In Progress X-Piratez! Ironman! No spoilers! Oldschool X-COM Total Conversion with mutant amazon pirates. Death to the star gods!

[lightbane]

You need more hangars, not just because of the ships but also to have more spawn spaces during base defense missions.

 

[Jaedar]

Yeah, this is the plan in the long term. Which hopefully won't be that long. If I can pull in 10-20 million in a month (without doing a fucking church base assault where I lose half a dozen people) I can throw up a dropship focused base really quick. Agree on the 3 hangars. I hate having a mission pop up and think 'Fuck, the ship I want for that is somewhere else.' Defending the lab will actually be easier without all that space dedicated to hangars. I can just drop more turrets in there.

I think one hangar per base is mandatory, or the spawn location gremlin will eat you.
One hangar surrounded by 3 turrets should be able to hold off most small attacks though.

 

[Average Manatee]

re: base configurations, I think you're safe to move all prisons/prisoners to a secondary base for interrogation/slaving since I don't think you need the old lab for interrogations. If you have no space at your current base when you capture slaves in a mission you have the option to immediately send them elsewhere. This is also a good way to split up research duties to another base so they don't overlap. Stack some more slaves in there and you can eventually get rid of the general stores too.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Choices and Consequences

I think one hangar per base is mandatory, or the spawn location gremlin will eat you.

Right... fuck. I should make some backup saves in case that or something similar crops up.

I think you're safe to move all prisons/prisoners to a secondary base for interrogation/slaving since I don't think you need the old lab for interrogations.

Yeah, the problem is more that I suspect other facilities might be needed, like surgery for torturing them or whatever. I'm too paranoid to not keep at least a small prison around. I really need a larger one though, prisoners seem to arrive for me in waves, so it's a pain not having high capacity so I can exploit them over a long period of time. I don't want to drop all my other projects to research prisoners, but I also can't affod to stash them all until the tree gets boring. Whatever, a problem money can solve, and money we shall have!



Update time! Merry Xmas to everyone if I don't post tomorrow. I got time off coming up after Xmas though, planning to play this a ton.

Much as I'd like to kick the crap out of more ninjas, we're kinda exhausted right now. Maybe next time?

Damn, those chaos disciples have all the cool techs. I gotta catch more of these guys.

This seems incredibly good- Someone with voodoo master of 3000 or so is not out of the question by any means, and that'd translate to 120 burn damage with 240 stun on top. Insanity.

I landed our fighter in the expanse to see if an enemy base had set up there, because AFAIK that's the only reason it could have flipped so quickly. Sure enough... That's a lot of fucking enemy hideouts.

It's not technically within the borders of the expanse, but I already knew the borders shown on the map aren't the real ones.

Fuck, 2000 infamy hit. My might not be recovered but I should probably at least take a look. Eridians are bastards but if we could at least kill something and stieal tech maybe?

Oh. It's in Godslayer's Hand you say? Let me check my notes...

Says here you're behind on your protection funds. Guess my hands are tied. Better luck next time!

Nearly lost another avenger armour on a fucking ratman cache mission. Asshole was camping the top of these stairs and took out the entire shield with a shotgun blast.

ANOTHER fucking Pogrom? Give it a fucking rest already, it's been like 4 of these in 2 days if you count the goblins too.

We really are in no position to be doing this shit.

Whatever. I really want that fucking rank up.

Turned out it was a bunch of raider thugs. I couldn't safely save the civvies, but we at least got revenge so we avoided losing 1000 infamy by ignoring it. Picked up some uber slaves.

Yeah, this is about what I expected. Better melee evasion than I thought though. The real benefits are the bonus stats- like +20 brave, reactions, +10 firing... good stuff! Also, this gives a major bonus to voodoo defense. I'll have to remember it i I need to bring someone like Strange Fellow on a mission vs espers.

Documents from that church ship we took. God damn this thing would have kicked out asses in the air.

Got a zombie mission, but just a normal one, rather than the bait kind.

Took the chance for some massive training. Catgirls and luka all got 6 hits in throwing and melee, lightbane got 6 hits with every weapon category.

