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

[Foxhound634]

Sell X-Grog and Chateau to the world and you'll swim in gold.

Something i've wondered about not just with x-piratez but also vanilla xcom, is how to make the 'conveyor-belt money machine' part of the game more interesting. In vanilla Xcom there were medkits, in x-piratez there is X-Grog, and while i think there definitely should be some form of reliable self-made income, i always felt these manifestations were too easy. You start manufacturing money from less money = profit, and then it can just run on autopilot for the rest of the game.

A supply-and-demand mechanic might spice things up, so that if you just flood the market with item X all the time, the profits for that item will go down. On its own, this might sound like a small gimmick, but if you were to link it together with the geoscape and the various missions you do and how you perform, big fluctuations of the market could occur. For instance, a terror mission that wasn't stopped might increase demand for medkits, and a spike in civilian abductions might spike a need for small arms for arming the populace.

Any thoughts?

[legionof1]

Economics have been mentioned before, but it is at present beyond the capabilities of the engine.

[Ethereal_Medic]

Soundslike X-Com Apoc. There you still could do this mass-selling of goods but had to look for the best month to drop your stuff on the market. For my taste that would be even more unreliable RNG for this game.

On the pro side you actually need alot of grinded money to buy the leaders for research.
If you got unlucky with mission spawning and unlucky during hideout assault/defence you have to capture every leader 2 times.

SG Coordinator needs only to be researched once (thanks gawd, such a bane to even capture him)
CoS Cardinal = 125.000.000 x2
Academy Provost = 100.000.000 x2
Trader Guildmaster = 75.000.000 x2

For the Mars Codes AND the Interogation research you need 600.000.000 doritos to get access to the final research project and the conquerer.

Without manufacturing or tons of luck you'll grind money with hostages and loot for a long time^^

[Dioxine]

One Cardinal is acutually enough, so that's 500M Dolaros, not 600M, but add to that 500M-worth of Hellerium required to build Capsules.
The economy in piratez is not about trade opprotunities, but about looting and expanding your tech base to find faster ways of generating wealth, so you can be able to pay these costs of flying to Cydonia.

[Ethereal_Medic]

True, the highest CoS isn't even able to be interogated. (what a shame)

The focus of the lategame is more geoscape than battlescape I suppose.

[CaptainCorkscrew]

Is the fix for the Savvy Girl in 0.99E.2 ?

Edit: Just checked, the fix is in.

[the Ring Dang Doo]

only thing I noticed about the Pachyderm was the gun mounts and damage capacity, I havent noticed any special missions coming up that other craft (like the aircar, my go-to ride) arent able to reach (they even go underwater)

It's not that new mission types come up with the Pachyderm, it's that if you try to take a slow craft on a certain mission type it tells you something like "That craft is no good for this mission, Cap'n!" and doesn't let you do it.  You may not have enabled that mission type yet --- I don't remember what the trigger is for the research.

[karadoc]

Here are a few very minor bits of feedback.

• I don't like the way commendation levels are named. (Condemned -> Infamous -> Ill-renowned -> Notorious ...)  The names don't make any sense, and it makes it harder to see what rank you've achieved. The words 'infamous' and 'notorious' essentially mean the same thing, and 'ill renowned' could mean something similar as well depending on how its interpreted. There certainly isn't a clear sequence in those names.  I preferred when it was just first, second, third, etc. Perhaps it could just be split into tiers, with just a single flavour name for each tier so that it was a bit easier to follow. (eg. Bronze-1, bronze-2, bronze-3; silver-1, silver-2, silver-3; etc, but with whatever flavour name name you like rather than bronze and silver.)
• BOW - Summary says that "bow damage is fairly dependant". Dependant on what? Do you mean dependable / reliable / has low random variability? Or do you mean that the bow damage depends a lot on the situation, as in it varies a lot?
  
• ...

That's all. Nothing important. I just wanted to write it down while I remembered. In fact, I've already forgotten what my third dot point was going to be. So I'll just replace it with this one:

• The game is fun.

[edit]

Ok. After 30 seconds of playing the game again, I remembered what my third point was meant to be:

• When a ship can't fly due to lack of pilots, I'd really like it if the game would take me straight to the choose pilots screen. As it is, I'm constantly getting the "not enough pilots" message (because my pilots get injured on the ground), and it's really tedious to close that message, go to the hideouts screen, go to the vessels screen, choose the vessel, go to the pilots screen, and choose some pilots, close all those screen, and then re-select the mission that I was going to go on in the first place.
  In most cases it makes zero difference who is piloting the craft. I'd be happy enough if the game just automatically chose the pilots whenever I haven't manually selected them. It could just pick pilots from the top of the list of people on the ship.
  

[Meridian]

Ok. After 30 seconds of playing the game again, I remembered what my third point was meant to be:

• When a ship can't fly due to lack of pilots, I'd really like it if the game would take me straight to the choose pilots screen. As it is, I'm constantly getting the "not enough pilots" message (because my pilots get injured on the ground), and it's really tedious to close that message, go to the hideouts screen, go to the vessels screen, choose the vessel, go to the pilots screen, and choose some pilots, close all those screen, and then re-select the mission that I was going to go on in the first place.
  In most cases it makes zero difference who is piloting the craft. I'd be happy enough if the game just automatically chose the pilots whenever I haven't manually selected them. It could just pick pilots from the top of the list of people on the ship.
  

There is an option like that since the beginning... it selects the people from the bottom of the list.

[karadoc]

There is an option like that since the beginning... it selects the people from the bottom of the list.

Thanks for that. I guess I tend to ignore most of the options because a lot of them effect the game rules (rather than just the interface). I still think it would be helpful if we could open the pilots screen directly when we're told the ship doesn't have enough pilots assigned.

[Arthanor]

The best would be getting the warning and having a choice instead of just "ok", like: "Abort" where you abort the launch and go pick your pilots, or "Take volunteers and launch!" which just takes some people (random or last in the list) and launches with those as pilots. The "not enough pilots" message is indeed a bit annoying, especially for transports since pilots matter the least, but get injured the most.

[Ashghan]

I think the best would actually be: "Abort", "Select" (goes to pilot roster) and "Volunteer" (takes from the bottom).

[Ethereal_Medic]

Autofill for Pilots is a great feature. Unless you use dual-purpose crafts this option saves time and nerves.

Once you got dedicated dogfight crafts you just assign the very best pilots (high acc, reactions and bravery) to the crew slots and usually never swap them out until you replace the craft.

As for the dual-purpose crafts, assign your combat crew 'n stuff and use the right-mouse button to drop the best pilots to the bottom of the crewlist and the problem is mostly solved.

[Ashghan]

Problem is that sometimes your best pilots are you best fighters as well, and you don't want them at the very back of the transport just because they're on the bottom of the list. Plus the best fighters get injured more often which is most often the reason for this irritating behavior. But a fair point - this problem is only relevant for dual purpose craft.

[Dioxine]

I think the best would actually be: "Abort", "Select" (goes to pilot roster) and "Volunteer" (takes from the bottom).

I'm supporting this.