Actually that first game the base invasion was the first mission, when I reloaded I didn't see another Ship until late Feb. I think they just scouted the base - and yes I do use the agressive rettaiation setting.
So the mission generated in February was a retaliation? Man.. that's not lucky.. Although I'd take that over an early infiltration.. I've lost 4 countries so far in October :/ Thinking that after I destroy their base, I'll try to see if you edit a save to recover a country and set negative funding (to represent bribes to get them to work with you again)
As for this, I got ninja'd by DracoGriffin, but here's more info from my experience!
Ok i'll try out some other locations, but the frequency and consistence of early base invasions compared to earlier versions, still seem weird since i've not encountered that previously. I'm also going to check if it has something to do with the save slot being from an earlier version, even though it has been overwritten in the current one. Also, i don't use save scumming or aggressive retaliation
There are certainly optimal locations, and optimal "playing patterns", such as shooting down UFOs over a different region than the one your base is in, so hopefully the retaliation strikes in the other region (retaliations have a chance to be set for the region where the UFO was shot down, OR in the region where the interceptor came from. If you intercept in your base's region, then the retaliation, if generated, will certainly be in your region and likely find your base). A good pirate needs to study her targets!
The video got me thinking of some other questions/suggestions i have:
1) I like the idea of the commendations mod, but i think it requires its own .exe file and is therefore not compatible with x-piratez. Is that correct? (Also it would be cool if the medals were present on each gal's inventory screen, instead of having to visit a separate screen) 
Yup, Piratez and Commendations unfortunately require different exes,
but there's some talk of Commendations being integrated into the main code, which
might mean Yankes would integrate it in Extended, and then we'd get medals and records for the gals
2a) I also like the melee weapons of x-piratez, but i'm still confused of the effectiveness of melee vs. armor. How much does armor reduce stun, because handles don't seem to be able to knock out academian security, and daggers/machetes never seem to pierce their armor (even when attacking from the rear), which makes them very situational. The rope has a very high TU cost so i guess it's only for keeping unconscious enemies unconscious. It seems that the most beneficial way to melee, is to only use cattle prods so you get a ton of slaves/interrogations. Even with their TU cost they hit hard and rarely miss, and just seem to make other melee weapons somewhat redundant, despite not having any skill/power bonuses. Am i missing something?
You can calculate the amount of damage that different weapons do. For example, a machete with a maxed out gal:
- Base power: 20
- Strength bonus: 20% * 80 max strength = 16
- Melee bonus: 10% * 140 max melee = 14
= max damage 50 -> damage range using EU formula: 0-100
So yeah, even with a maxed out gal, a machete doesn't do as much damage as a cattle prod. Compare with a axe though (50 + 0.7*80 + 0.1*140 = 120 -> damage range 0-240) and you can see that the cattle prod is far from the ultimate weapon, especially when you consider damage per TU since the cattle prod is very slow to use. It does have great accuracy and decent damage though, which makes it a great weapon to catch lightly armored targets with gals that don't have great melee accuracies.
2b) In other mods, flamethrowers seem to merely set something on fire, without any initial damage, thereby killing the enemy too slowly. Is this also the case in x-piratez, even with armor's weakness to fire?
(Heavy) Flamethrowers are some of my favourite weapons, they do get things to die. If you hit all 8 times, you deal ~48 damage that ignores armor (assuming 100% damage, ie no special fire weakness resistance). That's enough to kill those annoying guys in personal armor in the early game, and it also is a great counter to cyberdiscs and other 2x2 units, since they take 4x the damage (it absolutely murders reapers since they have a weakness to fire).
3) I think the technology pacing of weapons is a little off. You start out with flintlock weapons but almost immediately get assault rifles, combat shotguns, machine guns, sniper rifles etc. through loot. Yet it takes several steps of research to get stuff like the clockwork pistol and bayoneted musket, which are kind of inferior at that point (maybe also the x-bow). Also, some of the pistols in the game are about as accurate but less powerful than the flintlock pistols that you start with, so also seem redundant. This is also the case with some of the rifles and melee weapons, such as the short sword being inferior to the cutlass, despite having to research the short sword.
The short sword is nifty because you can put it in your belt, so a gal with a rifle can join a melee by spending only 4 TUs instead of 10 to pull a cutlass from the backpack. I think some of the weapons are there mostly for flavours, and also for being easy to maintain (you don't need anything to manufacture musket ammo, for example, so it may help early on if you are low on cash).
4) When intercepting ships, i find it impossible to tell which factions they belong to, which means is a problem for various reasons. One is that you cannot strategically avoid someone in particular, such as govt ships that penalize you. Another is that all the lore about the factions, their ships and missions (which i think are cool and all), just seems a bit redundant when they are not more significant when operating in the geoscape. E.g. it would be really nice to have an extended interception screen that listed the ship type's information, if the given ufopaedia entry is available. More information could eventually be present on the interception screen if you had also interrogated or researched your way to knowledge about the given faction.
You can tell the government because most of their ships have red and blue lights on the interception picture. Once you find a government ship, be wary of shooting down anything in the same region. Similarly, some crappy crafts are only used by less well provided factions, like the rusty-bronze coloured ones being used by raiders and spartans. Beyond that, if they use the same ships, why would you be able to tell the difference between the academy and traders? Apparently you can't easily pain UFOs, so they all fly in default alloy colours, and any ways, if you want details, just research the hyperwave decoder
