Piratez starting guide for new players

[Arthanor]

Fair enough, quite flimsy in the early game, when taking on enemy craft with inferior weapons, as in not tough enough to compensate and survive the fight without significant repairs or even a risk of being blown up (and who wants to risk it with all the gals and gear on board?). It is quite possible that it becomes better later when its dps/range allows it to not have to tank as much damage.

Downing freighters is indeed something the bonny can do, by virtue of cannons having much more ammo and much more total damage than missile, at the cost of dps and range. I had a spreadsheet to calculate all that, but it is quite out of date now and I have just restarted (and that game is not progressing very fast).

[legionof1]

Realistically freighters are the bonny's only niche in the air something else dosen't do better cheaper and safer. The bonny is a transport with guns and not anything else.

Frankly some of the air stats in this mod perplex me. Why would you send one gal to do anything on the ground? Why is the most theoretical(not functional) damage for much the game on transports?

I like the diversity and the utility craft are an excellent addition, but sometimes i look at a craft stat and try to conceive of a useful case for it and fail.

[Eddie]

You can build a hunter killer in the second month, and from then on you wouldn't attack with the bonny alone. With these two you can shoot down most things with just light weapons. You will take damage, sure, but you can do it.

If you consider playability in irongal mode, this is probably too risky as you cannot afford to loose the bonny. You would need a different lead attack craft than the bonny and the hunter killers can't do that. The swordfish is probably the earliest available craft to fill that role. The swordfish has some limitations, the most important to me is that it can only use heavy weapons. At the point where you get it your only heavy weapons are spike rockets and these are too expensive to use regularly. If the swordfish had one light weapon slot that would make it much more useful. If it's role is indeed that of a lead attack craft, the related attributes (hp, armor, repair rate) could use a slight boost to make that role more obvious to the player.

Concerning cargo ship landings: Shippings with really valuable cargo like supply ships would only land in a guarded port. It's a limitation of the engine that we can't have port attacks for landed ships (or maybe we can?). These shippings would be most vulnerable during their voyage and not when they are in port, so this is where pirates would strike at them.

[legionof1]

In historical piracy attacks on "landed" craft where not particularly uncommon. Tall ship era vessels routinely stopped at unguarded(but for the crew themselves) locations to take on water, get the crew fresh air, etc. Catching a ship at anchor with some crew ashore was an ideal situation for the pirate.

Even attacks on fortified locations where not unheard off. The pirates can't take a standup fight against a full garrison or a true warship but neither can those forces be combat ready at all times and quite often take some minutes to even be ready. How much could you steal with say 10-15 mins lightly opposed access if you had 20 some experienced folk? 

Even most fortified ports of the Tall ship era had rather small garrisons. What made the garrisons relevant was the fortification they held. No ship afloat could match a fort for raw weight of fire but neither could the fort withstand determined direct troop attack. Most port fortification served more as a deterrent then anything else. To engage a fort was to risk your ship and ships where very valuable.

[Eddie]

Bottom line is:
From the discussion about interception strategie I gather that you don't miss much if you only go after landed craft early on. So there is not much pressure to get better interceptors and weapons. What I would like there to be is some really jucy targets that require some investment into interception capabilities so that when that shipping comes up you would say "Damn, I wish I already had that better interceptor/weapon because now I don't have enough to get that shipping". Makes it more rewarding when you finally get the tech.

To me, interceptor tech should be something that enables you to take more missions.

[Yglorba]

Isn't that what gold transports are?

(And eventually, of course, you need a way to shoot down the hotrods with faction leaders, although that's more about speed than firepower.)

[Dioxine]

In historical piracy attacks on "landed" craft where not particularly uncommon. Tall ship era vessels routinely stopped at unguarded(but for the crew themselves) locations to take on water, get the crew fresh air, etc. Catching a ship at anchor with some crew ashore was an ideal situation for the pirate.

Even attacks on fortified locations where not unheard off. The pirates can't take a standup fight against a full garrison or a true warship but neither can those forces be combat ready at all times and quite often take some minutes to even be ready. How much could you steal with say 10-15 mins lightly opposed access if you had 20 some experienced folk? 

Even most fortified ports of the Tall ship era had rather small garrisons. What made the garrisons relevant was the fortification they held. No ship afloat could match a fort for raw weight of fire but neither could the fort withstand determined direct troop attack. Most port fortification served more as a deterrent then anything else. To engage a fort was to risk your ship and ships where very valuable.

Very good points. Except modern-day garrisons would have tanks and helicopters... and the game engine doesn't support these... This leads to a point... add stationary 'ufos' that shoot (forts), and limit the number of freighter landings (but not remove them), so the Bonaventura is actually useful for air combat It's sort of an armed merchant ship... very good against other merchant ships, but bad against fast boats, and even worse against warships...

[legionof1]

As to Tanks and helicopters in garrisons, the response time problem actually gets worse the more advanced you get beyond "grab pants,gun, and pointy bit, pants optional". Granted power projection has improved but not response time. Our little AI tanketts on the other hand much faster to respond provided the docking station isn't too complex.

