Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N9.7.7 12-Sep-2024 Second Coming

[Premier]

Hi, let me ask a newbie question (familiar with X-com, but only started Xpiratez).

Reading the forum, I understand that when you start a new game, you're supposed to support yourself by doing ground missions that crop up, since you can't really intercept UFO. So, with that in mind, I started a new game.

Over the course of January, I had 1 (one) ground mission pop up, a Ratman Rodeo. Other than researching stuff and manufacturing something so the runts will pay at least part of their upkeep, that's all I got to do in an entire month. Detecting UFO's doesn't help, either, since they show up, fly away from my radar, disappear, and even if they eventually do land and become vulnerable to a ground assault, they do that far outside my radar range and my Airbus will never find them.


As a new player, let me ask: is this normal? Is it how it's supposed to be early on, only a single mission a month? Or is there some sort of vital but undocumented thing that I'm supposed to do on game start that increases the amound of ground missions spawned? I don't know, am I suppsed to be immediately plonk down a second radar base somewhere to increase coverage; or maybe research an obscure technology that gives me more mission possibilities?

[ivandogovich]

Hi Premier!! Welcome to this incredible universe called XPirateZ!!

The new early game is definitely challenging, as you are starting from a very primitive situation and trying to build out from there.   Early missions are somewhat dependent upon the whims of Random Number Generation, so a one mission month is not surprising.  I believe that if you research down the Survival tree, you can unlock a Scorpion hunt mission that can provide very decent cash and resources.  After about month 3 I'd say you should be averaging 3 ground missions per month, and those should allow you to do some slow expansion. 

If you get some Shrine Ship conversion waves, or as I did, an enemy Base Building wave, you can get a huge boost by looting landed ships (frigates (the same map as freighters from the original) were the easiest to take on).   Kill one, steal his gauss weapon, kill more, loot more weapons, etc.).

I also just gave the following advice to someone in the comments of my videos:

Also:  I don't recommend trying to play Piratez blind.  I highly encourage scouting the tech tree with the tech tree viewer.  https://techtreeviewer.byethost9.com/
Meridian's Current playthrough, though it didn't have the same early start that you are facing will demonstrate amazingly great tactics throughout!  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe0K-GUDQkNJM3d7NgS4gU7u-Pm-4JWk3
Finally:  The X-PirateZ wiki is the Bootypedia over at https://ufopaedia.org.  Slightly out of date, but hugely valuable. https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Piratez

Once again, welcome!  Cheers, Ivan

[DracoGriffin]

I think that's the hardest thing; almost like there needs to be some sort of "Hey, you are primitive, you got nothing, work your way up the totem pole before you take on the big boys" sort of tutorial.

And unlike ivan, I say, play blind! Nothing like discovering a new toy or finding out your wasted time on a research or that bad guy wasn't so bad at all, but that other guy... well, you just lost your whole crew.

The best thing to keep in mind: this is not meant to be played and finished within one weekend. This is a bottle of good scotch or rum or bourbon or favorite alcohol here, that is meant to be enjoyed over weeks.

[Rince Wind]

It is also not that different from the OG. I remember having my first combat in month 2 or three sometimes, at least with TftD.

[Solarius Scorch]

It is also not that different from the OG. I remember having my first combat in month 2 or three sometimes, at least with TftD.

Very true! Actually, i think TftD is significantly worse.

Month 1: No real mission, as the only one is some ship attack that's waaaaay over your head.
Month 2: You managed to shoot down one USO, there's also this Terror where every civilian died, along with most of your crew.
Month 3: You're not gaining enough points, thank you very much, we'll call you.

I think Piratez is much more difficult to lose early, mainly because there are no obligatory terror missions and you get a lot of points from research.

[karadoc]

Speaking of difficulty, what exactly gets more difficult when I increase the difficulty level of the game? (ie. what changes if I choose Davy Jones instead of Blackbeard?)

I played my first game on v0.98b, Blackbeard; and now I'm playing my second game on v0.99, Davy Jones. It doesn't really seem significantly harder; but the base management side of things is much 'faster', for what of a better word.

In my first game, I had a shortage of money throughout pretty much the entire game; and also a shortage of armour parts, and a shortage of... well most stuff actually. When my money situation improved, I was using money to buy tac vests so that I wouldn't have to spent my precious armour parts. Also, there were a couple of points in the game where my research outpaced the available research topics (and so I was down to just research data disks, with nothing interested to go towards. I think the research bottleneck was mostly because it took ages for me to see any academy missions - so I guess that's a side issue.

Anyway, in my current game, I've got a huge stockpile of armour parts that I don't know what to do with; and I've got big heaps of gold bars and credit chips in my base that I haven't needed to sell. And the research tree has been wide-open for a long time. I think I've got all the resources that I need to get me well into the late-game tech.

It seems to me that the main difference is that the enemy's tech progresses a bit faster; and so I'm seeing more armoured enemies, and more enemies with good weapons. But I'm not sure if that makes it significantly harder. If I win a mission against well equipt enemies, then I get their equipment. Which means I get way more money, and more stuff to research, and more armour parts / power armour parts / grav units etc. So although it's a bit harder facing stronger foes early, the difficulty doesn't last long because it creates a turbo-boost for the player's economy. The stronger weapons from the enemies can be used to defeat their stronger armour; and everything has a high sell value. The only thing is, I'm not sure if I've got heaps of money because of the difficulty change, or because of the new early-game missions (which have provided me with many many apples). All I know is that I'm getting my 6th base far earlier than before; and the bottle neck for building study rooms is just the construction time - not the money or resources.

