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Author Topic: Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N7 16-Dec-2023 Flying Tiger, Hidden Tentacle  (Read 3609717 times)

Offline Greep

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - K2 - 2 Nov - Ice Ice Cool
« Reply #7545 on: February 11, 2020, 02:26:13 am »
I think he's referring to the hunter killers killing you if you minimize windows.  The current solution to this is, I believe, either:

1) having your faster ships  target follow your slowest ships , then have the slowest ship target the enemy, attacking at once, or
2) attacking with a ship faster than the hunter killer.  But you'd have to know the ship's max speed first.

I've voiced my concern with this as well, but for now you might want to just leave those guys alone unless you want to check out the little questions thread for some advice on it.

Regarding locked options, I mean, it is a total conversion mod as said above.  Some have to be locked because they will literally break the mod.

Also, isn't 0.99C like a zillion updates ago?  The mod is pretty good at keeping old save games workable with some slight updates, but that's... old.
« Last Edit: February 11, 2020, 03:12:41 am by Greep »

Offline Rubber Cannonball

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - K2 - 2 Nov - Ice Ice Cool
« Reply #7546 on: February 11, 2020, 04:34:38 am »
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? :(

In earlier versions of OXCE, the player had to read the readme file and manually set the options that were considered important by the modder for the mod to work as intended.  In later versions, it became possible for the mod to automatically set the required options as needed so the player didn't have to do it manually.  All the options that don't cause problems for the mod are still manually configurable.

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".

In more recent versions of OXCE, it became possible for the enemy to seek out and attack the player's aircraft with "Hunter Killer" ufos.  In X-Piratez, only Hunter Killer shippings will have active attack radars indicated by a large circle around the enemy craft.  If your craft get inside the Hunter Killer's radar range, it will try to attack your craft.  If it intercepts your craft, the intercept window pops up, but you don't have all the usual buttons since your craft is being attacked.  To protect your craft, you can now have escort fighters as Greep described in his point 1.  All your craft have to be together at the moment of intercept in order to defend together.  If the enemy ufo is not a Hunter Killer, then all of the normal buttons including minimize are available in the intercept window.

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. ^_^

Last I checked, the mod was unavailable on the mod portal.  As for the next version, the only thing I'm pretty sure of is a lot of scenery changes.

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...

Nope not a bug, you will run into them again.  Just not every red blip is a hunterkiller.  If you really want to avoid these changes either stick with 0.99C1 or make a mod for K2.  But I recommend that you give K2 a chance, the air game is only a little bit harder.  There are still plenty of pink site missions.  I don't think K3 was ever officially released although I've heard rumors that some people had seen a not quite complete K3. 

Offline IRBaboon

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Re: Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - K2 - 2 Nov - Ice Ice Cool
« Reply #7547 on: February 11, 2020, 09:35:59 am »
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 powerful. 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.

I quite liked the convoy, especially if by absolute luck I can nail a pogrom or some big assault. Its quite a satisfying and feeling to have everyone unload from the APCs, setup some mortars, slowly pass ammo out from my pile of gear, setup a perimeter, setup a triage station for the peasants who are bleeding out, and slowly flush everyone out. Mmm, mmm. Its not even efficient. Its just..... what's the right word? What's the word for that feeling when you have lot's of soldiers and weapons and apcs and you can unpack them slowly and this reminds you how large an organization of soldiers you have gradually created, and you have lot's of mortars and can likely deal with anything? Yeah, that feeling. Can't quite remember the exact word for it....

Offline Rince Wind

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - K2 - 2 Nov - Ice Ice Cool
« Reply #7548 on: February 11, 2020, 02:25:25 pm »
Satisfying

Offline SymbolicFrank

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - K2 - 2 Nov - Ice Ice Cool
« Reply #7549 on: February 15, 2020, 01:21:09 am »
I lost interest, so it took a while:

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.

I played Vanilla and OpenXCom many times. I love them, because they're a unique genre all by themselves (UFO and TFTD). Yes, the aliens are very accurate and hit hard, so I expect to lose multiple soldiers every mission. It's part of the game, and they're easily replaceable. The main difference between a rookie and an officer is the morale gained, or lost when killed. And I always sack every soldier with less than 40-50 morale.

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

In Piratez, the replacement soldiers are hard to get or useless wimps. Yes, even the extremely expensive veterans and freaks. The freaks get *ONE* stat that is on par with a Lunatic, and all the other ones will never get good.

Quote
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.

Well, in the third month or so, the enemy simply nuked all but two of my gals. BOOM! Now, three years in, I still haven't got anything even half as lethal.

And while chain mail is cool for the first two years, it doesn't make much difference afterwards. Your gals still melt after a single attack, if it is more dangerous than civilians.

And, yes, I aborted more than half the missions because they were hopeless. Not in the least because I couldn't afford to lose the gals and hardware.

In Piratez, losing gals and equipment is punished harshly and improvement is extremely glacial. Which is the opposite of what made the originals the classics they are.

In the originals I research laser weapons and I can take on the aliens on equal terms. In Piratez, I research thousands of things that sound cool but require tens of requisites and are obsolete the moment they are available. My gals get comparatively weaker all the time.

