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

[JustTheDude/CABSHEP]

Well... You don't really need armies of peasants and SS. While they do have lower stats than gals, some of those stats can be trained to the same level as gals can. Accuracy, throwing etc.

The best use of them is of course tanks. Gnomes are fairly hard to get, while tanks can be rushed in research, so they are usefull.
There is also a couple of missions that gals can't go, so this is also something to keep in mind.

Right now I will always go for the "Male Touch" route, thanks to the gameplay becoming more of a challenge without adding more enemies, or increasing their armor. It's at this point that you start to love mortar (that feeling when you bomb Church Boot Camp, killing everyone in second turn is just... Nice). Where Gals are rather generalist and can do everything good, you have to play differently with others.
Lokk'Nars are snipers, or poison dagger silent killers. SS are the main meat that just fights. Peasants start as rather support unit for healing and such.
Gals at this point become Heavy Support and Melee specialists.

And I don't think Expeditions are too powerfull. Lack of cover on the first turn increases risk and with low HP Peasants/SS/Lokk'Nars it's a significant risk. Trucks do way better.

[legionof1]

I would point out that the change of units counting for ranks was not aimed at the high capacity slow craft, but at the economic balance of the early game. Previously if you arranged things properly in regards to garrisons and how many gals you used(nd to a lesser extent how many castaways you found) you could have had 100+ soldiers with no more cost then you started the game with.

A full roster for free is pretty ridiculous right?

Expeditions and convoys just got worse as a side effect because the budget is tighter in the early game.

[Cristao]

Well... You don't really need armies of peasants and SS. While they do have lower stats than gals, some of those stats can be trained to the same level as gals can. Accuracy, throwing etc.

The best use of them is of course tanks. Gnomes are fairly hard to get, while tanks can be rushed in research, so they are usefull.
There is also a couple of missions that gals can't go, so this is also something to keep in mind.

Right now I will always go for the "Male Touch" route, thanks to the gameplay becoming more of a challenge without adding more enemies, or increasing their armor. It's at this point that you start to love mortar (that feeling when you bomb Church Boot Camp, killing everyone in second turn is just... Nice). Where Gals are rather generalist and can do everything good, you have to play differently with others.
Lokk'Nars are snipers, or poison dagger silent killers. SS are the main meat that just fights. Peasants start as rather support unit for healing and such.
Gals at this point become Heavy Support and Melee specialists.

And I don't think Expeditions are too powerfull. Lack of cover on the first turn increases risk and with low HP Peasants/SS/Lokk'Nars it's a significant risk. Trucks do way better.

Hmm - you are right I should consider replaying with male soldiers...

[Greep]

I would point out that the change of units counting for ranks was not aimed at the high capacity slow craft, but at the economic balance of the early game. Previously if you arranged things properly in regards to garrisons and how many gals you used(nd to a lesser extent how many castaways you found) you could have had 100+ soldiers with no more cost then you started the game with.

A full roster for free is pretty ridiculous right?

Expeditions and convoys just got worse as a side effect because the budget is tighter in the early game.

Well it seems kinda equivalent:  what would you need 100+ soldiers for if not for high capacity vessels?  I mean there's base defense, but even the highest difficulty doesn't get attacks that plain dogs have a hard time with for 8 months (unless we're going to get dogs with ranks in the next update.  Pls don't xD).  Maintenance doesn't spike until you get a princess (32 hands), and I can't imagine needing a roster that large when playing a usual game with flying craft + gals until you get like a turtle or something when you can pretty easily handle a princess.  Trucks/bikes/expeditions are where you'd need that amount in the early game.

@JusttheDude:  Well, you said it yourself, you play male touch for the challenge.  Which I think is where non-ubers lie at the moment: just challenge races.  It sounds kinda hard to justify even using lochnars for underground missions now.  If I'm going to pay on average 150-200k for a lochnar garrison, why even have it?

Regarding expeditions and lack of cover:  Well you just move your most expendables first.  Like I played a ratmen mission with mostly peasants and bikes, and lost 7 peasants.  That's basically a successful mission.  I can see why expeditions (double that) are a bit too powerful with the old unranked peasants.

[SymbolicFrank]

The X-prison escape is really hard: starting at the third turn half your gals panic each turn because the morale of all of them dropped below 50%. Next time I only take gals with 80+ bravery, to see if that helps a bit.

And I really dislike it that on average, the enemy only has to hit one of your gals once or twice with their superior weapons to kill them, while your gals have to hit those enemies more than five times with the best weapon they can use. Half the weapons I loot are superior to what my gals are armed with, so I have to sell them because I'm not allowed to use them and cannot research them. That sucks quite a bit.

Either allow easy replacement of gals, which goes against the very slow improvement curve, or allow them to use lethal weapons. And the same goes for armor.

