Damn! Shotgunned down after such fine flametrower work!
That last bandit really did well with his shotgun.. Good points by Dioxine on "support and squad tactics" but you're usually good at that. I'll just add that with melee and short ranged weapons, it is even more difficult to support, so it is even more important to keep gals together. Also, gals can have good reactions compared to enemies (unlike normal XCom). Try to setup ambushes and especially avoid rushing in with a melee weapon and ending up hiding in a spot that hasn't been cleared.
Now, Meridian.. Meridian.. You seem to suffer from "kidnapping addiction" even more than Ivan or I did. So I enjoyed hearing you say "No more prisoners!" in this episode, even though you persisted to use the handles. Some prisoners are worth the life of a gal, or even a few, because they are rare and precious. But not ghouls! Only take prisoners when you can afford to do it safely. This is well past the point where you should shout "NO PITY!! NO REMORSE!! NO FEAR!!" and kill them all ("billhooks and hammer to the back of the head, spit on the corpse, have fun in hell, sucker!" style).
If you want to take many prisoners and they wake up a lot, try to carry their corpses all to the same spot (ideally a corner of the map, or a room where you can stand in the door) and keep a gal with a stunrod to put them back to sleep. It's "elementary XCom" which we all forget because we don't really need it, until we play Piratez.. At least the Ghouls don't have a built in weapon
Imagine if Dioxine gave them a clawing in-build melee attack...
Great work with the hammers, and using the beers to complement their high stamina requirement. That is really well done. I just discarded hammers as needing too much stamina. And that last tank that was dealt with much faster than I expected. Of all the weapons to pick back up, the hammer was really the one (seems to work, unlimited ammo when you are running short), not the flamethrowers (doesn't really work, limited ammo). Flamethrowers are pretty good against armored enemies (like the guys with white helmets, they really get their edge against personal armor dudes where other early guns are pretty useless) but if you see a guy in hazmat suit that seems not to care, he probably doesn't
Gals, especially injured ones, have a hard time aiming or hitting in melee, the saving grace is "melee gun firing". Kaleido Ruby could probably have solved the ghoul problem a lot faster with a few melee homefront rifle autoshots, instead of handles. Also, firing guns is one of the few things in Piratez that doesn't require stamina (indeed, melee, moving and throwing all require stamina, and I think voodoo has some different kind of downside)
In the end, Piratez requires you to watch, learn and adapt:
Really look at your enemies. Dioxine did a great job to match their looks with their stats (hazmat suit = no fire/acid, unarmoured melee = dodge but probably squishy, armored guy = tougher but less dodge). This alone gives you hints to address each, with the proper weapon (guns, guns/explosives and fire/melee, respectively, for the above 3, I'd say). If something doesn't work repeatedly (handles! or fire on ghouls), you need to try something else
This is not XCom where you can liberally apply the same force (laser/plasma) on everything and expect it to work.
It feels like tanks should have been the big threat, yet these were taken care of with no fuss (because you looked at the tank and did what was appropriate intuitively: use explosive and high/splash damage weapons), the hobbits didn't pose much of a threat for the same reason: You found a solution (grenades) and applied it repeatedly. But the ghouls.. man the ghouls.. They distracted the hell out of you and did exactly what they are there for: tank a lot of hits and waste your time so that other units (that last f*cking bandit!) can kill the gals.
To end this, a general note: Remember you're a Pirate, not a the valiant protector of Earth. You're in for the quick easy fights, to get the loot and return to the hideout to party. If something is hard, you need to find a way to make it easy, or
you need to not do it. If you stick to it,
it will hurt you. But you seem to be the kind of guy who wants to "rise to the challenge" and pull through. Sometimes in Piratez, the challenge is recognizing that you're not supposed to be there.
There are situations in Piratez that are designed to hurt, to wound or kill your good gals and set you back, without offering much in exchange. Experienced gals are really awesome units, you need to keep them alive. Not all fight are meant to be fought, because not all fights will be worth it. You need a LOT of good loot to be worth a good gal, even more for many of them. There's no shame in pulling out. There's no cause worth sacrificing the gals life for, no home planet and human society to defend from evil invaders. You're a Pirate, if you're not getting the loot and living to spend it, it's not worth it.
As you said in your comments, it's entertaining to see the player suffer (one of the reason I enjoyed Ivan's LPs: Ivan moments and the suffering they cause + seeing him pull through), and because it's different as most players would just reload. But you're a pirate, if you're suffering, you're not looting the right folks!