It's probably fun if you spend a few years learning the optimal research route and just like to play the same few battles again, again, again and again, while you get weaker if the RNG doesn't give you one of the requisites. But who cares, if you lose, you start a new game that is going to take half a year to finish.

I like replayability and diversity, but I'm no masochist.

Then again, the Quickmind let's play shows that melee is very powerful. Throw your weapons and armor away, they will only hamper you! It's like a Japanese game, where a Katana beats a nuke, and a single, unarmed combatant slaughters battalions of soldiers armed with firearms.

Offline Ves

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - K2 - 2 Nov - Ice Ice Cool
« Reply #7550 on: February 15, 2020, 06:10:19 am »
It isn't for everyone. If slow tech progress annoys you i'd avoid the megamods and take a look at the mods that only modify the originals to some extent. The last sentence really says a lot, since melee is a cornerstone throughout the entire campaign. It is not worth it if it frustrates you.

Offline Greep

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - K2 - 2 Nov - Ice Ice Cool
« Reply #7551 on: February 15, 2020, 07:02:36 am »
Well, experienced gals being unreplaceable in the first year of the campaign is somewhat valid concern, male touch/peasants used to be another way of playing that played more to that angle, but not so much when they cost 10x the maintenance they used to. 

But lategame, even midgame really, that's what dojos + martial arts afterwards are for.  If the dojo is too slow, build more than one base with a dojo.  Train gals before you need them.

Melee is very very nice, but if I had to choose between ranged or melee only, I'd probably go with ranged.  Melee seems super powerful, but it's also super risky.

Offline Rubber Cannonball

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - K2 - 2 Nov - Ice Ice Cool
« Reply #7552 on: February 15, 2020, 05:42:32 pm »
Well, in the third month or so, the enemy simply nuked all but two of my gals. BOOM! Now, three years in, I still haven't got anything even half as lethal.

Well if you want nukes early, you will have to take them away from those that have them.  And melee will probably play a big part in successfully taking them, but you are risking a squad wipe to do it.  Smash, grab, and flee recommended if attempting.

In the originals I research laser weapons and I can take on the aliens on equal terms. In Piratez, I research thousands of things that sound cool but require tens of requisites and are obsolete the moment they are available. My gals get comparatively weaker all the time.

It's probably fun if you spend a few years learning the optimal research route and just like to play the same few battles again, again, again and again, while you get weaker if the RNG doesn't give you one of the requisites. But who cares, if you lose, you start a new game that is going to take half a year to finish.

I don't think there is an optimum research on purpose by the mod design.  And there are various gateway researches that keep the player from going very deep in any one direction too soon.  I think the player needs to balance researching new general topics with researching captives and loot items.  Since many research topics have multiple sources due to the get one frees attached to captives and some items, the only optimization I see is choosing the quickest way in brainer days.  You will eventually research practically everything you can eventually anyways when you hit the bottlenecks.  Note, don't forget to build new facility types as some topics require them to show up.  But it doesn't make sense to repeatedly research 10 brainer day captives to get 1 brainer day topics via get one free.  There's an endless supply of most mooks anyways.  If a topic doesn't have symbols on it -=# throw 1 brainer on it even if it consumes a weapon unless you think it's a rare one and there are other sources for the research topic.  Research is very incremental, it might take 50-100 topics to have the same game impact as one topic did in vanilla.  Research pace of 20% a year is probably good enough, first year will likely be less but you will catch up the second year.  You can go faster of course but your runts may have a hard time keeping pace with producing the things your brainers unlock.

There are many mission types available, there isn't a good reason just to fixate on a mission you know has a chance of giving you a needed item.

The factions get stronger on a much slower pace than the aliens in vanilla.  Your squad really shouldn't be getting comparatively weaker.  There are some factions that are much stronger than your squad, however.  It is best not to piss them off too much early in the game.

As others have said, you might find some of the shorter mods more to your liking.  In this mod you're on a 5 (game) year mission: to explore a strange new world, to seek out and exploit new factions, to boldly go where no über gal has gone before.  (with apologies to Gene and the umlaut looks cooler)

Offline Greep

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - K2 - 2 Nov - Ice Ice Cool
« Reply #7553 on: February 17, 2020, 08:12:36 am »
These hunter killers are getting really annoying.  I've randomly lost an early game transport twice in the same month.  Lost over a million credits, spending most of the month rebuilding javelins, axes.  Wasting a lot of time refitting inventory to crafts instead of playing the game.

Is there any way to deal with this early game or is this just kinda lame at the moment?
« Last Edit: February 17, 2020, 08:17:54 am by Greep »

Offline Rubber Cannonball

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - K2 - 2 Nov - Ice Ice Cool
« Reply #7554 on: February 17, 2020, 08:43:43 am »
If you are losing them on the return trip to base after mission where you can't avoid them, I believe a later OXCE version has remedied that.

