A thread for little questions

[khade]

As far as I'm aware, Ironman has never been suggested, since this is a work in progress, stability is not exactly the focus right now

[Jimboman]

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.

I always play on John Silver and save before every mission, intercept or major decision.  I'm the cautious type though and I also get frustrated easily (I'm slightly autistic) so I hate bad RNG problems.  Of course if it's ME that makes a mistake (bad moves during a mission for example) then I live with that.

[Greep]

As far as I'm aware, Ironman has never been suggested, since this is a work in progress, stability is not exactly the focus right now

Well, I never actually hit the superhuman button due to possible bugs, just feel like it's not in the xcom spirit to just reload whenever, personal opinion.  The mod is remarkably stable, it's just also incredibly long xD 


Edit: In any case, I think people are having a bit more faith in these flak towers than they should, maybe this math will help clear things up.

Ignoring damage roll variance for the moment, the odds of 3 flak towers shooting down a missile are .6*.6*.6 = 21.6%.  Very low.  With damage variance, it's not much better since you need high rolls for both of the hitting shots and can lose some of the triple hits.  (hazarding a guess, maybe 25%).

4 flak towers, is something like 4*(.6*.6*.6*.4) + .6*.6*.6*.6 = 47.5%.  The damage variance is a lot better here I think if you do the math, so call it 60%.  So you're still paying 3 Million dolaros just to get your base blown up anyways.  Not to mention, who can even afford 4 building slots per base?  I don't think I'd bother with AA defenses if I had to build even 2.

[legionof1]

Well even with low odds its far better to have the defenses then not, defenses tend to have much higher target priority for the missle strikes. Better a relatively low value AA then say a hanger forcing you to lose a craft, or a full barracks. Or maybe you lose the old earth lab.

[Greep]

Well, on the bright side, the Old earth lab is immune to direct shots (0 priority).  Although, since it's 3 missile hits you can still lose it since it's at map edge, but the odds are almost 0.  C-3PO odds xD. Probably the worst that could happen is losing your still, which oddly has a high chance to be hit.

I think if someone's foolish enough to actually play jack sparrow in the current version, they should probably just beeline flak cannons.  With those, you get pretty good odds with 3 buildings (~85% when counting damage variance and it only costs a million).  But I can't see anyone getting that before like august.


Anyways, assuming this is just a rough draft of the missile strikes, here's my thoughts on a more sane version:

-Only one building lost per missile strike (Even losing your still, or a hangar with ship, or a large vaults, are your radar, is honestly a pain in the butt.  Large buildings probably aren't even worth building anymore)
-Flak towers don't require a kit (700k->150k per building), because they suck so much and take up so much space.
-Lowering Overcharged Radar's defense from 150 to 100 (I don't think it's intended that radars are more effective than flaks)

^This at least gives the player a fighting chance.  One could even increase the monthly odds of it happening.

Edit: Anyways, I think I've ranted enough on this.  Got another question:  Anyone know if the money makers have changed lately?  I used to use this: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CkPqVsGXP72ncwIMQjk8gW2Qnc3sVNJVW0ZXhAWcKoc/edit#gid=1134076783

And one thing I noticed is wisdom canteens are a lot more profitable these days than what's shown here (twice as good as grog rather than slightly better).  Wondering if anything else is outdated. Actually even grog and medical supplies are better now. Also seems like lingerie is completely unprofitable now unless you manufacture the durathread.

[Rince Wind]

You might loose the lab by loosing the connections, right?

[Greep]

Ah yeah, I did the math and it's ~.015% chance of happening though (fixed math, ~1:6000 as odds).

Edit Hah, just realized the best bang-for-your-buck defense against missiles in the current version is spamming entirely empty bases.  4 flak towers gives ~50% defense but 3 empty bases gives 75% defense.  Which kinda goes to show how silly it is -___-

[machinehater]

What does the strange number behind the rob-project mean?

For example:

rob: researcher (0/1/1)
rob: explorer (1/1/2)

and, even more strange, an exlamation mark

rob: Bandit boss (1!/2/1)

[CPLT-K2]

Summary on what you can expect to get from them, explained in Prison Cells bootypedia entry:

The numbers represent: 1. armor parts; 2. faction related stuff; 3. common merchandise.

Bandit boss gives an actual armor to wear instead of parts, so the ! indicates that.

