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

[Multiheaded]

One of the early-game keystone techs has a really nonsensical requirement; you need 'Raiders' for 'Chainsaw Good' -> 'Power Tools' - plastasteel etc.

That's not really onerous gameplay-wise - Experiment Victims now give it (a recent change?), among other captives - but why the hell is that a dependency in the first place? Shouldn't it be more logical to pick up 'Power Tools' from something engineers or laborers share with you, and *then* figure out chainsaws/auto-axes as a special case?

"Oh damn, Capt'n, only these primitive wandering raider bands can invent a choppy BRRRRR, and we ain't heard much about them, so all that fancy Guild stuff ain't getting built!"

[Ethereal_Medic]

Getting raiders is something common during the early stages and since these goons are quite beefy in health you can get at least one scout or thug for research.
Also raiders are one of the few sources of getting 'rare earth elements' other than going 'cave hunting' in the extractor.

With the introduction of CQC you can't reliable use chainsaws on enemies, better chop down walls with it.

[Multiheaded]

Like I'm saying, it's not a big mechanical problem, as even if you don't get raider UFOs/pogroms, their topic is on Experiment Victims' rather short list among other sources. It's just something that doesn't make sense story-wise; can't a Guild/Academy engineer just give you all the steps for the mechanical tools they routinely use?

[BetaSpectre]

More people giving out more chainsaw good stuff makes sense.
Personally my only issue atm is ore requirements for nukes. Scrap metal is common enough, and ore makes scrap. So why can't scrap make ore to make into illegal uranium. In terms of balance it does make some sense though.

[Ethereal_Medic]

Ore is also used to get 50k chips.
It's all very optional and you just need some luck with excavator missions OR invest into the mining-ship.
Every mission the mining-ship is involved it spawns 4x ore inside the craft.

[legionof1]

Recently encountered 3/4 of the newest missions and gonna share my thoughts on each.

Bank Robbery:
Fun. The bank itself looks great. Gas traps are an interesting twist, but fail to be a reliable threat due to surrender mechanics. Also the traps are looted if you get a full clear? Why? they don't seem have any use.

They came from the sea:
Wow that's a ton of dudes to kill. Also some combinations of tiles are really hard to defend against. Notably if the "beach" faces the double door side of the fort it takes multiple turns to get into a position to shoot at the horde. Aside from the internal "gun slots" on the ground floor, and even then most of turn spent getting in position leaves minimal TU to stem the tide. Also the configuration of the "slots" on the double doors allows only 2 tiles of vision of the stair, compared single door sides nearly full vision.

Mysterious tower:
Yeah nope nope nope. This is nigh impossible on first encounter. Multiple Hell Barons, and Cacodeamons. At a stage of tech where one is presumably just starting the air game, and decent quality conventional arms?  On evil jungle tileset too. This things bloody hard with an endgame crew. One bright spot is that the Hell Barons appear to be confined to what ever level of the tower they spawn on. So with careful maneuvering and some flying armor one could loot around them. Still doesn't deal with the welcoming party of Cacodeamons on the jungle floor. 

[Multiheaded]

More people giving out more chainsaw good stuff makes sense.
Personally my only issue atm is ore requirements for nukes. Scrap metal is common enough, and ore makes scrap. So why can't scrap make ore to make into illegal uranium. In terms of balance it does make some sense though.

Ironically, it was really hard for me to get Raiders back in 99.B2, but ore seems fairly abundant. Not only the big green civvie ships carry it, but the 3 floor small round ones as well (Guild and Gov't), and I think there can also some free ore on hilly maps?

I am in March 2061 now and I keep like 20 units in the main hideout as a reserve (I didn't even know it'll be usable in nukes later on, just seemed like compact scrap metal storage) and sell the rest.

[ivandogovich]

I am in March 2061 now and I keep like 20 units in the main hideout as a reserve (I didn't even know it'll be usable in nukes later on, just seemed like compact scrap metal storage) and sell the rest.

I did the math on this once, and if you hire workers to stand around holding all the ore you find throughout the game, once you get into the higher levels of conterfeiting, it will easilly pay for itself and bring in a huge profit.  I stockpile all my ore now.'

[RSSwizard]

I did the math on this once, and if you hire workers to stand around holding all the ore you find throughout the game, once you get into the higher levels of conterfeiting, it will easilly pay for itself and bring in a huge profit.  I stockpile all my ore now.'

