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

[Jaedar]

Do soldiers spawn in the radar? Don't think I've seen that. Is it only if there's not enough other spawns?

Maybe?
For sure I got spawns in the radar with this layout

But that is my main base so it had 30+ soldiers.

 

[Average Manatee]

I'll report if I see any. Not getting any invasions atm due to aerial dominance. Shame there's no way to test custom base layouts in the battle mode.

Does anyone know what can cause you to get 110 Bravery? 100 was supposed to be cap. It's not from titles, training says it doesn't do it, and it can't be from armor since both the cats and the ubers have it. Is it a thing where you're allowed to improve as long as you are at or below the cap?

Spoiler

EDIT: It's not from intercepting ships either, since only my catgirls are pilots. I'm guessing it has to be related to bandaging people up in battle?

EDIT2: Nevermind, Grav boots on the catgirls give +10 and chainmail also gives +10. I guess I just unlocked both at the same time and both happen to have the same bonus.

 

[Jaedar]

I think the lp mentioned it, but can someone explain Spotter/Sniper to me?

Is it "snipers can shoot what spotters see"?

Humanists all having sniper and spotter is pretty rough, although they're just normal humans otherwise so I guess they needed something.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Is it "snipers can shoot what spotters see"?

Yes, but additionally, spotters can see anything that shoots them, including a kill shot. So if you snipe and kill a spotter, all the snipers on the map can reaction fire on you.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah it's kinda bullshit. Even if you've got a stealth suit invisible past 4 tiles and melee them down in one shot you're seen until your next turn. It kind of makes sense for shooting that an enemy can return (inaccurate) fire shooting in your direction but it's total bs otherwise

Enemies suffer half accuracy penalties for shooting out of their vision but it's not enough. Enemies in XCOM don't need accuracy to hit you, just luck.

I believe thrown explosives also reveal the thrower once they hit. If you have timed explosives to go off at the end of the enemy turn that will avoid being spotted. Unfortunately even you reaction firing and hitting a scout will reveal you which is also really bullshit. If you're on a map with no cover you're kinda fucked

 

[Jaedar]

So I did a mutant pogrom...
results (because it's funneh=:

Spoiler

No gal losses, because I was dodging in and out of the shadowbat every turn. Someone managed to get shot while standing on the ground floor though (you can't shoot at ground floor even from lowest part of the ramp, but seems enemies can shoot in from a decent distance). The gal survived (chainmail and 107 hp op), but I lost the gothic raygun she was carrying. Not really replaceable, but sacrifices need to be made.

Tanks are fucking scary. Somehow the first one died fairly easily, but the second I could barely scratch even after 5 bottles of acid with my heaviest weapons. One of the weapons I looted sounds promising for dealing with future tanks though, so maybe next month there will be survivors!

I won... technically speaking.

Enemies suffer half accuracy penalties for shooting out of their vision but it's not enough.

Don't you also suffer this penalty? Maybe it's for arcing fire or something, but I often feel my bow shots are being done at half accuracy when it's someone else spotting.

I believe thrown explosives also reveal the thrower once they hit. If you have timed explosives to go off at the end of the enemy turn that will avoid being spotted. Unfortunately even you reaction firing and hitting a scout will reveal you which is also really bullshit. If you're on a map with no cover you're kinda fucked

yeah, it seems explosives also reveal.

 

[turkishronin]

Nerf tanks

 

[Average Manatee]

Tanks are fucking scary. Somehow the first one died fairly easily, but the second I could barely scratch even after 5 bottles of acid with my heaviest weapons. One of the weapons I looted sounds promising for dealing with future tanks though, so maybe next month there will be survivors!

If you throw a chem grenade it should hit the under armor, which means its not helping your guns? I think that's how it works, you don't just automatically hit every armor side. Chem Grenades simply have a 20% armor pre-dmg mult in ANAL, which is a fairly common weapon property (though usually much lower). So a chem attack dealing 22.5-67.5 damage should deal ~4-12 armor damage. Though given that the tank is 4 tile it might hit 4x for 16-48 armor damage? Either way, follow up one or two chems with some dynamite and I think it'll work. Dynamite itself has a 6% armor pre-damage multiplier and it deals about 2x the base damage of chem grenade so it'll shred tanks over time too, though its obviously bulkier.

If you want to damage directional armor I highly recommend police shotguns or blunderbusses with chem shells. Can fire multiple times per round and since armor damage comes before the reduction of each pellet you'll shred a ton of armor quickly. Police shotgun is practically a sniper weapon at nighttime too.

