How to get points?

[KiriKaneko]

I've been avoiding researching mutant alliance til I get enough research to reliably do pogroms. I did manage to successfully do one for the first time earlier today, the previous attempts were total massacres for me. Humanists who were like terminators tanking tommy gun fire to the face, spartans pulling off 180 no scope headshots on my peeps when they shoot them in the back. Today I got some kind of nighttime demon invasion so I went with the new tech I got, smoke, flares, grenade launchers, a mortar, heavy shotguns, frag grenades and tac vests.

Sadly we lost someone when a enemy ran up, tanked some shotgun fire to the back and then point blank rapid fired one of my best soldiers with an autocannon. We also all got some severe wound healing time from fireballs, and we didnt save a single civilian. I got lucky with building placement so we fought as best we could to get off the pachy, got hit with a fireball so everyone was injured for half their health, but we got smoke and flares everywhere, took all the buildings in a line down our side of the map then just peaked out and took out everything that wandered forward into the lit up no smoke killzones with shotgun fire, grenades and mortar shells

Really I'd like a way to just keep my points up while I research but its not so easy. We're 1.5 years into the game, the enemy has two bases up, one has gauss cannon users and tanks who can see in the dark and OHKO us, and the other has chrysalids who can storm across the map and OHKO us, take an ungodly amount of damage to drop, and we've got to deal with psi attacks as well, so both the bases are untouchable

So now I'm getting a lot of point loss each month, every other month I research 2 of the +1000 point techs. I want money but I can't make more stills for money bases. The shark jetbike with 25mm cannon is only good for downing v small civilian craft which I've been told makes me actually lose points, and the pachy seagull/ramjet missiles usually miss and cant down a small ship before the ammo is out.

This is my second game, I got to this point last time and ran out of research to do, but I didnt have the cash for explosives/flares/smoke and the pogroms were just destroying me so I lost from low points. I really need a good way to get more points, or some tech I can reach soon which will make progroms much easier and allow me to take out these bases. For now I'm trying to clear the research I've got before I research mutant alliance and am forced to do every progrom, and hopefully I can survive those progroms

Is there anything better I should be using than heavy shotties/tac vests? Is there a better way to make money than to convert apples into wine, make x-grog and take lots of captives on temples/warehouses/academy outposts?

[KiriKaneko]

I play on difficulty 3

[Marza]

Heavy shotguns and tac vests I find are only suitable for some of the easier mission types and shippings. Heavy shotguns are powerful but but are terrible against most units that are armoured and tac vests users will have a bad day against anything that isn't using low quality weapons. Check your bootypedia for available weapons with high damage numbers/ have power bonuses that will result with high damage. You'll need them to defeat armoured enemies (The majority of enemy units in the game use some form of armour).

Do continue to shoot down civilian shipping, the small ship engines they have are worth $100k each. Continue to sell wine and ransom all captives you take for the money. Use the money to expand radar coverage to identify more shipping opportunities to loot. Build and use a crate of violence at some point.

Money gives you more options and you have to spend money to make money.

[KiriKaneko]

So looting civilian ships for engines and captives is the main way to make money?

I just unlocked 50mm cannons because a civilian passenger ship landed and there was an airman there. According to the bootypedia it hits like 3x harder than the 25mm one so maybe I can even splash the small ships now. Thing is, there's a lot of maintenance costs, will i really make that much money? And what about the point penalties?

I just got eurosyndicate and they sold me 8 laser rifles for 4M. This should deal with those armorued enemies effectively right? What armour should I be trying to get? I attempted some landed mediums and had to leave them, but on one I killed like 8 out of 12 reticulans just with mortar fire. Pretty lethal. I also got a landed goon ship and they were using laser guns and some kind of invisible armour. Killed 2 of my guys but I ended up retreating to the ship and just nuking the entire site with mortars. It was the only way to be sure. I want that armour XD

[Solarius Scorch]

If you don't make enough money, sell something, doh.

And don't worry about points... It's really hard to lose the game this way.