Luka also got almost all the kills, mostly with a forceblade. I wanted to use the pipe at first, but it turns out it's hard to actually kill a zombie while dealing +125% stun damage. Sadly, zombies don't count as 'monsters' so we can't get that title for all these melee kills. Still need to hold out for a monster hunt.

So then, what does this actually get me....

Not what I expected at all. Maybe I never did get this in a previous game. Those both sound generic and interesting.

Shot down another academy hopper. hese engineers sure have shitty combat stats considering their fancy armour and weaponry.

This one is the real prize though. We caught her alive this time!

BUT AT WHAT COST?

This fucker popped out from behind a tree like 4 tiles away, somehow never got spotted despite a lot of scouting before moving Luka out to secure the prisoner.

Jesus, these guys don't even habe decent stats.

He even managed to land a point blank gut shot with that lasgun on the soldier we sent to save Luka.

Survived by the skin of her teeth. It was partly my fault; we took a hit on the shields earlier, but I was so sure this chunk of the map was empty that there was no way we'd find an enemy that could hit us with like 5 laser blasts like that guy did. I entertained the idea of sticking around to regenerate the health, but I didn't want to risk leaving a guy with a lasgun running around.

What. The. Fuck. Are Syns immune to wounds and recover health instantly after missions? That's insane! No wonder she has such shit base hp max. Now I want to train her even more! Also, it now occus to me that it'd be a good idea to actually smoke at the start of every mission- if the stun is built up, the first chunk of damage will knock us out, instead of potentially letting us take a bunch of low stun attacks and die.

I think we've seen the dossiers for all these guys alreadu. Seems like our religious tech is getting along nicely.

An armored ambulance provides some easy training for Luka. Pretty much nothing here can even hurt us, aside from perhaps the academy drones or a cattle prod knocking us out.

I use the chance to employ some police brutality. I want the title gained by killing people with daze melee weapons. tt's actually kinda hard to get; the highest damage to stun ratio on a weapon we have is the baseball bat with 1:2 ratio. This baton is 40% instead, but the actual damage total is much higher, allowing for some kils here and there. Would be a lot easier if I had something like the plate armor shield; those things kill people by accident all the time.

Armored suits and cybernetics? Exactly what I wanted. Get me those red shields ASAP!

Damn, that's a lot of good shit. Why the fuck are exosuits behind this and not just spacesuits or capturing astronauts? The tech tree in this game really is insanely random. It's a good thing we got that red shield tech and the industrial printer or I'd have probably left this shit one the shelf for another month or two.

Took out a patrol car and managed to snag a manhack without breaking it! Could be pretty cool...

Also ran a barn burning mission. Seems like a great way to farm gal of steel for Luka. Most other areas with enemies using shotguns have the occasional armour piercing theat too, but not these farmers.

Not what I expected or wanted from the church reverand. Still, maybe this leads towards a contact or something.

Batteries being locked behind power armour is such horseshit.

Got damn I want all of those. Focusing on armour though... I'll grab the spear at least. Spears are amazing already, a vibro spear would be too good to pass up. Might get the sword too; I know that's powerful from previous experience. Electrified weapons seems best of all, but it's apparently a difficult tech, way at the bottom of the cost sorted list.

 

[Jaedar]

. Sadly, zombies don't count as 'monsters' so we can't get that title for all these melee kills. Still need to hold out for a monster hunt.

Damn, really thought they did. Maybe I was thinking of necropirates? For sure there's some zombie-type that counts as monster.

Seems like it will be hard for you to maintain a good score with all those bases sitting around.

 

[lightbane]

You keep running into issues that would be solved if you checked the tech-tree, it's pretty much essential. Hell, there's a spoilered version to avoid meta-gaming, if you prefer that, so there's no reason not to do it. As for the bases, I hope for your run that they can't organize a simultaneous assault against your bases. Or keep swaying nations to their side and deprive you of more and more money.

 

[Average Manatee]

If he holds on he'll clean up the entire tech tree eventually. Or hit a dead end because he lacks a specific facility to research something

I doubt national funding will be an issue. In fact I kind of doubt any game of X-Com on any mod has ever died due to lack of country funding. Manufacturing just takes over as what's important. With a mint and a manufacturing focused base he'll make triple what all countries combined give him, and he's only lost 1 of those so far.

