A thread for little questions

[machinehater]

Little question:
How many flak towers do i need to build per hideout to be 100% safe from inclming attacks, if even possible?

[Jimboman]

Little question:
How many flak towers do i need to build per hideout to be 100% safe from inclming attacks, if even possible?

Not too sure about ships (thankfully I haven't been jumped except by ratmen) but 2 flak-towers and a flak cannon were enough to protect my bases against missile strikes.  Along with good RNG of course!  If you see a strike coming in save your game, and if you get a bad hit then reload and try it again as sometimes the defences don't get everything.  Usually the missiles get taken out after the first reload.

There is a way to stop the missile strikes (no spoilers) and thankfully I've got past that in my present game.

Edit to add:  A couple of my bases also had armoured vaults, which helps in defence as well.

[machinehater]

Thank you!
Until yesterday i did not fear much any attack, every hideout has at least 20 dogs and 20 peasants. Then a research told me about missile strikes, so every hideout got a flak tower.  I still haven't researched  flak cannon. I did not want to give up the chokepoint in my primary base, by building to much facilities, but if you tell me, that you have 2 flak towers and one cannon, i think i need 4 flak towers per hideout (bye bye, money... ).

How many defense strength do you have with your setup?

[Jimboman]

Thank you!
Until yesterday i did not fear much any attack, every hideout has at least 20 dogs and 20 peasants. Then a research told me about missile strikes, so every hideout got a flak tower.  I still haven't researched  flak cannon. I did not want to give up the chokepoint in my primary base, by building to much facilities, but if you tell me, that you have 2 flak towers and one cannon, i think i need 4 flak towers per hideout (bye bye, money... ).

How many defense strength do you have with your setup?

Not sure my present defence strength is useful to you as I now have SAMs and Laser Defence as well, so it's pretty good.

4 Flak Towers sounds about right though, and it's better to spend the moolah on defence than lose maybe a hanger and barracks (or worse) to a missile strike and have to rebuild them.  I got so blasted by the first ever strike on a base (before I built flak towers) that I had to abandon the base and rebuild it slightly to the west of where the original was.

Piratez isn't like vanilla xcom, it's more of a 'thinking' and resource management game because you can't do everything in one base.  I have eight now.  One is a research base (with a small jail and beast den for research 'subjects'), one a dedicated prison, one a factory base and the rest for interceptors and ships like Deliverators and my Menace-class ship.  Just got a Thunderhorse too .

Just a note, not all ships can do all missions so its good to have a mix.  I prefer to build my Menace-class as a Fortuna as it can go in space and underwater.  It can't do (spoiler) space freighters though as it's 'too slow' so that's where a Deliverator comes in.

I really must write a quick guide one of these days, when I'm not working or playing games!

[machinehater]

Thank you!
Yeah, i have 4 bases now, and they are already full, and my research progress is at 12% :-D

I am still roaming around with a puny blowfish, they shot down my starting airvan and still can`t get better craft. I 2 interceptors are piranhas with 25mm cannons, and i am in februar 2602.

[legionof1]

Don't pay attention to tech percentage. It's a worthless stat here, we have cutoffs, RNG gates, exclusions, ect. You cant even get 100% by the normal cheats. Only save editing and even then you have to rewrite the tech tree as well to make it not break the game.

As to defense 4 flak towers is sufficent to keep the strikes out with a little luck, but that's really all you need to care about keeping out. If your properly prepared with garrisons normal retaliations are just loot delivery.

You will eventually want better then the flak towers thou cause most of the advanced defenses also spawn a turret on the battlefield layer as well which is nice for choke points.
 

[machinehater]

Thank you.

I have another question.
Recently i bould some Dojos, and after a few days the stats start increasing, yay!
One thing i do not understand: On the page, where i can assign my gals to training, there are their stats. In the upper right is a button with a + on it, when i press it, the stats change, but only TUs and HPs. Nothing more. Some increase, some decrease.
What does this mean?

[Greep]

So, anyone deal with missiles on jack sparrow?  Out of curiosity I spoiled myself and checked out the ruleset and oi... they start in May of the first year right?  Seems like Jack might be getting a bit too hardcore for me now, although I'm sure I'll be masochistic enough to try it someday.

I tend not to build overcharged radars, but the 100% hit chance is starting to look pretty attractive right now.  Is 1 radar enough to stop a missile strike guaranteed?  Or do you just have to spam silly amounts of flak towers?  Sounds like you can't even build the flak towers early enough anyways, I don't think I've ever gotten krazy hannah that early.

