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

[karadoc]

... the endgame is by far the least complete stage of the game.

Speaking of the end-game being less complete; I'd just like to say that I'm hoping for some more tanky enemies in the late game. In the late game, I'm researching and building things like plasma destroyers, and blasters, and heavy plasma pistols, heat rays, fusion grenades, and so on - but there never seems to be a time to actually use those things. They are just expensive over-kill weapons. Ordinary cheaper weapons can already kill most enemies in one or two hits; and while tanks and sectopods can take bit more punishment, they are rare enough that I still don't need to bring out the big guns; just a bit of focus fire from cheaper weapons or willie-petes can bring them down pretty quickly.

I'd like to have some battles where I feel like I really need my heavy weapons.


[edit]
I finally got anther mansion mission; and so I now have destructor armour. It's pretty damn powerful! I've given it to a soldier who has the absolute max psi. (60/45). According to the formula, the main attack does 276 damage, whereas a blaster does 210. The health regen of the armour isn't listed in the bootipedia. (It only mentions stun regen.) So I didn't even know it has health regen until someone mentioned it in this thread. I was envisaging carrying a bottle of mushroom beer to quaff at the end of each mission; but with the health regen, the hp loss is healed on the turn immediately after using the blast anyway. So instead I'm carrying combat drugs, rum, smokes, and a light weapon for close-quarters combat. Sense 10 provides a pretty big tactical advantage too. I'm just imaging the mercs in the heavy gunship thinking "wtf just happened?"  Nice crackdown, guys. :p

[KateMicucci]

I started up a new game after being too busy to play for the last couple versions.

Thoughts:

-Shotguns are fantastic now. On non-capture missions my team feels complete with 50% shotguns, a chainsaw, and a long-range or heavy weapon.
-Except for capturing, I'm barely using melee weapons this time around, aside from the chainsaw. Girl's stats seem a little worse than they did a couple versions ago which makes using melee harder, and knives are worse now.
-Accuracy and melee skill increases seem to come very, very slowly, probably a consequence of my new playstyle.
-Guerrilla armor feels like it should have 30 armor like Warrior instead of 20. It's as encumbering as Warrior and made of rare kevlar but only gives reaction and camo bonus. I never used it last play through and even with the new camo system it still doesn't seem worth it.
-Otherwise the armor re-balance seems to have been done well. It's much more obvious which armors I want my gals to wear for the roles they're meant to fill.
-Aircar means that setting up several outposts to shoot down civvies seems like a practical option now. Good.
-It feels like I should have gotten access to tac vests a long time ago and can't figure out what tech I'm missing. Does it require anything weird?

[ohartenstein23]

Kevlar can be manufactured after some pretty early research into armor and workshops, in fact Warrior armor is a prerequisite for that research.  The camo and huge reaction bonus more than makes up for the lower defensive values, as long as you realize it's meant for a different role - try it at night to make that gap between pureblood NV and your gals' NV even more apparent.

Tac vests are manufacturable after personal armor parts are researched and you have a workshop, so nothing too weird.  They also are loot from Guild warehouse missions.

[Solarius Scorch]

Kevlar can be manufactured after some pretty early research into armor and workshops, in fact Warrior armor is a prerequisite for that research.  The camo and huge reaction bonus more than makes up for the lower defensive values, as long as you realize it's meant for a different role - try it at night to make that gap between pureblood NV and your gals' NV even more apparent.

Agreed; Guerilla (and its more advanced variants) is my favourite armour ever. Everyone who isn't a specialist gets one.
My previous campaign was much more melee oriented, but even then I was using some Guerillas (but mostly bikini).

[KateMicucci]

X-bows are lootable and usable early but aren't researchable for a long time for some reason.

(Crossbows shouldn't have a flat trajectory either tbh)

[Solarius Scorch]

(Crossbows shouldn't have a flat trajectory either tbh)

Why not?
Honestly, I can't see why not. This is surprising.

[Dioxine]

Crossbows in Europe were mostly used as a flat-trajectory weapon, since longer range attacks were better served by bows. Due to crossbow's bolt being short and stubby, it considerably loses accuracy over range, as well as loses its main edge over the bow (armor piercing). In China however (and if I'm not mistaken, Ancient Rome), massed crossbow formations were indeed used for indirect fire. The stress is on "massed formations", which make accuracy irrelevant.

[KateMicucci]

Why not?
Honestly, I can't see why not. This is surprising.

A crossbow isn't a gun, it's a bow turned sideways. The trajectory is determined by how fast and far the projectile can travel before gravity overtakes it. A crossbow bolt moves at more or less the same speed as an arrow, depending on the particular bows being compared, so has a similar trajectory.

Crossbows in Europe were mostly used as a flat-trajectory weapon, since longer range attacks were better served by bows. Due to crossbow's bolt being short and stubby, it considerably loses accuracy over range, as well as loses its main edge over the bow (armor piercing). In China however (and if I'm not mistaken, Ancient Rome), massed crossbow formations were indeed used for indirect fire. The stress is on "massed formations", which make accuracy irrelevant.

