned one pixel away from your bases. (hangars per base * number of bases * minutes in hour * hours in day * days in longest month)

[shinr]

There is nothing preventing multiple missions from appearing in the same game second.

This happened to me recently.

A Bandit Mission spawned, so I pressed "I", clicked on the Airbus, clicked on the mission...

And it presented a choice between the Bandits and the Highway House.

I was like, "Wha?", but an in-game hour later, a belayed notification about the Highway House appeared.

I guess that game cannot show more that one mission notification at the same hour, even one-after-another.

[Juku121]

The game deliberately refuses to show more than one 'new mission site' notification per hour. There's special code for it.

So if the stars align, you 'detect' mission sites by randomly clicking on the globe.