Don't you also suffer this penalty? Maybe it's for arcing fire or something, but I often feel my bow shots are being done at half accuracy when it's someone else spotting.

Yes. It's the "No-sight penalty mult." under ANAL for weapons which seems to be 50% for all weapons. Any time the shooter can't see the target themselves it will be in play, which means obstructions or just lack of vision radius (e.g. its night and your catgirl with 20 NV is spotting for an uber with 12). There's probably some special weapons that ignore it. This is also why there's all those sniper rifles with bloated as fuck accuracy scores, to overcome that penalty.

 

[turkishronin]

Has anyone tried Camo? Normal humans(Spartans) still shoot me from gorillion tiles away even though their spotters still haven't seen me. How does it work

 

[Average Manatee]

Camo definitely works. Did you shoot ANY spotter? I think every spartan counts as a spotter. Alternatively were they possibly shooting at something else? Far away enemies often have awful accuracy and will just miss their intended target and hit something else. Spartans like to spray SMGs and shit.

There are units that have advanced NV or ability to negate tiles of camo (spot). Others spot you by smell or tremors or w/e, which I think is just automatic knowledge of you if you're in their radius, Others have heat vision. Humanists have dogs which have scent.

 

[Jaedar]

Has anyone tried Camo? Normal humans(Spartans) still shoot me from gorillion tiles away even though their spotters still haven't seen me. How does it work

Spartan spoiler stuff: basically all spartans seem to have spotter and sniper. So as soon as one of your dudes hits one of theirs, or gets spotted by any of theirs it's open season.

More generally, camo is like -12 spot range in daylight, but the normal spot range in daylight is also ~the entire length of the map so -12 won't help much.

If you throw a chem grenade it should hit the under armor, which means its not helping your guns?

Bottle of acid is not chem grenade.

By the way Damned Registrations let me know if you think I'm posting too much random or too much spoilery stuff.

 

[Average Manatee]

Bottle of acid is not chem grenade.

Hmm, I see those are thrown weapons rather than bombs. So they should work to help your weapons. But for big units like tanks you're only getting 1/4th the normal armor degredation that a bomb would since a bomb hits all 4 tiles. There's also the problem of enemies having forward/left/right/back armor. Your attacks can only reduce the armor of one direction at a time.

Spoiler

5 attacks might not do much, especially if they hit different areas. Tanks have 100-200 armor.

When I fought the

Spoiler

humanist tank in the Jack Challenge

it died after 4 chem grenades + 1 dynamite

Also so far had good luck with the disconnected radar room, no one has spawned in it across 3 base assaults. These are secondary bases with only a skeleton crew (10-16ish troops) and tons of room to spawn in the large living quarters though.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The dice have been cast.

Alright. Since opinions were kind of mixed on this, I'm opting for a half assed approach to saving Cleve. We're not going to try running out there to save him. We'll go down in two to three hits and I don't know where the ghosts are exactly. However, I suspect they don't have terribly aggressive AI, so if we hide over in the corner, they might mill around for a few turns and Cleve or someone else might wake up on his own and make their own way back.

This seems like a good spot. I'm pretty sure no ghosts are to the south except way down by the beach. Even if they do come closer, they shouldn't have a line of fire.

Aha! This is actually a great sign. It means Jaedar is on the verge of waking back up. His stun damage recovered after the enemy phase, but then he took enough stun damage from the heat to go back down.

That's even more promising! If we could get her back on her feet I might consider winning the mission. Our biggest drawback at this point is vision. Frankly, the ghosts are hard to see and the brainer outfit is a huge advantage there. I doubt we'll get her back up without that oxygen thank though; her freshness is already low and as a gal she's got a low cap so she'll go from 30% to 0% pretty fast.

Success! It's not Cleve (and I don't even know where Cleve is) but it's a second body and he can try grab someone else on the way back.

Optimist is the lucky bastard along our way to safety.

Aggravatingly, we're just shy of making it back to the safe tile. I could have made it if I hadn't spent the TUs to look around for ghosts. Was still probably the correct decision though.

Worst case scenario, we can almost certainly drag both bodies back with Strange Fellow and at least have a couple more of our boys brought home.

Luckily, Jaedar doesn't get hit and picks up Gunsmith as well, bringing our recoverable bodies total to 5.

I'm not sure since it's been a few days since I played, but I _think_ the ghosts are over in this area. Hopefully they stay there.