Counterfeiting takes a long time, like ~400 hours or some crap like that. While it may be profitable there's other things you can do to get money flowing with the number of runts you can employ. Things that dont necessarily require input material, or the input material itself can also be manufactured.

I came into counterfeiting thinking that "Okay ive saved all these chips all game long, practically every chip ive got my hands onto. Now that I can counterfeit I can convert everything I have nicely and cleanly into $200 chips as a REWARD for holding onto all that dough all game long" (including the money purses and bags of cash too).

The implication as a game mechanic is that it has nothing to do at all with profit margins compared to other manufacturing items. Like the fact it would be broken in terms of how fast you could make money compared to manufacturing boom gun ammo.

Money chips are not renewable, you cant really get more of them without going out there in the world and capturing something or someone. You cant manufacture money chips by breaking down components of other things. And most of the money chips you get from characters you've captured tend to be Blue Chips and you still only get half as much. Unlike the Apples for chateau you find alot less chips comparitively, only specific missions have money purses, and even inventory carry-chips for characters tend to be pretty low.

Unless the build time comes down there's no real reason to invest in a Mint for it, seeing as a mint takes a bloody long time to build and is a dedicated building slot, a Refinery would be much better for producing chems and other components.

(I modded the build time for counterfeit projects to be about 1/4 what it usually is, I wanted to set it to 50 hours just to "copy and paste my financial troubles away like the guild"... and catch up on converting all that cash I had laying around, but decided that it needed to take some time just to not be too anti-climactic).

[Ethereal_Medic]

Mint has it's place and it seems like 100$ plastic chips are quite efficient.
Mass-production of chemicals is alot more efficient and you don't need to look for 'components' in stock to keep the production running.
Next major step-up for the cycle "pay money to get even more money" is the factory+armory tower combo for mass-production of m1a1 tanks. Solves your financial issues entirely if you design 2-3 bases producing tanks for the worlds safety.

[ivandogovich]

As far as Conterfeiting vs Med Supplies or Chemicals, I understand the latter two were nerfed slightly by Dioxine in 99H2 so that they don't quite outshine the 1000>200 counterfeit profits.

Yep.  As far as game design goes, the overall balance of Counterfeiting vs other money makers has waivered as new streams of income have been introduced.  Aside from Manufacturing Tanks for sale at the endgame, I feel like counterfeiting is a viable stream of revenue that fits in with other sources. My sales points are 200, and 20,000 chips.

I use the profit/runt hour as my basic metric.  this sheet isn't yet up to date with 99H2.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CkPqVsGXP72ncwIMQjk8gW2Qnc3sVNJVW0ZXhAWcKoc

[Ethereal_Medic]

Nice calculation, I still pref. to just mass produce money into more money without micromanaging the vaults.
Game is hard enough and not designed to speedrun. Slow and steady towards cydonia (or don't).

[ivandogovich]

Yeah, I just updated the sheet a bit for current counterfeiting. (Wow the $100 chip has become quite profitable!) 

The chem nerf and medical supplies nerf are rather unsubstantial and are still excellent revenue streams.

Edit:  I also ran the numbers on Boom Gun Ammo.  If you are just getting rid of excess plastasteel, its pretty profitable.  Otherwise it is slightly better than XGrog and nowhere near as good as Chemicals/Med Supplies, etc.

[Ethereal_Medic]

Oct. 2502, got 4x refinery in my bases up and running to farm up the money needed to get my 5. base fully build out.
Also hoarding money for 6./7. and 8. base.

It's going to be another reticulan heavy influenced month :3
Payback time (for April 2501) and plasma-charger parts farming~

Change-Log:

- Master's Cane Hex attack deals less damage now

I don't really think that's correct. Maybe for those of low rank but something like the duchess and baronesses should do considerable damage. Also Noblewoman and Human Mage are coded as something like Rank 5 or 6. This leads to horrible instant deaths in the 'Escape Tower' bounty mission and while assaulting civilian crafts with a human mage on it.
I can clearly see the intention here, but this is quite tough to deal with if one hand gets spotted or 'sensed' the whole crew is in danger of this massive hex-attack depleting over 90HP in one swing. Maybe lower the damage even further and add secondary 'daze-damage' to it?

[Ethereal_Medic]

Master's cane~

25-80% hit-chance over 30+ tiles without LoS and 0-210 dmg.

Mhmm okay madame.