Author Topic: Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - N9.7.7 12-Sep-2024 Second Coming  (Read 4311322 times)

Offline Ethereal_Medic

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!
« Reply #4395 on: April 11, 2017, 05:51:34 pm »
Those missions are so lovely to do.  8)
Used the metallo (12 gals) 11 sniper-gears, 1 guerilla with 12 gas masks and started to smoke the whole area around and above the ship.
8 heavy lasers, 2 assault grenade launchers, 1 golddrum c-blunderbuss and 1 slugthrower, everyone has a panzerfaust in backpack and as much hellerium grenades, chemgrenades and firebombs as managable (besides eye-phones, vibro blades and surgery kits)

This builds so much tension to let the traders 'guess' where your squad is while they can't react to smoke-cover shooting via laser and grenade-fire. I run with the fear that one baby-nuke (curse these things) can wipe the whole squad but hey, even powerarmor can't stand a chance against this. (due to non-existent underarmor)

The map spawned a maya-ruins map (in south africa where a trader hideout is sitting). I can be glad that those traders went traitors and surrendered. Constant scorching hot - environment must have cooked thier heads nicely.

Offline Devon_v

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!
« Reply #4396 on: April 11, 2017, 07:21:01 pm »
I'm not having any issues with combat, that was easy enough once I worked out what the new "good" weapons are. It's just been the score penalties for some faction doing something somewhere which somehow causes my gals to make me walk the plank. Digging though my save some more it seems that I lost 2500 points for the Spartans running some big operation...in Antarctica. If this was all in one month, it would be bad, but I could recover. But it happened at the end of one, giving me my warning, and then continued into the next, putting me in a huge hole with an automatic game over awaiting at the end of the month.

I agree that the mood the game puts forward is one of exploration, which is really cool and different. I especially love relying on salvaged weapons and equipment. But then the scoring system is like "you're not on the optimal path? GAME OVER!"

Offline greattuna

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!
« Reply #4397 on: April 11, 2017, 07:33:31 pm »
Sometimes score indeed takes a nosedive. I think that maybe, just maybe, big factions are doing pacification missions somewhere, which absolutely tanks infamy, but I'm not sure about that.

Offline legionof1

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!
« Reply #4398 on: April 11, 2017, 07:43:19 pm »
Sometimes score indeed takes a nosedive. I think that maybe, just maybe, big factions are doing pacification missions somewhere, which absolutely tanks infamy, but I'm not sure about that.

Even a pacification run does not rack up the 2-3k spikes i have observed in my testing. ~3k in a 6 week period is a fuckton of activity for August to October range.

Offline RSSwizard

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!
« Reply #4399 on: April 11, 2017, 09:24:40 pm »
Just got Siberia Base finished. Wasnt what I was expecting one bit.
Took in alot of heavy antipersonnel and gas stuff.
# its heavily armored nazis with gas masks and lasers.

I was expecting a dusty old Xcom base filled with rusty robots and maybe some Reticulans, or filled with creatures that happened to make their nest in there.

Also from the sound of it there was supposed to be alot of computers and valuable equipment in there, but the only benefit I can see was (2?) briefcases of the Russian files which the nazi guys were carrying around.

Got it finished though, barely, lots of wounded from the battlecannon tanks and the funky lasers the humanist instructors were using. Used all my hellerium grenades. Had to start using their own heavy lasers against them. The only thing that took out the Supersoldiers was the (one, singular) Force Blade ive got, and I dont know if the Ghost Dagger did anything to them.



In the early stages (year 1-2 - depending on difficulty) you have to sell captives to boost your income. Civilians got a lot of stuff to be squeezed out of them and every single small ship-engine is worth 100k that adds up quickly.

Figured it was a (no)brainer that you had to sell captives. Otherwise your jails overflow and it tells you to sell them anyway. Early game since all the hands have poor aiming doing takedowns on enemies is more favorable.

Good melee will be essential later on anyway, so you better start beating people over the head with Handles and Aye-Phones. Whips have 3 tile range and *always hit and you can aim those up elevator shafts (I guess this is an indiana jones snag-with-whip maneuver).

Temple Of Sirius missions are a money haul - expect 500,000 to 750,000 to come out of there between captives and loot, I still take the mission even at this mid-late stage of the game (plus I currently need one to get a shrine maiden now, somehow they never got researched).

And in no missions should you ever kill sharp guys, thats 40 grand you're throwing away if you do - brave their pea shooter and go bust their head open. Priests are hard to take down but shoot him once with a pea shooter and then beat him with a handle and he's done - 60 grand. Get up behind him and just position the cursor over the "swing" option and keep tapping the touchpad on it until he goes down.

