Piratez starting guide for new players

[ivandogovich]

- Interceptions
I don't go after anything in the first year. Nothing. Only landed ships. I hire a jetbike when I can afford one to id and tail contacts.  Then send the Bonny when they land.  The reason I do this is to afford painful Hideout Defenses.  I'm just to chicken to do bring on a retaliation, until I've got solid defenses in place.

- Research
Research is the 800 pound gorilla in the room.  There is so much. 
I've broken out all of the topics you can discover from consumables (books, discs, etc) on the new Bootypedia Research page here.
There is also a link to all the topics that prisoners will give up.

In my current campaign for early to mid game, I bee-lined for a few topics: 
*Hyperwave Decoders, as they may Shipping encounters much more survivable
*Interrogation, for all of the tech gateways
*Studies to start my Dedicated Research Base
*Forgery (Mint) for strong cash flow
Aside from that, I've pretty much ignored Gauss, Laser, and Craft techs in favor of Armor, interesting weapons and lore. Tons and tons of interrogations.  2 prisons in the first base, 2 in a second, and 1 in my Research base.  I've now exhausted most of the talking points and enslave and rob the others.

[legionof1]

Interesting layout but are the 4 corridor/traps needed after the second ring is built? Wouldn't only one be more efficient? And is such an expensive base worth the investment? Most things seem quick in the default 15 lab.

[ivandogovich]

The corridors/traps are indeed optional.  They could maximize be further utilized as studies etc.  I just added some notes that explored this very thing.

https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Research_(Piratez)#Notes

Are they worth the investment??  Good question, and it may be overkill.

The fact that some Key Techs cost 200-500 are what made me want to create a base that could crank through higher techs quickly. 
I have a phase 3 base up at the moment (Beginning of Year Two) with about 28 brainers, and I do have a 200 pt research available that I have been putting off, while I've been cleaning up lasers and craft techs.
It may be that in late game, so many of the other techs have been exhausted, that these final, huge techs could perk along with 15 researchers for a month, etc., without too much hardship.

Edit:  And an even more efficient design would be to place an access lift in the corner and build from there.  I started in the middle to speed available build times.

[Eddie]

ivandogovich, thank you for your input. I was hoping to get more opinions, but it seems other people are as clueless as I am.

So for interceptions... attacking only landed craft is a viable option apparently. What shippings would you miss out on? So far I can think of smugglers that can have really good loot. Can you identify them in the aerial combat screen? I only had one so far and can't remember. Other thing I can think of is small fighters that so far are my only source of gauss pistols and craft gauss cannon. The craft gauss cannon you don't need when you only attack landed craft and the gauss pistol is not that much of a game changer.

[greattuna]

Smugglers are shown as JAMMED, but hyper-waves help a bunch. They also don't have as much good loot as one would expect, the only really useful things I got was 2 snuffy rifles, boom gun, and rare sniper gauss, everything else I could get elsewhere (like banana clips, rpgs, and one smuggling ship full of x-grog).

2603, March
-Interceptions
No. Nada. Too dangerous. I only have bonny, shark jetbike and deliverator in my possession, so most good ships are out of my reach, and rest will land anyway. Also, retaliation. It is bad, and I don't want more than 1 retal\mo.

-Research
Depends on player heavily, I only now started expanding in craft weapons direction, but I have some basic voodoo, guardian armour, and ability to manufacture laser ammunition.
Interrogations\gun almanachs\data disks are useful and quick source of info, and sometimes are necessary. They also can give access to some nifty stuff at black market (indirectly).
I can't really advice anything, just do what you think is best for you.

[Eddie]

Added the spreadsheet I use to calculate melee weapon damage.

[legionof1]

Note some smugglers do land just not all. Smugglers are very rng. They can have almost anything but its small amounts so it only really pays off when its rare goods like guns, data discs and similar items.

Some fighters do land if they spawn for missions like survey or conversion.

The only real thing you would miss out on hitting only landed craft would be gold freighters since they never land. However without hyperwave you can't tell a gold transport is active so....

[Eddie]

Yes, it seems attacking only landed craft is a viably playing tactic. You save on expenses for interceptors, craft ammo and hangars. Also you don't need the associated research.

Dioxine, what do you think about this? Is it good that way or should there be more risk/reward type shippings that you would have to shoot down but risk a retaliation?
It feels not very pirate like that you don't use the guns on your ships. I like it that you have to think about ammo cost (missiles are damn expensive) vs potential loot.

