Codex Popularity Poll

[Greep]

Most people only dislike red because of the lack of decent early game transport.  Freighters/Landed smalls are pretty hard without a shadowbat/worm/turtle. 

I guess I'm biased to early game codexes since there's a lot of good stuff mid-game that isn't linked to codexes, like blitz armor.

The scarab is pretty good for early game shootdowns of the weenies since the armor seriously cuts down on damage: 

25mm cannon will take down necroplanes/wasps, 50mm/30mm or charger laser (green codex) will take down megapol.  Not exactly gamechanging, but it's decent money.  A snake would have to use missiles and at that point it's not really worth shooting them down in the first place.

[username]

Most people only dislike red because of the lack of decent early game transport.  Freighters/Landed smalls are pretty hard without a shadowbat/worm/turtle.

Yeah, I could see "lack of early game transport" as a thing with red: There isn't really a transport that hauls more guys than your Airbus in there. On the other hand, I was already used to the 6-man team, so expanding beyond that didn't feel pressing, especially after Metallo.

I guess I'm biased to early game codexes since there's a lot of good stuff mid-game that isn't linked to codexes, like blitz armor.

I am not convinced Blitz armor isn't endgame. I still use Blitz armor clear into the endgame, because the next competing option is -25 TU. That's an extra 6+ tiles of ground you're not covering, which can be the make or break difference between introducing your opponent to the sharp blade of your axe and being unable to advance at all because you can't make it to the next cover. Blitz pretty much sits for me at the ideal balance between protection and speed. I'd like Swiftsuit even more if the inventory wasn't too restricted to carry a useful loadout, and Gold shield wasn't a worthless pile of junk not worth the cost of construction.

Blitz even has blue shield. The best kind of shield, as it is STRONK vs. both Piercing and Concussion, the most common and the most deadly damage types respectively. It only fails to provide protection vs. Daze, Bio, and Chem, but Daze isn't lethal anyway, Bio is uncommon, and Chem is both fairly weak (most Chem attacks have low magnitude), and highly telegraphed (Chem-spamming enemies are usually identifiable from the Strategic layer before you enter battle).

The scarab is pretty good for early game shootdowns of the weenies since the armor seriously cuts down on damage

Snake isn't too shabby at shootdowns, either: It's down one heavy slot, but it's got a shield, so you're often able to bring down enemies with no damage at all. Its only downside is its absolutely terrible internal layout, that apparently is full of unidentifiable holes enemies can shoot you through, and an unhealthy number of lights.

25mm cannon will take down necroplanes/wasps, 50mm/30mm or charger laser (green codex) will take down megapol.

I looked at Green codex and ultimately found it rather lacking.

Having Turtle AND Worm seems redundant, as Turtle covers all of your transport bases, leaving no real niche for Worm, since your shooting-stuff-down angle is covered entirely by Scarab already. Pestulator is just a double-down on what Biosuit already offers, and shares all of its flaws. Bonaventura seems largely inferior to Metallo, having weaker weapons, worse hull protection, and only +2 Dudespace. Saviour is similarly meh: The medkit is nice, but YOU are the one who is going to need it, and it cannot be used on yourself, since you've got no armor and a crappy gold shield, the worst kind of shield in the game, as its threat protection profile is good vs...well, absolutely nothing. It fails utterly vs. both Piercing and Concussion, which are, respectively, the most common, and the most dangerous. Every enemy faction fields at least one of damage types, usually both, so Gold Shields are worthless against everyone!

The main problem with the Green Codex is that it contains too much redundancy. Redundant equipment, redundant ship hulls. This kind of redundancy might be helpful to the Total Newbie, but not to me.

[Greep]

Yeah there's pretty much no reason to pick green if you find any early craft weaponry, I can't think of much it does better than the other three.  It's got fairy but so does gold.   It's nice for the early civilian raiding if you don't get any cannons and you can disassemble it later for laser research if you need it for SAMs.  If you get it before april you can even shoot down the ambulances coming at you for a bunch of ship engines and stuff.

