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

[Jaedar]

Protip: DO NOT FIGHT MERCS!
They exist to troll players, and by the time you can fight them, you can fight anything else. Even then, I noticed that the winning strategy against these guys is to pop out of doors, shoot, and go back in. Repeat.
Also, fire explosives are VERY effective, as the damage overtime doesn't damage loot on the ground I think.

Always fight everything at least once, for the interrogations.

Every time I encountered mercs I played popamole with the shadowbat until too many of them get too close that the risk of grenade instagibbing half the crew got too high, and I gtfo'd with whatever loot I could carry.

. IIRC there's at least one additional ending besides the classic XCOM's Mars assault, but I'm not sure.

I have seen a thing called the world is yours, which I assume is an alternate ending. I also know of the solar governor which I assume is the default ending.

At least the shots into the craft didn't delete all your gear.
And re: UAC vaults, yeah they're a fucking pain and mostly barely worth doing. And a single stray shot will delete everything you brought on the mission. But sometimes they also seem to have super rare loot? Really annoying.

 

[Average Manatee]

And re: UAC vaults, yeah they're a fucking pain and mostly barely worth doing. And a single stray shot will delete everything you brought on the mission. But sometimes they also seem to have super rare loot? Really annoying.

Yeah, really not a fan of these in terms of design. You start in the central square with shit in every direction and there are explosive barrels all along the spawn and the hallways. On the other hand, it is just lokknar you're using. Give them some basic armor and a shotgun and if its a wipe its not a big loss (send them in something stupid and replacable like the skyranger). If you can survive wiping on the first 2 turns its pretty easy, I've only seen easy demon shit down there.

Spoiler

I assume you can find the BFG9000 in there

 

[Damned Registrations]

Nine lives.

What shields have you researched at this point? You can hit U mid battle to bring up the bootypedia and find out their resistances if you have them. You do kind of need a cheat sheet available to remember what's what.

Just golden. I did take some notes when fighting the purple shield before, so I'm confident in my ability to handle it this time around. I did know about the hotkey for the bootypedia, but yeah, that's a good thing to point out for anyone else new to the game like me. Extremely helpful in some cases. You can also middle mouse click on enemy portraits and their weapons to bring up those pages, if they've been researched.

At least the shots into the craft didn't delete all your gear.

One of the few things I like about the turtle is that all the gear is in the tiny 2 tile windowless room in the back corner. Gear is totally safe.

Time for a big one.


So, sending a team over to fight the Reticulan bunker has a few problems. First, our ranks are still kinda thin. Second, we've burned a lot of Freshness on some recent missions. Third, a couple of our gals are on the scarab, which is on it's way back. I can't wait for it to get here and THEN head out, so they won't be coming. We'll make do with 4 werewolves and some of the boys, who are probably our most skilled troops at this point, even if they lack the health and armour of our ubers.

Doing a lot of manufacturing at the main base atm, figured I'd give everyone a peak at the kind of shit in the works. Some of it is stuff I should have done a while ago, like the charms. Other stuff is replacing things we've lost or general upkeep of loot I've left laying around.

We reach the site but can't find anything here. However, I recall these sites sticking around for quite a while. I'm going to anchor and hope it shows up.

We finish another zombie exam in the mean time. The tip here about using shotguns is a good one; they handle normal zombies pretty well compared to most other early guns, and their shorter snapshot range helps avoid wasting reaction fire on a zombie 30 tiles away in a forest. I still prefer spears I think.

Hah
Hah, bingo!

Infiltrate my ass, this shit is a full on seige.

Standard expendable werewolf opening move.

Just spotting the weakass peons with crappy low level guns so far.

Buddy took quite a bit of damage luring enemy fire, but I expect the mission will be long so he'll have time to get back in shape.

One of the newbies in chainmail with a Smasher lights up a peon, both literally and figuratively. The enemy has nightvision that exceeds our own, so setting their area on fire for vision will be helpful if done right.

This dude's light sniper would have been scary once upon a time, but everyone can shrug this off completely. We don't even have anyone in night ops gear, it's all heavy shit. The only human we brought was Optimist, and he's in the Doom outfit.

He's also getting a turn with the fun gun. Scratch 2 scumbags.

Average Manatee knocks a hybrid out too. No shielded enemies so far.

