A thread for little questions

[Ashghan]

They sometimes do a flyby in a propeller plane.

[machinehater]

When right-clicking on a weapon, a tiny dot appeares. I always thought this would disable this weapon for reaction shots (when i go on missions and want take hostages, my gals have an eurosyndicate las-pistol in the right and a dart pistol in the left hand).
But sometimes a reaction shot is fired anyway.
Did i misunderstood the meaning of this feature?
Or does it not work correctly?

I can't find anything about this, so sorry, if it was a dumb question.

Another thing, how many brainers do you hire?
I run the old lab and 1 additional personal lab, 19 brainers. The list of researchable topics is pretty long, but my first base, the "research base" is already full. Are 19 enought for a decent game?

And how many hands do you have?

I run one base to do the missions, and in the other 4 i have 20/30 hands in constant training at dojos, to defend the base and, if a gal dies in a mission, i have immediately a backup. Is this overkill or do i need this many people in the lategame?

[Greep]

Well, you should really just run as many brainers as your economy + emergency funds can support.  So if you've got all 8 bases, but they're just weed plantations and you've only unlocked a few extra mission types, then 19 brainers is good.  But if you've got 2 strike bases, tons of missions unlocked, and 5 bases pumping out medical supplies, there's no reason not to have 50-70.  A good middle ground is just once you've filled your starting base, just hire brainers whenever you have empty mess halls/sickbays etc in your other bases.

Regarding # gals, sounds about right, but there's two things to keep in mind:

-Hangarless bases can generally be defended with less gals than hangar'd bases.  In these bases, most of the enemies will just be sitting in the access lift behind  closed doors, so if you can shoot down the guards and stuff a big bomb (high explosive, crate of violence barrel bomb (but the radius is bigger than you expect for tat one) on turn 1 before the enemy can move, you can usually kill off more than half of the invading forces.

-Factions retaliations are much worse than regular retaliations.  20-30 +dogs is high for non-faction, but light for faction retaliations (and more importantly, gear plays a substantial role).  Faction retaliations, however, will not appear for  at least 2 years unless you're either playing on jack sparrow or shot down some faction ships.  Basically, if you can shoot it down with a single 25mm cannon it's not a faction ship heh.

[Rince Wind]

Why would you build medical supplies? At least last time I played it really wasn't worth it compared to grog.

I actually reduced the number of brainers i have in the lategame because I ran out of topics to research. I need some key prisoners to continue, other than that only the new tech that come with a new update or, very rarely, some new item from a mission need researching. So I only kept the brainers in the main base. Money isn't an issue as I churn out battle tanks.

[Greep]

You must not have played in a while, then heh, I hear grog used to be much more profitable way back in the day. 

Right now, they give about double that of grog when using "weed sell" and "chemical buy" prices and triple when accounting for runt maintenance.  That or you're thinking first aid kits which aren't worth making.

This spreadsheet I found: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CkPqVsGXP72ncwIMQjk8gW2Qnc3sVNJVW0ZXhAWcKoc/edit#gid=1134076783

Isn't quite accurate but close enough.

[legionof1]

When right-clicking on a weapon, a tiny dot appears. I always thought this would disable this weapon for reaction shots (when i go on missions and want take hostages, my gals have an eurosyndicate las-pistol in the right and a dart pistol in the left hand).
But sometimes a reaction shot is fired anyway.
Did i misunderstood the meaning of this feature?
Or does it not work correctly?
snip

The dot means the weapon is preferred for reactions. Reactions trigger in this order: melee>melee attacks on guns(gunbutt)>ranged. The preference will only affect attacks on the same priority(melee/gunbutt/range).

[Rince Wind]

You must not have played in a while, then heh, I hear grog used to be much more profitable way back in the day. 

Right now, they give about double that of grog when using "weed sell" and "chemical buy" prices and triple when accounting for runt maintenance.  That or you're thinking first aid kits which aren't worth making.

This spreadsheet I found: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CkPqVsGXP72ncwIMQjk8gW2Qnc3sVNJVW0ZXhAWcKoc/edit#gid=1134076783

Isn't quite accurate but close enough.

Then their bootypedia entry is finally correct. Again.

[machinehater]

First, legionof1, thank you very much for this info!

Second: i encountered my first sectopod. Holy shit. Somehow i managed to take it down, but lost my favourite princess, as she fired with the panzerfaust and got a nice reaction shot from this monstrosity. How sad =(.
I am aware, that they should bring a challenge and yes, they do, but now i am a bit worried about enemy armor, and i never had to worry before. Eurosyndicate weapons did fine until now, and if they did not, there where still the tech blades in every inventory of every gal going on missions.
What does more damage to Armor? Laser or plasma? Flask' o acid does not seem to do something.
In the analisys tab of weapons and ammunition sometimes there is written: armor and a number, for example 40. What does this mean? Armor effectiveness? Armor damage?
Does this whole thing works like in phoenix point, where with a weapon that does 30 damage you can't surpass a 40 armor, no matter how many times you hit it, or does shooting with lasers, with enought patience, crack the egg?

I had the same problem with a big traders guild ship, where 3 hovertanks showed up at the same time and 10 hits with tech blades did nothing at all.

I love (and hate) how the game, just everytime you feel comfortable with your tactics and weapons, manages to put some new threats and riddles at you. Good work!

