Why are so many mission types just a way to kneecap youself? I just hide the relevant research, now that i know what's what.
Like, take zombie bait. What's the actual point of researching it? I'd much rather game generates an academy mission for me, it's much more profitable and i don't have to deal with peasants vs zombies bullshit.
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, which is a good building, but by the point i can rng a scroll of night, i would've wasted a lot of mission slots on those ratman caches. Underground missions seem to just contain a lot of junk. Metro can absolutely fuck your crappy small units and wipe the entire contingent along with all your gnomes. I'd rather not do these missions at all, which i can do by not wasting research on them. Win-win.
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.
Mansion invasions, guild rep mansion - okay loot, but i can get same loot from a normal mission, and without the restrictions bullshit.
Highway star - does anyone actually ever research this? A restricted underwater mission with gnomes specifically... why would i do that to myself?
Highway house - a crappy mission that only serves to get the ability to shoot down civilian cars early, and it will stick in the mission roster forever.
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, i would much rather the game would just spawn a guild warehouse(where i also won't explode my entire team). The end reward for UAC missions is the megachaingun which is just a piece of crap at the time you'll plausibly be able to research it, since all tough crafts have high armour.
Underwater/space missions - these are just bad but required to progress. Space missions are just about moving to 1 building, across the bad UI, underwater missions are basically normal missions but you're gimped. AND you have to pay for extra crafts and extra equipment in research&maintenance on geoscape. I postpone these as far as i can, since i just don't want to play space missions, there's nothing interesting about them, they just have bad UI.
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.
I think these missions should have much better loot that would actually make them desirable, be in their own category(let's say you get 2-3 special missions per month), and get disabled after you ran them a couple times. Similar to siberia mission, which is a cool challenge, gives you extremely good loot, and doesn't overstay its welcome.
A lot of high tier rng in piratez suffers from this "gambling is bad for you", if you don't savescum. Like the mystery boxes for example - you waste a ton of research on it, then open it to get a slime invasion and cripple yourself. Also there's a tiny chance to get an orb that will allow you to possibly create an okay weapon for shadowrealms, but why would you risk this? You'd either just sell the box, or hoard them and then open them super late game.
You also have this situation where you have a clearly better option and an overcomplicated, worse one. Like, why would you build a casino, when you can build a factory instead? Or why would you hoard chips to invest in a mint, when applenomics are so much better? Or why would you spend an eternity researching advanced firearms and spend alliance tokens on m-crafted parts, to get crappier weapons than the lasers that everyone carries by month 8. Even bulldog&ripper cannons are crap compared to the cannons you loot from ufos. Entire branches of research are better off hidden, since it takes so bloody long to go through them, and they just give you a marginally better version of a worse weapon(a version that you have to build through workshop! With ammo! I only these advanced guns ran off the normal clips), and by the time you get to that weapon you have a better tier of weapons available. It's all just a noob trap.
I do love the xpiratez setting though, this is possibly the best setting in any video game ever.
