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

[Solarius Scorch]

Thanks for the reply! I play on Blackbeard. Yeah I noticed that bounty hunting always gave me quite a bit of infamy. The only bounty hunting mission that I don't understand is the one where you have to destroy the red barn. I always just land and blow up/ shoot up the red barn and leave without hurting the guy but my score is 0. I have started just skipping this mission when it comes up.

You aren't supposed to leave. If you leave, you still abandon the mission, no matter how much damage you do before that. Just wait for the mission to end itself (after 5 turns).

And well, Blackbeard is the middle difficulty, so shouldn't have any extreme impact on your score. Good.

[Ultimoos]

I play on Blackbeard and can give you some tips that work for me very well.
1. Rush little bird. It wasn't important pre N7, but now in my opinion getting to Little bird as fast as possible is more important than anything else. If you sell security corridors day one and buy 4th brainer you can get both bounty hunting before February and Little bird.
2. Use Little bird to take down mainly bandit cars and most important, couriers. Courier crush sites drop 14mm ammo. Arrive to any mission you possibly can on Little bird for massive infamy boost from glamour. Do it for as long as you have 14mm ammo.
3. Any missions against humans you should be doing at night. Gals have superior night vision to normal humans and on pair with guild security. Getting lock'nars will help you greatly to ambush enemies.
Peasants wearing mud have good night camouflage and with shotguns can easily fill empty spots in craft.
4. Your 14mm ammo will most likely run out in March or April. So, in meanwhile you can work your way toward Improvised aerial explosives. Those can take down both bandit cars and trucks. But to use then you either need Angry bird or electric car from Car thieves. At this point it's possible you'll have a landed 9m ufo in your radar range and get 25mm cannon from it. If so, you can drop everything and go straight for car thieves to use it. Hunt police cars and wasp fighters for more ammo.
5. It's super important to plan well your initial base. Have a plan on what you will have in it and how are you going to restructure it later.
6. You have to strongly consider if you are going to be doing undersea missions. A lucky find of alien submarine can get you sonic oscylator parts. If you get 2 parts you are golden. Do not fear hallucynoids. Gals with high bravery can take them on on Blackbeard. Use anchors and barbarian swords to quickly kill them. Poisonous tentacles will destroy nearly all enemies you'll face.
7. When doing bounty missions save Jack tokens until you have 500 and get confederate gear. You'll now be able to buy electric lassos. Another amazing weapon that can deal with anything bellow Power armor.
8. Keep buying brainers when you can afford them.

That would be top of my head right now.
Below is my current score history. So, I do not really know what could cause a massive downward score spice on Blackbeard.

[Benjamen86]

I play on Blackbeard and can give you some tips that work for me very well.
1. Rush little bird. It wasn't important pre N7, but now in my opinion getting to Little bird as fast as possible is more important than anything else. If you sell security corridors day one and buy 4th brainer you can get both bounty hunting before February and Little bird.
2. Use Little bird to take down mainly bandit cars and most important, couriers. Courier crush sites drop 14mm ammo. Arrive to any mission you possibly can on Little bird for massive infamy boost from glamour. Do it for as long as you have 14mm ammo.
3. Any missions against humans you should be doing at night. Gals have superior night vision to normal humans and on pair with guild security. Getting lock'nars will help you greatly to ambush enemies.
Peasants wearing mud have good night camouflage and with shotguns can easily fill empty spots in craft.
4. Your 14mm ammo will most likely run out in March or April. So, in meanwhile you can work your way toward Improvised aerial explosives. Those can take down both bandit cars and trucks. But to use then you either need Angry bird or electric car from Car thieves. At this point it's possible you'll have a landed 9m ufo in your radar range and get 25mm cannon from it. If so, you can drop everything and go straight for car thieves to use it. Hunt police cars and wasp fighters for more ammo.
5. It's super important to plan well your initial base. Have a plan on what you will have in it and how are you going to restructure it later.
6. You have to strongly consider if you are going to be doing undersea missions. A lucky find of alien submarine can get you sonic oscylator parts. If you get 2 parts you are golden. Do not fear hallucynoids. Gals with high bravery can take them on on Blackbeard. Use anchors and barbarian swords to quickly kill them. Poisonous tentacles will destroy nearly all enemies you'll face.
7. When doing bounty missions save Jack tokens until you have 500 and get confederate gear. You'll now be able to buy electric lassos. Another amazing weapon that can deal with anything bellow Power armor.
8. Keep buying brainers when you can afford them.

Awesome, thanks for the advice! Yeah I always sell the security corridors and buy a 4th brainer day 1. I  tend to overlook the Little Bird because I read that it wasn't useful a while back, but that being outdated makes sense.