A crossbow couldn't be used as a flat-trajectory weapon at any distance because the drop is so significant. In just one second of flight time a projectile is accelerating towards the earth at 9.8m/s. Even the bullets from my musket, which are significantly faster than the arrows from my crossbow or compound bow, will drop about 18 inches at 50 yards if aimed level.

See the charts here.
https://www.nycrossbowcoalition.com/myths-facts-presentations/


At the top of the chart are the rifle bullet and the shotgun slug, with almost insignificant drop at 100 yards. A medley of modern crossbows and vertical bows are in the middle, all with comparable drops. The traditional bows are at the bottom, with the worst drops. That is because modern crossbows and vertical bows are made of better materials and shoot much faster than traditional archery equipment, giving them less drop for a given distance. No traditional crossbows are in the chart, but we could expect them to perform similarly to the traditional bows.

The in-game X-bow looks like a modern crossbow, so perhaps an argument could be made that they should not have a drop as significant as the Hunting Bow or Combat Bow because of a higher velocity. Even so, it's very strange to see the X-bow shoot with a trajectory as flat as the firearms.

[Solarius Scorch]

Quite an interesting chart.

I think my initial bafflement was because I automatically assume that an X-Com battlefield is fairly small. Well, not as small as its visual representation, but still. Therefore the question of bow range can at least partially be explained with accuracy rather than raw throwing power, while a crossbow is inherently more accurate (except very well trained bowmen; I mean people who train all their life).

So I'd say that the crossbow model is somewhat defensible along these lines. But I also think it's more understandable for an average gamer. The general perception of bows (especially in games, but also in movies) is that they shoot in arcs (hence archery lol), while crossbows are more like "medieval rifles".

[Arthanor]

Maybe we need an "arcingHeight" parameter? it is silly that bows can't be used past 6 tiles or so indoors, and it's also silly that x-bows have no arc at all. This would allow differentiation between greatly arcing weapons (grenade launchers), bows and x-bows.

Of course, it's entirely acceptable to stay as is given the engine, instead of tweaking the engine to represent a barely noticeable arc in the distances involved.

[Dioxine]

First off real thanks for elementary school physics, I passed it with flying colors as it happens.
It is not my intention to measure everything with a milimeter tape, especially considering how abstract the model is - no matter what gun freaks would want.
Obviously I didn't mean crossbow have flat trajectories - I was talking about their tactical role. Naturally every projectile follows a ballistic path. And obviously the engine doesn't allow to tweak it - you can either shoot artillery-like, or completely laser-flat. The latter was chosen for crossbows because of the aforementioned tactical role. Crossbows lacked sights for long-range sniping, and they were intended for use with non-elite personnel - they were usually used at ranges of up to about 30-40 metres. You can study the medieval art of fortification to learn more (towers spaced within crossbow's effective range, etc). In Piratez, it's obviously not really to scale; crossbow's limited utility at long range is represented by sharp long range acc penalties.
Having said that, bows top off at 80-ish lbs, while a crossbow can have 150, 200 or more - which naturally makes the trajectory more flat. But that's wholly beside the point. If we took the Asian aproach, then, indeed, a crossbow would fill the same tactical role as the bow and would follow a ballistic path - but where would be variety in that?

[Devon_v]

-Except for capturing, I'm barely using melee weapons this time around, aside from the chainsaw. Girl's stats seem a little worse than they did a couple versions ago which makes using melee harder, and knives are worse now.

You probably had bad luck. I started with several gals with high strength and accuracy and spent the early game running around with ballbats capturing people left and right until they got so strong they were killing them in one blow. I actually had to make an effort to train shooting once I got real guns.

The issue might be that most of the swords need some degree of finesse to use and suffer considerably from mid to low melee accuracy. The ballbat doesn't do much inherent damage, but it's easy to hit with and does excellent damage with enough strength behind it. Gals using it can upgrade to the mace easily and really crack armor.

Civilians are great training targets in the early game. Although there are minor penalties for killing them, early game research should have you so far to the positive that it doesn't matter. It's not too hard to save up for a ride that can mount the charger laser so you can shoot down civilian traffic. They don't belong to a faction so you won't get hit with crackdowns, either. Weaker gals in training should be stunning most of them anyway so you get ransom on top of training.

[Ridаn]

So I found an exploit and not really sure where should I report it. Removing all armours from gals using Backspace generates lots of Cool Clothing. Its not like you can get rich of that, but it sure fills up the vaults very fast for me.
I assume its a lovechild of a keybind function introduced by OXCE (or some of Meridian commits?), and from using multiply armour options from a single item (originally from Xops iirc)?

[ohartenstein23]

Cool clothing is the loot item for scout and adventurer armors - all hired hands come with it, so you're just removing their clothes.

[Meridian]

So I found an exploit and not really sure where should I report it. Removing all armours from gals using Backspace generates lots of Cool Clothing. Its not like you can get rich of that, but it sure fills up the vaults very fast for me.
I assume its a lovechild of a keybind function introduced by OXCE (or some of Meridian commits?), and from using multiply armour options from a single item (originally from Xops iirc)?

Not my fault this time I hope.

Cool clothing is the storage item you get when you take off either Adventurer or Scout armor... maybe you had those on before stripping to Tribal?

Or are you saying you can generate unlimited quantities of cool clothing?
If so, I'd like to know how exactly.