A thread for little questions

[Apocca]

Hmm, HK-117 was introduced since L6. Any idea where Technocracy Datapad #1 is found in earlier versions?

[Nilex]

Uh, no idea sorry. Wasn't even aware of that. And who is to say it won't change further down the line.
Anyway item string is "STR_TEC_044" if you, via save edit, wanna add it to base storage for research (recommended) or into already researched list.

[RSSwizard]

I chose Men and what im basically seeing here is it lets you relax somewhat and Zerg Rush missions with slave soldiers if you dont care about them dying... and because of their limited health any wounded will not have too long to recover. The crusader armor also gives them like 30ish Armor so they can take a hit or two and might shake it off just like gals do. Also remember there are Accurate weapons like the Scoped Carbine+EP rounds, Commando Rifle, and dudes are just as dangerous with Grenades as anybody else. And grenades only weigh 3-4 pounds, its not a 20-40 pound gun... imagine 10 guys loaded with Grenade Launchers/WP and Hellerium Grenades... glass hammers are still hammers.

You can make slave soldiers from Slaves too, you can make lots of them and then just ship them off to the Hot Tub base so they can steadily cook up their stats. Its definitely an Attack Dogs sorta option.

I haven't exactly been doing this because I threw a BUNCH of money into Freaks since theyre the only ones who can wear certain armor types (Ghost, im looking at You). And ive got a stock of Lokknarrs that I keep around. If I need suicide bombers with timed baby nukes im definitely enlisting the 'Soldiers though. They could at least have a chance to get it to where it needs to go, the goblin girls will just get shot down in the street.

What im not doing is investing anything into peasants. Im losing some missions I cant participate in but thats just how it is.

Edit:

One thing im really doing anymore is LIMITING the size of my deployments, like just 2-3 top notch Hands, it takes longer to finish the missions Turnwise but each Turn is shorter. Some exceptions like Mansions and pogroms possibly but im even considering a 4 Gal load with an armored car for pogroms, and I can take down a Mansion with 8 easily (since the girl on the roof can show me where the guard stacks are).

I might even take 4 gals to a Mansion just to sweep it for treasure chests and money bags (still havent found where those uranium briefcases are though).

[legionof1]

snip
I might even take 4 gals to a Mansion just to sweep it for treasure chests and money bags (still haven't found where those uranium briefcases are though).

Lower most tunnel level, but not every mansion has em do to random generation. Look for tiny dead end rooms near longer straight passages

[Alex the KatanaCutlass]

To Dioxine and team: TYVM, brothers and sisters. YOU RULE.

[Nilex]

Something is happening that statistically shouldn't be possible...

Been trying to defeat a 250 blue shield with 2x 0-200 plasma weapons (HPA within power drop-off range, full damage to blue shield) for who knows how long (over 50 tries). Chance for success is around 38% so that's 3-4 tries. Let's assume that inherit HPA 2x 0-100 dice roll lowers it to 20% at worst. That's 4-6 tries. Defo not 50+ (and fekking counting). Could somebody please explain wtf is happening here? Even I can't be this unlucky.
Only potential cause why 0-400 can't defeat 250 I can see is undocumented resistance of Blue Shield to plasma. Wording of last paragraph by iffy double usage of "normal" with different context causes slight confusion.

If anyone is willing to test: attached save loads the prepped shooter, second shooter is 2 squares north, both with over 100% accuracy. Should be child's play.

UPDATE
debug mode ftw

[legionof1]

I think this may be a case of deceptive power decay, you may in fact be outside the 16 dropoff from the positions in the save. Distance is in truth counted in voxels and abstracted to tiles for player ease of use. There are x voxels per tile but the shot counts the path traveled which is a dithering mess as you approach diagonal to the grid.

I cheated with debug to warp more shooters into those spots and only got through after 4 shots about 5% of the time. From the other side of craft i got through much more often.

I will also point out that your odds are flawed. To get 2 shots with a median of 100 dmg to do 250 dmg between them you need both shots in the 25th percentile or higher. The odds of that are 25% x 25%=6.25% And that with an even distribution. 2 dice per dmg roll, means it in fact requires 25th percentile result X4 or .39%.

50 tries at .39% all failing sounds perfectly plausible to me. And that if dither drop off isn't happening, cant check that with out hacking rangefinders into the save, and battle saves are heinously hard to edit.

[Nilex]

I feared Hovertank's armor resistance was mistakenly applied to its armor but the voxel thingy explains it. Both were near diagonal shots (NE -> SW). So I guess pressing ALT during aiming does not take voxel precision into account, just regular squares. In my case ALT showed drop-off starting 4-5 squares beyond the target square. This scenario pissed me off so bad I had to stop for the day, then pulled up debug the next day to give 1st shooter an extra shot (CTRL+W'd him back and forth to fill his TUs). Interestingly, on the 1st try, 3 shoots were enough to shut down his voxel shields (yeah that's how I'm callin em now). Mercs lobbing grenades from across the map like cartoon characters, with their cheato-vision, hardly helped keeping me calm. Hate um.

Appreciate you taking the time to explain this to me. It's clear now no need to dwell/hack deeper on my account.

I admit to eyeballing the odds. Had I done it I probably wouldn't post. It's crazy how couple of extra rolls lower the chances. But it's 2% not .39% (37.5th percentile not 25th as 4x62.5=250). I just got lucky by saying 50 tries. Well within acceptable save/load range for me btw . Anyway shields should have dropped about 3 times from my tests but as they didn't I conclude it's the voxels.

[Apocca]

I think I was mistaken. HK-117 is also in L3. It was introduced in L1. So the Technocracy Datapad #1 comes from there. It is triggered by "Storm is coming" which is an event that comes after The Red Menace.

[Warzameg]

Are there any good ways to acquire an arc welder, ideally before Back to School?  It's blocking all vessel construction.

I saw you can get it by researching engineers, but they're fairly rare and can give so many different things when you research them that the odds seem bad that way.

[Apocca]

When I have a research like that I usually research other stuff so it limits the list of things and then save research the engineer when only 1 thing is left on the list.
There is also Humanist Files which gives Arc welder but that's after Back to School.

[Nilex]

Can't remember if it's also a lootable item from a mission (maybe bases?) but yeah early game engineers look like your best bet, even if it doesn't seem so. I do remember grinding all kinds of civilians (not as bad as it sounds) to reduce pool of available research results from rarer types. Even delaying researching rares is an option if prison space allows.
With this approach only bottle necks I ever got were from event items given by research triggers I avoided (expanding those *!mission types!* until I felt ready). In hindsight there was no reason to fear. But prison space man... that's an enemy lasting well into the late game.

[legionof1]

Arc welder is in the get one free list for almost all factions versions of engineers, it can also be found as drops in guild warehouse from the warehouse wars unlock. Also the varaint of the medium ufo that also carries industrial scanners IIRC

[Alex the KatanaCutlass]

Which establishments provide the "study" function, except the pers.study?

[legionof1]

personal labs and study room provide this service.