[Rubber Cannonball]

And I really dislike it that on average, the enemy only has to hit one of your gals once or twice with their superior weapons to kill them, while your gals have to hit those enemies more than five times with the best weapon they can use. Half the weapons I loot are superior to what my gals are armed with, ...

This is the very essence of "UFO: Enemy Unknown/X-COM: UFO Defense" the original game!  Did you try vanilla openxcom?  Did you like it?  If you are not proficient with vanilla, you'll most likely have a hard time with X-Piratez.

Either allow easy replacement of gals, which goes against the very slow improvement curve, or allow them to use lethal weapons. And the same goes for armor.

There is easy replacement of gals, all it takes is cash.  Perhaps you have neglected some early research topics.

There are plenty of lethal weapons some of which are available from the very beginning.  Don't expect all your gals to be toting heavy plasma 3 months in like vanilla.  Just because you can't research a weapon yet, doesn't automatically mean you can't use it.  Advanced armors probably takes the longest to get your gals equipped, just like the OG.  But the early armors are useful.

Don't be afraid to skip or abort missions where the odds are heavily stacked against you.  Try to do the high scoring ones; it will take some experience to figure out which score well.

PS If anything I said is out of date, it's because I haven't played the latest version yet.

[MemoryTAS]

There is easy replacement of gals, all it takes is cash.  Perhaps you have neglected some early research topics.

Could also be locked out if you took the "We need male touch" research option.

[Greep]

He might mean training wise.  It can be pretty easy missing the dojo if you don't know about it.

[Rince Wind]

X-Prison is the one where you start with 5 or six gals (depending on craft) in prison, right?
There are mostly low-level enemies there, just kill a few officers and most enemies will panic. You just need to find the esper or the last engineer usually.
I never had problems with that mission, but I am not sure if I played it after morale changes, definitivly haven't played it since freshness.

[Dakkdakk]

The worst you'll prob find in Xprison missions are megapol enforcers and the huge monkey guys with shields and batons, those are pretty tanky, but can be taken out easily using tech blades and other stuff you'll likely have by that point.

And your gals do get some decently lethal weapons early on. You can take out even mercs using the humble assault cannon, though it'll prob take more than a single shot. And don't neglect melee, as you can take out enemies in power armor simply by having a gal swing an axe or a hammer to their backside a few times. You can also get the krazy hannah contact going before you get a workshop, too, meaning you get access to RPG's, mortars, light, medium and heavy machineguns, all which are pretty damn deadly against anything short of maybe the star gods themselves.

And yea, if you're careful enough, you can have nearly all your gals be castaways, greatly lowering the overall upkeep. It just that I didn't really pay attention to the spike in maintenance due to using lots of peasants, since I didn't really use them much until now.

[Rubber Cannonball]

hmm, Rince Wind and Dakkdakk seem to be talking about 2 different missions.  I'm not sure which mission SymbolicFrank is talking about.

[JustTheDude/CABSHEP]

Lets make it clear: Mission where you are forced to go without gear and naked, then bust out of prison you are held should be known as "Doctor X Prison"
and the other where you are assaulting prison for mutant alliance should be known as "Megapol Prison". Nice and easy.

You need like 3-4 turns to find first enemies, start killing and Morale will return. It's not like everyone will be panicked on the same turn.

[Dakkdakk]

Ohhh yea, my mistake, I mistook the megapol prison mission for the xprison one.

[georg7490]

I'm terrebly sorry for interrupting your conversation, but could you please tell me - what was the last version of this mod where:
1. ALL options of the game were available to modify. As for now I can see that many options in main menu are locked (purple colour) and unavailable to change. Is that a joke or the diagnosis?
2. The attacking of a single enemy air unit on the globe view was available with multiple air crafts of a player. In K3 version I can see that the auther have made unavailable to minimize the air attck window jut to wait while other player's air craft will join the air battle with the same enemy's air unit.

That is... quite... i don't have decent words to describe my feelings about that gameplay "improvement".
3. I don't know what other bad surprises (like previous two) are waiting for me in K3 and further versions - so please suggest me the version of the mod that was normaly playable, just before the auther of this mod become crazy enough to made that kind of mistakes. Thank you very much for your kind attention. ^_^

p.s. about number 2 issue - when i started a new game I can see that there is no such a horror like on upper screenshot. I guess that's just a bug that happened because I was loaded in K3 a save file that was made in version 0.99C1. I guess they are not playable anymore in K3 version...

[RetroJL]

1.  I can't speak for the devs, at all, but Xpiratez is a fairly extensive total conversion mod.  One could assume most of those options are locked to prevent certain issues or exploits.   And if that doesn't work for you just go into the options file and change it yourself.  Betting some changes would mess things up royally though, Weapon self-destruction comes to mind here.

2.  AFAIK you can still attack with multiple interceptors.  Hell, it's almost required on some alien craft.

3.  Nope.  Not touching this one.  Read above.