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Author Topic: A thread for little questions  (Read 1034080 times)

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #420 on: July 01, 2017, 03:27:46 pm »
Solar, hello, I have already answered this question.

But I haven't. :P

Offline breaker52

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #421 on: July 01, 2017, 09:24:01 pm »
Can't read, really now? :)

sorry and thanks for the help,

Offline legionof1

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #422 on: July 02, 2017, 07:56:08 am »
On the point of laser weapons being absent, the most prevalent source, in my experience, is church ships of middling size. Other faction ships of similar size/deployment level, tend to get replaced by faction specific encounters(Like freighters for guild). The church end up being the most "standard" in terms of tech vs ship size.

Another sizeable source is space missions. Nearly all space foes excepting zombies are laser armed.

A third source, albeit one time, is the russian files mission. Anyone not the power armor supersoldiers, will generally be laser armed with the occasional Kruger plasma pistol. Mission is however exceedingly difficult. By the point where you can easily accomplish it, nuclear lasers may just be a pointless addendum, compared to the gauss and plasma you may have already. 

All that said lasers are largely bad picks compared to conventional weapons, or the more readily available gauss. The eurosyndicate brand does make the cut, barely, for stopping power but are very expensive and gated behind tech RNG, and either a massive -1000 score drain(electing to ignore syndicate hit missions) or very difficult missions that only at best breaks even in score. And the hit missions will keep spawning over and over.

If mercs were not so damn resistant to bullets and incredibly difficult to get close to lasers would not have a useful purpose. Conventional weapons either do more damage per shot, or have useful secondary effects like buttstrike attacks or armor stripping. Even lasers "shtick" armor pen is present in lesser forms on rifles and assorted other things. Outside of mercs i dont use any lasers at all, aside from the occasional fatty to bore through buildings for convenience in late game.

But im probably flaying a long dead equine.   

« Last Edit: July 02, 2017, 12:28:48 pm by legionof1 »

Offline BBHood217

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #423 on: July 02, 2017, 11:35:20 am »
What's upcoming anyway?  More space stuff?  More underwater stuff?  I do eventually want to see those sunken cargo ships and galleons instead of an empty seabed.

Also, is there a reliable source of damaged grav units?  Or do I have no choice but to scavenge them off drones and fliers?

Offline Bacon_Hero

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #424 on: July 02, 2017, 12:15:47 pm »
On the point of laser weapons being absent...

Ah I wish I had known about the heavy downsides of Eurosyndicate deal earlier. Anyway, that's in the past now. I immediately sunk $9 million into Euro-las weapons to patch the "tech gap" in my force. At that point unlocking gauss weapons was at least 4 to 6 months away for me.

In my game I go on all the missions I can. That means landed guild ship missions. Mercs for some reason stopped visiting. I cannot shoot down every churchship I encounter, and they rarely land so maybe that's why I don't seem to face enemies carrying las.

I decided to rush for lasers after encountering Mercs for the first time and thought that enemies from that point would become increasingly difficult but it seems that other enemies after them were far inferior. On my recent first encounter with The Dark Ones I expected to be trounced but to my surprise they were carrying shotguns and crappy revolvers and shit like that. My girls just waddled up to them with vibro-axes and shockafists and cut them to little bits.

IF ONLY I HAD KNOWN THAT I DIDN'T HAVE TO WORRY

No matter though, Eurolas weapons are pretty good. They just barely supersede the incredible OP weapon that is CAWs (for like a million times the price) but they have better range and good auto-fire. I think CAWs are just too strong in general and they make other tech choices redundant.

All part of the fun of a blind play, I suppose. This game is full of surprises and really doesn't follow mainstream conventions such as "investing years and millions and lives in specific tech research is supposed to give you an upgrade - not a sidegrade."

Still, at times with long difficult, out of the way tech path leading to rubbish worse than things I already have or tech with no clear advantage, I can't help but feel I'm being trolled by the game.