While waiting for more boys to wake up, I try outfitting everyone with radiator meshes like I should have from the start. There's a slight problem; this one that optimist was wearing can't be stased on a belt or even a hand slot. We'll need to send someone out there to equip it if we want it back, and that's 44 TUs.

It's not that far away though, and the ghosts aren't nearby. Since we've got more bodies now we can afford to risk a bit more to try recover Cleve.

A ghost has been sighted. Obnoxiously far away and high up, we're not going to be able to pincushion her with spears. OTOH, we can take cover from her fairly easily. I think these stupid torches are revealing our position. The ghosts seems to have decent nightvision, but probably in the ~16 range.

Pierre manages to get back on his feet!

And he spies Cleve en route!

Shit! Pierre got tagged by a ghost. He won't be getting back up any time soon.

Luckily, Cleve seems to be the next in line to wake up!

Sure enough, Cleve ends up dragging Pierre back. We've got nearly everyone back now. We're missing Azira, who fell smack in the middle of all the ghosts to the west, and Modron, who went down with the oxygen tank at the beach to the south.

I've gotten all the radiator meshes equipped now. If we get left alone long enough, their stun recover might even be enough to get us all fresh enough to fight some more and win the map!

Even better! Modron woke up! The tank only has 6 charges left.

I opt to chug one and hide under this ruin. This keeps us out of direct line of sight from the ghost. We're about to find out if they have nightvision or just x-ray senses that can see him through the bricks and behind her back.

Well, she didn't chase him down so I don't think she's got senses. However, she did tag him as he tried to sprint the rest of the way home. Shit luck there.

Azira wakes up next. I'm sorely temped to pick up the spear at his feet and try killing the ghost that is so nearby, but I opt to sprint back instead. The boys are damned good runners considering they're wearing frogsuits.

See the ghost in this tile? No? Thats because Strange Fellow busted her ass! I suspect there are only 3 left on the map at this point which might threaten us. 2 Near Azira and the one that got Modron.

We spread out and take cover as best we can, but one of the ghosts is clearly firing from fairly high up, making the cover pretty pointless.

At this point we've only got 3 boys left standing, all 1 hit away from being unconscious. Some might even faint just from the terrain effect.

I've pushed our luck far enough, I think. Time to flee.

Considering the absolute clusterfuck we were in, only losing a single hand is a damned good result. Hell, we don't even have any actual wounds on the survivors.

We lost some gear, but most of this is replacable, aside from the healing items.

Oasis gets a promotion, likely due to Modron vacating a spot.

RIP Modron. Hope the girls treat you well in your new home.

 

[turkishronin]

I volunteer to replace Modron o7

 

[Jaedar]

Good thing I lived.

I also learned to dodge this mission when it came up in my playthrough.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Average Manatee was right.

Finally got around to this one. Nothing buildable yet, but I found the info incredibly helpful the first time I unlocked it.

I'm like 90% sure this is required to make nun outfits. But I'm not 100% sure because I didn't fucking unlock them yet. Argh. I think we need the Romanica contact, and for that I'm now certain we need a bejeweled cross. Like the one we left behind on that ghost island.

More fungus! Honestly this is rather annoying. I hope this leads to something more useful than ~15 mushrooms a month at the cost of 25k monthly upkeep per outbreak.

So this thing is the result of researching necroplane tech. This is what you'e SUPPOSED to unlock early on, by finding a crashed pirate wreck on a distress call, researching it, and building one of these fuckers. We're a bit late to that party so this thing is worthless.

Honestly can't imagine when you'd want to use these. -50 morale isn't just a death sentence, it's a deathsentence for every ally nearby as well. And -8 freshness will leave you pretty fucked even if you do have a way to recover the morale. AND it's self only. These suck!

Ah, finally something that will unlock those 30mm cannons I've been waiting for-

Oh come on!

Well okay that's something at least. We still need one more gauss cannon part to make one though.

Look, it's basically like our turtle except with a way better layout! Okay to be fair it's way slower, has less range and no weapons. But still.

Might never actually use these. On the other hand- Rambo.

Well, we've finally crossed the 1 million mark for our protection money. Balance seems fairly stable right now, which is impressive considering the amount of shit we're supporting and how little loot we sold this month.

Mmmm. Methlabs.

