Bugs & Crash Reports

[Ethereal_Medic]

Good ol' lategame crackmarines 
Brutearmor+ and plasma-weaponry supported by fusion-explosives.

Now with even more crack in it thanks to stat-bonuses.

[Rince Wind]

Ah, but it seems that Brute makes the gals loose freshness more quickly than harbinger, for example.

[new_civilian]

Nepotism does not work for me either. I can click as long as I want and nothing happens. The girl later shows NEPOTISM in her achievements, though.
I attached an OLD savegame from some days ago, there's only one gal that is legit for the transformation, not sure what her name was, she died in a later mission...

And the gyrocopter armor HMG seems to have problems remembering that it is loaded with ammo, I load it in the base and give it one additional ammo clip to go. When the tac game starts, only the unloaded clip in the inventory is there. Not a big issue, i simply place 2 clips in the inventory, alright. 

[Solarius Scorch]

All 2x2 armours (including vehicles) have issues with remembering ammo loading. You need to pay attention to that in the pre-battle equipment screen, and load the weapon if needed.

[new_civilian]

Yep. Figured that out.

I found the reason for the non-working Nepotism, btw: The recovery time for the transformation is ZERO and that does not seem to work. Once I changed it to 1 it worked.

Fwiw, I have to stop playing X-Piratez. It simply soaks up so much time, that everything else in my life comes to a halt. 
I have to admit I thought I invest several hours into it every day and make good progress, but once I realized that after weeks of playing it 5 to 6 hours a day, sometimes more, I still hadn't progessed even remotely to what I would consider a milestone, i stopped.

That and I wanted to mod again. 

The mod is good: No two ways about that.
Balance is mostly fine. However some things did not work for me (and yes that's probably a "me" only thing, so feel free to have a different opinion and don't go ballistic because you have another opinion).
So here's how I experienced and played the tactical game and my thoughts:

-Imho the mod needs some tweaking in terms of TU usage (vanilla behaviour grenades and especially Sniper rifles are too punishing, not much (lower their TU usage by ~4 TUs and they are perfect) but to be honest I gave up on anything that needed priming and also switched to rifles for my shooting gals, simply because they are much more useful.
Also picking something up from the ground into the backpack basically uses most TUs, which I found a bit too restrictive. Same for manacles, you turn around and oops, have to wait another turn. Which defeats the purpose, they are meant to allow your troops to move on and not guard a stunned victim. Still, it was easier to simply let a girl guard the victim than going through the hassle of using manacles. And usually the fight was over before the manacles were used. And sometimes they even woke up and I preferred to simply stun them again instead of using the manacles which are prone to the close-combat-shot-avoiding-thing. You get the picture 
-Sniper rifles... Either you kneel/stand up and then have to use snap (which OF COURSE misses because its lousy accuracy) or you can't move, which is impossible on all 60x60 maps, which basically most maps are. So rifles it is. Forget their slightly lower accuracy, if you are mobile then you will be close enough to hit.
-Shotguns and SMGs... well I used them at the beginning because I had nothing else, but once I had rifles I simply skipped them as well. Their range wasv too short for my style of playing.
-I tried chem ammo and it works but in the long run normal ammo with more damage simply is the better solution. No need for a second weapon/gal, also eases the logistics.
-Melee boiled down to CattleProd/Ninja stick/Handles for everyone and maybe ONE or Techswords on the entire team. Nothing else was needed.
-Bows... I never used them much. I tried for a while, but once I had boom-fruits and stick-grenades, they became obsolete. That and the rogue armor made the girls too vulnerable.
-Pistols. Apart from the Kustom Handgun for special missions they were dead weight for my kind of playing. If close, I used melee, for anything else: Boom fruits/stick-gerenades and rifles.

So what my game boiled down to was this loadout: Rifles for everyone, stun melee for everyone, stickgrenades/boom-fruits for everyone. All the specialization did not really work for me.
Psi and things like the Cobra-Staff were also not worth the hassle (remember I hadn't progeressed too far), maybe this changes later...

TLDR: The mod is fine, but slightly too restrictive in certain areas. Maybe lower some requirements SLIGHTLY.

[RolandVasko]

^^ try X-COM~Files!

[legionof1]

I will point out that manacles are something of a relic/artifact at this point. They where made a very long time ago and there function is obsoleted by new mechanisms. Once upon a time they where essentially permanet knockout on anything you could bring them to bear on. But things change and Dioxine hasn't really found a way to make them do there intended task since without some worse side effects.