I like the "fort" idea but i wouldn't make them immobile just slow and sufficiently meaty that interceptors are a poor choice. Don't know about fewer freighters landing. I believe the point was more why is it stopping in random forest 248j when it has the demonstrated capacity to loop the planet/travel to another. Who signing for a freighter worth of goods in explodey purple jungle? Catching a freighter at some settlement no matter the dinkyness feels logically better.   

[Dioxine]

I believe the point was more why is it stopping in random forest 248j when it has the demonstrated capacity to loop the planet/travel to another. Who signing for a freighter worth of goods in explodey purple jungle? Catching a freighter at some settlement no matter the dinkyness feels logically better.   

Maybe but game doesn't support this, really... because it doesn't take into account if the freighter was shot down or did it land. It always takes the terrain involved from globe's texture. So the logical assumption was, if we can't differentiate, then proper landings (ie. in settlements) are off-limits - security's too strong, probably.

Maybe their response time isn't that good, especially against invisible ships, but they still would have at least bunkers, and few dozen (if not hundreds, depends on many factors) extra security. Again, game makes it impossible to differentiate, so ground force at the LZ cannot be made different than ground force at crash site.

One solution would be Freighter spawning a 'terror site' where it lands. Then you could choose, dogfight and a battle in the wild (an a potential Crackdown), or a much harder battle at a landing spot. Problem: these landing spots would be immediately visible to a player, no matter their radars.

[legionof1]

A modified "terror" every now and again would be interesting. Freighters set to no landing would give the boony a clear task in the air. The player seeing the "port raids" i dont feel is too bad if you would tie it to something akin to the mansions or the russian files. Maybe data discs have "shipping schedule" get one free? Or off guild Reps? Or maybe mutant alliance "spies". As long as the mechanic is gated and explained to the player as to what it represents, the player likely dosen't give a toss of the backend execution.

[Dioxine]

Good idea about opening it with a research topic, so everything is laid out and explained beforehand. I wonder if I should do the same with regular Mutant Pogroms (so the player won't be dragged into this unwillingly and unwittingly), maybe as the preq to contact the mutant alliance.

Now then, this will of course mean a lot of work with preparing landing site maps. But the result would be worthwile I think.

I even consider starting the game earlier in tech, making repairing of Bonavetura your first goal. The trick would be, there would be several Bonaventura variants to choose from and each would open up a different fabular path, with varrying missions (so the player can be evil, or be an idealistic rebel, etc). So far this is the only mechanic that would allow to choose a path - making it dependant on an unique starting base item that can be used to manufacture one of several things.

[legionof1]

I wouldn't bother with gating the pogroms unless your considerably regressing starting tech. Most players of the mod will be familiar with the concept. Rare is the player that hasn't at least a passing familiarity with what is a core mechanic in UFO, TFTD, and the new games. At least that ends up here.

If you did regress the start to a pre first transport state gating the pogrom is necessary to prevent the score penalty from being merely punitive.

A morality/play-style branching would be interesting. The "evil" branch has more to do with the dark ones(easier destruction voodoo, hellblades, etc). The "good" branch has better non lethal gear and better communion voodoo rewards(less plody converted cyclops).

A savenger "roadwarrior" style with faster craft repair and more things like the junkmaster and focus on low tech gear. However less craft hitpoints and miss out on higher tech ammo.

A brainer "tech" style with easier high tech access by eliminating some prerequisites. But you pay a premium in production costs and need to build "experiments" so sacrifice runt time.   

[AncientSion]

I dont know about engine limitations, but would it be possible to have different Terrain types for city-landed ships ?
I.e. if a shipping lands on a City and you engage, you could get a Terror (progrom) type MAP (not Mission) instead of still chasing engineers through the Woods ?

[Dioxine]

@legionof1: Fully agreed. I had some of those concepts myself. Not sure about rolling back the tech, though. It might feel too much like Temple of Trials in Fallout 2. That can be of course mitigated by making it less linear. More important concern is starting experience. As of right now, a player can go and start blowing stuff right away, have some fun with the game, try various funky guns, and have a quick blast playing a few missions. No need to go too deep right away. I could of course make the early-tech game optional (a mod), but that'd produce its own problems (inter-mod communication issues, more work in debugging). The plus would be, the tech progress being more logical and intuitive, and much more possible branching and vagaries.

@AncientSion: Yes it is an engine limitation. The only difference between landing site and crash site is a script that randomly explodes the engines. Terrain is always taken from globe's data. To have a specific mission, you need it to be a mission site. Naturally terrains ALONE can be added if freighters had their own, very special set of coordinates linked to terrains inside globe's data. However just swapping the terrain doesn't seem worth it. Extra security and extra goods should be present, because it'd be a reasonably large (if quite open) map, containing the landing, its facilities, and a part of a settlement. Also innocent bystanders are likely to be present (in reality, unarmed hostiles who can even be set to pass out after 20 turns so you don't have to catch them to auto-grab all loot).

[legionof1]

You could put the branching post bonny but require the bonny to build. The player then has a choice to trade advantages for their play-style for grounding the transport for many runt hours. Initial experience is preserved and its only if the player wishes that they invoke the alternate paths. Never build the super bonny and you have the vanilla tree which the base against which the branching is balanced. Or give the player a skyranger for landings until they build the bonny. Early detection limits how far and how fast you need to move the troops.