'Fire Pit' sounds like a social room to roast marshmellows in. It is not. It is a security corridor that sets off ~20 radius firebombs every time a unit enters it. Potentially multiple times per round. That means if you put one next to an access lift, one the first turn when they send out a guard dog to scout, it'll roast alive the 9 guys inside the lift. It even reaches down and scorches people trying to crawl through the sewer as well. Just don't get too close yourself, and don't rely on it to stop imps.

Sadistic urges? No idea what this is referring to. *Resumes whipping civilians to train throwing skills*

Well, more maids is always a good thing.

While the concept of uber gal sized guns is a good one...

The ones initially unlocked are pretty crap. They basically just massively overkill people with light armour. We want stuff with long range, accuracy, and high ammo capacity.

So, on a lark I researched Chakrams, which I knew to be basically useless. Then upon reading the funny description I realized that it was, in fact, an incredibly important tech unlock I'd forgotten about. Should have written that one down.

Civilizing Beastmen ahoy!

Finally did this one as well. These things add +200 TUs, basically the male equivalent of a hyena rider. Have yet to actually use one since an armour that generates it's own lights sounds terrible, but I could imagine it being really good in certain missions, like maybe that burning city one.

The shitty early game craft weaponry meant to be used alongside stuff like the buckaroo to take down blimps and the like. It's reload time is actually so long it's probably viable to fly into range, fire, and then fly out of range until it finishes reloading. Also, how the fuck are these more accurate than machineguns?

Oh, and that unlocks a bunch of other stuff. Of course. Very logical.

This got finished quickly, because it was a very high priority. Why so important?

Muahahaha!

Well, first we find another blimp, so roving hordes of werewolves will have to wait for another day.

...and we just lost a gal in chainmail. How the fuck did this happen?

Well, two things. First, I forgot that the blimp turrets have sniper (Master) which means that they can see where you are multiple turns after having initially seen you. So the fucking thing might have seen her exit the craft and psychically known where she moved to through the darkness. Seems legit. Second, that tile near the headlight appears to not even qualify as dark, because she got shot by a LOT of enemies on that turn from a lot further than 9 tiles away. Fucking suicide lights. I'm putting the blimps back into 'really fucking sketchy' pile of missions. If we do any more of these, we're not leaving hard cover until those turrets have been annihilated.

Oh, and I forgot to mention it, but we also almost lost Echidna here on the first turn as well, because a troublemaker with a shotgun reaction fired at a gal who tried taking potshots from the door. Have I mentioned I don't like this layout?

Okay, this one was just straight up bullshit.

Look at that fucking angle. No way in hell this thing should have been able to make that shot, firing through multiple wall tiles.

Luckily Echidna was nearby on her mission to capture a turret with a cattle prod.

A mission which turned out to be entirely pointless. Despite the 'ignore stun immunity' tag, it just kills the turrets anyways. So much for getting improved loot that way. Makes me wonder if armored cars are the same way. At least we've got proof of concept; the cattle prod does indeed work much better for this.

RIP Gandalfina.

 

[Gumsmith]

Kustom Handcannon is one of my favorite guns. Good gals will miss constantly trying to use one but great gals will find it to be a potent and reliable sidearm. At least that was my experience before the pistol drop off nerf, it might not be as great now.

 

[Jaedar]

Can confirm that the blimp missions are sketchy. The turrets are scary accurate and will kill a gal with chainmail in a single turn easily, even from fairly high distances. They seem to be a guaranteed source of wands however, which is possibly a good pickup?

The quad actually looks amazing. It is essentially just chainmail, except without the weight, energy, and environment susceptibility penalties. Depending on how the lights work it's probably a bad idea to bring it on night missions, but on day missions it seems pretty great. Assuming you are in the market for a large unit.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, those turrets are bad news. And you only get 15mm guns out of it while you can amass 25mm guns from random bandit traffic milk runs.

4 tiles units just... take up too much space. It's so hard to justify taking up almost half your troop capacity on most early game craft.

Kustom Handcannon is one of my favorite guns. Good gals will miss constantly trying to use one but great gals will find it to be a potent and reliable sidearm. At least that was my experience before the pistol drop off nerf, it might not be as great now

Handcannons and blunderbusses are also nice to count as pirate themed weapons for titles. I much prefer the blunderbuss though.

I also learned to dodge this mission when it came up in my playthrough.

Just tried it and came fully prepared. 10 of my best gals in swimsuits with aqua java and sabres. It took a lot of hits but we absolutely overwhelmed them easily. Loot was pretty poor unless researching the ghosts unlocks something good.