[Ashghan]

Laser has a built-in 0.66 modifier to armor, but they are usually low powered, so even with this debuff, heavy armor stops most of them. Though the heavier varianst (heavy laser, portable lascannon) work ok.
Chem is somewhat useful if you can apply it in large numbers - each shot or pellet does up to a couple points of armor damage (5-10% of weapons power, usually). Not very efficient way to go since chem weapons usually have low damage, but you will get results... eventually.
Plasma has a similar damage armor effect (usually 10% of rolled damage), but it is  vastly more powerful than the other two, so it is the go-to damage for armor.
Explosives are just average - they hit the weakest under armor, most enemies don't have any special resistance to them and they're fairly powerful. Large enemies (tanks, sectopods) take quadruple damage from explosions (each of their tiles is hit separately) - that makes explosives pretty effective. But you'll need higher grade (90 or more damage) to make a dent in their armour to begin with. Anti-personnel explosives won't cut it. Hovertanks are a bit different - first you need to take out the shield (shotguns and any explosives work well, since shield takes full damage, no reduction) and then treat it as a regular tank (though more deadly)
Kinetic weapons are mostly useless, with the exception of miniguns - each hit can shave a point or two of armor, so it behaves similarly to chem - slow but steady results.
Melee works as usual - though heavy hitting weapons (bardiche, hammer, great club, anchor) are preferred.
Acid flasks are... underwhelming - you'd need to throw a dozen of these to considerably weaken an enemy's armour.

The "armor" rating in analysis tab is the resistance of the item to damage. If hit by explosion (usually) for more than it's armor, the item is destroyed. It has nothing to do with regular armor.

[machinehater]

Thank you!
Until now i had my gals packed with spikeballs, i love'em!
But on the sectopod (and hovertanks) they did nothing (with ctrl-H it showed 0-0-0-0).

When an unit is hit, it flashes in a color. Red means the health goes down, that's fine. What does white mean? Hit the armor?

[Greep]

Yup and Yup.

To add to the previous points, firearms deal 0-200% listed damage and explosives deal 50-150%.  Flasks of acid, while underwhelming, can help vs a few early game enemies like flying megapol enforcers, but you can't expect much from essentially free ammo.

Btw, at this point in the game, you've probably unlocked a lot of pinups (#XXX researches) lots of generally useful information like this is in them. 

Edit:  Er, by "hit the armor" it means "causes armor damage".  I finally found out why rats occasionally hurt my gals in barbarian armor haha.

[machinehater]

yes, i think i unlocked all the #xxx's.
But there are so many and after hours of playing something can get lost..

Yes, i actually meant armor damage (white flashing color while hit). Cool, thank you

[Greep]

Ah, missed your comment on the spikeball.  For (non-fleshy) vehicles, you generally want really high explosives.  Spikeballs aren't even particular good vs a weak armored car, LASS is about the weakest I'd use for that, HE or panzerfaust are good too.
 
https://www.xpiratez.wtf/en-US##STR_SSRL_2

There's two important factors there, damage and armor effectiveness (also damage type, although most explosions are concuss). For instance, a LASS does only 90 concuss, but has 75% armor effectiveness, so, it's more like 105 or so against a car.  Then a car's concuss resist and armor knock that down to about 30-40 (I'm unclear on how armor effectiveness works with resists so I just wing it lol), but then that's quadrupled, so it'll kill it like every time.

Looking at the wiki, sectopod's got 100 under armor and 60 concuss resist, so you'll be needing ~200 explosive just to pierce it. 

https://www.xpiratez.wtf/en-US##SECTOPOD_ARMOR

So even a mighty panzerfaust (150 + 75 armor effectiveness) would probably just barely hurt it.  Spikeball (80 + 100 armor effectiveness) ain't going to do anything.

[legionof1]

resistance is multiplied against your damage. Armor effectiveness manipulates the targets effective armor. They are separate stages of the overall calculation. Resist is before armor. So resist reduces damage by %, then armor is adjust based on effectiveness, and then this adjusted armor is subtracted from the result of the resist step.

[Ashghan]

Just to fill in some more steps after hitting a target:
1. Damage roll (base damage multiplied by a % roll (0-200 for most firearms, 50-150 for melee and so on)
2. Resist factored in (damage from 1. multiplied by resist%)
3. Armor reduction (pre-damage) based on power from 2. (for chem, plasma, acid etc)
4. Modify (for the purpose of calculation) current armor by armor effectiveness of a given weapon
4. Damage reduced by effective armor value.
5. If anything was left from step above (damage penetrated the armor) - multiply it by the health damage modifier (toHelath) - for example +50% for slayer ammo
6. Subtract the result directly from target's health.
7. Multiply the leftover above by stun damage roll% (usually 0-50%) add the result as stun damage (not sure if stun resist is factored here or not, I'd assume yes)
8. If damage excels health -> dead. If stun more than health after subtracting damage -> unconscious.
9. Damage armor if hit penetrated (multiplied by armor damage modifier (toArmor))
10. Add wounds - I think it's random 1-3 wounds for hits over 10 health damage, modified by wound count multiplier (toWound) - lasers for example have lower chance to cause wounds
11. Apply any special effects (burning, smoke etc.)
(12. Trigger reaction shot, if appropriate criteria are met)

I am unsure regarding position of 2 and 3. Otherwise, I think I got it all.

EDIT: Slayer ammo is +50% to HP damage, not +25%