Cydonia or Bust! Kiri's question thread. Game complete!

[KiriKaneko]

So how do I get mutant alliance favors? The bounty C pass research didn't unlock it :/

[greattuna]

Some favors have prerequisites. You have to make and research Prize: Mutant Martial Arts first before you can make Prize: Alliance Favors.

[legionof1]

Yeah most of the auxilla are pretty poor when comes to front-line combat besides the tanks. Slaves are however pretty useful to reduce costs when used as support troops like medics and mortar crews. In the medic role you only need TU and stable morale to avoid panic. In the artillery support role the lower accuracy is of limited impact due to large aoe.

[KiriKaneko]

Ah ok, thankyou. Should I research the other favors?

[KiriKaneko]

Do I get points for shooting up megapol?

[kayelgee]

Are medical supplies really that profitable? From what I calculated based on checmicals value plus runt-hour costs the profit should be marginal, despite the hints in description. ...

For me it always was X-grog, or now is chateau du mort, since in new version apples are plentiful and pretty much guaranteed on ratman village/help the loknars/lokknar farm.

I think you miscalculated medical supplies(you might've overlooked that you get 10 med supplies per batch) because it's on par with chateau without the need to get apples so you can build multiple bases producing it. Once you have a lot of runts(200+) producing medical supplies you should consider producing your own chems on site so you can get ~10% more profit and be better than chateau.

Can someone tell me why I should bother with the mint? I've run the numbers and 200$, 1000$ and 2000$ chips are ~40% more profitable than X Grog whereas Medical Supplies are around twice as profitable. Was the mint way better before 0.99G?
I haven't unlocked plastic, gold and obisidian chips cracking but unless plastic chips are godlike I don't think it's worth it over medical supplies ever.

[Ethereal_Medic]

The most efficiency for the mint is smelting ore into 50k chips and break 50k into 20k chips.
Everything below is better served by selling chem or med-supplies.

A rather new addition is a producable tank (M1A1) once you've build the armory. That badboy brings 1M profit every sold unit.

[Yataka Shimaoka]

Ooooooh! Me likey  that!

[Martin]

Tanks can pull their own weight in combat,

Four gals bring more firepower than single tank and can spread out as needed. I would only consider tanks if I lucked into the tech early so could send them out against weak dudes who have no way of penetrating one.

[SomeGuy]

I like to always have a tank at any battle, they're good at absorbing bullets and being distractions since they instantly get repaired at the end of the mission (like stepping out of the ship on the first turn). But really depends on the mission, facing off against Mercs with gauss weapons usually make Swiss cheese of the tank but depends on the type of the tank. But they're cheap enough to mass produce.

Though, I have had some times when the tank came in handy, like shot down a heavy freighter and brought in the flak cannon tank, sure it couldn't take out the other 4 or so tanks effectively but it completely destroyed the upper hallway which is always filled with enemies. Or cross map howtizer tank shots to save gals from other tanks.

[Ethereal_Medic]

Best strat against mercs is to not go into a firefight at all.
Just nuke every square of the battlefield.

Tanks become rather obsolete once you've the armor to just field very beefy gals and the best medical tools and cake.
In terms of bio-suits and bio-suits mk2 tanks trade thier role completely for more hands with indirect fire support.

[KiriKaneko]

So am I ok to shoot down Megapol? I'd like more points and infamy bonus since megapol doesnt give much money, but if shooting down and enslaving the wolfbros actually gives me points I'll keep doing it since they're easy and nice exp

I have a few more questions please

1) Just how long do I have before I lose the game? I know crackdown missions start to happen even when you are deliberately avoiding aggro, when do they start? How long before sway government starts the countdown to doom?

