A thread for little questions

[RSSwizard]

I cannot recall any such trickery. Yes, Meghapol sometimes uses plasma weapons, and sometimes not; but it depends on craft and not time progression. (Apart form the fact that some missions may appear later.)

Umm... actually on the same missions I Do notice changes to equipment, and in the ruleset there are clearly 5 Item Levels (not 3) in the Deployments which have different items attributed to them.

I havent looked for the monthly/tech level distribution map, but it'd make the most sense to randomize items that way - instead of OG xcom though where you have a clear progression itd be totally random. The trick is having a string long enough to capture the most likely length of the gameplay, if its 10 Years youd need 120 indexes.

Picture evidence to prove it. Set #5 for this critter is a minilauncher with stun bombs so thats a pretty wild swing from a pistol or laser snub. This is waaaaaay too much work for Dioxine to have put into crafting deployments piece by piece... without having a Monthly Map to actually distribute them.

[Solarius Scorch]

Sorry, but this only proves your ignorance. Multiple entries are for randomization, not tech evolution. (also 5 instead of 3 is irrelevant.)

Come on, people... Nobody knows everything, and certainly not me, but I'm tired of these" proofs".

[Nilex]

So Faction equipment only changes per ship, with better/larger ships having better equipment pool?

Cutter will have lesser quality equipment than a Destroyer for example. I just got ganked by Heavy/Rifle Plasma wielding Church Zealot/Neophyte from a Destroyer, when I all hoped for were few easy Force Circuitry and XP for newbies coz Church was supposed to be turkey shoot at this point.

If true then enemy equipment progression does happen as observed, but depends solely on enemy ship (with some similarities and overlap between them). Since better ones come a fair bit later so do the enemy gunz.

[Solarius Scorch]

So Faction equipment only changes per ship, with better/larger ships having better equipment pool?

Yes, precisely. Per ship or other mission type (if not generated from a UFO). Optionally, it can also be influenced by the race/faction, which is often a case.

In rare cases, tricks may be used to break this up, like making two different UFOs which look identical but have different properties... But I don't know if it's used in Piratez.

[legionof1]

The identical outward trick is used a few times. There are several variations to the tall fat cross ship(Abductor ?) some have industrial scanners in the tile loot some do not, but they outwardly read as the same ship, and have largely similar loadouts for crew and arms.

[RSSwizard]

Welp... Im clear out of Research topics to do and I even researched all of my disks (several were left and the research topic disappeared). My 24 Brainers are hungry and its going to kill my infamy score too.

What do I do now? I haven't broken into wizbiz yet, only just now got Harbinger armor.

[Nilex]

Why do I get the feeling everyone is playing the game faster than me? I'm just about to exhaust all research from getting two Smuggler Negotiators and I've been at it for 3 months (with help of 100 brainers total). Geez.

What I'm doing is playing catch-up with Runts, upgrading whole fleet (decided on Fortuna, Triton, 4x Sabre, 2x Dragon, Devastator, Spector, 2x Thunderbolt or 2x Leviathan), upgrading armors, sorting equipment for all bases/soldiers as I finalize each squad specialization, and lastly - praying for that fucking Marsec Lasgun still. Just as I woke up today I realized I'll have to shell out over 50M for all tokens (mostly Jack) needed to convert into White Dragons. My hands are full even without research.

Not knowing of an easy way to reveal all missing research (not including locked out Codexs) I've been typing in commonly shared 3-letter strings into tech tree viewer to flush out unresearched topics. Pretty effective if not tedious. All that remains is figuring out where to get trigger items, which mission to accept and which to skip. Currently at 88% with Grey codex and hoping to reach low 90% after all is said and done. Then maybe unlock all Codex - for the toys and to achieve the holy grail of 100% faster than Dio can release new patches.

[legionof1]

snip
What do I do now? I haven't broken into wizbiz yet, only just now got Harbinger armor.

It's okay if you hit a RNG wall to scale back the number of brainers you have on staff. Thou usually the answer most employ is to massively ramp up producing things for sale, like assorted booze>chemicals>ect. The optimal product changes based on what services each base has, and your tech progress.

Why do I get the feeling everyone is playing the game faster than me? I'm just about to exhaust all research from getting two Smuggler Negotiators and I've been at it for 3 months (with help of 100 brainers total). Geez.
snip

Probably a false impression, most of us that float around here frequently have been around the mod for years. At least for myself i don't complete more then say 2-3 runs per calendar year. But because that adds up to thousands of hours played total, i have vast pool of experience to draw on to so how each individual change in a patch can affect the mod. I don't need to play out every new wrinkle to know what changes and how that butterflys across the mod.

[RSSwizard]

Im thinking boom gun shells are probably my most optimum product. I haven't done the math on manufacturing plastasteel but based on the cost that goes into chems, and then pladtasteel, then the millions that come out with the boom shells it seems like a big profit. Shuttling Contraband is also really good too.

I had a country sign a zero tolerance policy... but I already researched zero tolerance to zero tolerance... so what gives?

[Solarius Scorch]

I had a country sign a zero tolerance policy... but I already researched zero tolerance to zero tolerance... so what gives?

Perhaps the mission was ongoing already?

I honestly can't remember now if zero tolerance disables alien infiltrations, but if it does, then it's the only explanation I can think of.

[RSSwizard]

I thought that made zero tolerance/pacts Reversible?

[BBHood217]

Family Ties only prevents future sway govt missions, but it does nothing to any ongoing ones; those you have to stop yourself.  Fortunately unlike in vanilla UFO, shooting down the courier before it lands prevents the deal from happening.

[Alex the KatanaCutlass]

ATTN Nilex:
"I just got ganked by Heavy/Rifle Plasma wielding Church Zealot/Neophyte from a Destroyer..."
I take you were fried to a crisp critter state by it, right?
I avoid this by mid-clicking on an enemy I wanna pulverize. It shows what the fracker has got.
AND, it does seem that our virtuoso, Dioxine, made a reeeal effort on weapons animation as well. The graphic now is soooo goood, that you can tell the weapon a character wields even as/when (goddamn grammar) you look at them creeping the battlescape. So that you know what's gonna GANK ya, heh-heh:)
Juuust kiddin.

[Nilex]

Well I'm glad you gotta a kick outta it

Plasma Rifle actually was absorbed by Brute armor, Heavy guy didn't get to shoot even. Was great seeing the roles reversed for a change. The real problem were Exalts with their double light sabers and my reaction-fire cover team getting distracted by lesser threats. Maybe I should consider them XG Rifles for the occasion rather than cumbersome and slow (albeit abundant) Gauss Muskets. Amen. Oh and does ATTN mean - attention?

Btw, got two minor questions related to damage formula I've been holding to ask since forever:
In the analysis screen does the "Extra damage" bit refers to weapon's [base damage + PWR formula], or just [PWR part]?
What's the difference between "Vanilla default" and "0-200%"/"50-150" damage spread? Basically "Calculation type" 0 vs 1/2 as they're called in online BP. Afaik, UFO does 0-200 for everything except explosives which use 50-150. Going off that it makes either Vanilla default or 1/2 redundant notations.

[legionof1]

Calc 0 is vanilla behavior based on the damage type(explosions 50-150, bullets 0-200, fire 5-10). The other types are used as specific overrides. So you can for instance have a fire type weapon the does full power dmg, or a gun that only does the 5-10 roll. 0 setting is retained because it's the expected default and would break vanilla compatibility. It's also saves hand defining the roll if you don't need it do something special.

Everything in the extras damage info section applies to total power with any bonus. It an organizational formatting because none of those features existed in vanilla.