Newbe questions

[Ridаn]

If you don't mind, can you or ohartenstein23 point me to where in the rule files it says that? The rule for the ninja seeker does not list it as a possible drop. Also I started a new game on 99J6b and the mission isn't listed in the possible missions in the save. Shouldn't it be there or will it only appear after two years?

I never looked at the rules or saves before but I'm in year 4 and been playing for a while after the upgrade and never seen a prismatic shield or ninja ship yet. Since it's blocking the forcefields research now I wanted to make sure it's not a bug. For now I took my save back to 99J4.

Had two Ninja Seekers spawns in J6, second one had Prismatic shield, and 1st was blown to pieces.
Also make sure you attack them with low damage rapid fire weapons, like looted Gauss.

[ohartenstein23]

It doesn't say it in the ruleset files, except that the Prismatic Shield item has a 'special type' definition, which means it's looted from an object in the map file, just like power sources.  You won't ever see the objects in the map either unless you start breaking down some walls in the ship.

[AgentFransis]

Oh, I see. Thanks for the reply.

[Zippicus]

I just lost my first campaign because I couldn't generate enough infamy.

Now, I never played any of the old X-Coms before, and I was also told to just relax and play the mod as it comes instead of trying to metagame it. So I did. I attacked landed craft and ran off when they proved to well-defended, tried to stop pogroms (usually failed) and sky ninja/ratmen raids (usually succeeded with no survivors), did as many missions as my permanently wounded gals could handle, boosted my economy by making space and hiring runts and going big on selling Grog. I felt things were going well, given that I regularly defended the Gobbos, took down towers, raided landed ships, did some bounty hunting, made good money, was steadily expanding my bases and crawling through the tech tree.

When, about two years in, the air was red with shipping and I had no armed craft to take down any of them, and my infamy was getting into the negative thousands, it all ended up being over very quickly.

So, I guess attacking shipping is not optional?
And what other ways of earning infamy are there (something something interrogations? Which are interrogations, exactly?)?
Give me all the ways of earning infamy, please!

Also, what is pimpcraft good for?

And is there some guideline as to what to do with prisoners - whom to research, enslave, rob, ransom etc.?

It's like the jump program in the matrix, everyone falls the first time.  There really is a lot going on in the game and it will take a few games to get the hang of everything.  Like has been said, research is probably the biggest thing for infamy, especially when  you research captured enemies.  Just don't overdo it with the brainers, they will bleed you dry if you hire more than you can afford.  Generally speaking you should be able to keep your infamy stable early on just by doing the ground missions that pop up.  Pogroms are a bit of a special case, you can safely ignore those until your research advances to the point where you're expected to help defend against them.  While some are doable right out of the gate, some will be suicide missions with virtually unkillable enemies.  As far as shippings go, all you can do in the early game is follow UFO's around and hope they land, if you intercept them with your airbus you can minimize the interception window and your airbus will follow them around till they land or fly out of range.

It's hard to say for sure what went wrong with your game, it sounds like you were on the right track with what you were doing.  Generally speaking though, if you're getting -1k+ score it's most likely one or more secret enemy bases generating a ton of negative score.

[wolfreal]

And graph inside the game can tell you a lot of thing. It is good to check then at least every 10 days (After the first year ends). Like that, you can see where things are happening. If you see a zone with a peak in activity, you should take a peek.

[Shrugger]

Thanks for all the advice.

So for my next campaign I will try to make a beeline for air interception technology, either by manufacture or by market access, while investing as much money as possible into brainers.

Any guidelines on how many bases to maintain, where to place them, when to build a new one?

[Rince Wind]

I start building new bases when I have access to proper radar. As overcharged isn't far from hi-res you can just go with the former.
Europe is a pretty good starting location, you only miss out on mission in New Zealand, eastern Australia and the tip of South America.

Then try to go for global coverage. North America and Asia still have mostly temperate terrain, which is easier, so those are my next two picks. Then it doesn't really matter for me (but I am not the most experienced player), South America, Oceania, Africa and the poles. Plantations can help financing the new bases.

I like to have a large prison on my 2nd base and make the 3rd a manufactoring one.

[Zippicus]

Things have kind of changed up with the last couple of versions so I'm still trying to figure out how I want to do things.  I usually put my primary base in either North America or Europe.  I've been experimenting with expanding early with a plantation base, usually south of my starting base i.e. South America or Africa with pretty decent results.  I don't start expanding in earnest until I can build stills and workshops to offset the expansion costs by producing alcohol.  I build all the bases available for mostly full radar coverage, there's not enough to cover everything so I usually ignore the pacific region since it's 99% water(a blimp or expedition on Hawaii isn't a terrible idea, but they'll mostly be sitting there doing nothing all game).  My base setup is pretty standard, I use my 1st base as the research base, a plantation base, a prison base, 2 interception bases, 2 factory bases, and 1 training base.  I used to go with 3 factory bases but with the changes to pimpcraft I put all my courtesans and prisoner overflow into a dedicated prison.

[ivandogovich]

Expansion is much simpler now.  As soon as you can afford them, you can start plopping down plantation bases, no need to wait for  Stills.  Stills can always be built back in later as you remove plantations.  Yes, its good to have some type of radars in them, and Overcharged is best, but I've even gotten use out of the Outpost radars too.