[KiriKaneko]

I already lost my first game that way. I researched everything I had available except mutant alliance, kept skipping progroms and only did warehouse, temple, crackhouse and save sister missions. I got 2 months in a row of -2000 points and the game ended. I assume either my base points a month is -2000 so I need to find a way to get points somehow, the missed progroms were giving me a massive point loss, or there was some heavy UFO activity that screwed me

I've already had quite a lot of those months so far in this run and I still havent researched mutant alliance. There are 2 bases, I've attempted and failed 1 progrom, and succeeded in another progrom but skipped all others, and I've been doing help Lok Narr, hunting and Ratmen Rodeos as well as the other missions. I think I would've lost this run already if I hadn't done some of those +1000 point missions on a month following a negative score a few times, but I only have 2 of those left now which is why I'm doing progroms and saving them for a merc progrom bailout.

[Solarius Scorch]

Well, I don't know what to say... I never managed to lose by points, not even once. (Except in TFTD.)

My guess is that there is some enormous activity somewhere, like a ship landed in one place for a really long time. Check your graphs, it shows such activity spikes pretty well.

[KiriKaneko]

Maybe I should go to landed ships then immediately abort them if I dont feel confident. I can go for mass radar coverage but I should probably get an interceptor in the americas, europe-africa, and asia-australia before I get the rest of the radars up so I can be sure I can splash them all

Does splashing civvia ships definetly give negative points?

[jungybrogan]

spartans pulling off 180 no scope headshots on my peeps when they shoot them in the back.

I hear you man.  I'm at the point where every mission now has enemies with 180 aimbot hackers that not only see you from across the map at night, but instantly noscope headshot your camo'd girls behind cover, when shot in the back.  Tactics/positioning just went out the window, it's more like a just a stat/gear check now, and the only way to win really is to camp the ship and bombard from behind cover, but it's just so tedious and unfun now that it's the only available tactic to me.

[KiriKaneko]

I'm having to relearn the game. I got through TFTD difficulty 3, and UFO defense superhuman by spamming smoke everywhere and levelling everything in sight with mass laser fire. Lasers were fast to get and good for the game, and plasma isnt that much harder (but I sell them til I have all my hyperwaves up). It was nothing more than a rush to catch a navigator and cover the world in hyperwaves. I could easily keep ahead in points by splashing small UFOs with avalanche missiles provided I got every single one, and could even skip terror mission on superhuman. Smoke allowed me to shoot with no fear of retaliation fire, and things only got easier when I got plasma cannons which let me splash medium/large UFOs, get myself psionics and flying armour, avenger, hover plasma to spot for my psi.

In this game I cant do that. I actually had to unlock smoke, and a lot of things can see through it. My peeps can tank bullet fire with their faces a lot of the time, and even laser/plasma shots are rarely instantly fatal even with our crappy gear. On the other hand I have a squad half the size, enemy use of explosives is prevalent. They're a lot tougher than before. Psi and hyperwaves arent that easy to get, starting interception craft and super expensive and crappy. Laser/Gauss cannons were the money maker in UFO/TFTD whereas alcohol is the money maker in piratez and can only be done in the starter base. Since gear isnt as good, smoke isnt so broken, high tech is harder to get, money bases cant be made anymore, interceptors are overpriced and dont really pay (yet), I have half the squad size and the tech is hard to comprehend I've had to learn over again

Which has so far come to live captures on easy missions for money, take advantage of tac vests and my soldiers high survivability to get them really strong by doing easy missions, mortar everything in sight on hard missions, or if I have to shoot something then make sure it's in the back of the head at point blank with a shotgun, just like the deaths in the clinton campaign, so there's no risk of return fire. I'm sure I'll come up with better tactics, right now I'm still learning, but I'm afraid of losing all my progress again because I aren't actively working towards a solution to my negative points situation

[Marza]

I'm at the point where every mission now has enemies with 180 aimbot hackers that not only see you from across the map at night, but instantly noscope headshot your camo'd girls behind cover, when shot in the back.

Sounds like you've met the mercenary faction or even the Star Gods! Thankfully most of the enemies in game are much less capable of such things.

Does splashing civvia ships definetly give negative points?

I don't think so. I think you stand to gain points as long as non lethal force is used on the civilians.