 

[std::namespace]

Look at that fucking angle. No way in hell this thing should have been able to make that shot, firing through multiple wall tiles.

Not sure if said for lulz but if it sees 1 pixel of you - it can shoot and hit you. And those holes in walls looks like windows so its basically guaranteed to see you.

works underwater

 

[Average Manatee]

Anyone know what % cold resistance you need to avoid damage per turn? Doesn't seem to be 100% since Rogue outfits avoid it at 110%. Also how do resistances stack? Does 150% armor and a -25% cold resist Shawl multiply for 112.5% or subtract for 125% cold resist?

EDIT: I've also been doing some math, and it seems Weed Plantations are pretty shit? Unless I'm missing something?

Numbers for Blackbeard difficulty

The big cost is 55k+25k+5k =80k to do all the plantation actions. With the cost of that factored in you only make ~61k per month per Weed Plantation. And this is assuming you end the month with normal plantations, otherwise having a weed plantation instead costs you 110k in upkeep for a net loss of 49k vs. just having the normal plantation.

No wonder my progress is so much better after restarting and going for lots of radar bases to shoot down everything I can with piranhas. A single extra civilian shootdown a month with a ship engine is roughly as valuable as a whole weed base.

 

[Jaedar]

EDIT: I've also been doing some math, and it seems Weed Plantations are pretty shit? Unless I'm missing something?

Are you including the cost of the runts here? Kinda looks like you are but it says Hands, and it doesn't seem to be included in the total. The analysis of 220k profit minus 74k opportunity cost, - 85k plant actions for a mere 71k profit seems legit. And 71k is not a lot of money for 4 tiles. It does enable bees, which is 300k per month, and weed plantations are still strictly better than normal ones, even if it's only by 71k.

I am wondering if you need to consider multiple farms, as a single farm is not enough sectoweed to keep 50 runts occupied. Then again, rolling cigars also requires culture iirc, which I think in practice means extractor+still+mess hall, while x-grog only needs extractor+still. But mess hall also has a brainer slot and I think a few runt slots?

There's also strategies where you run the sectoweed farms for months without paying runt upkeep, bring in the runts and then cigar everything. That's slow to pay off but you'd make a buttload when you cash in.

They're also a good way to acquire sectoweed in general, but that's a different question.

No wonder my progress is so much better after restarting and going for lots of radar bases to shoot down everything I can with piranhas. A single extra civilian shootdown a month with a ship engine is roughly as valuable as a whole weed base.

While a civilian shootdown is indeed valuable (I don't know if there's an infamy penalty for shooting down the ship, but you'll easily pull like 200k from ransoms+engine), craft weapons, ammo (ammo feels like the big one to me, especially since you'll either waste a lot when reloading, or will have to micro reloads) and upkeep are not free either. Might have to include cost of an uber or two as well. They're complete milk runs though unless one of the civilians is a terminator in disguise. I've lost an experienced melee gal to that.

The true cost of civilian shootdowns is in real life time to do it.

 

[oasis789]

Anyone know what % cold resistance you need to avoid damage per turn?

i believe there are different levels of freezing cold environment but i'm not sure how to tell

 

[Jaedar]

Anyone know what % cold resistance you need to avoid damage per turn?

i believe there are different levels of freezing cold environment but i'm not sure how to tell

There seems to be 4 different tiers from looking at the tech browser thing. So some spoilery/haxxory speculation

Spoiler

Seem cold does 7, 8, 20 or 20 damage with extra stun. They are all of flat damage type. So I guess you take damage = x*resist-armor ? This doesn't really match up with my experience however, as a gal in chainmail has 40 armor, and 200% cold, so should at most take 20*2-40 = 0 damage but every time I use chainmail in cold I end up with everyone in the hospital for a week from frostbite. Unless it goes at under armor? in which case it should occasionally go through since 20*2-30 = 10. Ubers with furs should always be immune since it's 20 armor and 50% cold, whereas peasants have 30% resist but only 6 armor they should occasionally take damage but I never use peasants so I can't verify.

I would also guess that the game picks randomly, so some turns you take 7 sometimes you take 20?

According to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=cWN6kLEA_1c the way to calculate resist with items is a bit complicated so I don't feel like doing it when I'm just speculating how it works anyway.

So I guess the answer is: it depends.

 

[Luka-boy]

works underwater

My favourite mid-game weapon by a mile.

Spoiler

It's pretty much a 40K Bolter with less ammo capacity