It's a shame that losing governments or getting negative scores still causes a hard-fail state and that crackdowns can occur independent of my activity, it would be nice if I could support myself on piracy and illegal manufacturing and play smart to avoid the heat, rather than having a "governments all hate you now so game over" moment after a few years or if I'm keeping too much of a low profile. Still I'd like to know how much time I've got, I don't want to rush the game too much and would like to skip missions that are easy since I'm producing enough x-grog to cover my expenses now, but I don't want to skip a lot of missions and then lose the game while I'm building the conqueror because the governments pull funding and then the text box of doom informs me that my bases have been erased and I have to start all over again and grind through more missions next time. I could get my medical supply industry, training base and research base going faster if I keep doing these 100-200K missions but I'd really rather skip them for the high value ones like the passenger ferries and churches, and the high infamy/point bonus missions like scientific experiments, lok-nar and ratmen which I can usually speed through with shotguns, grenade launchers and mortar shelling (the latter is highly amusing, the map ends up resembling This War of Mine although it's a waste of resources)

2) I'm thinking of preparing for some underwater and zero G missions. There might be more tech there and I can get more points and a faster rise in monthly income plus the infamy bonuses. What transport ship and equipment are very good for those missions? I still don't have a full training base, only 2 dojos in my main base so my troops aren't exactly expendable yet, I will need a large income and a dedicated training base before I can have such a large number of troops and fast replacement rate that I can send them in wearing bikinis and wielding harpoon guns, so I'd like something that will improve their survivability, let me kill the enemies effectively and relatively safely, and perhaps take the odd captive. I was thinking of trying to get a transport craft that can carry a lot of personnel and then using some kind of vehicles as my primary units since although they are expensive they don't require long training times and don't drive up the wages of my hands. Is there some kind of submarine or spaceship unit I should get for this, or are underwater and zero G missions quite easy?

3) Do I have to unlock all of the Prize research? Mutant Alliance favors was gated behind mutant martial arts which isn't intuitive, and since I already had dojos I would've never touched that until after I had all my manufacturing bases ready and ran out of things to research unless I had noticed mutant alliance favors in the tech tree and asked how to unlock it. Is there any other key tech that's really hard to find unless someone points you towards it? I really wouldn't mind if it took me years of playing to find it, but since the campaign is on a time limit, if I miss out on crucial tech til a few years in when the governments start to leave me and my campaign is about to be ended then I'll lose all of my progress and have to start all over again (this is why I hate the time limit, I would love to figure all this stuff out by myself without asking, it would've been exciting to find all the tech gated behind mutant alliance favors without expecting it, but I cant just jump into underwater and zero G missions and lose lots of people or research things randomly because it could set me back and sink my entire campaign when the time limit catches me)

[KiriKaneko]

Actually I have an idea. Does anyone know if it's possible to edit the files to completely remove sway local government and random crackdowns, and make it so that low level missions are available throughout the entire game? That way there would be no time limit and I can just sit back, enjoy the experience, jump into unknown missions and get totally massacred and not be anxious that it could sink my entire 200+ hour campaign

[Ethereal_Medic]

1.) You lose the game once 8 (or more) 'countries' stop paying you. You lose once all your bases are gone or you fail to succeed in the final marathon mission to take cydonia.
Honorable mention that you'll lose the game with two months in a row with huge negative credits or bad performance.
2.) Underwater mssions can be quite dangerous against sharkmen and deep ones. The first been fast enough to ambush you and chomp your squad while deep ones can use projectile weaponry to play around close range. For Zero-G missions the smaller ones can be done with just recscue-pods but the bigger maps with more enemies should be dealt with using either superhero-armor or basic space-suits to use items rather than just the close range flamethrower and a medkit.

Shooting down enemy crafts (once you dominate every single ship encounter with firepower) net enough score points to skip every mission in the late game.
3.) You can check the research tree-viewer for further informations to proceed the campaign. It's activated by using the third mouse button (mouse-wheel) and pressed onto a research topic while looking into the research labority. Progression in research is bound to the research buildings and the topics. "Back to School" "School Graduation" and "Higher Studies".

There is no timelimit for the ultimate doom to come. The game will become harder for sure but it's not comparable to the remakes of 2012+ where the aliens keep getting more and more health and fielding larger pods barely managable by the 8man squadsize.

[Mechanique]

1) Just how long do I have before I lose the game? I know crackdown missions start to happen even when you are deliberately avoiding aggro, when do they start? How long before sway government starts the countdown to doom?

