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

[Solarius Scorch]

Uhh.. 2nd month and skies are already red? and ninjas flying fortress hovering around my base? did every mission i could but still suffered infamy hit and had to pay extra 600k to break even.. am i extremly unlucky or is this new reality? 2nd difficulty level.

On the 2nd level it shouldn't be a huge problem, just be mindful of ninja bases - don't ever fly inside their detection circles, unless you know what you are doing and can take on their fighters.
Unless maybe ninjas decided to build a base right next to yours (so you can't launch any craft), in which case it's pretty much game over, but the chances of that are minuscule, unless both of you decided to settle on the Pacific Ocean (meaning Hawaii).

[nicedayright]

I've never bothered with workers before, so I only just found out they spawn in at your base as civilians during crackdowns. Probably a great way to farm those Cavalier commendations.

[Earthquake]

When I use Demonic rituals (13 glamour and skulls) - one of possible results is Demonic Invasion.
What is this thing?
It only take some space in storage. Or am I missing something?

[Gremlion]

Dioxine added many objects which activate during hideout assault missions.
Some are helpful for you, some are deadly (literally a nuke which would explode if you don't win in XX amount of turns)
Demonic assault, probably, spawns some enemies from the hell faction.

[Earthquake]

Oh, I see...
In most games I have no more than few hideout assaults, most in firth year.

[unarmed drifter]

i decided to come back to XPiratez after i got a bit bored by grinding allyums in XFiles. My first run with the new sky ninja version lastet till october where i lost my six best gals and racked a negative score for the second time in a row.
Any tips on how to survive (maybe even win) the ninja girl assault on the government general (the one with the nerve wracking industrial metal soundtrack)?

Spoiler:

yeah, don't get hit. easier said than done.

[Iazo]

It's a bit vague. We don't know what you did wrong, but I assume the lack of tonks did you in.

If you want a super detailed play-by play, join Discord, and ask Grub since he does those missions for fun.

If you don't want to do them, don't do them and eat the infamy cost. It is obviously possible to survive on points via research, but this seems like a structural problem with your game, since in Oct you should be able to reach many infamy points over 10k.

[Mathel]

The -2500 infamy "Govt official under attack" can be won with great usage of mortars. Shell the hostile craft from behind cover and let the allies take most of the punishment. Once you take out the cannons and the flying ninjas, then you can go in for cleanup.

[Gremlion]

Soundtrack is from Red Alert, if you liked it.
For the ninja attack on general you need:
1. Blow up turrets. Big ones are susceptible to EMP grenades that ninjas carry a lot. Might be even oneshot. Small ones have like 40 armor, kustom shooty guns from the ninjas work well. You want to blow up big ones on turn 1, start with primed to 0 turns emp bombs in hand. If you are close to throwing distance - run and throw. If you are not, disable.
2. Be careful of invisible suicide bombers. Black ninjas drop a backpack-sized bomb when downed, which can evaporate chainmail gals. So, when you see your allies being dropped in melee by invisible enemies, you need to send a shooter and  a melee tank. Shooter should down the ninja, tank should pick up the bomb (can't place into inventory). There are usually 3 suicide bombers on the second difficulty.
3. Ninja medic can be superannoying, it has 50+ armor. Some armor damage goes a long way.
The rest is just... having more dakka to break shields and down them. Usually removing turrets alone results in government win.

[unarmed drifter]

thanks for the replies

@Iazo: i don't know what tonks are, but they were definetily lacking. but i guess you're right with the structural problems...
-fastest ship: airbus
-most dakka ship: little bird
-best armour: the eight pieces of agressor suits from red codex
-best weapons: 1 boarding gun, 2 spitfires, 1 autogun (from a spartan progrom)
i decided to go all in for brainers, but their salaries ate up my funds. i postponed the codex stuff for too long and had the workshop only in september.. OTH i don't believe that researching nurses, silver bars and bandit smg's will make up for -2500 points, but maybe i'm wrong. (having chosen the male path, i wanted to get the big pink "pigeonturtle" ship for my SS army, but i don't even know if it's still in the game)

@Mathel: sounds good, but what if you don't have a mortar? also, there's not really cover apart from the gov bunker, because all the other buildings are only one tile high so the ninja turrets will happily shred you
>Once you take out the cannons and the flying ninjas
yeah :DDD (i took out two turrets with incendiary nades)

@Gremlion
>Red Alert
oh fff thx a lot :3. i was so stressed by the constant screen flicker/level shifting when the turrets kick in...
>EMP grenades, kustom shooty gun
didn't have either
>invisible suicide bombers with melee
okay that explains at least two deaths. i'm playing on diff 4, so there might be more than three. what to do with the bomb if you pick it up - hopefully it can be disarmed?

anyway, i restarted, if it goes south again i will lower the difficulty

 

[Gremlion]

Better play on the second difficulty. If you can't get chainmails by october in 4th difficulty, which throws free money in a form of many-many easily capturable enemies you will be wiped out by hideout building destroying rockets in the second year. You should've had interceptors in the august.