[Solarius Scorch]

I don't have any in-depth knowledge regarding balancing, but it seems to me that a lot of Civilian's points are deliberate decisions. In X-Com, explosives are king and the go-to option in most situations, so making them less attractive sounds okay (bearing in mind they're still very good, just a bit more hassle). Similarly, sniper rifles are so much superior that they need some drawbacks to make assault rifles viable (and honestly, getting into prone position is hardly unexpected). Shotguns and SMGs are indeed most useful early, but later on they still retain certain important roles, depending on the mission.

Piratez is an incredibly diverse mod, which on purpose addresses various player types. Nobody uses everything, because everyone has a different playstyle. It is also forgiving enough to give you some leeway in avoiding stuff you don't like.

[new_civilian]

Solarius is partially right. Most of my points are caused by my personal preferences and playstyle.

Still, unless you encounter a perfectly flat terrain and have direct LOS, sniper rifles are too difficult (imo) to deploy. My personal solution would be to lower their TU by the amount I described above (lower by -4 TU) and decrease their damage accordingly. At the moment you can only fire an aimed shot with a sniper from an airbus if you have someone opening the door for you and an enemy standing directly in LOS. I am not saying that they can't be used, but in my battles I prefered the more reliable damage output of rifles. Sure they are weaker, but you can fire up to 3 times, they have a good aim-accuracy and you can move and shoot and hide in one turn.

Making explosives less attractive by using loads of TU lead only to one thing in my campaign: I simply added explosives/throwables to everyone to compensate for the decreased per-turn damage output, which of course lead to even more realization that the TU usage is too high. The problem with the grens set up like that is: It will leave your gals out in the open and then you want to make sure the enemy can't harm you and all you then do is throw even more grenades. etc etc.

Again my solution would be to decrease the TU usage SLIGHTLY allowing your gals to go back into cover, making the gameplay a bit more streamlined. And no, not 2 grenades per turn, don't get me wrong, all i would recommend is a SMALL decrease of TU usage, juts like with the manacles and sniper rifles.

Manacles... The solution is simple: make them melee weapons, decrease TU's slightly (- 4 TUs) so that you can turn around before using them. Done. All problems solved.

The mod apart from that is fine (what an understatement) and I had no other problems. I really liked the fact that you can chose several ways to play it, there is always something that you can do if don't like doing another thing. Sometimes I got frustrated because I could not go on new missions because I lacked certain troops, crafts, weapons or equipment, but those weren't missions that were overly important, so it's not a big deal.

I especially liked that MELEE was really useful and proved to be a real alternative to shooting everything. The need for capturing enemies alive enforced an almost complete stun-melee-weapon loadout, though. Which is a shame as the huge variety of melee weapons in X-Piratez is excellent and lots of fun. A "solution" to change that, would be to enable the looting of corpses, but that's a terrible and dirty-cheap idea and please don't do that. 

So, overall the mod would get a 95% rating from me. It is absolutely worth playing, IF you have the time.
Good job, dioxine!

^^And yeah I played X-Files before it also gets a similar rating. Haven't tested the newest version yet, but I doubt that it got less good.

[Rince Wind]

You already loot corpses, depending on who you kill it yields different stuff.
But you don't get money, of course, why whould you?

You don't need to capture everyone. While that is the optimal way, it also gets boring. Later on especially you don't need another 20k and the added synthmuscle mesh (or whatever) that you get from robbing/enslaving instead of killing.
So I'll happily let my Blood Axe + Furiosa Armor Gal kill an entire ship of Mercs in a turn or two.

Sniper rifles and other heavy weapons require good positioning. You bring the sniper to a place where she can cover a lot of ground without moving and start killing. The sniper doesn't need to see the target, she only need a line to fire on it. At night snipers are terrifying, because they don't care, as long as there is a spotter. Flying armors are really good for snipers as well, just park them above your ship once you cleared the vicinity.

Explosives on everybody has been my go to since the original TftD (only played the OG years later), it is more a standard loadout than almost anything else.
I haven't played a lot with the recent changes, but it seems it makes grenades and similar weapons comparativly less good in the hands of experienced gals with maxed time units while making them more viable for lesser members of the crew. Also grenades can be thrown over obstacles, so often you can just stay in cover. Or use a 40mm grenade launcher. Stronger gals can have one in the backpack as secondary weapon.

