A thread for little questions

[Nilex]

I added Cacodemon corpse to your main base but you won't be able to research it until you build Study or Personal Labs (recommended). My suggestion is nuking Data Centre and replacing it with Prs. Labs. I got Caco corpse tech by researching Arcane Tomes which to me seems like the most easiest and natural route. Only after that did mission that regularly spawn Cacos started appearing in my game.

Just added that one line if you wish to continue from your save, if not you can add it yourself to current save progress by opening file in better text editor (notepad++) and searching "Desert Crab" (your 2nd base). Scroll a short bit up from there until you get to "items:" - your main base storage. Somewhere there add "STR_DOOM_CACODEMON_CORPSE: 1" line. That's it. Backup file before saving changes and load it within game.

Btw, why in God's name you emphasize kill counts after solders names of all things?

[Nilex]

Really last couple of questions:

1) How to capture a Hovertank? Discovered I haven't researched a "live" one, same with 85mm Tank. EMP again seems like the way to go but its enormous energy pool suggests I should let it drive around for several turns to lower its energy closer to its health levels or EMP would just destroy it before stunning. Is there a better way maybe, some method to sap his energy so I don't have to wait? UPDATE: Hmm seems like Reticulan Electrogun will do the trick of sapping energy then Zzz... it off with EMP.

2) Are Stormrat and Xenforcer implemented or WIP? Govt Siren I reckon is in those Govt Fusion Cruisers I was avoiding to shoot down. Those few are basically the last researchable topics I am still missing besides hard-coded mutually exclusives.

[JustTheDude/CABSHEP]

If I remember correctly, Dioxine said that Hovertank and such (armored cars etc) aren't supposed to be captured at all, but research for "live" unit is still ingame to not break anything if player somehow menages to via bug/glitch.

Stormrats are plentifull in early game, mainly in a bandit warehouse mission that disappears when you get access to decent craft weaponry trough research. I think they also appear during mutant pogroms with bandits. This means that you probably won't ever get them in very late game. Judging by the fact of researching so much.

Pretty sure Xenforcer appears in Smuggler ships and simillar transport vessels of wealthier factions as cargo. Rare, basically an easter egg from that one shitty X-COM game.

[Nilex]

Thanks dude that's pretty informative. I'll defo try to capture the hovertank, now it's personal.
UPDATE - impossible using legit means as of L7. God is my witness I tried :(

Sadly it seems I missed Stormrats then. I still get an odd Bandit Warehouses here and there. Love that mission coz it never takes more than the 1st turn and you get to punch people in the face. Maybe Stormies are super rare there, I never figured were spawn odds are in the rules. Hopefully they end up in researchable documents in later updates.

Xenforcer IS from a Smuggler, apparently a small type craft with specifics stats that don't match anything in bootypedia. I'll just play till Cydonia and accept I missed it if not found by then.

[JustTheDude/CABSHEP]

Oops... Its not literally "Bandit Warehouse" bounty hunt mission, my mistake. I forgot the name, but generally its a mission with one building that has some air rockets for your crafts and deadly, but immobile gun placements outside. It appears after researching "We need craft weapons" (or something like that) and then disappears after researching some other craft weaponry project.

[Gals]

I added Cacodemon corpse to your main base but you won't be able to research it until you build Study or Personal Labs (recommended). My suggestion is nuking Data Centre and replacing it with Prs. Labs. I got Caco corpse tech by researching Arcane Tomes which to me seems like the most easiest and natural route. Only after that did mission that regularly spawn Cacos started appearing in my game.

Btw, why in God's name you emphasize kill counts after solders names of all things?

Awesome, many thanks, I'll have a go at this later on! Great suggestions.

The kill counts is something I usually update every 1st of the month in the early game (I am now getting sloppy with it as I accelerate the endgame). It's just a habit I got into in UFO and Xcom, where I might have a lot of soldiers and want to differentiate between the more important ones, and the ones I don't want to risk. It's also a kind of rank. So I can see at a glance that this soldier has 321 kills, so they aren't the one to rush towards the smuggler's ship and get sliced by the sudden appearance of the invisible Star God or Cat Girls! Or in missions with Chryssalids/Tentaculats (fun fact - I make my living as an author, and one of my SF books has an alien called a tentaculat, in homage to how many missions they ruined for me in Xcom). If I lose someone then the RIP screen immediately helps me to see how important they were to me. So it's just a fun shortcut. Same as I add O to the end of the name for starting soldiers, so I can always tell if they are one of the Originals. I do rename based on circumstances sometimes, but tend to find that many weeks later I cannot remember why someone is called "Susie Sci-shipkiller" or "Mandy Merc-survivor" etc. :-)

[Nilex]

@Dude
Yeah that makes more sense. Wish I got a chance to fight them in combat. Probably rushed through that technology path and locked them off before mission had a chance to spawn. Oh well. Anyways thank you for the amendment, I can let go of anticipation.