 

[Arrowgrab]

If he holds on he'll clean up the entire tech tree eventually. Or hit a dead end because he lacks a specific facility to research something

I doubt national funding will be an issue. In fact I kind of doubt any game of X-Com on any mod has ever died due to lack of country funding. Manufacturing just takes over as what's important. With a mint and a manufacturing focused base he'll make triple what all countries combined give him, and he's only lost 1 of those so far.

Yeah, but in the long term, it's not just about the money. IIRC (at least in normal X-Com), if a certain number of countries cuts funding, you automatically lose. And with the inherent autism of X-Piratez, who knows how much country swaying bullshit the game is going to throw at us?

 

[lightbane]

Wasn't that in the 2010 game? In the OG, I think you can only lose by having all of your bases destroyed, or being underfunded. What I do remember is that if you took too long, the enemy activity would ramp up so high, that you wouldn't be able to keep up, which seems to be the case here.

 

[Average Manatee]

That's not a thing in OG X-Com, only the 2012 remake. The failure condition for X-Com is two months in a row of negative cash at the end of the month or two months of horrible score (limit depends on difficulty but its always negative, like below -500). AFAIK Piratez and other mods don't change this.

 

[Jaedar]

I doubt national funding will be an issue. In fact I kind of doubt any game of X-Com on any mod has ever died due to lack of country funding. Manufacturing just takes over as what's important. With a mint and a manufacturing focused base he'll make triple what all countries combined give him, and he's only lost 1 of those so far.

Yes and no. The xpiratez campaign is very long, and since the country funding goes up every month, you can end up making a lot of money. In my campaign, in jun 2064 I am making 22 million from the protection racket. Admittedly, I no longer really need the money, and for pretty much the entire run that money mattered I was making almost all of it from loot, infamy and manufacturing. But it does help.

 

[Arrowgrab]

That's not a thing in OG X-Com, only the 2012 remake. The failure condition for X-Com is two months in a row of negative cash at the end of the month or two months of horrible score (limit depends on difficulty but its always negative, like below -500). AFAIK Piratez and other mods don't change this.

Oh yeah, that's right. I misremembered.

 

[orcinator]

There's was at least one special lose condition in X-piratez last time I played. Hope you don't lose at THAT or run into whatever new game over Dio put in.

Also put me in somewhere.

 

[Average Manatee]

I doubt national funding will be an issue. In fact I kind of doubt any game of X-Com on any mod has ever died due to lack of country funding. Manufacturing just takes over as what's important. With a mint and a manufacturing focused base he'll make triple what all countries combined give him, and he's only lost 1 of those so far.

Yes and no. The xpiratez campaign is very long, and since the country funding goes up every month, you can end up making a lot of money. In my campaign, in jun 2064 I am making 22 million from the protection racket. Admittedly, I no longer really need the money, and for pretty much the entire run that money mattered I was making almost all of it from loot, infamy and manufacturing. But it does help.

Yeah, same thing happens in xcomfiles, if you play for 5 years and maintain 10% monthly growth you're making good money. It's more an issue that country defections just aren't that common. Even if one defects it's only going to lower you're monthly income by like 5% but that's beaten by the 10% growth you get so long as you maintain decent score. And decent score only means like 500-1000, in piratez you do enough missions to regularly hit 10x that

 

[Damned Registrations]

Fearsome

Also put me in somewhere.

Will do. Maybe as a catgirl; I think Echidna is the only named one we have currently. Note to self- examine the memorials to figure out which names are dead but not chilling in stasis pods, and create a list of future successors. We've got the cash now and can even brute force gals with the freak option.


Damn, that's a good chunk of infamy cost for just letting a ship fly around. Curious if I can shoot these down easily. I don't think I've seen one yet.

Still metric fucktons of church and merc ships flying around africa. Not surprising with two bases right there.

Fuck off with these secret base missions already! You have enough bases!