Extractors: Now there's a nifty tactic I hadn't thought of. Usually I wait til the Workshop comes along before I expand my workforce. Ill do this next time I reset.

Maximizing Brainers: Are you insane? These creatures cost a massive salary. I might add +1 every month. Im at July 2603 and ive still only got 27. And I ran out of research topics twice even at this rate. Bad idea to max brainers (but its great in vanilla xcom) - there's alot of stuff you cant research until it shows up.


Four bases? I have 1 and a half and I'm trying to afford outfitting an air force.

Dont build a 2nd base until August first year, and I mean that. You've got alot of other things that need that money to advance. And I dont suggest you do anything important with that 2nd base either - put an Outpost and Large Vaults in it, stick 5 Hands in it and ship them the stuff they'd need to defend the base. Its a storage facility until you decide to do something else with it.

Base #3 needs to be functional in some way, but I wouldnt lay it down until you get Hyper Wave Decoder because you really (really) want to skip all those intermediate radar techs and just go for that. These facilities are expensive and you'll end up having to wait the (30?) days for the Decoder to build no matter what. You put Base #3 down somewhere far away from your primary coverage.

Base #2 & #3 are where you dump your excess Crafts so you've got something that can intercept (or do the long range terror mission delay trick). So its good not just for storing ore and ship engines its also good for letting dust collect on ships you want to keep around too.

Yknow this reminds me of a nasty trend im seeing with people playing this game and its that they're playing it like its running a business, with long term protracted income model and business plan to get as much money as possible. 1 Dimensional thinking.

And thats NOT the way it works. Money isnt the only currency in this game. I mean you can play it that way but its more effective to play it like Captain Malcom (Mal) Reynolds. And I will probably quote this in the Get Gud thread just to make sure it doesnt get lost.

Current Monthly Balance - how much can you afford right now at any given time. Keep a certain amount in reserve, a healthy buffer, spend the rest on something you need or really want, or start saving up for something expensive (usually a building or new base). My healthy buffer, safety limit is about 5,000,000. If ive got more than that sitting around it needs to be dumped into something or have an earmark for it like armory towers.

I caught some flack for putting down 18 Power Stations but you know why I did it? Because I had $33,000,000 sitting around doing nothing. So I put it to work. Lets do the math here these things cost 1.5 million and resell for 1 million so its a net loss of 500K, when im ready to use the real estate they are taking up I WILL sell them (functionally you only need ONE to fulfill the manufacture requirement).

They income for 150K every month so they pay for themselves after 4 months. After that each one is taking an Empty Space of base real estate and making 150 grand for it. Eventually all that real estate will be necessary but its a good idea to probably build all 8 Bases and lay down power stations across as much of them as possible (corridors folks... you wanna maximize how many you're producing at a time).

I havent done this but I did take my Base #2 and #3 and built 18 of those things. I have 3 more bases I can build and im thinking of expanding this now since somehow ive got 75 million laying around doing nothing.

Offline Ethereal_Medic

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!
« Reply #4400 on: April 11, 2017, 11:32:51 pm »
The moment you placed a luxury spa for future use of super maids and carefully check the techtree to find this TOPIC LOCKED behind green/gold codex.  :'(

At least some refund tho and some day i can at least use farms tho...

Offline Scorrpio

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!
« Reply #4401 on: April 12, 2017, 12:23:49 am »
There's definitely more than one way to skin a cat, but it looks like you got lucky in that the game RNG did not decide to slam-dunk you with a high-pointer alien mission out of your coverage - the way it apparently has done to the OP.   It tried to black-ball me in August'01, but thankfully I was ready.

Month 18, 8 bases, 100% hyperwave coverage, close to 90 hands with 3 active teams keeping busy.  70 brainers on payroll and the list of available techs is still almost 100 long.   If you run out of research it generally means you missed out on some key drops/captures cause shipping bearing said drop was out of your range.  Or sold a captive who could cough up vital tech due to lack of space.   

And my point about power stations was simple math.   Same money to lay down a factory + support would pay for itself in less than a month and score you around 28M monthly after that building tanks.   Plus it gives you an insane manufacture capacity at the drop of a hat.   

I would agree that breakneck expansion at max efficiency is not exactly 'in the spirit'.  Them Gals are a bunch of fun-loving pirates, not an industrial machine.  But it looks like the way the game is now, taking it easy and taking your time doesn't fly. 

Now if it were up to me, and engine could support it, I would eliminate the protection money at start, and maybe fattened those civilians and criminal types a bit with extra chips.   And same way as pogroms do not carry ignore penalty until you do Mutant Alliance, so you can choose when to talk to with local governments.   I.e. let them factions run wild in Australia untill you are ready to set up a base and offer protection services. 