In any case, I'm curious as to what gets harder on harder difficulty levels; and I'm wondering if I could make some tweaks to the system so that it could be harder without the game being shorter. (eg. maybe less of an increase to enemy tech progression; and a percentage increase to all maintenance costs, or decrease to all selling values; or perhaps a small reduction to the rate of experience gain for the player's soldiers.) I'm just throwing ideas around. I have no strong opinions about this at the moment.

[legionof1]

I dont know all of what changes, but the largest influence on the game is an increase of numbers of mobs per map and consequently their diversity. More mobs means more chances to "roll" advanced units if a map allows it. More advanced units means more chances for captures and faster potential tech progression. More advanced units means more and better gear drops which means more tech and more "wealth".

There is also stat inflation but its comparatively minor. Foes just get better across the board. Something that was bad at shooting before is still bad just the scale has moved on everything. I will grant that there maybe some cases that are exceptional because much depends on equipment.

[LadonLegend]

Hi. I'm fairly new to Piratez, and I was wondering about something.

In the vanilla game, the aliens progressively get stronger as time passes; e.g., the only aliens are sectoids in January, but in august, you have mutons and ethereals. My question is if Piratez does the same, as there isn't an invasion to progress as time passes (as far as I know). I know that a game using the Piratez mod is supposed to be very long, so I'm wondering if there is some sort of gradual progression.

[ivandogovich]

Welcome LadonLegend! 
Yes there is a gradual progression much longer than the original.  The original was usually complete in 1 - 1.5 years game time.  PirateZ is more along the lines of 4-6 years but possibly maybe be finished sooner.    Early on the enemies are very easy, but graduate to nightmare status over the course of the campaign.

[Riph]

Hello x pirates.  I'm enjoying the mod very very much, huge compliments to the team that put it together.

I have a question.  I'm at year 2.5 and my armor research seems to be gapped by having no Damaged Defender Armor.  I've been using regular Defender Armor for more than a game year now, since you can steal it from military transports.  But where the heck does the Damaged Defender Armor come from?

[Dioxine]

Ho-hum, looks like atm the only way to get one is to get yourself killed while wearing Defender or Guardian armor. I'll make some workaround for the next release.

[Meridian]

But where the heck does the Damaged Defender Armor come from?

It comes from dead girls wearing normal Defender armor... stop playing so well or stop reloading after they die and you'll get it

[Riph]

Guilty as charged, sir.  Thanks for the info.


Side note that I feel everyone deserves to hear:
If you open up piratez.rul and find the entry for your favorite autofire weapon (for example, AUX_TANK_MG) and add the line
explosionSpeed: 5
You fix the problem of the game stopping every time a bullet makes a dust cloud.  In other words, autofire actually looks like autofire, instead of a series of 5 slooooow single shots.

merged - Dioxine

Ho-hum, looks like atm the only way to get one is to get yourself killed while wearing Defender or Guardian armor. I'll make some workaround for the next release.

If I may offer some more research related feedback, I was frustrated by going for more than a year unable to research School Graduation for lack of Advanced Chemistry because the Guild never, ever, ever sent Pest Control guys.

More of those guys would be a good idea imo.  Alternately, make Advanced Chemistry also come from Broken Guild Engineers or some such.

Game is freaking awesome though.  My wife and I both threw our fists in the air when we saw that you could outfit your boarding teams with platemail, shields, and maces.

[Dioxine]

Glad you're enjoying it. There's so much lore and stuff that's not in the game yet, though... makes me a bit sad

Also, so does explosionspeed finally work? Used to be a dead function. I used     hitAnimation: -1 to fix the most glaring problems (minigun-type weapons). Also, you can increase bullet speed in options.

The problem with PCMs is that upon their introduction, they were appearing AT LEAST every third Pogrom... which was every third month... then lots of changes happened, mainly a lot of new factions. However, the difficulting in researching some key topics like Adv. Chemistry is quite intentional, so it's harder to beeline to your fav techs even if you play with a walkthorugh, and you just might be forced to try something else

[Riph]

Also, so does explosionspeed finally work?

It does.  The reason I looked into it is that the Custom Shooty Gun lacks a hit animation, whereas the Super Shooty gun has one.  the result is that when you 'upgrade', all your soldiers suddenly start shooting way slower.
This inspired me to do a general look&feel pass on a lot of the weapons.  Another good example is the Commando Rifle, which is a ton of fun to use, but has a slow as molasses bullet projectile.  Adding a bulletSpeed: 16 to it removes a ton of frustration.

they were appearing AT LEAST every third Pogrom... which was every third month... then lots of changes happened, mainly a lot of new factions. However, the difficulting in researching some key topics like Adv. Chemistry is quite intentional, so it's harder to beeline to your fav techs even if you play with a walkthorugh, and you just might be forced to try something else

Makes sense.

However the player can run into a situation like I did, where the Guild simply does not do pogroms for over a year (thanks RNG!).  The result is the player wearing tac suits while fighting enemies with heavy gauss.  It gets ugly.

The second outcome, which is arguably even worse, is that it took so long to get adv. chem, while I waited I researched everything else.  So I just invented the Guardian Suit, Muscle Suit, Brute Suit, and I'm showing no signs of stopping.  I feel like I've gone from Tech 2 to Tech 5, and won't be spending any time enjoying the sights and smells of Tech 3 and 4.