It's a shame that losing governments or getting negative scores still causes a hard-fail state and that crackdowns can occur independent of my activity, it would be nice if I could support myself on piracy and illegal manufacturing and play smart to avoid the heat, rather than having a "governments all hate you now so game over" moment after a few years or if I'm keeping too much of a low profile. Still I'd like to know how much time I've got, I don't want to rush the game too much and would like to skip missions that are easy since I'm producing enough x-grog to cover my expenses now, but I don't want to skip a lot of missions and then lose the game while I'm building the conqueror because the governments pull funding and then the text box of doom informs me that my bases have been erased and I have to start all over again and grind through more missions next time. I could get my medical supply industry, training base and research base going faster if I keep doing these 100-200K missions but I'd really rather skip them for the high value ones like the passenger ferries and churches, and the high infamy/point bonus missions like scientific experiments, lok-nar and ratmen which I can usually speed through with shotguns, grenade launchers and mortar shelling (the latter is highly amusing, the map ends up resembling This War of Mine although it's a waste of resources)

Sway government missions are stopped by *family ties* tech, relatively early one. After that as long as you have positive scores every month, you will continue to get increased funding. So you have as much time as you want, late game you can avoid ground missions altogether by shooting down large vessels into the ocean, and just do the ones you want. Even mid-game you can skip like half of missions as long as you do few high-score ones. I find that around 3k points per month worth of missions is enough to cover any random excavations or -500 points heavy freights, as long as you don't need to rely on infamy bonus for income. My first run took around 4 years to complete, you don't have to rush things.

2) I'm thinking of preparing for some underwater and zero G missions. There might be more tech there and I can get more points and a faster rise in monthly income plus the infamy bonuses. What transport ship and equipment are very good for those missions? I still don't have a full training base, only 2 dojos in my main base so my troops aren't exactly expendable yet, I will need a large income and a dedicated training base before I can have such a large number of troops and fast replacement rate that I can send them in wearing bikinis and wielding harpoon guns, so I'd like something that will improve their survivability, let me kill the enemies effectively and relatively safely, and perhaps take the odd captive. I was thinking of trying to get a transport craft that can carry a lot of personnel and then using some kind of vehicles as my primary units since although they are expensive they don't require long training times and don't drive up the wages of my hands. Is there some kind of submarine or spaceship unit I should get for this, or are underwater and zero G missions quite easy?

Jellyfish for underwater missions, if you didn't fuck up with your codex choice - it's free gun is really good on open maps and works underwater. The crew limit is not much of a limit too, those missions are always trivial and can be done by like 2-3 high-accuracy gals. And don't go with bikinis, reaseach chiller (which is inconsistently named as exploration outfit) instead to not be limited by time and avoid expending TUs on oxygen tanks. 0-G just require a lot of firepower, and can be accessed early by your menace - again if you did not fuck up with codex choice-  or pachyderm, accessible from Authorized Dealers that is gated behind Zaxx's favors. Bring rockets for easy win, don't get hit if you are doing it in pods.

3) Do I have to unlock all of the Prize research? Mutant Alliance favors was gated behind mutant martial arts which isn't intuitive, and since I already had dojos I would've never touched that until after I had all my manufacturing bases ready and ran out of things to research unless I had noticed mutant alliance favors in the tech tree and asked how to unlock it. Is there any other key tech that's really hard to find unless someone points you towards it? I really wouldn't mind if it took me years of playing to find it, but since the campaign is on a time limit, if I miss out on crucial tech til a few years in when the governments start to leave me and my campaign is about to be ended then I'll lose all of my progress and have to start all over again (this is why I hate the time limit, I would love to figure all this stuff out by myself without asking, it would've been exciting to find all the tech gated behind mutant alliance favors without expecting it, but I cant just jump into underwater and zero G missions and lose lots of people or research things randomly because it could set me back and sink my entire campaign when the time limit catches me)

Well, they are not crucial for ending the campaign. Favors prizes, while their pre-requisites are counter-intuintive, are pretty good to have. Dr.Wang's "armaments" that is gated behind those, Jack's I think, is especially good. As for key techs - there is at least dozen. While all key items can be found normally be doing various mission types, there is one important that is gated behind X storyline, so make sure to do that. Also, Russian Files tech from Cyberia mission, that can be accessed after guild rep interogation.