The Newbie Guide

[Ashghan]

I guess I should have pointed out that units have priority over terrain. In my defense I'll say it's pretty obvious. Stunned enemies are items on the floor, not units per se, so they count as floor for targeting purposes. Add to that the fact that walls are only only on top left and top right edges and you have a headache. Easier to remember: if you want to shoot a stunned enemy, do it in open terrain.

[Dakkdakk]

I'm likely misremembering, but I think I once played an openxcom mod in which you could press a key while clicking to fire to make the shot prioritize the terrain rather than units. Again, I might just be misremembering things.

[MemoryTAS]

C) Northern tip of india:  Main advantage here is it's 100% land and also mostly backed by the pacific ocean.

Actually if I do an Asia start (which I do 99% of the time) I prefer this position as it covers a lot of the typical ship landing areas. Of note is the top of Japan being a frequent landing:

[Rubber Cannonball]

Actually if I do an Asia start (which I do 99% of the time) I prefer this position as it covers a lot of the typical ship landing areas. Of note is the top of Japan being a frequent landing:

Do you put your second base in South America as it is antipodal to your starting base?

In my first game, I made the mistake of putting my first base at the North Pole which is my normal vanilla start, not knowing cold weather effects were a thing in X-Piratez.

[Greep]

Personally I tend to put my second base in nearish range of my first, just so there is some air overlap and easy to do landed smalls with a shadowbat from the main base.  Not quite radar adjacent, but like asia/north america.  Or asia/africa.

[MemoryTAS]

Do you put your second base in South America as it is antipodal to your starting base?

Yes I always put my second base in South America. From there I can reach the missions I couldn't easily reach from my first base without resorting to slower methods of transportation that often provide little cover. Admittedly I've never really tried the convoy.

[MemoryTAS]

I also think you should have explained how some enemies may generate negative score upon death and initial capture. Any enemies from the Mutant Alliance, the Govt, or civilians will give you negative score initially. Additionally some enemies from some other factions, notably hoes, altar boys and shrine maidens will also give you negative score. Normally a kill is one number, a dead body being looted is another, and capture is double the kill point value. However when you research any live enemy in the game, that enemy's score value upon being captured is set to I think 10. So it becomes ideal to capture and study the enemies that give negative score as soon as you can so you avoid losing score to them. Additionally you can theoretically put off researching enemies that give you higher scores in order to get double the points from capturing them instead of the set 10 but you'll often end up needing to research them sooner than later due to research trees they might unlock and you can't rob them without researching them.

There isn't exactly a good way to know which enemies give which score values without knowing the sprites but it's something you should definitely keep an eye on.

[Greep]

Yeah I've gone with a research-when-convenient regarding civilians/etc.  Will add some final notes on that.  Also regarding score, seems like in K2 doing too well can severely punish you with some rubberbanding.  Got -2500 and -1000 infamy events randomly in the same month because of doing too well the previous month since I wanted to do mass interrogaqtions for shadowmasters which sent it through the roof.

[MemoryTAS]

Yeah I've gone with a research-when-convenient regarding civilians/etc.  Will add some final notes on that.  Also regarding score, seems like in K2 doing too well can severely punish you with some rubberbanding.  Got -2500 and -1000 infamy events randomly in the same month because of doing too well the previous month since I wanted to do mass interrogaqtions for shadowmasters which sent it through the roof.

You can also get -100 etc randomly from doing "poorly" so I don't know if the "rubberbanding" is worth avoiding. You can also get some cool events from doing well.

I prefer dedicating at least one group of brainers to interrogations and civilians are always the first to be interrogated. You get substantially more score from temple missions for example by capturing researched civilians.

[Rubber Cannonball]

I also think you should have explained how some enemies may generate negative score upon death and initial capture. Any enemies from the Mutant Alliance, the Govt, or civilians will give you negative score initially. Additionally some enemies from some other factions, notably hoes, altar boys and shrine maidens will also give you negative score. Normally a kill is one number, a dead body being looted is another, and capture is double the kill point value. However when you research any live enemy in the game, that enemy's score value upon being captured is set to I think 10. So it becomes ideal to capture and study the enemies that give negative score as soon as you can so you avoid losing score to them. Additionally you can theoretically put off researching enemies that give you higher scores in order to get double the points from capturing them instead of the set 10 but you'll often end up needing to research them sooner than later due to research trees they might unlock and you can't rob them without researching them.

There isn't exactly a good way to know which enemies give which score values without knowing the sprites but it's something you should definitely keep an eye on.

I once racked up -2600 points on a successful eurosyndicate mission against the mutant alliance by going capture heavy on unresearched mutant alliance units.  I would have been much better off point wise with capturing just 1 of each unresearched unit type and killing the rest.

Also if one really needs the points and assuming there are plenty of available things to research, killing, without vaporizing the corpse, generally will score more than double the 10 points each for capturing already researched units.  Obviously, they can't be the negative scoring factions or units mentioned by MemoryTAS above.

[Pallington]

wait I started a game on lowest difficulty bcuz I'm a scrub noob, I've gottn to march, should I start a new save to get the full content???

[vadracas]

Things might be slightly thrown off, but when updating check the upgrading saves thread in this subforum, and for this particular update, especially in the early game, you're fine.

[Jimboman]

When building my bases I put my first one in Siciliy or Sardinia as it covers most of Europe and the Med.  Once I get interceptors I use the main base for research and as the main base for my Menace-class ship.  I then put a fighter/radar base in the Balearics to cover the main base.  I put my other bases (fighter, production, large prison etc) in as equidistant areas around the globe as possible, with each base having one or two fighters as well as addons for the large prison etc (one base for each).  The large prison base also serves as the casino once I get the research and resources for that (robbing prisoners is a great source of blue chips).  The factory base doesn't have radar, but does have defences and only one hangar for producing ships which leaves room for additional storage modules.

[Rince Wind]

Storage isn't the problem on a proper factory base, you can always just send more slaves or workers. The limiting factor are the barracks for the runts.

[Solarius Scorch]

wait I started a game on lowest difficulty bcuz I'm a scrub noob, I've gottn to march, should I start a new save to get the full content???

You can just open your save in an editor and change

difficulty: 0

to

dificulty: 1