Not letting this thing land and fuck off this time. I don't care how big it is, we're at least going to fuck up some of it's crew.

Fucking plasma weapons on the neophytes. Jesus.

And these things too of course. So many fucking TUs on these. Can I have one please?

Oh, and the weather for this mission is fucking awful; the dust storm.

The dust storm seems to fuck you out of a large chunk of your TUs every single turn. This would be fine if it affected the enemy as well... but it's easily blocked by shields. Doesn't seem to be a choking attack either. Maybe some weird sort of daze damage?

I'm pretty sure it also fucks over sight range. Really wishing I'd brought someone in legion armour for that extra nightvision.

Enemy ship is quite large, but seems to only have a single entrance, at the bottom of it's weird mushroom like structure.

It's weird that this exalt ended her turn with no time units. Perhaps the sandstorm is doing damage that goes through golden shields, like piercing or concussive? That'd actually be very helpful for us!

Timely Bard is rocking the hermit armour on this mission and seems immune to the dust storm effects. So apparently even a lousy 3 shields is good enough to stop it.

Scanned a neophyte out of curiosity... these guys have an unreal amount of voodoo power. No wonder I kept struggling to psi attack them before. 'Easily influenced' my ass.

I throw out some flares to counter the vision problems but the first one lands in this little valley instead of the hill where I aimed. Annoying.

After waiting for like 20 turns and facing morale issues, the enemies finally start to leave their ship. They've got some impressive looking guns on the more elite units.

I brought a ratmeister as well, which was great for getting a look inside the ship, at least crew wise.

Yep, figured we'd find one of these.

There's probably an efficient way to surround their exit point and murder everyone that steps out, but I was pretty worried there was some secret exit or an exalt hiding in the corner of the map that would ambush me if I tried to get closer.

The morale issues are such a pain on these longer missions.

Once I got the flares set up and the shooting gallery began though, that helped buoy our morale.

Eventually this guy cae out to say hello as well.

As tempting as it would have been to capture a second cadinal, it would have been fairly suicidal. Their weapons are simply too strong to approach with no cover, and we've got nothing to reliably stun a cardinal from that far away. On top of that, these guys have spotter and sniper, like the reverends. So if we injure one it'll be able to blindly fire at us along with the reverends.

Doesn't help that he popped out with a reverend as well. It was actually all I could manage to take these three units out in a single turn.

Good thing we brought Jaedar along with that doom armour. He makes an excellent sniper.

Just a couple enemies left standing after a gruelling seige.

He wouldn't leave the ship so I had to come to him. Seems to have some new kind of weapon. Looks... concerning.

Damn, that's a lot of infamy. We're getting that rank up for sure now. Also, this was a surprisingly small crew compliment for a very large ship. I was expecting like, triple this based on how many crew are in a small vessel.

Sadly, not much in the way of xp, since all the kills came from jaedar and angel sniping everyone.

Lots of new toys in here... wait, they had fucking blaster bombs? With 3 launchers? Jesus christ! Good thing they didn't have units with sniper besides the cardinals and reverends. Fuck me.

Sadly, out of the new toys, only the plasma spitter parts can be researched. Kinda tempting, since we got 4 from that ship. Might be able to salvage an awesome weapon from them.

Luka piced up a title I'd rather she hadn't in a bounty mission, trying to earn those monster titles for killing with daze weapons. OTOH... now that she has 1 vskl... can Luka use psi weapons? Obviously most would be kinda crap but those magic cards deal damage like ninja stars; based on the square of throwing skill. That could be an awesome sidearm eventually.

Heh. I wonder if this was a retaliation raid for killing a cardinal.

And yet they still won't give it a fucking rest. I really hope killing that cruiser prevented them from spawning a new base. There was some crap about resource wars and landing ships twice in an area to make enemies stop... but I figured that was a different, early game sort of mission. Maybe I'll try it if they keep this shit up next mission. Failing that, perhaps the answer will be to wipe out all their bases. Or just get a fleet that can easily handle them in the air. We did just get 4 more ship engines and an ungodly amount of other valuable resources; we can totally build a base for an interception fleet now.