And another peon goes down over here, courtesy of our last original gal. We started out surrounded, but at least we're more or less in a corner with the windows to the edge of the map so we can use the ship for cover pretty well.

A very long enemy phase indeed. Lots of doors.

We have a werewolf take the hill. Not because this is a smart place to stand, but because I want intel on what is coming out of the bunker.

And also to draw potential reaction fire so Echidna can snag our first captive safely. Welcome to the club buddy!

We stash him in the window room opposite the armory. Protip: Right clicking on a weapon gives it a little white dot, which indicates it will be preferably used as reaction fire. So if this guy got up, Echidna will stun rod him back down instead of slicing him to ribbons with the sickle.

At this point it occurs to me I've caught a peon before, and should check their stats. The fuckers have both sniper and spotter. Ugh. Probably their whole race does, aside from maybe ogres. Smoke is basically useless too, and they can't be choked with gas. It is what it is, we'll deal.

See all that space with no little grey arrows. That's cause we're fucking winning this time.

Fuck me their weapons scare me though. I think they're less dangerous than the gauss stuff, but the explosions are spooky.

Not sure if they missed the werewolf or were aiming to nick this gal with the splash damage. Either way, they did nothing.

Forgot about these little fuckers. Never did get a brainer to see one iirc, but I know they're armored like damned tanks. I think they're alive too though, they scream when they die and hold normal weapons.

Our next most senior ogre demonstrates how to miss all 30 shots with a minigun. Ugh. I miss Gumsmith. Modron II was in the scarab, and Gumsmith II has been recruited, but is going to need some time at school before he sees battle.

The combination of sniper, spotter, massive nightvision and really long range weapons and a damned bunker makes this mission a nightmare. Better be some excellent loot and tech after all this. I'm going to be pissed if we don't capture one of everything and unlock purple shields.

Werewolves seem to do the trick for knocking out smaller enemies here, but no discernable effect on the ogres. They probably have a ton of stun recovery and daze resist. And everything seems to have unbreakable morale. I might try howling at the mechoids, maybe we can make one of them shit their pants and drop their guns.

This time our ogre doesn't even have a shot, courtesy of an annoying tree. I try shooting it down anyways but the minigun isn't up to snuff.

Optimist has LoS though, and takes down a mechoid.

Another hybrid to capture... I'm not planning on ending this by fleeing, but in a mission this long it'll be safer to keep them nearby then let them wake up and rearm or get blown up in the crossfire. This is a shitty spot though thanks to that fire.

We hide behind this hill for now. The terrain is fairly balanced; we've got some places to hide but nothing REALLY abusable; it burns a lot of TUs and energy to climb up and down these hills.

We get a peek at the ammo for this type of gun. Forgot the name (weirdly we can see the name for the ammo but not the gun) but the damage is displayed there. Woof. Do not get hit.

I busted out the Mortar too, trying to use it like we did vs the nomads. Can't get a clean shot though.

Not even onto the roof. Apparently the arc is more shallow than I thought. Maybe last time the range was shorter than I remembered, or we had a bit more room to the map edge?

This corner would be a great spot to shoot from, but it'll take forever for this green gal to get there. Should have brought another catgirl instead, I think.

Uhh, that's a werewolf under there.

Here too. Not a good day to be a furry.

The first one didn't make it. RIP. I would like to keep these guys alive, but at the same time, they're eventually going to be obsolete I'm sure, and I want to make the most of them while they're still able to make a big difference in fights.

We get revenge with a mortar shell. Tits Randier isn't in good cover, but she is in SOME cover, and so far away the enemy might not even try to hit her. Or maybe ogres don't even have spotter. Who knows.

Fuck me I didn't expect them to be able to make a shot like that.

Judging by how she's not a stain on the ground, I think the shot was a near miss and she only took some AoE. Freshness is fucked though, she's going to have trouble regaining energy for the rest of the fight.

Finally a shielded fucker shows up.

Right, obviously shields block howling. Actually, that might be a good way to bust some shields, by virtue of the raw numbers. I should have tried howling at the hover tank. At any rate, this guy isn't in a spot we can reasonable get to recover even if we did manage to knock him out, he's right under the ledge of the bunker.

Jade Witch takes him out with the Splatty, probably our second best infinite ammo laser weapon.

Optimist tries his hand at deforestation, but apparently the Fatty can't destroy dead trees. Or even set them on fire.

