Tech tree frustrations

[legionof1]

Okay lodging a complaint here about two specific parts of the tech tree.

1: A live Reticullan Elder is needed for a branch of voodoo and other subsequent techs and a tech that rather alters game-play. However as far i can tell they are only feasibly targets on base defense where taking them alive is not always reasonable given their rather frail form and base defense collateral damage potential. Retcualians only spawn relatively small vessels outside of crackdowns and crackdown vessels sufficiently big to have an elder are pretty hefty foes to shoot down(crackdown ships don't land). Weakest of the potential is a Corvette. According to the tech tree there is an alternate path to the tech via a get one free path. However that path requires a reticulan elder. Circular tech path....WTF. So difficult and rare occurrence with no functional bypass or alternative. 

2: Broken prisoners. There are a fair number of bottlenecks resulting form needing to break certain low frequency foes(guild master, Academy Provost, etc) There are NO substitutions and breaking a prisoner requires 2 live captures. Bad RNG can leave the game in an tedious and possibly unwinnable state. In my case I have seen less then 20 academy ships in 5 game years. Shipping 890 just appeared. 2.25 percent academy or thereabout. One tech and one provost that i can recall all game.

[Boltgun]

High profile foes seems to always spawn on base attack, so if you go trigger happy, you'll get more. That was where I got mine.

Some ships are more likely to have them then other, and they're not the biggest.

[legionof1]

Yes they do always spawn 1 minimum leader in a base defense. However base defenses are not particularly good capture scenarios given leaders tend to be one the first units encountered. The minimum 1 dude tend to start in the lift and getting his stunned body out of harms way is a tricky proposition. Then win the base defense without the body becoming collateral damage or waking up again to cause problems. Minimum one gal sit out the rest of the battle to stand over the body. And have a prison in the base that defended. Oh and nevermind the not insignificant problem in taking down these vip's alive with tons of his buddies just the other side of the flimsily hatch.

Difficulty aside my main problem is that it is possible to never be offered the opportunity to win the game at all. 2 guildmaster's 2 provosts 2 Academy engineer 1 cardinal and one Star God Coordinator/Public Enemy live captures are needed to open the end game. In my case i have never been presented the chance at sufficient academy targets. But aside from the trade guild who have double the number of mission types they fly and some of the easiest pickings. The other faction could just plain not happen.

The mod needs to have a mechanism to guarantee the endgame or at the very least provide some insurance to prevent outlier RNG from dooming a run irregardless of player input. 

[Dioxine]

Circular tech path....WTF. So difficult and rare occurrence with no functional bypass or alternative. 

Well yes, that was the idea. Did you expect everything at the first playthrough? Also it's not circular, it's a sanity check in case some bypas will appear in the future.

2: Broken prisoners. There are a fair number of bottlenecks resulting form needing to break certain low frequency foes(guild master, Academy Provost, etc)

Well yes. That was the idea. You need to learn how to hunt them. Bad RNG will change at some point.

The mod needs to have a mechanism to guarantee the endgame or at the very least provide some insurance to prevent outlier RNG from dooming a run irregardless of player input.

That's BS my friend. RNG never dooms anyone. You're just inexperienced in playing this, judging by how you seem to take all information from just a single campaign.

[legionof1]

Ah okay

Well yes, that was the idea. Did you expect everything at the first playthrough? Also it's not circular, it's a sanity check in case some bypas will appear in the future.

Well yes. That was the idea. You need to learn how to hunt them. Bad RNG will change at some point.

That's BS my friend. RNG never dooms anyone. You're just inexperienced in playing this, judging by how you seem to take all information from just a single campaign.

Ah okay i can get having things set up for checks like that. point withdrawn.

True nuff rng will change. As for learning to hunt the targets i dont know what i can do that im not already doing. I am at present downing every craft i can to force more strikes against my bases in an effort to generate more chances. But the academy are ships just are not there to attack. I have not seen an academy craft in several months now. Any ideas or other avenues i might pursue?

I will concede that much of my experience is from this particular run as its the only one to go this long or this "well". All the others i screwed up and lost at a much earlier game time point. I learned. I found out where i went wrong. Now to be within sight of the final hurrah with nothing to do but grind map after map to maintain score....Fun is gone.

And as to doomed RNG it is theoretically possible with xcom to be boned and not know it since all missions are generated at game start except retaliations. Has this been altered in this mod?     

[Yglorba]

Forgive me if I'm saying something that seems too obvious, but have you made sure to cover as much of the world as possible with hyperwave decoders?  Obviously, the more of the world you cover, the more chances you have to spot what you're looking for.

[legionof1]

Yes i have full coverage. Although its quite possible a fair number of ships slipped by before i had it. this run had real money issues for a very long time. Still does. mid year 5 and only now is the mint about to come online. Still 2.25% or thereabouts academy ships in total is a frustratingly small number of available targets. So far as i remember nothing bigger then a runabout, except a single cutter in year 4 and a single boarding torpedo in year one.  The torpedo was to early to do anything but lob all the explodey bits to have a hope of surviving. That was not a good day ended up losing most of the crew and most of the loot i had gotten up to that point since the fighting spread into the armored vault cube under where the stores where. Also how i discovered the cave/sewer level... By blowing the floor up over and over.

[ivandogovich]

A note about Reticulan elders.   They are also available in Reticulan outpost missions via imperial probes.  It's a really nice map, too.

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[Arthanor]

With the mission scripts, it would be possible to make a base or retaliation mission that spawns automatically every month after year 5 or 6 for every factions that needs to but hasn't been unlocked. That might be a good check to have to make sure the game can end.

[legionof1]

Good to know about the outpost thanks.