X-COM OpenXcom Thread

[Average Manatee]

Oh, 144 frontal armor? That explains everything
I wish there was some sort of indicator that deals you if you are dealing damage. It doesn't have to be like in the newer games (though I do like that way), but maybe some sort of particle effect, like blood splatter / a special hit spark instead of the usual blue circle on impact.

Get the MC reader, it should give you the alien's stats.

It's a great idea to always have one handy. Very useful to check if an alien has TUs left to reaction fire. I keep it on my sniper.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

You know, I don't think I found one yet. Then again, my playthrough is going pretty badly. Early lobsters are a bitch.

 

[Endemic]

You know, I don't think I found one yet. Then again, my playthrough is going pretty badly. Early lobsters are a bitch.

Stun bombs and tazers work well on them.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I know about tasers. Its getting close enough to use them without dying that's the problem

 

[Endemic]

I know about tasers. Its getting close enough to use them without dying that's the problem

If you have them, sonic pulsers aren't bad. Forget about using guns, Lobstermen's DR is very high even against Sonic weapons.

 

[Average Manatee]

Heavy Sonic works alright, 2-3 shots usually does it.

 

[Arrowgrab]

Is Skyranger a practical joke in Piratez? I have not bought it, but from what Pedia says it's some kind of noob trap. What is it using for fuel?

It's slow, fuel is free. Back when you started with a way better ship I liked to sell it and buy a Skyranger, investing the profits in liquor.

Actually, it has a jet engine that uses up chemicals in your base's storage the same way nuclear drives use up Hellerium. There's a small handful of chemical-engine aircraft in the game.

 

[Endemic]

Heavy Sonic works alright, 2-3 shots usually does it.

Sure, but it's still doing only 50% of the quoted damage.

 

[Average Manatee]

Heavy Sonic works alright, 2-3 shots usually does it.

Sure, but it's still doing only 50% of the quoted damage.

I'm taking that into account with the 2-3 shots statistic. 130 / 2 - 20 armor = 45 average damage for a creature with about 100ish HP. Bear in mind that explosives take a -70% penalty to their damage. Lobstermen can survive a blaster bomb 100% of the time I think, and sonic pulsars are a really poor idea. I'd deploy smoke, use motion detectors and go for a melee ambush rather then do grenades.

Is Skyranger a practical joke in Piratez? I have not bought it, but from what Pedia says it's some kind of noob trap. What is it using for fuel?

It's slow, fuel is free. Back when you started with a way better ship I liked to sell it and buy a Skyranger, investing the profits in liquor.

Actually, it has a jet engine that uses up chemicals in your base's storage the same way nuclear drives use up Hellerium. There's a small handful of chemical-engine aircraft in the game.

Right, forgot about that change. Still a useful tool, fuel is really expensive to be burning constantly in Piratez (vs. how much you can make selling it off) and if you have a streak of bad luck in mission selection you can run out. Chemicals are cheap and easy to get.

 

[Endemic]

Lobstermen can survive a blaster bomb 100% of the time I think.

True, although that's less of an issue if your DPL is safely on the other side of the map

 

[Average Manatee]

Spamming DPLs everywhere means no loot though, which is a bit of a bummer

 

[baturinsky]

Bows are so OP in Piratez. I only discovered this fact at ~8th month. They have damage that scales with skills, have fixed TU cost (meaning ~three aimed shots with Combat bow per turn), and does not need LOS. So, on an open enough map (i.e. most maps) you can just spot with parrot and shoot from anywhere a la World of Tanks artillery.

On the other hand, I could not find a use for blades. On one hand, they scale off different skills than blunt weapons, meaning they could be useful with Gals with respective skills. And they have fixed TU cost too. But, they don't give you live kill unlike blunt, so you are better off shooting at target from afar than charge, if you are not going to take it alive anyway.

 

[Average Manatee]

They are excellent, but

- Sucks indoors or with trees
- Not really enough range for open fields in daylight.
- Doesn't do great against armored enemies IIRC. Think most armored types might resist the damage type or something.
- If you have a gun and vision is blocked, you can prime a grenade and lob it. If you have a bow and trajectory is blocked, you're kind of screwed unless you want to draw a probably useless pistol.