Manatee gets into a safer position. Her Lasgun is extremely accurate, she can probably land some hits even from back here from that hilltop.

More attempts at knocking out an ogre with howling. No dice.

Robroy finally lands some shots, but doesn't do much more than chip a bit of armour away. Still might help in the long run though.

Jade Witch and Optimist set up shop using this hill as cover, popamoling at the enemies to decent effect.

In a move of brilliance, desperation or retardation, I decide to send Echidna to the west side to try and take the mechoid over here captive. Stun baton should do the trick I think, and it's already lost a chunk of armour too.

Fuck me, apparently she was still on their bullshit sniper/spotter radar somehow. Probably from clubbing the hybrid back to sleep inside the ship a couple turns ago.

We could reach the mechoid here, but this seems sketchy, there's a lot of enemies that could get in range with a bit of walking. And she's not immune to gas grenades or able to shrug off explosions like the gals in heavy armour with helmets.

I opt for a nice spot over on the edge of the map here instead.

Which is good because she spots a Siren down here behind the mechoid. Robroy fires in it's general direction but fails to land a hit.

Little scared for Echidna here; I relaized belatedly that they refreshed their sniper vision by spotting her with the aid of the laser light show.

She lives though! I charged in, figuring I can knock out the mechoid and then stand next to the Siren, deflecting her gun. There's a hitch though. We can't hurt the Mechoid. Apparently the enemy covered in fucking metal is basically immune to electricity. Motherfucker! We lack the energy to get back to cover.

I opt for a desperate plan: moving two of the remaining werewolves forward into obvious line of fire. Echidna moves deeper into enemy territory. Hopefully being out of direct line of sight will mean the enemy preferentially shoots at the werewolves and she can make it out alive.

Uh, so that's where the siren went.

Looks like catgirls are a more enticing target than tanky werewolves.

Though they do draw enough fire to drop one of them. He's on fire too, probably going to die next turn or shortly thereafter. Echidna doesn't have the energy for a rescue op.

The mechoid to the west is far enough away it can probably get a shot at the roof (and who knows, maybe more enemies are up there) so I opt to try hide behind the bunker. All the enemies should have been drawn forward by now, so it's probably the safest spot on the map, we just need to cut down the siren.

Well, uh, we cut down the siren at least?

I'm sure it'll be fine.

Anyways I'm gonna go read the Genghis Khan LP that just got updated.

 

[Jaedar]

And re: UAC vaults, yeah they're a fucking pain and mostly barely worth doing. And a single stray shot will delete everything you brought on the mission. But sometimes they also seem to have super rare loot? Really annoying.

Yeah, really not a fan of these in terms of design. You start in the central square with shit in every direction and there are explosive barrels all along the spawn and the hallways. On the other hand, it is just lokknar you're using. Give them some basic armor and a shotgun and if its a wipe its not a big loss (send them in something stupid and replacable like the skyranger). If you can survive wiping on the first 2 turns its pretty easy, I've only seen easy demon shit down there.

Spoiler

I assume you can find the BFG9000 in there

I assume the same! What I have actually found: uac plasma, enriched uranium, gnome stasis pod. Uac reels / old earth books as well, the former of which seem quite rare?
Most of the UAC vaults are actually not lokk'narr only, and gals have a really easy time in close quarters like that. As for enemies: If it says hot, there will be imps. These have a tendency to cause an instant chain reaction on turn 1 that wipes your entire party. Half the time you should retreat instantly. Sometimes it's 100% imps, sometimes there's some other low tier dark ones as well. If it says toxic, you better bring amazing chem resistance or you're going to die in a few turns. Enemies are slime balls which deal ridiculous damage in melee and seem resistant to most damage types. If you send in a bunch of gals in looting armor with the right weapons it's pretty easy though.

 

[Average Manatee]

Protip: Right clicking on a weapon gives it a little white dot, which indicates it will be preferably used as reaction fire. So if this guy got up, Echidna will stun rod him back down instead of slicing him to ribbons with the sickle.

I'm pretty sure this doesn't work. The right click dot only matters when deciding priority between two ranged weapons or two melee weapons. Since Sickle is technically a ranged weapon it will still be used if the enemy is outside melee range but melee will always take precedence if the enemy is in melee range.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Protip: Right clicking on a weapon gives it a little white dot, which indicates it will be preferably used as reaction fire. So if this guy got up, Echidna will stun rod him back down instead of slicing him to ribbons with the sickle.