[Gremlion]

I love the mod but the infamy system has always confused me. I've been playing off and on for 3 or so years now and have never made it past November because keeping my infamy positive seemed almost random. I feel like I'd have a mediocre month only to be in the 2000 range, and then I'd feel like I had a great month to be at like 200 at best. What am I generally supposed to be doing to keep my infamy up? I make capture a big priority and only kill enemies if my hands are in danger or I'm going for shock and awe.

Also side question: The temple raids always seem to screw me, so I'm pretty sure I'm doing them wrong. I either get a near-wipe or negative infamy from them.

One of the biggest score losses is enemy ships flying around. Excavators that drill ore can easily tank infamy by thousands, and to counter them you need global radar coverage.
Very decent infamy gain is provided by brainers. Every new research is the infamy. They are +- self-sufficient.
So, building bases around the world is the way to go. Usually in the first year every new base for me was going for mess hall + surgery room (each gives 1 brainer space).

Temples:
Normal one.
Issue  - 1-3 units with a shotgun. Shotgun will murder a gal without armor due to doing multiple pellets of damage. To do it safe you need to have at least units with Barbarian + Shield armor, but ideally you need to rush warrior armor to feel safe. I usually surround every exit, then play "whack a mole" - open door, stun closest (I like domestic shotgun + rubber bullets), end turn, and then finish with a cleanup.

goblin zaxx bounty - requires infiltration gear. Which means no armor. It has the same shotgun problem, but you can't armor up until the endgame, pretty much. This mission has less enemies, so it may be finished faster.

Other than that, you should look at these missions as money generators, there is loot for ~1+ million.  So, scoring low infamy or even losing a gal or two is still totally worth it. Still, if you don't have  decent gals that may enter a building without risking reaction fire, it's totally fine to skip these missions.

Thanks for the reply! I play on Blackbeard. Yeah I noticed that bounty hunting always gave me quite a bit of infamy. The only bounty hunting mission that I don't understand is the one where you have to destroy the red barn. I always just land and blow up/ shoot up the red barn and leave without hurting the guy but my score is 0. I have started just skipping this mission when it comes up.

this mission is not about the score. every destroyed barn cell gives you a token after the mission ends. each token worth 10k$ of zaxx bounty (you need to spend 100k to get 10 tokens), and fully destroyed barn gives ~170 tokens.

[Ultimoos]

Awesome, thanks for the advice! Yeah I always sell the security corridors and buy a 4th brainer day 1. I  tend to overlook the Little Bird because I read that it wasn't useful a while back, but that being outdated makes sense.

That might have been me. Just before this patch dropped I was complaining I can't find a use for Little bird that would be worth the hassle, and than Dioxine hit me with Uno reverse card.

Temples:
Normal one.
Issue  - 1-3 units with a shotgun. Shotgun will murder a gal without armor due to doing multiple pellets of damage. To do it safe you need to have at least units with Barbarian + Shield armor, but ideally you need to rush warrior armor to feel safe. I usually surround every exit, then play "whack a mole" - open door, stun closest (I like domestic shotgun + rubber bullets), end turn, and then finish with a cleanup.

Other than that, you should look at these missions as money generators, there is loot for ~1+ million.  So, scoring low infamy or even losing a gal or two is still totally worth it. Still, if you don't have  decent gals that may enter a building without risking reaction fire, it's totally fine to skip these missions.

I have an opposite opinion on this. Do what you can to do Temple missions. Even if you have to send 5 peasants and 1 Gal. Gal scouts and stays mostly out of danger, peasants take the front. It's OK if they die after all. If you feel overwhelmed you can kill people. I know that is heresy, because most enemies here are money piñatas, but you got to do it.
Be careful of double doors. Do not stand outside of them until you are sure there are no enemies near them. A guy with shotgun on enemy turn will kill one of your units camping those doors 90% of the time. A single doors you can camp safely.

[Gremlion]

I have an opposite opinion on this. Do what you can to do Temple missions. Even if you have to send 5 peasants and 1 Gal. Gal scouts and stays mostly out of danger, peasants take the front. It's OK if they die after all. If you feel overwhelmed you can kill people. I know that is heresy, because most enemies here are money piñatas, but you got to do it.
Be careful of double doors. Do not stand outside of them until you are sure there are no enemies near them. A guy with shotgun on enemy turn will kill one of your units camping those doors 90% of the time. A single doors you can camp safely.

There are better goals in life than trying to win every battle. (c)

If a mission frustrates you it's fine to save your IRL time and mental health. Like, I'm not going to play every mansion robbery that appears...
As for camping, I'm yet to lose CQC to temple units, so someone exiting the door usually results in either being stunned or shooting stars then being stunned.

[balam]

I've eaten a few molotov cocktails camping those doors 
I do camp those doors, but it's not 100% safe, specially very early game with low stats and no armor.