 

[baturinsky]

Although, I have just found that ScrollLock makes night maps actually playable:

 

[Average Manatee]

Holy shit that is so helpful. Is it a new feature or just one of those things that you needed to read 100 pages of crap on the forums to find?

 

[baturinsky]

Holy shit that is so helpful. Is it a new feature or just one of those things that you needed to read 100 pages of crap on the forums to find?

It's mentioned on "hawtkeys" Bootypedia entry.

 

[baturinsky]

Any tip about what *stop targeting civilian traffic* "research" does? It seems to be some major choice, but I can't do it without knowing what it actually means.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

(I've lost count how many times I've said this.)

For those having trouble with Lobstermen in TFTD: They take double damage from melee weapons.

Rip and tear, men.

 

[Arrowgrab]

Any tip about what *stop targeting civilian traffic* "research" does? It seems to be some major choice, but I can't do it without knowing what it actually means.

Once it's researched, civilian traffic going on their daily business stops spawning. This is good because you won't waste fuel going after and ID-ing targets you don't want to actually attack, and because it gives you a one-time score boost IIRC. It's potentially mildly bad because you can no longer farm civilian ships, but those are pretty shitty, anyway. I also might or might not be a requirement for later important research topics, I'm not sure because I can't make heads or tails of the online tech tree browser, but I just asked a question about it here

 

[baturinsky]

Research tree in Piratez is too conneted. For example, I haven't researched Molotov unitl a year in, but it turns out that Workshop needs Molotov, and pretty much everything needs Worskshop :/

 

[thesheeep]

Probably more of an indirect thing in attempting to reverse-engineer Molotov cocktails for "healing".

 

[Jaedar]

Research tree in Piratez is too conneted. For example, I haven't researched Molotov unitl a year in, but it turns out that Workshop needs Molotov, and pretty much everything needs Worskshop :/

You're not wrong. I recommend using the external tech tree viewer (it's almost complicated enough that extracting the information you want from it is hard enough to not be cheating) http://techtreeviewer.byethost9.com/. However, one year in is really not a lot in xpiratez, at least not the current version.

 

[Average Manatee]

Best thing to do for Piratez is just clean up old techs once in a while.

Make sure to research all your techs in parallel with 1 brainer each, it's more efficient with Piratez's smaller numbers since X-Com doesn't do rollover.

 

[thesheeep]

I just can't get the nightlies to work on Linux. It's nonsensical folder structure isn't really helping here, I'm afraid.
It worked fine on Windows...

Get openxcom, make UFO folder inside of openxcom's folder, put folders from Steam's UFO in there. Easy enough.
But doing the same on Linux just doesn't work for me and I have no clue what is going wrong.
According to the wiki, there are a number of folders I can put the data files into. I put the UFO folder into in all of them. Still, nothing.
It continues to claim "No X-COM installations found...".

And don't point me to that video tutorial. Video tutorials are the poison of the Internet and dumbing people down since the beginning of YouTube. For 99% of things video tutorials exist for, a simple text with some screenshots would be 100 times more efficient and more clear.


Edit:
Nvm, the wiki is simply wrong, it seems.
/usr/share/openxcom does not work
/usr/share/games/openxcom is the right one.

Thankfully, the game has a log file that pointed me in the right direction.
Christmas holidays can come now.

 

[profreshinal]

Research tree in Piratez is too conneted. For example, I haven't researched Molotov unitl a year in, but it turns out that Workshop needs Molotov, and pretty much everything needs Worskshop :/

You're not wrong. I recommend using the external tech tree viewer (it's almost complicated enough that extracting the information you want from it is hard enough to not be cheating) http://techtreeviewer.byethost9.com/. However, one year in is really not a lot in xpiratez, at least not the current version.

There is an ingame techviewer. MMB when hovering over an item in the research or manufacturing screens. It will also tell you what percentage of research you have done, 10% done after the first 6 months or so in Piratez