So looting civilian ships for engines and captives is the main way to make money?

Looting shipping, including civilian craft, is a good way to make money. You're a pirate.

I just got eurosyndicate and they sold me 8 laser rifles for 4M. This should deal with those armorued enemies effectively right? What armour should I be trying to get?

Those lasers will deal with a lot of armoured enemies very well. Others, not so much. I'm not going to tell you which weapons work well against which faction; that's for you to discover (It's probably already discovered in your bootypedia). I can't tell you what armour you should get because they can all be really effective with the right equipment. What I can tell you is that by year 1.5 I like to have everyone wearing guardian armour because I prefer the massive armour values and resistances it provides. My armour progression starts with warrior and camo paint, then progress to tac armour (with the helmet), then to defender, then to guardian.

[sinisteragent]

So looting civilian ships for engines and captives is the main way to make money?

You're a gang of pirates!

Hitting the big factions is a calculated risk until you start to become a major player yourself (and even then, one of the most important skills in XP is picking your battles).

You might also want to experiment more with fire, explosives, artillery and/or spotter/sniper tactics if reaction shots are messing you up. Also, melee. You might be surprised how effective a nude berserker can be if you learn to use her right. Some of my best fighters have never bothered with even the lightest armour - the incredible stamina regen rate means that once they've got a few fights under their belt, they can sprint more or less non-stop and still have the energy to cave a sucker's head in.

Spartans are a bit tricky to panic because they seem to have high discipline, and come with a lot of backup. But they go down fairly easily and aren't particularly skilled. I'm not really sure what to suggest, as while they often put up a respectable fight, they shouldn't be causing such a headache. Perhaps try using grenades or archers or artillery (the assault cannon is a deceptively effective weapon, especially once you've got a few alternative ammo types) to soften them up, as these don't tend to trigger reaction fire. 

Hit and run is the order of the day, too, especially against humans. Don't assume you'll one shot them, but think of how you'll take them out of the fight - inducing panic, causing wounds and shock and generally wearing them down.

Also, never be afraid to kill a few people, grab their stuff, and leave. And if negative points are really a problem (not having a go here, but they shouldn't be that big a deal, so there's probably something going on), do poke around with the graphs screen (and note that you can scroll down on parts of it) as there might be intense activity in an area that you're not picking up. A spy zeppelin can be a real boon here.

[nrafield]

If you don't have cash for explosives and smoke you must be mismanaging money. Don't hesitate to fire your Brainers if you don't have a lot to research. Don't be ashamed of downing civillian ships early on, their engines are highly likely to survive unlike the bigger ones and they are worth 100000$ each. This can add up easily.  The Eurosyndicate laser rifles, while good, are IN NO WAY WORTH IT unless you already have tons of money.


The Mutant Alliance research is actually kinda important as it's a direct gate to better equpiment. What you have to is immediately start constructing a Library after researching it - provided you have researched everything else you could, you should have a new project that advances you to next level in the hideout with library.

[legionof1]

At present the mod has unfortunately shifted to who's got the biggest weapon gear check. Against anything but unarmored humans the player is at a vision disadvantage that only narrows, not eliminated by tech. The existence of thermal has pushed sniper type weapons from good to bottom tier utter garbage. Before there was a bit of a tactical puzzle going on with not overexposing the scouts and getting support fire gals in good position. Now it's hurp derp throw grenades/rockets at everything with a bit of melee for captures. Most guns just don't cut it in a damage race that player start behind in. 

[nrafield]

At present the mod has unfortunately shifted to who's got the biggest weapon gear check. Against anything but unarmored humans the player is at a vision disadvantage that only narrows, not eliminated by tech. The existence of thermal has pushed sniper type weapons from good to bottom tier utter garbage. Before there was a bit of a tactical puzzle going on with not overexposing the scouts and getting support fire gals in good position. Now it's hurp derp throw grenades/rockets at everything with a bit of melee for captures. Most guns just don't cut it in a damage race that player start behind in.

Not sure what you mean by this. Haven't explosives always been top tier? And how have any weapons been made worse at all besides bows, when most problems with enemy weapons are eliminated by putting the most properly armored gals in front?