Getting higher-level ships

[lusciouspear]

Hi,

I'm a few years into my game and stuck. I've researched a ton of the tech tree (up to Plasma and Gauss, can't manu clips tho), have great armor, can obliterate anything that moves.

But I've never gotten high enough level Reticulan (I've rarely seen them), Church (ditto), Star God, or Trader operatives.

It almost feels like there's a bug -- I've taken out 7 Academy bases in SE Asia and 90% of all missions spawn there for the past year or two.  I'm on .98E

Is there a way I can hack in some ships/missions to make this happen?

[AncientSion]

Research stuff and just buy the VIPs you Need on the black market. they cost between 75 and i believe 135m.

[legionof1]

keep playing. There is a significant clumping in faction appearance. Eventually it will change. Alternatively if your searching the very highest(guildmaster, retculian elder, etc) one of that tier is always included in any hideout defense. Shoot down everything of the faction that flies by. Or buy them if you have the cash. Things like academy espers and their equivalents will almost always show in mansion runs.

Reticulans do deserve a special mention for imperial probe mission they have. The outpost has at least one of every reticulan. It is however quite difficult due to the layout being lots of tiny rooms packed full of baddies with higher quality weapons then normal for the faction. Nothing like opening a door into a aoe plasma. Six rooms in a row. Oh and its made of rock or ufo walls so wall breaching is tedious at best.

[niculinux]

Need also to research topics related to ships (not only craft cannon, engines) and so on, i believe

[lusciouspear]

Thanks for the protips. I haven't seen any Imperial Probe missions yet, but I shall wait...

[Solarius Scorch]

Thanks for the protips. I haven't seen any Imperial Probe missions yet, but I shall wait...

A few years in and no probes? Are you sure you're just not shooting them down?

[Mattdo]

I'm pretty sure the mission generation system is bugged in some way. My game contains missions that have been going on for years, the same thing over and over again.

You can try to edit AI missions in the part of the save file beginning

alienMissions:

(That's where you can change the faction of an AI ship.)

Or you can change the ships themselves elsewhere.

Use caution, make backups, etc.

[legionof1]

A few years in and no probes? Are you sure you're just not shooting them down?

Seems possible to me. I've gone years with factions not turning up. Also if its the first 2 years getting full radar coverage takes some time, particularly in light of the new early game progression, probes may well have occurred but he might not have seen them.

[AncientSion]

I agree that the algorithm responsible for spawning factions appears to be broken or is "wrongly" used / adjusted.

[Stian]

Would a Tetris-like approach be possible? That game uses a bag like randomization approach where pieces are randomized by picking from any of the pieces which haven't yet occured. Then once all pieces have been used a new bag is filled with all pieces and the process repeats. If transfered to xcom this allows for an even distribution of factions while retaining the possiblity of getting the same twice in a row (last of one bag, first of the next bag).

[Meridian]

Would a Tetris-like approach be possible? That game uses a bag like randomization approach where pieces are randomized by picking from any of the pieces which haven't yet occured. Then once all pieces have been used a new bag is filled with all pieces and the process repeats. If transfered to xcom this allows for an even distribution of factions while retaining the possiblity of getting the same twice in a row (last of one bag, first of the next bag).

This is already done for regions where missions occur and also types of missions.
And it's reset every 2 years.

It's not done for races (which follow the rule of minimum month of occurrence).

And in X-PirateZ its completely ignored anyway (since a few versions ago) because of switch to mission scripts.... I think.

[lusciouspear]

Out of curiosity, does XPZ 'increase' in difficulty like Long War? Where every month, other factions get 'research' and 'upgrades'? Looking through the conf files, it appears that certain UFOs spawn more as the years go by.

[AncientSion]

You get bigger shippings, yes, also as game time proceeds, Star Gods spawn more regulary. However, this is more than offset by the fact that you Gals have three times as much TU and double as much accuracy in addition to five times as powerful weapons.
Id say the game gets easier as game time progresses all things considered.

[lusciouspear]

Oh, it definitely gets easier. Crazed girls in blitz suits with power maces solve all problems

[Cristao]

^Except the star gods problem.