Edit:
Otherwise, in the early game you may have to use the activity graphs as a poor man's radar.  Flying ufos score a point every 30 minutes in the region they are flying over.  Landed ufos score 2 points every 30 minutes.  Enemy bases will score points throughout the month; not sure how often they score maybe once a day.  I don't think pink sites score anything while they are active and most of them don't score anything when they disappear either.  Don't forget that there are more regions than there are room for buttons to turn their graphs on; use the mousewheel to scroll the buttons.  Also the colors are reused so be careful.  The mousepad + - keys zoom in and out on the graphs to make it easier to tell if any are changing although it is still kind of a PITA.  The graphs are updated for ufo activity every 30 minutes, so detection by graph is only behind 30 minutes.  I don't know if there are any ufos that don't score points while flying.
« Last Edit: February 17, 2020, 09:31:01 am by Rubber Cannonball »

Offline Greep

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - K2 - 2 Nov - Ice Ice Cool
« Reply #7555 on: February 17, 2020, 09:15:56 am »
Either direction, the radar on early game transports is poor.  Really any early game ship actually, even if I wanted to do the hassle of accompanying craft every single embark (not really -_-)

Edit: regarding graph watching, there's no way I'm doing that lol.

I guess the K versions are just a bit rough on account of not many people being able to playtest it.  I have to admit I'm not seeing the point of hunter killers being added to piratez.  It seems to be made for mods where you're supposed to be able to shoot down any ship and use interceptors to accompany transports, and this is simply not the case with piratez.
« Last Edit: February 17, 2020, 09:59:40 am by Greep »

Offline legionof1

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - K2 - 2 Nov - Ice Ice Cool
« Reply #7556 on: February 18, 2020, 05:41:28 am »
The point of HKs to force the player into being competent at the air game, and reaching the tools/techs to do so. Before HKs there where a number of important research items that one could only find on flying craft, and players would totally ignore the air game and then complain the mod was unfinishable or broken.

Dioxine chose the kick player in the wallet until they get the message they need air power.

A second reason was to give faction bases a little more bite and force you to engage and destroy them. People used to ignore 5 or 6 bases in the late game. Or worse use them as free equipment farming. Now supply ships don't land and bases try to actively interfere with operations.

Granted these changes are quite fresh and still need fine tuning. But then Hobbes made his declaration and derailed fresh releases and further development.   

Offline spazeroid

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - K2 - 2 Nov - Ice Ice Cool
« Reply #7557 on: February 18, 2020, 01:39:45 pm »
Hello,

I joined the forum just to say that this is in my humble estimation probably one of the finest games ever made. I grew up playing original abandonware x-com. I loved the hell out of it. Then I found this mod and the world shifted for me so to speak. I have probably put 200-300 hours into it, across several games. It just keeps getting bigger and my mind is not prepared for that. Thank you so much dioxine, for making this mod. The fact that it exists continually leaves me amazed.

I'm also here to report a possible bug. so I'm about 2/3 of the way through the game. It's march 2603. I have hellerium munitions, smart guns, civilization and nightmares. I still don't have voodoo. I got the first 2 events in what I think is the voodoo initiation event chain, but I can't get the third one. It's so bad I'm thinking of save editing just so I can get my hands on saucy magic. Am I doing something wrong?

The campaign itself is from multiple versions ago, which I keep updating as I go along. I got saves back to January of last year, so it's probably a side effect of a too old campaign. What makes me think something is messing up is that I have gotten the mad scribblings quest twice, despite managing to use the mad scribblings once. (On a related note, it is borderline painful to find any consumer goods past the mid point of the game.)

Is there any legitimate way to solve this problem? Or should I dabble in dark arts?

P.S.: I'm probably going to send you money.

Online Meridian

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - K2 - 2 Nov - Ice Ice Cool
« Reply #7558 on: February 18, 2020, 02:10:00 pm »
I'm also here to report a possible bug. so I'm about 2/3 of the way through the game. It's march 2603. I have hellerium munitions, smart guns, civilization and nightmares. I still don't have voodoo. I got the first 2 events in what I think is the voodoo initiation event chain, but I can't get the third one. It's so bad I'm thinking of save editing just so I can get my hands on saucy magic. Am I doing something wrong?

You can use the tech tree viewer in game (press Q in geoscape) to see what's missing.

Or online bootypedia: http://xpiratez.wtf/xpedia_en-US.html#STR_PSI_LAB

Offline spazeroid

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - K2 - 2 Nov - Ice Ice Cool
« Reply #7559 on: February 18, 2020, 02:55:38 pm »
You can use the tech tree viewer in game (press Q in geoscape) to see what's missing.

Or online bootypedia: http://xpiratez.wtf/xpedia_en-US.html#STR_PSI_LAB

Certainly! I have voodoo schools, but I don't have voodoo initiation (http://xpiratez.wtf/xpedia_en-US.html#STR_PSI_INITIATION). I need that to get the fun stuff. More specifically Voodoo:communion.

Looking more into the tech tree, I have "ye old magic shoppe" but not voodoo initiation. This is likely a side-effect of being from an old version. Should I just save edit myself into having voodoo initiation? Or is there a internal check that should correct itself?