By midgame, I just meant you can get blitz earlyish.  Just one academy scientist kidnapping and you get that thing pretty much right after school graduation.  It's pretty useful anywhere you're allowed to bring it as you say

The worm is mainly used just so it's harder to miss landings on the other side of the globe early game, which is why I mainly use the turtle for underwater sites, mansions (if I'm feeling crazy enough to do them) or something exceptionally difficult.  The turtle also doesn't get a decent radar so it gets blown up by HKs early game. 

That said, the worm is such a troll ship if you've ever played with it, it'll definitely get a gal or two killed from accidentally gas triggers.  I'd definitely prefer a shadowbat, BUT it does get an aux slot, so you don't have to buy a pachyderm if you want to bring an armored car on a fast ship.

[username]

I'd definitely prefer a shadowbat, BUT it does get an aux slot, so you don't have to buy a pachyderm if you want to bring an armored car on a fast ship.

At a mere 1800 speed, I can only call it a "fast" ship by putting fast in sarcastic quotes. Speed on a transport isn't really the most critical thing, though. Majority of missions don't despawn if anything is heading towards it.

The turtle also doesn't get a decent radar so it gets blown up by HKs early game.

This trick may blow your mind: Fighter Escort. When you send an unarmed transport, also launch your interceptors and tell them to follow it. This is one of your rare opportunities to shoot down anything that isn't a civilian, since if they wanna come fight you, you will no longer need 5K+ speed just to catch them. This is pretty much the only use all those sub-5K fighters even have, since there's no way for them to catch anything. Slapping a few shadowshields on your Turtle, seeing as it has all those STC slots, will make it awfully tanky.

Otherwise, it doesn't matter if you have a decent radar or not: Everything is faster than you anyway, so a better radar just means you get more time to scream in panic before you die.

That said, the worm is such a troll ship if you've ever played with it, it'll definitely get a gal or two killed from accidentally gas triggers.

Well, if I'm running the Fast Action Response Team, my team is immune to gas anyway, since I'm constantly emitting it.

[Greep]

Well, fast transport is just about catching landed ufos.  At 1800 speed based in europe you can hit a landed ufo basically anywhere on the globe before it gets back up except maybe australia and lower south america, shadowbat is basically the same speed.  A turtle in europe OTOH can only hit europe, and some of asia and africa.

It is optional, but adds quite a lot of money:  selling the engine, slave AIs, and hellerium nets around 1 million for one mission and you can occasionally get half a dozen of these a month even as early as february.  When that doesn't sound like much money, the cutters are the only source of scanners before x-prison, which is hard as hell with all the melee/freshness changes.

Anyways we might be talking past each other, I usually rush shadowmasters super early via interrogating hoes/laborers/female laborers so I generally think of how useful they are very early on.

[username]

Well, fast transport is just about catching landed ufos.  At 1800 speed based in europe you can hit a landed ufo basically anywhere on the globe before it gets back up except maybe australia and lower south america, shadowbat is basically the same speed.  A turtle in europe OTOH can only hit europe, and some of asia and africa.

If you really want to chase landed UFOs, on the rare instances they actually do, instead of just overflying their alleged destination and not landing, you could just chase after them until they do, I suppose. I take more of a direct approach of things: If I can't MAKE a thing I want happen, then it's not happening, and if I can't stop a thing that I don't want from happening, then it will happen. Either you force the outcome or you deal with the results, because you're going to have to, either way, and at that point it is considered a solved problem and warrants no further attention.

It is optional, but adds quite a lot of money:  selling the engine, slave AIs, and hellerium nets around 1 million for one mission and you can occasionally get half a dozen of these a month even as early as february.  When that doesn't sound like much money, the cutters are the only source of scanners before x-prison, which is hard as hell with all the melee/freshness changes.