@machinehater,  Transformations (martial arts, e.g.) have a cap they train to, and this can even decrease their stats since hands get set to the cap if they would otherwise go over.  Generally speaking dojos and (physical) transformations are mostly just for getting newly hired hands up to speed so they don't fall over in their armor lol.  Bravery and reactions are also untrainable in a dojo.  So I generally just fire hands that start with severely low reactions.

Edit: Oh right, month 5 is actually june since january is 0, right?  Seems slightly more manageable.

Btw, doing the math on defense, seems like regardless of whether you can stop a missile wave with 1 radar, the radars look better than flak towers.

Radar:150 x 100% hit = 150 damage
Flak: 200 x 60% hit = 120 damage

Radar = 875k
Flak = 4 x 95k (cannons) + 12 x 12k (munitions) + ~30k (kit manufacturing cost and time) + 150k = ~700k

Radar: 150/875k = .171 defense per dollar
Flak: 120/700k = ALSO .171 per dollar, but less reliable and less space efficient

[legionof1]

Your math isn't wrong about flak towers in terms of raw defense per buck, but over charged radars take longer to build and provide no secondary benefit. Flak towers have storage and barracks space.

In terms of how much defense you need for missiles, the strikes have 500 health. So 4 overcharged radars are required to stop them. If your lucky you only need 3 flak towers. A combination of the 2 is therefore the best utility for base tiles. You still need 4 buildings but 1 overcharge, and 3 flak gives you 75 storage and 15 barracks space, vs none. 

[machinehater]

so if in logs my defense strength shows 600 i am safe (theoretically) from missile strikes?
I builded 1 oc-radar and a flak tower and am at 600. I found out, the armored vault gives defense as well.

About the training, this does not answer my question, what this "+-button" does. Estimated training? I do not think so, because, again, only TU and HP change if i press it

[legionof1]

600 is sufficient in theory, but be mindful of accuracy.

[Ves]

@machinehater

here is a description of that feature in training

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,8205.msg127378.html#msg127378

[Greep]

Well, if I understand base defenses, if you're playing on ironman, no amount of flak towers makes you safe.

This is how xcom worked, so I assume it's the same in piratez:

-Roll for a hit, a miss deals no damage.
-Roll for damage variance (x50%-150%)

So the minimum needed to be safe from missiles is 6 (technically 7, but I think 6 gets you 98-99%) overcharged or infinite flak towers... by june.. per base.  The money's doable (although a base costs a rather silly 7 Million to set up instead of 2), but there's just no room left in a base to do.. like anything.  TBH, sounds like you're better off just not having defenses at all until you hit flak cannons, build 3 of those cheapos, and then just praying you live to see SAM sites.  Think I'm going to wait out this version until it's tuned a bit.

Edit:  On the flip side, if you are playing without ironman, 2 flak towers and a bunch of reloading is sufficient (much less reloading with 3).  Which is doable, but I mean, if you're reloading you can beat the game with a topless gal wielding a shiv xD

[legionof1]

well even with dmg roll variance 3 flak and a OC radar are still reasonably effective. +/-50% across multiple weapons averages out rather nicely. Even building for assuming the worst possible performance for every weapon is still not gonna suck up the whole base, OC will always do at least 75 dmg, and then you only need to do another 425. Even accounting for misses and half damage, 7 flak has almost zero chance to fail. Assuming average dmg and accuracy rolls you only need 3


You can of course choose to ignore defenses but i will also point out that even if you fail to shoot down the missile strike defense guns are have vastly higher chances to be destroyed if the stike get through, thereby protecting other facilities.
The OC radar is 5 times more likely to be selected then a barracks for instance.

[Greep]

Well, from what I gather, missile strikes blow up 3 buildings right?  There's several combinations of blown up buildings that will make your campaign unwinnable or not worth finishing (all your hangers, workshops, etc).  So anything less than 99.9999% protection means you're playing yahtzee not a strategy game.

If it's 3 waves of missiles that separately do 1 building destruction, that evens out the odds slightly.  But even then, you need that 99.9% to stop 2-3 hits, so we're talking maybe 5 ocs or 6 flaks.

Either way, I don't see jack sparrow ironman being worth playing at this point since it's no longer a strategy game, so I'll just let other people bash their head on a wall for this version xD  Might be worth a playthrough on davy jones just to see the new maps, though.