[Solarius Scorch]

Why camp this door, though? It doesn't seem like a good tactic.

Normally I do it like this:
- gather a few people near the door;
- next turn, shoot whoever can be seen inside;
- next turn, storm the building and cut down anyone who opposes within (usually takes 2 turns).

It works pretty much every time and I don't lose people, unless something goes really wrong. Camping sounds to me like giving away the initiative for no tangible benefit.

I admit it's not my favourite mission, though.

[balam]

To further elaborate, I camp the door when there is no risk of dyeing (after I get decent armor). Also, camp as in place few units near the door until I'm ready to storm the temple.

Early game it goes like this (preferably night time):
- Sit on the spawning spot with 6 clones using the pillars to break los.
- Stun everyone that comes near and make a nice pile of bodies near the spawning spot.
- After I've stunned most (if not all) of the roaming enemies, the temple itself is no big deal - there will be only a handful of altar boys and rarely a neophyte camping inside.

This takes a lot of time (20+ turns) and it's pretty boring but the ransom money makes it worthwhile.

[Vengos]

I hate temple mission for different reason. If its some dense urban area usually 1 person hides anywhere but in temple and i have to spend 3-5 turns looking around.

[yuriski]

I hate temple mission for different reason. If its some dense urban area usually 1 person hides anywhere but in temple and i have to spend 3-5 turns looking around.

Honestly, that happens every other mission for me. The "funniest" one so far was playing hide-and-seek with 2 Gauss hovertanks.

[John___Doe]

The sirius temples have multiple enemies with shotguns and molotovs, plus the priest most always carries short ranged weaponry. Relying on cqc to camp the doors is not safe; to the contrary you are putting your gals right where the enemy is most able to hit them.

Regarding the Little Bird: dont forget it can equip a second weapon in addition to the 14mm, several of which can be recovered from the early bandit craft. It is not wholly reliant on 14mm ammo.

[shinr]

Regarding the Little Bird: dont forget it can equip a second weapon in addition to the 14mm, several of which can be recovered from the early bandit craft. It is not wholly reliant on 14mm ammo.

You can also a put a light machine gun on it as a ghetto 14mm.

I got it by being save-scummingly stubborn with my first Pogrom, though.

[Psyentific]

Don't camp doors for more than one turn, and if you do it should only be to farm reaction fire XP. If you have the safety, the cleared map space to camp for a turn then you should be breaching the craft/building and finding more enemies to kill. Since reaction fire uses the leftover TUs from your turn, that means the TUs you're reserving for reaction shots could instead be spent taking the shot on your turn or positioning yourself out of LOS. General tactics you want to remove as many enemies from the map as fast as possible. You want to avoid situations where the enemies can encounter you on their turn. Your own reaction fire is a mitigation against this, not a desired outcome, because it inherently means you're in a situation where you might get shot.

[nicedayright]

Just a note on door camping. Enemies don't open doors so much as try to walk through them. If you're standing directly in front of the door, they'll try to path through, freeze after the door opens and they can't path through you and then take their actions. Usually this means getting reaction bonked, but that leaves your gal standing in front of an open door and vulnerable to fire from the rest of the goons in the room.

Stand to either side of the door and enemies trying to path through will not halt inside the room. Instead, they'll make it one tile past the door before they halt. This usually means they get reaction bonked, but now your gals are not (as) exposed to fire from the rest of their friends.

It can be useful to park a few gals like this to hold a door while the rest of your team maneuvers to sweep the map and secure the other entrances. Setup is important for a proper breach and clear. If you open the door and someone is facing the door with a gun, consider waiting a turn or sending in another gal from a different angle. Avoid the temptation to use up all TU's on one gal at a time, instead, take one action at a time before switching gals so it's like they're all acting simultaneously rather than one after another. Because of the way reaction checks work, you'll take less fire this way. If you can get a gal within CQC range of every (armed) target in the room, you should do that before you actually start with the bonking. It's really hard for them to shoot accurately with a nine foot tall muscle mommy parked over their shoulder.

If a target has a gun *and* a melee weapon, consider that the AI is a lot better at choosing weapons in reaction mode. If you try to bonk them in melee and miss, their reaction will prioritize their knife, which is bad. If you park your gal in melee range and end turn, they have a pretty good chance of trying to use the gun in CQC and wasting their shots, after which your gal will bonk them. Sometimes they actually just walk away when you do this, which is odd. Consider whether your target has access to grenades. The AI will prioritize using a grenade if two or more of your units are close together, even if the guy throwing it is in CQC. Trying to double team one of these guys for a capture can often have the embarrassing result of them dropping a grenade at their feet, injuring two of your gals and depriving you of a captive.