More stuff to shoot

[Eddie]

Tl:dr - more drones

One of the few things I don't like that much about Piratez is that it's nearly always better to stun enemies instead of killing them. Because of this, I almost exclusively use non deadly weapons, which is only a fraction of the arsenal that Piratez has to offer. That is why I like Ratmen Rodeos, because here the benefit of capturing is negligible enough that I don't mind using deadly weapons. So I thought what could be done to improve gameplay, and the answer is add some drones.

- Manhacks
Flying melee attackers. I don't think Piratez has this type of enemy yet, so it would be something new. Fits the setting and is in the spirit of the mod using stuff from other games. There is a Half Life 2d jump and run game that features manhacks. I made a screenshot that can hopefully be used to extract a model. This stylized 2d manhack is probably nicer than a screenshot of the 3d version.

- Scanner Drone
Not sure if this can be done. The idea is an unarmed flying unit with superior vision that makes your gals position known to the enemy. In night missions they could throw flares at your gals, or fly close to your gals and then turn on a light, thus blowing your cover of darkness. This is probably doable. I have no idea how daytime spotting would work with the engine though.

- Armed quadrocopters
Something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNPJMk2fgJU
Quadrocopters should be low tech enough that any faction could use them. I would also like to have quadrocopters (with possibly good nightvision) as a slightly higher tech parrot replacement. I don't like to use animals as cannon fodder and parrots can't see shit at night anyway. Tech required could be integrated devices.

If Dioxine is willing to implement any of these, I will try to make unit graphics for them.

[karadoc]

I'm not sure whether or not drones are the answer; but I do agree that it can be nice to have some things to shoot without missing out on valuable resources.

In my first playthrough when I saw a tank or an armoured car, I thought "oh no. Those things are hard to kill." But this time I think "cool. Finally I get to use my grenade launcher / rocket launcher / whatever." And my favourite thing about missions against humanist is that I don't need to take prisoners.

I'm in the end game of my current playthrough (making final preparations to build the Conqueror); and I can say it's kind of liberating to know that I don't need any more resources - but on the other hand, it's also very easy to get live captures on most enemies with the fancy equipment I have. One of the good things about facing cyclopses and waspites is that they don't need to be kept alive (and cyclopses are probably going to survive whatever you through at them anyway. Those guys will happily take a blaster bomb to the face and still be standing).


Recent changes to the game allow the player to transfer prisoners at the end of a mission if the base's prison is full. That's pretty nice, but I sometimes wonder if it would be better to go in the other direction. ie. have significantly smaller prisons - like 5 instead of 15; so that it was only worth keeping the best prisoners alive. (That wouldn't really work though, because the player would just build more prisons - or get frustrated...)

[KateMicucci]

Ratmen Rodeos, at this point, are the only recurring missions that don't drive me crazy, because you can go door to door or level the village without needing to worry about the prisoners. It will be fantastic when we get more difficult missions like Spartan camps to let loose on because right now I'm only playing to do terror missions.

[Eddie]

Some more thoughts on how to do a scanner drone:
Can something like negative camouflage be used? And a weapon that modifies that property? Negative camouflage meaning the unit can be seen from further away. So for example the enemy has a night vision of 9 and my unit is 12 tiles away. The scanner drone hits my unit with it's marker weapon and now the enemy unit can see it, despite beeing out of it's night vision range. Is such a mechanic possible?

[Premier]

Recent changes to the game allow the player to transfer prisoners at the end of a mission if the base's prison is full. That's pretty nice, but I sometimes wonder if it would be better to go in the other direction. ie. have significantly smaller prisons - like 5 instead of 15; so that it was only worth keeping the best prisoners alive. (That wouldn't really work though, because the player would just build more prisons - or get frustrated...)

I disagree with smaller prisons. There are a lot of prisoners you MUST research in Xpiratez, and a lot more that you CAN because they give you non-essential but helpful info. Crippling the player's ability to keep some prisoners in reserve while others are being question would just add extra grind without any actual gameplay benefit that I can see.

Even more importantly, you also need prison space for people you want to rob for armour parts and the like, since you can't send them to the Workshop directly from the Too Many Prisoners screen. Say, you capture 10 enemies (for example's sake), and they're all of a type that can be robbed for something you want: durathread, damaged armour parts, engineered biomatter, whatever. If your only prison has a capacity of five, you're cheated out of the ability to actually take those items off half of them.

[Eddie]

I had an idea that I posted in my feedback post, but there it's kind of buried in all that text.

New custom mission: Weapon Depot Assault
An easy version, where the target is a police station guarded by Highwaymen, dogs and armored cars. A tough version (unlocked by contacts: Krazy Hanna) where the target is a Spartan camp protected by tanks. So you have some targets for your newly available heavy weapons.