Extended Piratez general FAQ/Strategy Guide

[Arthanor]

I think there's a point after which there are retaliation missions sent for you every month (in vanilla it depends on the difficulty setting), but I am not sure when that is in Piratez. As far as I know, there is no time limit. The only thing that's time limited is assaulting supply ships (they blow up after 20 turns!)

[niculinux]

[...]
As far as I know, there is no time limit. The only thing that's time limited is assaulting supply ships (they blow up after 20 turns!)

Is this a feature or bug? If the first...it very weird! Hope eventually won't happen anymore!

[Arthanor]

Feature: Dioxine doesn't like the idea of people "farming" supply ships. So although they are crewed by low level units who are relatively easy to take out, there are also 1-2 terror units, they are equipped with particularly devastating weapons and their engines have this capability of exploding, so after 20 turns kaboom!.

If you shoot them down, you will likely destroy the engine so that gets rid of the explosion risk, but that also gets rid of the main reward being the engine and nuclear fuel. The weapons are nice to have though, as they are high quality, devastating things. But overall, if you want to farm supply ship, you need to design a very specific strategy (likely involving dogs for expendable scouting, snipers for taking out enemies from far away, and boarders of some kind who can face the onslaught or are expendable enough you don't care.. maybe dogs for boarding too.. Too bad there's no kennel ship!)

[Cristao]

^Got my first supply ship. I sent out my Thunderhorse with 12 gals. So imagine the scenario, I normally advance my troops in groups of 4 including a voodoo user. Then all of a sudden, the entire map is on fire and I start panicking off screen. My entire 3 teams scatter trying to escape the area. Luckily I am a heavy user of assault armor so only my witch armor users were on the ground (PS they are witches, they should be able to fly!!). What is quite weird is that there is no warning, it is the first time I am seeing a baby nuke being fired. I thought it was only the Hell fire Rod that could do such wickedness. All of a sudden, I am accelerating my forward scout movements and being less conservative - any thing that moves dies. Any shadow dies. Only one soldier got injured and that person was in a witch armour.

[Arthanor]

12 gals against a supply ship and only 1 wounded? That's pretty well done! I usually get multiple wounded from gauss shots, if not casualties from baby nukes.

I suggest bringing dogs for scouting next time. They're useful scouts and if they get a gauss shot or a nuke coming their way, it's much less of a loss.

[Cristao]

I should state that I use my own modded armor, weapons and stronger soldiers. That gives me an unhealthy advantage compared to your games.

[Dioxine]

No, that makes you a plain, boring cheater

[Arthanor]

lol fair enough. It's a single player game, I don't really care what others do with it. I personally enjoy trying to work with your idea of balance, but even I have made some tweaks (snap shots on Fuso Knives and bows)

[Cristao]

No, that makes you a plain, boring cheater

  Variety is the spice of life. Nothing better than trying to use stun on a waspite and then having it reaction fire your five soldiers...  That was a funny experience. Luckily I brought along a tech sword.

[Cristao]

lol fair enough. It's a single player game, I don't really care what others do with it. I personally enjoy trying to work with your idea of balance, but even I have made some tweaks (snap shots on Fuso Knives and bows)

Never mind Dioxine ..  I can try his idea of balance on my second playthrough. Now I am just interesting in seeing how those Star Gods roll in Cydonia.

[Solarius Scorch]

  Variety is the spice of life.

True, but if you're sharing stories, it doesn't make much sense when you use cheats...

[Cristao]

^Aight. Careful tho - apart from stats going up to 180 and loads money plus a stun pistol. Not much different.

Ooh did I mention my customised tank ..

Perhaps I should release it as a combined mod pack. Cristao's Cheat Mods for OpenXcom!! 

[Dioxine]

You definitely should do that

@Arthanor: snap shot on those 3 might be a good idea... same TU (you don't throw any faster), lower acc.

[Arthanor]

@Arthanor: snap shot on those 3 might be a good idea... same TU (you don't throw any faster), lower acc.

It felt like Fuso knives as a early breaching weapon for good throwers would be cool, but it was made useless by the lack of reaction fire. Bows just seemed to make sense. I did:
- same stamina cost (it's no easier to throw)
- 80% of TU cost (you don't aim as much, so it's a bit faster)
- 66% accuracy (you're reacting!).

For bows, there's also the fact that snapshots only are accurate to 15 tiles instead of 25/30 for the aimed shot. Overall, it doesn't replace aimed shots in your turns, but it helps on the enemy turn so you're not a sitting duck.

[Dioxine]

The general idea is 'no reactions on weapons that require power-up'. But these 2 seem to be skirting the line... Tough choice.