I didn't actually find the X-Prison that hard. If anything, it was about as, if not easier, than the typical mission, probably because I already melee everything anyway, so an environment in which enemies lack much in the way of ranged weaponry actually makes the process easier. Since this is already my style, it didn't represent any real change in how I operate.

[Greep]

Well, I'll just say you can reliably get those landings early game that you say pass over you, but it's an entirely different base design playstyle and leave it at that, getting a bit of a tangent here xD 

Edit: Oh neat, red now gets 8 aggressor instead of 4 chainmail.  That looks like a pretty sweet upgrade.

[username]

I was WONDERING what happened to the chainmail I was supposed to get, and where the Aggressors came from. They were handy for those missions where you're not allowed to wear the "obvious" armors, although I was usually flying Grav Harnesses at that point since I rushed to get those. And as those come with no armor and your team's armor is only as good as the worst armor on the attacking force, especially since any slower armor becomes totally irrelevant as those guys will never make it to the fight...the only real use of heavy armor is soaking reaction spam in the initial LZ, and for that, the armor must be HEAVY, so I usually use a car or tank.

[legionof1]

Balance happened. Mostly cause Chainmail got a shield version which pushed the armor to high for something the codex gives so early. So instead of 3 suite of of super armor(for the point you can unlock them) you get 8 weaker weaker outfits, but there still better then equivalent tech level.

[Greep]

Playing around in quickbattle, seems like red codex may actually be just straight up the best if you're going all the way to cydonia on davy jones or jack sparrow: you need 220/250 (davy/jack) vdef to stop mind control attacks and purgatoria is the only one that make it (vulnerable if morale drops but kinda hard with >100 bravery).   Sorceress/saint/annhiliator don't even come close with a maxed out gal, syns also don't quite make it.  If you reach panic immunity from bravery they just go straight for mind control.

Looks like 2x2 units are completely immune to psi, though, so the bonus vdef on xec*exorcist is a little redundant. 

[legionof1]

Even on max difficulty you don't need to no sell MC to win, just getting the odds low is sufficient so long as your ending your turn properly. Even stargods have to pay the costs in freshness and morale. So long as you don't suffer any critical losses in the hunt for the W and the brain the occasional success is irrelevant.

Having a few units in the group that are intentionally worse without being free hits leads to the foes just sinking TUs/morale/freshness to get nothing done.
 

[Greep]

Oh yeah, I just meant it's really nice.  Purgatoria doesn't get shoulder/leg slots, so it also can't stack 4 drug dispensors and ignore freshness like an annihilator can.

It seems like in piratez enemy psionics don't have full map vision, so it's harder to decoy them.  But it's hard to tell I didn't test that much.  It's confusing becuase it seems like sometimes they do and sometimes they don't, maybe it has to do with the spotter/sniper system.

Also, didn't realize that about enemies needing to use freshness for MC, that's pretty handy.

[username]

I'm finding that if you carry a shitty grenade, the AI can't seem to resist the urge to cheathax its way into using it (no free inventory slots make it otherwise impossible to actually move the grenade to your hand and not drop your weapon in the process), but because it's a really shit grenade, it'll just chew up his turn for no useful result. Every time I've had someone MC'ed, the AI wants to use that shitty grenade that I never removed from my loadout template since the beginning of the game. It doesn't really do anything but the AI uses it anyway, and this keeps it from moving very far or performing any effective action...not that my crew seems to actually carry weapons capable of effectively hurting each other: In order to harm a heavy target, I use a two-stage process, and when the AI only controls one person, it can't carry out that process, so it goes with "throw the shitty grenade", since its other option is "unload a laspistol into a red shield for no useful result", as the laspistol is meant to strip blue shields and Annihilators have red shields...

[Ragshak]

Maybe it is time to reset poll and give it another shot?

[Solarius Scorch]

Maybe it is time to reset poll and give it another shot?

Nah, I think that the balance hasn't changed enough to warrant this. I'd hate to lose all this data.