@Gals
My pleasure, glad my 0-to-hero editing skills finally helped someone other than myself lol. I also practice many similar "mini-games" in my playthroughs just to spice things up. It makes the whole thing more personal and memorable! Perhaps you'd be willing to consider changing kills notation to reduce yourself the workload of noting every single kill. For example using same notation as the game uses for research costs: # many kills; = moderate; - some. Just to save updating every single number, it must be getting tiresome hehe.
I'm pretty stoked to talk to an SF author. It's essentially the only genre I can bare to read because it's so different to everything else. Much respect! It's no wonder those two traumatized you enough to affect your inspiration, they are widely remembered just for that

[Gals]

@Gals
My pleasure, glad my 0-to-hero editing skills finally helped someone other than myself lol. I also practice many similar "mini-games" in my playthroughs just to spice things up. It makes the whole thing more personal and memorable! Perhaps you'd be willing to consider changing kills notation to reduce yourself the workload of noting every single kill. For example using same notation as the game uses for research costs: # many kills; = moderate; - some. Just to save updating every single number, it must be getting tiresome hehe.
I'm pretty stoked to talk to an SF author. It's essentially the only genre I can bare to read because it's so different to everything else. Much respect! It's no wonder those two traumatized you enough to affect your inspiration, they are widely remembered just for that

Thanks again - I just completed it! Building the Conqueror took some time, but luckily I had already built the 250 fuel capsules. So I went on the final mission, and it was quite epic. So that's around 12 months playing the same campaign with my rule that if I lose, I have to delete the save, but I made it! (It's how I played games like Doom and Hexen back in the day too - https://www.karldrinkwater.uk/2014/11/the-doom-wars.html and https://www.karldrinkwater.uk/2016/04/the-hexen-wars.html ).

X-Pirates may be my favourite game ever, just pipping Dungeon Master and Heroes of Might & Magic 3. :-)

By the way, you'll find details of my SF books at https://karldrinkwater.uk - Chasing Solace is the one with an alien called a Tentaculat (though it isn't the same creature, just the same name). The Lost Solace books are a sort of cross between Event Horizon, Pandorum, and Aliens, but with a big focus on AI.

[RSSwizard]

I remember running into Cacodemons in Dark One Pogroms but maybe it was cut off, dont know. It would probably be a good idea to go back into the .rul file and add them in (its got to be an alien rank type). Id welcome them being in pogroms, they're a decent challenge and flying it makes melee unreliable. I think their projectile hits kinda like the imps'.

ONLY place ive run into Stormrats is the Highway House missions. But I dont know what you're talking about with the Missiles because I think 25mm Cannon Parts is all you get from the highway house.

Which funnily isnt even necessary because its possible to collect 30mm Parts and 50mm Parts from some ships that land. And Seagull Launchers + Missiles for your Airspeeder.

11 Years in-game?  WTF?
I thought there was a time limit in the game, I been rushing to get finished by Year 4 because of the inevitable Stargod and Mercinary Crackdowns that'll just destroy you.

[Gals]

11 Years in-game?  WTF?
I thought there was a time limit in the game, I been rushing to get finished by Year 4 because of the inevitable Stargod and Mercinary Crackdowns that'll just destroy you.

The game started in Jan 2601 I think, and ended April 2612, so yes, c.11 years! :-)

I was playing on the easiest level, I think, because I'd never lasted even a couple of years in the past so didn't think I would this time, either. Hard to remember for sure.

