Newbe questions

[Shrugger]

Fire did the trick. Thanks gents!

[KZad Bhat]

Shock damage also works well. Cattle prods, stun batons, electric Lassos, and melee strikes with Origami Linux SMGs work very well at knocking them out, but they tend to get up after 2 or 3 rounds, no matter how many times they go down, so best to keep a gal standing over an unconscious Lobsterman while the rest sweep the map. Or of course knock them out and burn the spot they're on if you'd rather have them dead.

[Rince Wind]

Or leave smoke where they are.

[BBHood217]

Honestly, lobstermen aren't as terrifying here as they were in TFTD due to being way smaller in numbers and usually being completely unarmed despite still being able to use weapons so all they usually have for offense is their big meaty claws.

[KZad Bhat]

They may be fewer, and usually unarmed, but they are much better armored. Or perhaps more accurately it takes you much longer to get to weapons that easily punch through their armor. In TFTD, it didn't take long to get into gauss weapons, and those had decent penetrating power against them. It was harder to get up enough ammo to make sonic weapons really useful, but could still be done, and was highly effective. In XPiratez though, the most effective weapons are all area effect, risking hurting the mutants in the area, or your own gals. Or, they're melee, meaning you get right up on them. The forced change in tactics makes them more of a pain in the ass, at least until you can get good laser or plasma weapons. But depending on your own skill and knowledge of research chains, and RNG, that can easily take 3 game years before you have a real chance of getting into those. Especially for plasma!

[Shrugger]

I'm running out of gals and there just aren't a lot of rescue missions any more. So I'll need to hire some from the market.

Now, Warriors get better starting skills but have higher upkeep, and their skill caps are the same as for hands.
So, hiring Warriors is just a short-term boost as opposed to the more long-term economical Hands, who'll eventually reach the same skill levels?

Also, hideout defence. Is there some early warning system that I can make use of?
Ratmen and academics are easy enough to deal with, but I just got DOOM'd and barely made it; knowing in advance would've been grand.

And how do you transfer armed and armored quick reaction squads from one base to another? Ship the vehicle they're in? Or somehow move it across the geoscape?

Does attacking Megapol hurt your gov't standing?

[Dioxine]

In TFTD, it didn't take long to get into gauss weapons, and those had decent penetrating power against them.

Dude. Take your nostalgia glasses off. Trying to use Gauss against Lobstermen in TFTD was pretty much pointless (like using the Gauss line in general - the Gauss was there for you to waste your research effort).

[ivandogovich]

I'm running out of gals and there just aren't a lot of rescue missions any more. So I'll need to hire some from the market.

Now, Warriors get better starting skills but have higher upkeep, and their skill caps are the same as for hands.
So, hiring Warriors is just a short-term boost as opposed to the more long-term economical Hands, who'll eventually reach the same skill levels?

Also, hideout defence. Is there some early warning system that I can make use of?
Ratmen and academics are easy enough to deal with, but I just got DOOM'd and barely made it; knowing in advance would've been grand.

And how do you transfer armed and armored quick reaction squads from one base to another? Ship the vehicle they're in? Or somehow move it across the geoscape?

Does attacking Megapol hurt your gov't standing?

Yes, Warriors and later Veterans are just short term boosts.  Their end statcaps are the same as hands.  If you have some months to throw them in the Dojo or Spa, it may be cheaper to go with hands.

Early warning defenses:  Hyper Wave Decoders can tell you what missions UFOs are flying.  If it says Crackdown, they are looking for a base.  In this case the HWD is a good early warning system.  However, with the recent advent of Doom and Ninja raids, this has become less effective. As far as I understand it, these missions can go straight in on a pre-discovered base.  So if Rats had previously discovered your base but never attacked, you could get Doomed without ever knowing it.

Transferring QR teams to bases:  First, it helps if every base has some rudimentary defenses, even if its dogs and peasants.  Later add Werewolves, Bloodhounds, Reapers and tanks as you have them.  These will basically be good scouts for your core defenders. 
Then getting Quick Reaction teams there: 
1. Load the team up, with armor and equipment (usually at your main assault base) into a fairly fast craft (Sorry Turtle). 
2. Launch the craft to a target waypoint in the direction of the target base.
3. Go back to the first base and "Ship" the craft to the target base.
4. Go back to Geoscape and click on the craft in flight and tell it to "Return to Base"... it will then go to the new base.
This does require a hangar in the target base.  Railpods could be an option, esp if all you want is to send a set of base defense equipment.  You can create a loadout of bombs, rockets, chem shotgun rounds, etc, and save it as a craft equipment template (I call it Base Defense Kit).   Then load your pod with that kit.  Do the transfer thing, rinse, repeat until all your bases are stocked as you want them.

Attacking Megapol doesn't hurt your gov standing as far as I understand it.  I think it actually helps you gain Infamy.

[AgentFransis]

You do get a warning for DOOM attacks with a hyperwave decoder but the attack is like a boarding torpedo - spawns close to your base moving really fast so you can't intercept it nor have time to ship in a squad. It can however be easily shot down by base defense so you can beeline to flak cannon research to set up some defense if you want. That said the DOOM dudes aren't really much harder than ratmen and you should at least have some decent guns from the DOOM raid you beat. They're all lightly armored and take well to a good shotgunning.

And yes, meagapol are just cops for hire. The govs don't care. They can be nice for training rookies when you have armor that can ignore their shitty guns and you can farm them for synthmuscle mesh and grav harnesses.

[Shrugger]

Turns out you can just ship a vehicle straight to a Hangar and the crew and gear will go along, no fiddling with the Geoscape required.

Does the HWD work globally or only for the base that does the spotting?

[doctor medic]

i would like to see which faction pogroms are the hardest for the early or mid game.

In the end game i suppose its obvious that mercs and star gods will be the hardest but until then i find in early game the rat pogroms very annoying,a ton of annoying ratmen mixed with blood hounds and some ghouls into the mix and around 2 armored cars.The issue isnt that its hard as in there is danger to losing a gal,at the worst scenario you might have most of your gals with some glancing shots and be thrown for less than 10 days in the med bay depending on the map and if a blood hound pops from the fog.

The real issue is that because there are so many enemies (40 in my case) that saving any mutants is out of the question at this point of the game and you are better off just trying not to die at this point,thankfully there are so many enemies that the score you get is enough to keep you from going under from all the mutants that died.

[Solarius Scorch]

Turns out you can just ship a vehicle straight to a Hangar and the crew and gear will go along, no fiddling with the Geoscape required.

Yes, but how long would it take?
Wasn't it about emergency situations?

[Shrugger]

Eh...probably takes longer. I only tested it after the invasion, when time was no longer an issue. My bad.

[Rince Wind]

You can get Merc Pogroms in the early game, so those are already the hardest.


HWD only works on the base it is on.

[ivandogovich]

Turns out you can just ship a vehicle straight to a Hangar and the crew and gear will go along, no fiddling with the Geoscape required.

Right, the Geoscape fiddling is only to get it there at the flight speed of the craft, rather than on standard shipping times.  This can be quite a bit faster, depending on the craft.