I'm pretty sure this doesn't work. The right click dot only matters when deciding priority between two ranged weapons or two melee weapons. Since Sickle is technically a ranged weapon it will still be used if the enemy is outside melee range but melee will always take precedence if the enemy is in melee range.

Yeah, but the scenario in that case was her standing adjacent and me wanting her to use the stun baton. Also I forgot to mention: it tracks by hand, not weapon, so be careful if you set this and change weapons later. There are some weapons you really don't want to react fire with, like minilaunchers.

 

[Jaedar]

Protip: Right clicking on a weapon gives it a little white dot, which indicates it will be preferably used as reaction fire. So if this guy got up, Echidna will stun rod him back down instead of slicing him to ribbons with the sickle.

I'm pretty sure this doesn't work. The right click dot only matters when deciding priority between two ranged weapons or two melee weapons. Since Sickle is technically a ranged weapon it will still be used if the enemy is outside melee range but melee will always take precedence if the enemy is in melee range.

Yeah, but the scenario in that case was her standing adjacent and me wanting her to use the stun baton. Also I forgot to mention: it tracks by hand, not weapon, so be careful if you set this and change weapons later. There are some weapons you really don't want to react fire with, like minilaunchers.

I think the real reason it doesn't work though is that enemies seem to stand up at the start of your turn, so you don't get an opportunity to reaction them before you get an opportunity to just smack 'em (although as they have full tu they can retaliate).

 

[lightbane]

. Forgot the name (weirdly we can see the name for the ammo but not the gun)

Probably a bug, or a glitch of the engine that can't be messed with. Otherwise, expect this to disappear at some point.
Reminds me of how you used to be able to capture enemies ko-ing them by using stamina-draining restoratives (like vodka) on enemies, which is no longer possible. Or how enemies that stood in your escape tiles were auto-captured (yet another lost feature IIRC).

Not even onto the roof. Apparently the arc is more shallow than I thought. Maybe last time the range was shorter than I remembered, or we had a bit more room to the map edge?

That map is full of trees that makes arcing weapons less useful than usual.

 

[turkishronin]

I feel bad about killing reticulans. They look cute

 

[Damned Registrations]

"They look cute" he says.

I tried to have the ogre chuck some dynamite since the minigun wasn't working out, but he was wildly inaccurate. Good thing I saw that coming and had set the timer for 3 half turns. Jade Witch picks it up here to finish the job.

Bang on target.

Manatee works on the ogre on the other side of the hill, scoring a hit but not putting the bastard down. They be tanky fuckers, this one has taken quite a few shots already.

Speaking of tanky fuckers, I opt to run in the other nearby werewolf, who wasn't even harmed last turn. He manages to land a claw attack on the mechoid but then runs out of energy. He's probably fucked.

I also promptly forgot about the dynamite I just threw and gunned down the mechoid with Optimist, as well as taking out the ogre. And accidentally killing the sleeping ogre he was next to. Fuck. Whatever, survival is more important.

Turns are getting shorter, but still damned scary, especially since the high level dickheads are probably still holed up inside.

Yeesh, or wandering outside beyond our vision. That was rather close.

Yeah, doggo down. Well, it kept the guns off Echidna at least.

Err...

Oh man. Turn 12. I remember turn 12. Not. That was hours ago. I need to do these in smaller chunks. Also, I needed to sleep like 3 hours ago, so this update might get really confused, vague, or incorrect.

Well, Echidna lives on.

This is probably the route we want to take, but I'll leave the attempt until the end of the turn, to hopefully trim some enemies and make it safer.

Really wish I could send her back to snag the werewolf and the safety of the ship, but she's having massive energy issues now that her freshness has gotten low.

We'll send some others out for rescue duty instead.

Looks like the wolf has 3 wounds. I was wrong before when I said they do 3 damage each per turn, it's only 1. I was confusing it with a stat from the poisoner title.

WP Mortar is satisfying, but ultimately ineffective on these fuckers. Annoying.

We managed to down an ogre without killing it. Though it is on fire so... good chance it dies anyways.

Another possible escape route. If she had a vibro sword and a bit more energy, I'd consider it. She could probably stand in a small room and kill anyone that tried to find her easily, like the Rimrider base.