Offline Ethereal_Medic

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #425 on: July 02, 2017, 12:43:51 pm »
I tend to pick the heavy nuclear laser (battle laser) asap once I've the chance to research/build/equip them.
I'm not using the stellar-empire gauss at all, I stick with the XG-Gauss instead (if I decide to and not just use more lasers)

In all my playthrough I got very late to plasma-unlock due to bad luck with provosts (they either nuked by the panicing esper next to her during base defence or run into my reactionshots during alien base map). I salvage nearly all plasma weaponry for hellerium and parts for plasma destroyers and heavy plasma pistols.

I watched Meridian and Poet doing thier playthrough through various stages of the ongoing game and got mixed feeling since none of them had to deal with the 'new super early game' and the 'bounty-hunting RNG' and instead got a more fluid progression without gated-techs like the occasional impl.-bomb-launcher not showing up etc.

Both now playing other games and gave the mod no second try on the stream. I really wanna see how they perform with this state of the game.
I also never got into this 'specializing your loadout' stuff since you can't do that with no gear to choose from early on and with the vast amount of content it keeps updating and is just alot to monitor as the in-game year progresses.

I stick to use 'generalized' loudouts for the available hands, giving everyone something to heal, 1-2 throwable weapons, 1x handle and the best rifle (either piercing or laser) to mow down the enemies as far as strength-cap goes. I usually lack melee and throwing skill during my campaign but never run into the situation that I needed those skills without me having a 'firing' solution to take hostages.

Offline legionof1

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #426 on: July 02, 2017, 01:20:09 pm »
Mercs at present are effectively the end game. They combine superior vision attributes with excellent camo, lots of hp with just sufficient armor to be annoying but not much affected by +/- armor pen, excellent resist spread, and top tier firepower. Alot of there strength's can never be matched by the gals until end game tech, if  at all, and then only 1-2 of those strengths at a time.


Even full stargods are not as deadly a package as merc grunts. Never mind ranking Mercs.

If you can reliably handle mercs without deaths you probably have the gear/tech and skill to win the game immediately, even if it will take ages to actually end the campaign.

@Ethereal_Medic
Battle lasers are competent, but not by alot, for majority of content. Anything sub 50 damage just can't hack it once moderate armor is prevalent. And lasers armor pen just doesn't do nuff to make them competitive. At best it makes them approx. equivalent to similar class conventional weapons when moderate armor is faced. If the armor is very low or absent your behind in damage. If armor is very high, you very often don't have the base damage to punch through even with the penetration aid.

Specialized loadouts, are something for later in the game(12+ size transports), or for the first few months where almost anything is an upgrade and gun/ammunition hodgepodge scavenging forces you to squeeze every iota you can out of the minuscule crew. But the player spends so much time with limited crew that they largely forget. And the loadout screen, even with template functions(which most are ignorant of) is poorly suited to handling the sheer amount of options.

Find something tolerably effective and sticking with it unless circumstances dictate otherwise cuts hours, if not tens of hours off an average campaign.   
 

Offline Bacon_Hero

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #427 on: July 02, 2017, 02:00:01 pm »
If you can reliably handle mercs without deaths you probably have the gear/tech and skill to win the game immediately, even if it will take ages to actually end the campaign.

What?! I severely over-estimated the difficulty of this game then. My first encounter with Mercs was around 12 months in. They landed and I only had sniper rifle, aqua arrows, Battle-Rifles, a couple of CAWs, military shotguns and mortars. My girls were in warrior outfits and TAC armour.

It was a really tough battle. I only won by throwing down my guns and putting on my shockafists and picking up my barbarian ax and cattleprods. My mortar girl pounded them from a distance while the rest set up traps and moved forward. My early game strat revolved around capturing as many people as I could so all my girls had high melee. Took me many hours to win the mission without losses (I do save scrum because I don't want to throw weeks of progress away)

After researching Mercs and discovering their weakness subsequent encounters were much easier. I broke out the rare lasguns and adv clips and fartbags whenever Mercs come to visit and manage to capture their large ships and fend off their terror missions without too much trouble. They even left behind half a dozen vibro-axes for me and gave me enough material to build synthsuits for all my girls.