[legionof1]

Landed only is a viable path early and even good play funds wise. But at some point you have to shoot down craft to expand your pool of capture targets to advance tech. A landed only run is possible if you get bases from every faction but then you need minimum one base per faction in addition to affording buying leaders from the mercs(do you have 550 million laying around?). I feel at some point you must step up into the air game and spend money to make money/progress at anything more then a snails pace. Game is a long one as it is, slowing yourself down when you can afford to play the air game strikes me as silly.

[Dioxine]

Hard to say since I never pay much attention to the danger of shooting ships down. In all probability you're advancing slower though (less funds), and the auto-crackdowns will come sooner or later anyway. Better to be ready IMO. Air combat isn't that expensive either, just don't buy any craft weapons at the black market unless rich or desperate.

Still. Should I reduce the number of landings? Would it feel more right? It's actually strange that all these freighters land so often in an open field...

[superschokokeks]

later there are ships with sway gov mission, where a success cuts your funding. According to bootypedia you have to shoot them down before they land.
So you have to tech up your interceptor to fight frigates/terrorships.
I lost 4 founders because of this (try to shoot down 4-5 large ships at the same time..).
Maybe there's a possibility to prevent this mission before happening (take down hideouts?) don't know.
I know I have to finish this game quick or research large-ships-killer fast or I loose within a year.. or two.. or three.. *cough*
..And I'm in year 2603 or 4.. Those missions type started late

Well.. Okay. You have a lot of time until this happening but be prepared..

[Dioxine]

Sway Govt missions are fully preventable only through research.

[legionof1]

It's actually strange that all these freighters land so often in an open field...

I think the number of landings vs shootings is good. Maybe you just lock the freighters to "land" in the more industrial/urban tile-sets like the dockyard? Even the farm is alright thematically, if perhaps a bit too rich due to apple occurrence.


Sway government runs are a much more limited threat in this mod compared to vanilla. Here the governments are not the primary funding. Hell they just offset maintenance and even then a single government or 3 are not particularly valuable.  I lost i believe 2 nations in my current run before i got to the prevention tech. I didn't feel any appreciable pinch in funds except when i was forced for a few month period to rely on seagull missiles because i had lost my primary factory base to a stargod landing that came up pure grey robes.

[Arthanor]

The large % of landing crafts (especially in the first mission) creates odd things, like you being more of a raider than a pirate (the naval/ship combat part is quite small compared to the ground combat).

It might be interesting to reduce the time spent landed so they are harder to catch, or the number of landings, of the type of UFOs that land, but for stuff like the research mission it still makes sense to land. Crackdowns are harsh, but with the mind shield being early tech now, it might be possible to avoid it. It might also be possible to tweak down the likelihood of retaliations when shooting down UFOs.

I would welcome more air combat, but the diminution of engine/fuel needs to be considered (it's already been cut, and might need to be increased if you are supposed to shoot down UFOs more often, depriving you of that). Assaulting crashed UFOs with blown up engines also makes battles easier (which is nice), and makes the few with intact engines feel like winning the lottery.

The bonny is also quite flimsy (and losing it with all the gals and gear is a game breaker), so maybe the civilian crafts will need to be tweaked too. But in many cases, especially with a Hunter-Killer as backup, I think it is doable to crash a bunch of UFOs. Then you'd get the choice: more pigeons/zeppelins for radar coverage or more interceptors?

[legionof1]

I don't feel the bonny is particularly frail at 300 hp, the real issue in the air is armament, your simply out-ranged by everything except the lightest of ufo's. And only your initial charger laser even equals them. You take alot of fire just closing and the bonny has no missile slots. Even the first pure interceptor with seagulls has a better chance with less 2/3 the hp. Granted it has some dodge the bonny dosen't. But its the missile alpha at equal or longer range to light ufos that makes the real difference.

The 2 light 2 heavy config is very hard to make use of early. The first real upgrade is the 105 rockets but that's only one tier before stingrays and a fairly marginal upgrade at, 5 dmg per shot, 5km range, and 10% accuracy over starter spikes. Light slots blow at anything but finishing until laser tech. The slots just do not perform well until mid to late game at which point your vaporizing anything that's a reasonable match hp wise for the bonny. And by then quite possibly you could upgrade the bonny.

The only real use i have been able to put the bonny to is downing freighters. interceptors with missiles can struggle with a freighters high hp. Freighters also have very short range and low power guns so the bonny can unload the full clip of the charger laser in safety before closing and only suffering for 15 km to bring spike rockets and the 25mm to bear at which point superior RoF ends the battle very rapidly.

It something like strapping AtA weapons to a C-130. does it work: yes. Do i want anything else at all: yep.