We opt for the roof instead. Those dark patches are ventilation grates I believe. Probably easy to blast your way through. Would make for an interesting strategy.

I'm including a lot of these because it's difficult to convey when the enemy turns are happening otherwise. Wouldn't matter much on an easier mission, but here any enemy turn is a big deal.

Mostly because they're fucking legion and the whole map is a crazy firestorm with lasers and plasma flying everywhere.

Fortunately, not all the enemy weapons are fucking 170 damage death blasts. The funky blue fleshlight looking things only deal around 0-60, which our armour can kind of handle, somewhat. Tactical less than chain, which is shiny.

And of course ogres can tank it by virtue of having over 150 health.

Ogre isn't on fire or bleeding, but he is choking to death. We can probably save him.

Jade Witch digs out one of the spare extinguishers from the weapon locker.

All this smoke is shit for recovery, but it better than being on fire.

Good thing these turn transition screens are varied and cool looking.

One advantage we have is that enemy weapons, especially the really strong ones, leave a lot of particles hanging in the air when they fire, giving us a good idea of where the enemies are at.

We've got a lot of wounded right now.

Not helping!

She's not TOO injured, but this shit is racking up, and that freshness is way too low. So is morale for that matter.

Enemies continue to pour out of the bunker. The ogres and mechoids are so fucking tanky too!

Echidna was carrying a poison grenade, and I elect to make use of it here. Rather than risking a toss fucking up and landing on her toes, we just fly overhead and drop it from our hand for 2 TUs. Nice and easy.

Hah, what a ridiculous image. Who would make girls fight in swimsuits, right guys?

Gas grenade seemed to work pretty well, took out at least one enemy for sure, though we no longer has LOS on them.

Ruh-roh.

That is... not a good place to stand with 0 TUs.

Turn 19 now.

I couldn't catch it, but the enemy started mental attacks at this point, targetting the werewolf. His morale is basically untouched, so I'm not too concerned. It must be a weakling doing it.

I try lobbing in an EMP shot on a mechoid, but the trees make it nigh impossible to get a clear shot.

And then I realize that howls work on the little armored fuckers. Like, really, really well. They must have fuck all daze resistance and rely entirely on armour. Wish I knew that 15 turns ago.

Echidna is stll safe, but also still bleeding out. Wish she had carried a healing gel around, but honestly I figured if she got hit she'd be dead anyways.

The werewolf who was on fire many turns ago. These things are indispensible in a mission this long.

Fucker! God damned sniper spotter peon cunts!

Well fuck, she's basically out of commision now, I don't want to lose her.

We'll hide behind the ship for now.

Mechoid capture successful!

We can't quite get all the way back to the ship, but pretty close.

Turn 24 now. At least turns are a bit faster now.

We've basically got everyone back aboard, aside from the werewolves as sentries, and our wounds are healed. We've got some interesting prisoners now, and I'm tempted to just leave, as we've been taking hits pretty steadily and the enemy numbers still seem quite high. However, what I really want from here is that purple shield tech, and neither of these two will have it, I think. Also, at some point that ogre died. For some reason, we can't cure it's stun the way we can with other characters. Weird.

If I'm going to tough this out, I want Manatee to at least be able to move and fire in an emergency, and that 6 freshness is going to make her a liabilitiy.

These cigars are pretty awesome for recovering freshness, provided you've got the hp to spare.

Sadly, we do not have the hp to spare- we need enough to not get knocked out by the stun damage.

We
We'll settle for the buddha smokes, which are like 1/6th of a cigar, and a bit less efficient health to freshness conversion wise.

We'll also drop our weapon, in case she goes crazy and starts firing randomly. Again. Yeah I didn't catch that with a screenshot but she totally went nuts inside the ship earlier.

And here we have my biggest fuckup of the whole mission. Echidna lands right in front of this dude, with the intention of stunning his ass. We somehow have literally 0 energy though. We can't even walk away a single tile, and won't have deflection if he shoots us.

At least he's got one of the real shitty guns, so maybe she'll get knocked out and live?

I don't trust that, so I have her hover upwards a tile (which costs no energy) and Jade runs in to try stun the fucker with a baton. She misses one of the two swings she gets though, and he's still standing.

Tac Armour has shit evasion, only 5% rea and 20% melee, so there's a good chance this guy can bypass it and shoot our poor catgirl.