I honestly believed they were an early-mid game encounter and signaled that tougher foes were coming. I thought it would be like Impossible Long War where the enemies would just steadily ramp up and if you teched wrongly you'll just be unable to win missions later on.

Eventually I ran out of lasgun clips and needed a good laser replacement quickly - so I rushed for eurolasers.
« Last Edit: July 02, 2017, 02:06:59 pm by Bacon_Hero »

Offline BBHood217

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #428 on: July 02, 2017, 02:28:56 pm »
I tend to pick the heavy nuclear laser (battle laser) asap once I've the chance to research/build/equip them.

Where are those boom guns?  They're the only things keeping me from battle lasers.

Offline Ethereal_Medic

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #429 on: July 02, 2017, 04:00:01 pm »
I'm not a friend of shotguns with very small clip-sizes.

I'm aware that a battle-laser is not the best weapon but at least I can shot freely without worries with my ammo stock.
I would totally use '1-shot-per-turn' weapons if these would use the TFTD Damage Formula (50-150% DMG).
I can't stress out how frustrating it is to set-up a Python-Sniper with chem/piercing-rounds, use all my TU's for a 300% hit-chance shot and get a 0 for damage result.

Yes it's RNG and stuff but this feature alone of 0-200% is stupid and destroys the purpose of using dedicated snipers since this role is unreliable and outclassed by a simple rifle that can do all fire-modes and can do various snap-shots to 'cheat' the damage roulette.

Even if I have to shot a target 5-6 times with a battle laser, my chances are higher to defeat the HP-Pool than begging for a portable-lascannon or gauss-sniper to roll high enough to get rid of the problem.

It boils down to the Damage Roulette for me, it's all over the place and sometimes without a reasonable logic behind.
For example the custom handcannon. It uses 50-150% formula?! I don't see a reason for that and I freaking love this weapon for it's reliable damage output against foes with shitty to mediocre armor (unless piercing protection).

Offline Bacon_Hero

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #430 on: July 02, 2017, 04:53:46 pm »
Where are those boom guns?  They're the only things keeping me from battle lasers.

I found a bunch in Merc ships and Guild Bases

Offline BBHood217

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #431 on: July 02, 2017, 05:58:29 pm »
Not long after I posted that, I scored a boom gun from some smugglers.  Seems your desires come true if you grumble about them here enough :P

And speaking of bases, is it normal for enemy bases to take three years for the first one to show up?

Offline Bacon_Hero

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #432 on: July 02, 2017, 06:15:31 pm »
I found my first base about 6 months in, near my own base!

I'm playing on Jack Sparrow difficulty so maybe all the spawns are accelerated

By my first year and a half I took out 4 bases, each time capturing a Guild Master.


BTW guys, does anyone know how to break Eurosyndicate Contracts? I just went on my first pogrom and had -750 score.

I tried not to kill anyone but there was a clump of 5 enemies in a small alley intersection and my mortar girl was bored :( :(

I captured a govt general but I don't think I need him
« Last Edit: July 02, 2017, 06:18:24 pm by Bacon_Hero »

Offline Ethereal_Medic

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #433 on: July 02, 2017, 06:43:52 pm »
The Eurosyndicate Mission never goes positive.
You'll allways get a penalty for doing the mission AND ignoring it.

Doing it nets you some cash (you can now use to exchance into the bounty-hunting minigame if you feel like it).
Not doing it will do a big score penalty in europe area.

That's the payoff for signing with the Syndicate, you get thier 'good' lasers for a constant score-dump in europe unless you find a way to rack up score in this area.

Offline Dioxine

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Re: A thread for little questions
« Reply #434 on: July 02, 2017, 07:14:36 pm »
Yes it's RNG and stuff but this feature alone of 0-200% is stupid

Using just a single sniper, that is stupid. Indeed however snipers do not have a real niche as of now, despite how abuse-able snipers are.