Sadly, we're way too exhausted to fuck with the landed frigate right now.

Got this off an academy medic. Holy fuck, this is clearly way overdue. The RNG really fucked me on this one, we've interrogated a ton of medics, and I went crazy trying to get other things they might have revealed out of the way so they wouldn't be wasted.

Yep, those both seem incredibly fucking important alright.

Sadly, this didn't lead to anything. Was really hoping it'd unlock some kind of improvements to a flight suit.

This was pretty much exactly what I was hoping for. Faster, lighter, more damaging and with better armour piercing and damage, but still deals TU damage. This will be prutal in the right hands.

Went for this first since... well duh. I want to use all the 'weird thingies' the enemies keep dropping.

Not exactly the plethora of weapon options I was hoping to see. This is clearly going to require a massive research investment. Ugh.

Forget what revealed this, but it seems like an important foundation for bringing dead back to life properly. Or maybe making some more perfect gals some day.

Interesting. Makes me feel like I should have encountered some ninja bases by now, instead of merc and church bases. I should try and find the others and see what types they are.

Had a free ogre worker show up and we got the dossier on them for free. We could certainly use a bit more space for loot right now.

Voodoo class has finally produced some results. It seems to operate in a weird way, giving nothing for a long time then suddenyl giving a massive improvement. Could defeintely use a few more of these schools. Or a better one.

Nice to see that income climb by a large chunk again. We might be behind in tech still, but it feels like we're catching up in income at least.

Alright, you better give me some cool voodoo shit!

Eh... I mean that's a high level tech I'm sure, but I could have gotten that from the ghouls I think.

Huh. What the fuck is a Zapper. Sounds weak. But... also kind of sounds like the other rimrider laser weapons. Maybe it'd start a chain that could lead to the Fatty?

The other option... I dunno if we want that right now. I would assume it's going to unlock a mission even harder than a normal base assault.

Unpowered armour researched. It's... pretty much what I expected. With the exception that it can be made with one part instead of like, 5. Seems only that weird ceramic armour needs 5? That shit is already obsolete now, I wonder in what circumstance it would have been viable?

Anyways, these sound a lot more promising.

Found another enemy hideout, this time in siberia. Seems to be one of the ones that spawned a while ago though. No idea who it belongs to.

Oh?

Hell yeah! Considering we've already done some research on demons and zombies, it seems like we'll have a headstart on progressing this line of tech.

Also, we obviously reached a new rank after that last month's performance. The requirement for the next is kind of vague, but I suspect we've already achieved it.

I bet this is the medicine bottleneck that is holding us back from the school project being unlocked.

Jesus christ, this stuff is so fucking good. And seems heavily aligned with our codex. Sadly it's also all expensive as fuck to research. The Communion is especially tempting given what we got out of Destruction, but it might require further research to pay off. Medikits for everyone would be incredibly helpful, The Bio-Forcefield seems like it might relate to a better version fo the hermit outfit's shitty 3 point shield (or at least explain what it does) and have other voodoo effects. Advanced Tranquilizers probably unlocks more options with prisoners, and given that Bugeye/Reticulan Legacy basically unlocked voodoo for us, I'm extremely curious about chryssalid legacy potentially unlocking some kind of awesome transformation. I want it all! And we've still got the armour related stuff to go through as well, and unlocking restricted weapons. Certainly not feeling bottlenecked in research options any more. We need way more brainers.

We've got another new contact as well. I recall this one selling some crazy nuclear flamethrower. Probably worth prioritizing as well, might lead to new ships too.

 

[Gumsmith]

It was actually all I could manage to take these three units out in a single turn.

This LP has a dire lack of explosives.
One of my favorite rocket launcher facts is that many pirates can remove an RPG from their backpack and take an aimed shot with it in a single turn. Think of the possibilities!

 

[turkishronin]

I feel like catgirls have made goblins obsolete...

 

[Jaedar]

It was actually all I could manage to take these three units out in a single turn.

This LP has a dire lack of explosives!
One of my favorite rocket launcher facts is that many pirates can remove an RPG from their backpack and take an aimed shot with it in a single turn. Think of the possibilities!