So I bring Optimist in on things too. Hopefully he doesn't shoot her feet off. Probably should have hovered higher before doing this.

This is kind of hard to parse, so here's a description of what just happened. Optimist merdered the fucker easily. Enemy turn. The peon, which had been losing his shit for several turns, gets the balls to pick up his gun and shoot Echidna from below, killing her. Then the second hybrid further away, which couldn't have hit Echidna due to the tree foliage in the way, lands a shot on Jade Witch instead, killing her too. Two hands down in an instant.



Echidna II was my favourite hand so far. The way she took down all those enemies in the Rimrider base was fucking legendary. I should have saved a stasis pod for her. Losing the last of our original escapees is a tragedy as well.

Oh, and for bonus points, the enemy succeeds in mind controlling our werewolf on this turn, and he walks over and claws a nice big hole in Optimist, bringing him under 20 health. The mission just went from under control and very promising to absolute shitshow in about 3 seconds real time, all on the enemy turn.

It's at this point I remember that aside from voodoo strength and defense, DISTANCE is a massive factor in the success rate of these powers. And I've got no idea who is using them or from how far away. We regain control quickly, but our werewolf is now on death's door, and with zero freshness he can howl maybe once per turn from now on. Shit.

Oh, and Manatee just passes out now. There's just no way to recover enough freshness with smokes without losing enough hp that the stun buildup won't do this anyways. Catch-22, and part of why I really like titles and items that can passively recover stun, even if it's fairly easy to do with consumables. Also why Poisoner titles are amazing; they could allow us to keep using smokes and regenerating health, not very high but enough to stay on our feet at least.

I'm mostly just using the craft doors to take potshots at this point. Also, seriously considering fleeing again. Would be an utter disaster to lose our two best hands just for a couple mediocre prisoners though.

Fuck, one of these might make it worth it though. I'd imagine they'd unlocked shield tech, and maybe other cool shit too.

We're in no position to try though. Optimist has swapped out for a sniper rifle and takes him down in one shot from a safe distance.

Turn... THIRTY FIVE. Jesus.

Desperately wanting to catch one, I swapped Optimist to a Magnum instead, and he took a shot that broke shields on a technician without outright killing it. It fell down from it's wounds a couple turns later. SCORE!

And on my way to retrieve the prize we run into this. Guess we know who was doing the voodoo. Also, that gun is shit! Get him! Or so I'd like to say, but everyone already moved and shit this turn... it's just Robroy standing in front of him helplessly.

Welp...

Oh, and we've still got enemies firing at us from all angles well beyond our line of sight. Kind of wish I'd brought night ops now, at least one. Or a BETTER SHIP.

Or hell, arrived in the daytime, not that we had the luxury of waiting for that. All this fire provides a lot of light, but the smoke kind of counters that, and we still can't see shit from further than they see us, even if they're near a fire.

Not captured well here, but Robroy made a hail mary toss of a stun grenade at the elder after surviving the enemy phase... and it hits! And knocked the little fucker right out!

Also, Optimist has been one shotting everything he shoots with this magnum. From long ranges too, just sniping fucking hybrids easily. He is, without a doubt, the MVP of this mission.

Tits Randier, OTOH, is undoubtably the cockup of this mission. She just got mind controlled and dropped a poison grenade at her feet, fucking up Robroy. At least she had a helmet to mostly ignore the gas. Aside from utterly fucking the freshness of both of them.

Optimist downs his sixth enemy, and is out of ammo. I, uh, didn't expect to need this gun 6 turns in a row like this. He was supposed to tag a technician and switch to something else. We're pretty out of position now.

Oh, and he's been tanking shit he has no business tanking. That Doom armour must have some badass resistances.

Enemies still coming out of the woodworks with those crazy plasma guns or whatever they are.

At some point the last of our werewolves died. Aside from being a massive problem since, you know, they are our only renewable source of meat shield, the howls were also a reliable way to keep the prisoners on the floor. The next time that Mechtoid wakes up we'll need to kill it.

Which is right about now. And actually, we can't kill it, because we lack the TUs to spare. Shit. In retrospect I should have shoved it in the corner by the window without a weapon underneath. I just considered it a non issue because of how well the howls kept it down.

Well that helps at least.