[Xolvix]

I'm just jumping in here, but in my case trying to go through the campaign on the easiest skill level just so I can understand the mechanics better... I'm not really sure what I'm doing. People say you should have this or that by such and such month, yet there's so much research to do and a fair bit of randomization in what missions you'll get and what's in them (which then determines future research options) that it becomes a bit of a mess.

Unlike the classic X-COM campaign, there's no clear indication as to how I'm progressing in the campaign. I know the fun is in the journey (and it's quite a journey), but after quite a bit of hours of play I end up spinning my wheels almost, running out of research (apart from eternally Socializing), wondering how to make tangible progress towards an end state.

Sometimes I'd cheat, adjust the funds in the savegames or mod the Ubers to be unfairly powerful, just so I could progress. But then I'd get my first alien base mission equivalent and I'm like, WTF my guns are doing NOTHING to certain enemies because I have zero understanding of how to take down shields despite all my shameful cheating. I feel like I'm blundering through the game blind without knowing whether I'm playing it "right" or putting myself in a situation where I'll never properly progress. But my understanding is that this is intentional - it should be a learning experience. But on the wikis and posts I mostly just read gameplay tips on how to handle situations (which is useful), but not much about how to actually progress towards an end state.

I can't do a Meridian and spend nearly a year on a single playthrough. And that was an earlier version of the game, with less stuff!

[teddybbeer]

Seems that you need to rush certain things or theres game over and infamy from ninjas will overwhelm you.

Last game in second difficulty:

By april ninjas had atleast four bases (spotted the 4th).
june was first raid, fifty-five (!!!) enemies in small open desert map, won it by turn 40something.. i pity the fool who trys this mission in ironman
in august were two more raids.. missed the first one because troops were shot up and second one spawned right to ninja base. suffered massive infamy hit and was 1.5m short of funds, plans for workshop went out of the window from that .. and that was it, sept was slow month with shitty mission spawns (thee small bandit camps for example), another 600k short, still not enough for workshop.
oct had best score ever according to charts and higgest infamy ever according to charts, so overall score was couple hundred in + .. and 900k short in funds. still no money for workshop.

my base is in blackmarch (lucky break as blackmarch sells panzerfausts, otherwise would be surrendered earlier, theres really nothing against turrets in first six months) and ninjas are somewhere northeastern africa, so i cant do missions in s-america (or can you divert crafts that are returning from mission?).  15ish gals, 14 brainers, got personal labs, but just before workshop SHF (while i got stapler rather early something else was missing from that researchchain). no funds! (and no apples.. coconuts, oranges, bananas by hundreds but no apples...)

was the second time when i hitted the wall in M3 in first year.. gotta say that difficulty curve has certanly gone up.

[Iazo]

Tonks are cute tanks.

(They're cute because they're yours, although for military purists among us, the player tanks are actually  more akin to tank destroyers due to fixed turret.)

Anyway, metagaming right now involves knowing event, optimal research paths, sources of rng item blocks and how to avoid it...none of this is necessary, but can help a lot knowing where you're headed and what you are missing.

I have helped some people with savegames. In the end, many, many issues people have is by being strategically passive. Saving money instead of reinvesting it, not hiring brainers, not building more bases and radars, not shooting down targets, not researching new missions, not attempting easy lucrative missions but charging headlong into pointless difficult ones with questionable rewards.

I can't promise wonders, but I've often been handed 'hopeless' games which only nedded nudging towards the right track to flow again.

I am on discord, and if anyone wants some help, find me there, hand me a save file, and we can fix it.

[Greep]

@ teddybear
I believe crafts should be immune to hunter killers on return trip, makes up for not being able to take control of them.

@ newbies
I do have a general guide on the forums here if you search "the newbie guide" although it is quite out of date and has some dubious advice.  That said, this update definitely is much harder, so yeah :/



Anyways, having fun with the new update, really loving Romanica's DEUS VULT style starting bonus. Mowing down dozens of ratman and dogs with pistol wielding crusaders is very amusing.  Although it's more like creep slowly forward and get shot at while my gals do the real killing. The Big Bird craft also makes the males run quite a bit less painful, since it flies more than twice as fast as those godawful tanks.

I got lucky and found a hero in february who is seriously badass with this armor, nothing like 150 melee in nearly chainmail right off the bat.  Hopefully I'll make these armor sets last until I get my hands on some durathread for mass pyroman, since I don't think you can repair them without the tech, unfortunately.

Also. nuns with shotguns   Seriously, Romanica is the best start.