[Greep]

If you want to know what they give specifically, you can look up the item in the spoilery bootypedia (online here is convenient: https://www.xpiratez.wtf/en-US).  Some of the robbery stuff is pretty good (grav harnesses from the flying raiders, force circuitry from priests, some really good stuff from VIPs), so you should probably just rob everyone once though really.

Also: Thought about missile strikes, and there actually is a doable workaround.  The worst case scenario is just both hangers getting knocked out, so you can just make sure your second base is also set up to be a strike base.  But large vaults and large barracks kinda feel off the table unfortunately.  Losing a large vaults would be like having two slime infestations at once -__-  I still feel like flack cannons are the only practical defense, though.  If you're spending 3-5 million credits on AA towers in june and get striked anyways, you're going to have a bad day.  At least without defense, you lose only the buildings lost.

Edit:  Started jack sparrow campaign anyways out of curiosity.  Seems like I and some other people are wrong about some things:

1)  First there's a single missile strike in april.  Then you get missile wave strikes afterwards
2) Early game missiles hit a single building, then later on they start doing more damage based on #128 research.
3) Missile HP isn't a static 500hp for a missile:  according to #128, the research you get when your base gets hit for the first time, they're dependent on how much damage the missile would do.  So I really have no idea how effective AA guns will be
4)Next month in may, a based got struck 3 times in the month, so you can get struck quite a lot.

^ Anyways,  Also realized that you need personal labs to get hellerium study to rebuild a still.  So if your still gets shot down in april, you're basically just screwed.  No wine for you for like, months.  That just feels excessive.  I also realized it's not the end of the world, since you don't need a still to make money with runts (hellerium is... somewhat close to grog in profitability), but that's millions flushed down the toilet in one strike if it happens.

That said, the new maps don't seem to have many apples anyways, in june and I think I found 80 apples :/

[legionof1]

Snip
1)  First there's a single missile strike in april.  Then you get missile wave strikes afterwards
2) Early game missiles hit a single building, then later on they start doing more damage based on #128 research.
3) Missile HP isn't a static 500hp for a missile:  according to #128, the research you get when your base gets hit for the first time, they're dependent on how much damage the missile would do.  So I really have no idea how effective AA guns will be
4)Next month in may, a based got struck 3 times in the month, so you can get struck quite a lot.
snip

there are atm only 2 different strikes on JS(strength 1 and strength 3)the very first is weaker and a single building(str 1). All the others are 500 hp(for a complete clear, str 3). The entry describes how the engine feature works in generic terms. Not how it explicitly functions in the mod. That would give away to much.

[Greep]

Hmm... Doesn't seem to match my experiences, though:  the april one was strength 1, but so was the triple wave in may (there were three separate single hits separated by a few days from each other).  Unless you just mean the first of the random attacks is also strength 1.  Does this mean you can be hit up to 9 times in a single month in the second wave attack?  I.e. 3 strength 3 attacks?  Or does a strength 3 missile just mean there's three attacks coming.

[legionof1]

Unless dio changed something since i lasted discussed the mechanism with him(some months ago), the very first strike is a str 1 missile that destroys 1 building and has reduced health. All following missiles are strength 3, killing 3 buildings and having 500 "craft" hp. If you do some damage to the missile without killing it completely you lose less buildings.

On jack sparrow difficulty you can have up to 3 strikes per month.

[Greep]

It must have changed then, the May attacks all hit single buildings.  In one case two burrows were lost but it was a secondary base that wasn't fully built yet and looking at the arrangement it was likely that it was lost to connectivity

In any case, if you can lose 9 buildings in a month, you've got to build AAs.  And if it's 3 strikes, that means 5 radars is a minimum really.  I'll see how that affects the game, but honestly, crunching the early game economy is just making the game boring.  I guess on the bright side, one can leave bases that get the AAs up completely defenseless since 5 OCs also is enough to shoot down all of the demon/ninja invaders.  I know they use weak ships, so I'm assuming they're boarding torpedos?  Thats only 400 hp

[Greep]

Anyways, split up the topic, and made a monte carlo simulator, since it turned out to only take like 20 minutes xD

https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,8460.0.html

In any case now I know the exact answer to how likely 3 flaks will shoot down 1 missile: 23.4%.  I was close!

Edit: Btw, anyone know if there's other sources of necropirates than the roaming bands in early games?  Just noticed advanced chemistry now requires necropirates and zombies, and getting arcance tombs for the necropirates sounds like it'll suck.