In other news, I sent one of the newbie girls on a suicide run to spot enemies for Optimist to take out with the Fatty. Seems like a better choice than waiting for them to mind control us to death inside the shuttle.

Robroy ends up squashing the Mechtoid with the club, which I equipped quite a while ago, not trusting him to avoid evil spells and splattering our crew with a heavy weapon.

We're on turn like, 50 or something by now. They're going by very fast, only a handful of enemies left.

And this fucker got back up! We've been trying to reach him but the enemies suddenly got very aggressive and we couldn't get out there without being in a crossfire.

Luckily, it seems his morale has taken a hit from having dozens of his allies die.

Optimist risks it and runs out there, punching the elder out and then snatching the body. Well fucking done!

Oh, and he spots this guy as he does. Uh, might be an issue.

Over here, Terra is getting blasted with shotguns and ducking lasers and plasma bolts. She's also lost all freshness and her stun is so high she can't regen any energy at all. She's been trapped on that tile for like 10 turns.

Optimist still somehow not dying to enemy fire. His innate health regen is probably helping quite a bit.

We have left a LOT of bodies on the ground.

Something of an unsung hero, Ceres has been providing fire support here and there, and has managed to be the only person left besides Optimist who can still move around well enough to use a gun efectively. I give her an assault laser, since it's excellent for reaction fire, and have her cover Optimists back while her camps the west corner of the bunker. Also, behold the body piles where everyone died at once.

The two of them handle everything surprisingly easily, taking down quite a few technicians and other enemies. It seems the key to this mission is actually abusing line of sight via the walls of the bunker itself. I thought they'd just use the catwalks to get over our heads and snipe from above (and they did a couple times but not well enough to matter) but this was much better than trading shots with enemies surrounding us from the far off shadows.

We took out quite a few of these guys, and even found this one unarmed, a sign he broke at some point. I'd sorely tempted to try rush in for a kidnapping, but we're so close to victory I can't risk it and just put him down.

It was over 65 turns. SIXTY FIVE. 59 enemy units. We lost all four werewolves and our two best hands, but at least it was only two hands. And we got some cool shit again.

Oh, and bravery. Why the fuck everyone got it now and not in previous mission I have no idea. They all certainly need it.

Toys include a metric fuckton of reticulan weapons, 30 life support systems (we need like, 5 for an advanced craft)

6 Regeneration Chambers, those are probably garbage... Reticulan fusion reactions, mechtoid corpses, 1 of our own grav units...

And a host of prisoners, including an ogre, a hybrid, 3 sirens and an Elder! Infuriatingly, we failed to snag a technician, so we likely still won't have access to purple shields or the means to use a bunch of this tech. And we also failed to get a live mechtoid, which probably has unique rewards as well and would have actually been very easy if I'd known to howl at them from the start. At least we can probably snag those two in the future without having to take the entire base again.

Optimist gets a well deserved promotion.

As well as a title for slaying, I believe, over 40 Reticulans? God damned.

RIP Fallen heroes. Ye shall be sorely missed.

 

[std::namespace]

at the rate you are losing soldiers, you wont survive a ratman base attack...

at least here the elder was worth 1 dead vet... maybe...

 

[oasis789]

way too greedy trying to get captives on a base assault against plasma weapons enemies. maybe go for the elder but everyone else should die

 

[turkishronin]

Not even 1000 infamy after killing over 50 enemies...

 

[lightbane]

I couldn't catch it, but the enemy started mental attacks at this point, targetting the werewolf. His morale is basically untouched, so I'm not too concerned. It must be a weakling doing it.

I'm surprised the Sectoids didn't mindrape you to death, as usual in XCOM.

Turn... THIRTY FIVE. Jesus.

Reminder that in OG XCOM, by turn 20, all enemies automatically know your position. No idea if Piratez has this.
That was a mess indeed. Shame you didn't get into the bunker much to check how it looks like.

 

[Jaedar]

Very jealous of you snagging an elder, I haven't found one yet in my run. Not sure if I should be jealous of having so few researches in the list, mine has just grown since the start. At the same time, I think I'm far ahead of the lp in research (I've got 50 brainers total at this point and also in sept 2062).

That mission looked brutal. Maps with 40+ enemies always turn into meatgrinders, and fighting reticulans at night is bad news. At least mectoids are very squishy for mechanical units.