By the end I shot down everything that flew in my 8-base network. Battleships and Cruisers I used Dragons with plasma guns; for everything else Sabres with a combo of laser gun and Tesla. Silver Towers often got away, because they usually outran my Dragons. Sometimes a base attack occurred but by the end my bases usually had 5 plasma batteries and a repulsor so they never succeeded in landing. And once they did attack with some super fast ship, but I shot it down before it reached the base, and I never saw another. :-)

[Alex the KatanaCutlass]

Hey, why even after I did the Jack challenge mission it keeps giving me only those D crap??

[legionof1]

Hey, why even after I did the Jack challenge mission it keeps giving me only those D crap??

The challenge feature is only a one time thing, a single instance of a B rank from the chosen faction. It does nothing to advance your bounty hunter rank. And even if it did raising your rank does not eliminate the lower ranks from the pool, just reduces the odds.

While i can understand not wanting to encounter low rank bounties as you advance, they do represent a not insignificant fraction of the permanent easy mission. Watch towers, nurses and such all eventually cease to happen either via time or tech triggers that you must pass. The bounty rank advancement on the other hand is not really relevant to progression. What you can get from tokens is, but your allowed to grind along at any tier.

[Alex the KatanaCutlass]

Hm... So I understand. Nothing against easy missions, I have my B team for those. You explain things very well, legionof1, and I like reading your posts - they make me not having to ask half of the questions that I had before. 

[Alex the KatanaCutlass]

ATTN Dioxine and To Whom It May Concern:
Friend, as an ex-punk i DO understand very well how it is to be a target of discrimination. See, I simply am different from 90% of other ppl. My looks, my way of thinking and doing things... It's all out of the box. I don't like at all doing-it-the-same-way-over-and-over-again. SURE enough, there are things that have to be done so, like keeping the goods at the same places in a shop, so as to evade any commotion, etc. However, where possible and cool, any change like doing the ordinary things in a different way is making us flourish, sharpens our mind, body, soul - US, makes us think creatively, makes us NOT being lazy, cheers us up... Like the X-Piratez! One HELLUVA MOD, man!

So, how do you avoid/counter online "attacks" like insults and the like?

- You can block the posters where feasible.
- If not, you can sue them.
- You can make this writing under your avatar - "Offenders will be sued.," etc.
- You can counter the kind of "attack.": Calling you a Nazi? - you can post a photo of you with Soviet/Israeli/Polish/Yugoslavian etc. flag. Cat killer? - You can post a pic of you and a kitty at a pet shop. Allergic to cats? Can do so with a poster of a cat, maybe a big black tomcat, or a panther, a tiger...
- Answering with: "God knows what you yourself are (have done wrong) to behave like that. Why don't you tell us?" Y'know, something to divert the attacks on THEM. They are all the same - wanting to mess around with other people, but not united, and very prone to doing it to each other(s)!

Cool?

Yea, and certainly do (re)read/(re)watch The Sun Tzu's Art of War. Its approach is more than good for dealing with the real civilian life situations.

AND

If ya hadn't already, then certainly learn how NOT to be influenced by such. Remember,
there's more than many of THEM on the web, so it's VERY good to know these things. There are all kinds of psychological/philosophical/religious/spiritual methods for this on the Web and in the books.

BECAUSE:

- THIS IS THE HUMANITY'S PROBLEM FROM THE TIMES OF YORE'S YORE. TODAY, WITH INTERNET, IT HAS BECOME MUCH MORE INTENSE.
- TOO MANY GREAT, GREAT PPL AND GREAT, GREAT THINGS HAVE FALLEN TO THIS - DON'T END LIKE THAT!
- !!!Many people have even committed suicide because of this!!! We must stay ALIVE!
- Moments of weakness of mind, moments of weakness of spirit, being uncertain, fear... These cause all that. So let's kick all that to hell's oblivion.

Okay, that's all.

NOTA BENE:
I have written this in my very best intention to help Dioxine, legionof1, Nilex, Solarius Scorch and all other cool people here, and for you to use this to help yourselves and your own people (friends, families...).
-Maybe I've been quite emotional - well, this is quite an important thing in life, isn't it?
-Maybe I used the Imperative "Tense" - without any intention to order anything to anyone.
-Some things I've typed in CAPS to draw attention to them.
-THIS POST HAS BEEN COMPOSED IN ORDER TO HELP. NO NEGATIVE THING OF ANY KIND IS MEANT BY THIS POST.

[Alex the KatanaCutlass]

A time limit? is there one? Mercs and SG attack? When, when? Wanna kick their butts with my HARDWARE!