I love assault rifles and similar weapons - but in piratez they are one of the weakest choices until you get lasguns (and enough ammo) or smartrifles in my opinion. Only when rifles surpass LACCs they get good. (not neccessarily damage, but the combination of damage, ammo capacity, weight and accuracy)
With HEAT ammo or at least AP ammo shotguns stay relevant. There are always gals that need training and HEAT/AP lets you kill most enemies with great accuracy at short to medium ranges, no shooting skill required.

[MemoryTAS]

Still, unless you encounter a perfectly flat terrain and have direct LOS, sniper rifles are too difficult (imo) to deploy. My personal solution would be to lower their TU by the amount I described above (lower by -4 TU) and decrease their damage accordingly. At the moment you can only fire an aimed shot with a sniper from an airbus if you have someone opening the door for you and an enemy standing directly in LOS. I am not saying that they can't be used, but in my battles I prefered the more reliable damage output of rifles. Sure they are weaker, but you can fire up to 3 times, they have a good aim-accuracy and you can move and shoot and hide in one turn.

I disagree on this. Sure extremely early game sniper rifles can be quite difficult to use, but when you get Sniper gear, accuracy for most sniper rifles gets close to if not past 100% with snap shot on most targets. At that point I'm mostly using aimed shot to get ~100% accuracy shots on targets without LoS, pretty much the only weapons capable of doing this aside from maybe the justiculator and the other one I'm forgetting.

[Mathel]

Solarius is partially right. Most of my points are caused by my personal preferences and playstyle.

Still, unless you encounter a perfectly flat terrain and have direct LOS, sniper rifles are too difficult (imo) to deploy. My personal solution would be to lower their TU by the amount I described above (lower by -4 TU) and decrease their damage accordingly. At the moment you can only fire an aimed shot with a sniper from an airbus if you have someone opening the door for you and an enemy standing directly in LOS. I am not saying that they can't be used, but in my battles I prefered the more reliable damage output of rifles. Sure they are weaker, but you can fire up to 3 times, they have a good aim-accuracy and you can move and shoot and hide in one turn.

-Sniper rifles... Either you kneel/stand up and then have to use snap (which OF COURSE misses because its lousy accuracy) or you can't move, which is impossible on all 60x60 maps, which basically most maps are. So rifles it is. Forget their slightly lower accuracy, if you are mobile then you will be close enough to hit.

Snipers get good again when you get flying armors. A gal on the top of the map has pretty long reach with them.
Also, I do not know which sniper rifles you used, but at least with some of them, you can move a few tiles and still use aimed shot with trained gals.

Manacles... The solution is simple: make them melee weapons, decrease TU's slightly (- 4 TUs) so that you can turn around before using them. Done. All problems solved.

As I understand them, they are designed to be used on already downed hostiles, which melee can not do. A standing opponent is obviously going to resist being cuffed quite well.
But I did not use them either. I did not see the point, since most foes, once stunned, would surrender even if they woke up.

Bows are also good, for the same reason that grenades still are. Shoot over obstacles.
Pistols can be carried in QD slot and thus are ready as backup for gals with weapons bad at close range (Launchers, Snipers).

[MemoryTAS]

Bows also have the distinct advantage of having one of the if not the best light source in the game. Flaming arrows can be used to light surrounding terrain and since throwable light sources were nerfed (have a chance of breaking upon impact), the fact that you get so many in a single pack really works out well.

[Rince Wind]

The fact that they go out is nice as well. Unless they start a bushfire.

Pistols also make handy weapons for weaker members of the crew, especially those that only have one hand slot, like bugeyes. You don't always have a good 1 handed SMG for your melee gals as well, so I usually give them pistols. Things like eagles and magnums pack a punch and have decent range.

[Rubber Cannonball]

Sorry to continue the bug and crash report derail but +1 to the previous 5 posts by Rince Wind, MemoryTAS, and Mathel

Great things:  Sniper rifles that your gal can effectively use with snap shot,  Flaming arrows as temporary light source, pistol as a low tu secondary weapon for basically anyone not using a primary weapon that can perform like a pistol, swords and other melee weapons that don't trigger reaction fire or ai spotter/sniper when approaching and attacking from behind.

Not so great:  manacles.  I haven't been able to employ them effectively either.  Seems more effective to have a gal guard and restun as necessary.