But as things stand now, if I followed you above post guidelines in my current campaign, I would have walked the plank in Sep'01.   

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!
« Reply #4402 on: April 12, 2017, 12:47:13 am »
Next update will have more early game content, so more opportunities to make money. :)

Offline greattuna

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!
« Reply #4403 on: April 12, 2017, 01:09:40 am »
After cramped 6-seat airvan, Turtle feels so good. Whole 12 spaces! I can afford diversifying! And I'm in general on track to recovery, since I finally inserted that goddamn drill. I'm also starting to exhaust the civilian-related research, so I can concentrate on important things now.

Also, believe it or not, but I find rubber slugs useful. Sure, it's only 20 damage, but it's got range! And the more my gals have experience, the better that range is. Very good to stun them from afar without risking point-black reaction shots.

Question of the day: where do I find Blood of Life? I want that vampire armor.

Offline Scorrpio

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!
« Reply #4404 on: April 12, 2017, 01:27:34 am »
Question of the day: where do I find Blood of Life? I want that vampire armor.
Blood of Life = zombies.   Good luck getting the gems though...

Offline desert

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!
« Reply #4405 on: April 12, 2017, 01:51:36 am »
More a base engine question, but especially important for Piratez gameplay: is there a way to automatically take a soldier's current loadout from one vessel to another?

I am not referring to templates.

If I need to transfer troops to another craft temporarily, on a transport mission that needs range or special capabilities for example, then I first need to make a note of every item and loadout of the gals in question, remove these from the first ship's inventory, add them to the second ship's inventory, transfer the crew, and requip them. Templates make this process only about 5% easier.

It would be such a relief if I could do the following (abstracted):

Pirate Spice has a flintlock pistol, a bandage, and 2 reloads. She is on an Airwhale craft. I want to put her on the Airdolphin crew. I go to the Airdolphin's crew menu and transfer Pirate Spice. The Airdolphin now has a flintlock pistol with 2 reloads, and a bandage, in its inventory, and Pirate Spice is equipped with these items.

Offline Scorrpio

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!
« Reply #4406 on: April 12, 2017, 02:38:56 am »
I am in progress of writing an external utility that modifies savefile, equipping a craft for specific mission type (armors and equipment)   What you describe ought to be fairly simple.   If I find the time, I can share the C++ code. I use a Cygwin terminal to compile and run them.

Offline sinisteragent

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!
« Reply #4407 on: April 12, 2017, 04:00:52 am »
Lets do the math here these things cost 1.5 million and resell for 1 million so its a net loss of 500K, when im ready to use the real estate they are taking up I WILL sell them (functionally you only need ONE to fulfill the manufacture requirement).

They income for 150K every month so they pay for themselves after 4 months. After that each one is taking an Empty Space of base real estate and making 150 grand for it.


This seems kinda relevant: http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0135.html

Offline khade

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!
« Reply #4408 on: April 12, 2017, 04:59:49 am »
Now if it were up to me, and engine could support it, I would eliminate the protection money at start, and maybe fattened those civilians and criminal types a bit with extra chips.   And same way as pogroms do not carry ignore penalty until you do Mutant Alliance, so you can choose when to talk to with local governments.   I.e. let them factions run wild in Australia untill you are ready to set up a base and offer protection services. 

I'd really really like this, though we'd need a losing criteria for making them angry enough to squish us instead of scared enough to pay us.  If someone figured out how to do it, I'd also like building costs and uses to depend on what the Gals know about them, for example, the lab is incredibly expensive, but until you do the research, they haven't even figured out how to turn the mainframe on, I figure it would make sense for the cost of the lab should be different before and after that event, before it was merely a useful space for experiments, after it has a constant extremely high energy cost.  Maybe have some research that is faster with a working computer as well.  Other ideas are having limited space in the barracks, prison and storage, until you put the runts towards cleaning them out and fixing them up, maybe not lower costs, but increasing size limit and getting piles of junk to work with.

Offline Ethereal_Medic

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Re: [MAIN] XPiratez - 0.99F.5 - 1 Apr - Fight Magic with Courage!
« Reply #4409 on: April 12, 2017, 09:09:58 pm »
This sounds like you ask for a even earlier version of the starting buildings available.
Stuff like "ol' prison" with only 10space; Rusty Barracks with 20space; dirty vaults with 50space (and no armored vault to start with)

If those budget-versions are worth building and cheap in buildtime/maintance it would help alot to work with the small cash in januar.
Currently (depending on starting location) you might not even be able to build a second barracks at day 1 and hire some runts.

And a soft reminder to remove academy drones from mansions... those bastards can't panic on this maze-like map.