Frankly, about brainers:  If you can afford them, you should hire them.  They pay alot with the infamy bonus they generate from interrogations.  Ideally, I like to have 15 brainers in May or Jun, with a second base getting ready to go up after that.  My second base is often over flow prisons ( I have 4 prisons in it right now, 2 yrs into the campaign) for mooks that I still need to talk to.  It also gets some plantations then more manufacturing infrastructure with Extractors, Stills, Workshops, Barracks.

[Marza]

Any guidelines on how many bases to maintain, where to place them, when to build a new one?

I'm quite interested to hear everyone's approach to this, since I reckon we're sure to get a list of different answers.

Personally I place the starting base in Europe/North Africa (North coast of Libya specifically) for the reasons Rince has explained. I invest everything in the starting base until it's decked out with 16 brainers, another extractor, another prison, mess hall, sickbay and extra barracks/vault space. It's usually April once this is done but ymmv. On average I capture half of all the enemies I encounter to fuel science and for ransom money and beeline into the airgame to shoot civilian shipping as the opening strategy.

Gradually expand overcharged radar coverage and spam plantations, you can probably get all eight bases down by December first year. I garrison these bases with peasants at first to really keep wage costs down. A serious crackdown will still take the base out, but hopefully the plantation spam will have more than paid for itself and you're only losing peasants.

Pick a second base to transition into a manufacturing base at your leisure; tear down plantations for barracks, extractors, a workshop and an actual garrison worth a damn.

[Shrugger]

Thanks again for the tips.

So I see you're all building specialized bases. Guess I was on the wrong track in trying to make redundant general purpose ones...in retrospect, it really did me no good.

So, rate the following idea:

Homebase gets the best Gals and gear, to defend the lab and brainers. It'll receive mostly barracks, vaults and hangars to support those top-tier fighters. It'll also work as a manufacturing place until I can build stills and workshops.
All other bases start out as barely-guarded plantations just to make money. Later on they transition into moderately-guarded bases, either manufacturing to make money and gear in, or prisons that contain overflow until the brainers at the home base can interrogate them.

Where do I put how many hangars? Homebase is an obvious choice, as far as I can tell, but what about the others? One per base, to send fast reinforcements to? Or do I make a dedicated deployment base with lots of hangars?

Also, it all sounds to me like I should really NOT take my time and try to grow as aggressively as possible. That kinds ruins the idea of the relaxed game I was promised, but I guess the mod is good enough to stand on other merits. How does enemy activity and difficulty scale over time? Is it like the modern XCOMs, in that after some time there'll only be large groups of very tough enemies, and increasingly harsh punishments for not winning in time?

[Rince Wind]

You don't have to expand aggressivly.

You also won't have that much space on your main base for vaults and hangars and so on, because you'll want the buildings needed for some research, starting with the mess hall and including stuff like the library, surgery room, computer core. I have a large vault there plus the starting armored one. More armored ones replace the large one later. If you need more space slaves and workers are enough. I like to have half decent manufactoring on the main base, so a lot of stuff is produced where it is needed.
I keep 2 hangars at the main base, one interceptor and one troop carrier. I delegate special missions like underwater ones to secondary bases to reduce the micromanagement. It also helps train the gals and others so they are not complet noobs when the crackdowns come knocking.
I let them do some of the civilian missions as well.

One or two interceptor bases are useful, imo, plus a hangar at each base for reinforcements and another one for the special mission craft on one or two more bases. You should be able to get 4 interceptors or three interceptors and a tank to any point on the globe in reasonable time. But that is not something you need to worry about early.

[Marza]

Aye, if your airforce is rocking four dedicated interceptors, you're probably set to take on most things. That's something to aim for by year 1 month 6. Adjust the size and mix of your airforce to suit your taste and priorities.

Aggressive expansion is purely optional, myself and others like it however as it does return the most dividends, which results with more assets to play with. The composition of enemy missions will change and slowly ramp up over time. A few of the easiest missions will be removed from rotation entirely, others will be simply occur less often. You'll still be able to storm ratmen villages with your old faithful muskets, ten game years (and beyond) in the future if you so wish. You'll just have to tangle with the odd mercenary armed with gauss weapons now and then.

[KZad Bhat]

On the previous game I had going I had my first base down to just one hangar eventually, to accommodate all the research buildings as well as enough storage for all the stuff I was getting on missions. Second base I'd set up to get ready for a factory . . . I'm not doing that again, because I was still nowhere near getting the factory ready to build, but that will come at a later point eventually. My third, which this time around will be my second, I set up with a Large Prison and a Luxury Spa, not only to be a repository for my Courtesans, but also to be a training ground for new recruits, so they wouldn't end up going into battle too weak to handle at the things my main gals could do with ease.

The plan was, and still is, to end up having 2 or 3 bases that are dedicated to housing M-Wing interceptors, so I can at mid- and late-game easily shoot down any enemy vessel in the air, to stop the Guild, Academy, Church, Mercenaries, and such from becoming too much of a pain. In all of them I will have at least one prison, and at least 10 gals, eventually more I'm sure, to provide base defense if nothing else. Anything that can will have gals going out, but I don't know if my M-Wing bases will really be able to do that effectively. We'll see.

All of this I expect to take 3 game years or more to get to the point of having the prison, dedicated manufacturing, and at least a couple interceptor bases on top of my starting base. I probably won't even have a second base started in the first year. I've had a few times I got to it as soon as I could 'afford' it and then it only takes a couple months to find out . . . no I can't.

[Rince Wind]

Plantations really help being able to afford new bases.