I prefer the UAC launcher. 5 shots without reloading is very handy.

My true favorite is gnomedisc though. 100% accurate snapshots is a crazy thing to put on a rocket launcher.

Enemy ship is quite large, but seems to only have a single entrance, at the bottom of it's weird mushroom like structure.

Also, this was a surprisingly small crew compliment for a very large ship. I was expecting like, triple this based on how many crew are in a small vessel.

I think this is literally just a "battleship" from vanilla, and it also has a vanilla crew complement. Which is kinda small by xpiratez standards.

I also don't know how to stop bases from being founded. Seems that even if you shoot down all/most of the ships the base can still appear.

, they had fucking blaster bombs? With 3 launchers? Jesus christ!

I've never actually seen the ai use the guided projectile function of blaster launchers in xpiratez.

Voodoo class has finally produced some results. It seems to operate in a weird way, giving nothing for a long time then suddenyl giving a massive improvement.

I think it works same as vanilla, ie every 30 days it pops an increase.

The other option... I dunno if we want that right now. I would assume it's going to unlock a mission even harder than a normal base assault.

Do eeeet. It's a fun mission. I will refrain from commenting too much in the difficulty but it's a lot easier than a base assault.

he Communion is especially tempting given what we got out of Destruction, but it might require further research to pay off.

What's the deal with all these voodoo subtypes?

Spoiler

There's 4 voodoo schools, destruction, communion, illusion and excess. Each codex is specialized in one and barred from its opposite (red-gold, green-gray).
Communion is the school of the green codex, so it is sure to have lots of stuff to get, although I am not sure how much it will pay off immediately as I was barred from researching it.

I feel like catgirls have made goblins obsolete...

Goblins have some uses. They get unique missions, they're cheaper and easier to replace and the avenger armor is a really cheap and early shielded armor, which can even be taken on REDACTED missions which is borderline op. That being said, I think they are kind of shit, and I never bring them on normal missions. Same with ogres except worse, because ogres are just worse ubers and they don't get any special missions afaik.

 

[turkishronin]

I've never actually seen the ai use the guided projectile function of blaster launchers in xpiratez.

I only once saw a raider shoot one at his own feet in a base invasion. These things used to rape me in vanilla X-COM

 

[Gumsmith]

I prefer the UAC launcher. 5 shots without reloading is very handy.

They're all great. Damned Registrations should test them all in the field to determine the best one...

 

[orcinator]

Goblins have some uses. They get unique missions, they're cheaper and easier to replace and the avenger armor is a really cheap and early shielded armor, which can even be taken on REDACTED missions which is borderline op. That being said, I think they are kind of shit, and I never bring them on normal missions. Same with ogres except worse, because ogres are just worse ubers and they don't get any special missions afaik.

I forgot what skills are used for piloting but gobs have their maxes at a higher number than gals, though I'm not sure if cats can match that.

 

[Jaedar]

Goblins have some uses. They get unique missions, they're cheaper and easier to replace and the avenger armor is a really cheap and early shielded armor, which can even be taken on REDACTED missions which is borderline op. That being said, I think they are kind of shit, and I never bring them on normal missions. Same with ogres except worse, because ogres are just worse ubers and they don't get any special missions afaik.

I forgot what skills are used for piloting but gobs have their maxes at a higher number than gals, though I'm not sure if cats can match that.

Aiming, reactions, bravery are used.
Cats have caps at 130, 125 and 100.
Gobs have 120, 125 and 80.
So cats are just better.

Goblins can also pilot pretty much all vehicles, but they're worse than gnomes at it.

 

[std::namespace]

And these things too of course. So many fucking TUs on these. Can I have one please?

can you break chrysalid morale by fire and mindcontrol it?

Timely Bard is rocking the hermit armour on this mission and seems immune to the dust storm effects. So apparently even a lousy 3 shields is good enough to stop it.

does dmg roll over on shields? i dont remember...
if you get hit by 300 concussive once, does the shield stop it?

 

[Average Manatee]

Damage does roll over. Not sure how resistances are handled in the split though

 

[lightbane]

I think fire ignores certain shields, not sure.