Reminder that in OG XCOM, by turn 20, all enemies automatically know your position. No idea if Piratez has this.

On most missions it it's the opposite, after 20 turns you will learn all the enemy positions. But some maps it doesn't happen. No idea if enemies also learn your position via hacks.

I'm surprised the Sectoids didn't mindrape you to death, as usual in XCOM.

I was going to comment on this, but I expect the lp will cover it once some of those prisoners get interrogated.

 

[oasis789]

We opt for the roof instead. Those dark patches are ventilation grates I believe. Probably easy to blast your way through. Would make for an interesting strategy.

this is really interesting though. if you had a squad of grav harness gals with a plasma torch or some other high power weapon to burn through the roof go straight to the command center snag the elder and gtfo 10 turns max

 

[Luka-boy]

I was going to say that the worst part is that he didn't get a live Mechtoid. If I recall correctly it used to be the only way of getting Reticulan Power Systems, and thus Power Tools, but apparently they changed it and now a corpse is enough.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Hallelujah!

way too greedy trying to get captives on a base assault against plasma weapons enemies. maybe go for the elder but everyone else should die

Probably. These fuckers are so damned rare though, and I really wanted those purple shields and whatever else a technician would unlock. Honestly no idea what I was thinking when the clusterfuck happened. I think the bars extending past the interface threw me off; what seems like 80% full energy on Echidna from the bars is actually like 50% or maybe less. The fact she has like 170 TUs means she can burn through 80 energy really fast, even if it seems like a ton.

at the rate you are losing soldiers, you wont survive a ratman base attack...

I know. If the game would stop being an absolute cunt and give me some decent training missions or ships with more than 2 people that aren't mercs to fight, I could build up a team. I should probably just chill more, stop trying to climb the tech tree so fast. That base had me spooked but realistically we're fine I think. Definitely not doing the ghoul mission this month like I'd planned, nor the burning mission I made a ton of looting gear for. Current goal: Safely rebuild a team of elites, even if we need to be a bunch of pussies to do it.

I think the real reason it doesn't work though is that enemies seem to stand up at the start of your turn, so you don't get an opportunity to reaction them before you get an opportunity to just smack 'em

Not always the case. Zombies will revive and bite you on their turn. But more generally, the issue is simply not noticing. It's easy to get distracted and forget to check and make sure the Z's are still there when you see a brand new enemy and someone dies or something. Trapping prisoners in a room with no weapons and a guard that won't gib them seems like the way to go imo. Just wish my ship had a suitable room.


This keeps happening. A medium ship lands, and then small ships appear shortly afterwards. Not sure if it's something I should deal with or like a vulnerable ship being escorted or what. We're being pussies today though, so I let it slide. The escort ships have 5k speed which signals to me that they're fucking scary.

Sum Martial training looks pretty damned good, lots of nice stat bonuses for only 3 days and no resources. Might run a bunch of units though this, especially those lacking in hp and str like catgirls, or those lacking in bravery like these raider gals.

We find a tiny landed ship and it ends up being more fucking Reticulans. Figures.

Don't think we got anything new here, but that fusion reactor is probably good for something.

Argh. Our main base, paradoxically, has the worst AA defenses because we don't want to irradiate our crewmembers. So I actually have to deal with this tedious shit.

We've got a different layout now, with a large crew quarter bordering the hangar. I figure it'll be fine to have that additional opening given how many troops and weapons are stationed here.

Was just a sad little nurse raiding party anyways. I did make a hilarious discovery: Werewolves are great for capturing academy drones by howling at them.

Oh hell yeah, I've been waiting for this.

Sorry BrotherFrank , I couldn't resist the pun. Time for everyone who opted in as a peasant to have a little fun.

Looks like it's a barebones set of zombies, just normals and fatties. Sounds good to me.

So why the fuck was I hyped for this mission and the nun outfits? Well... they get these things, which I never actually had a chance to try out on zombies before, but on paper, seem really, REALLY good.

I wonder if it's as busted as it was in Diablo.

As an added perk, this will let us figure out how much voodoo power all these peasants have. Sister Francesca here, sadly, is pretty average.

Still does the job though!

Turkish Ronin is even worse, and probably isn't someone we want to bring on missions where she might get mind controlled. Good thing the Rosarius only fills the jewelry slot, and leaves our hands free to use spears.

Belem Belle, on the other hand, has an excellent base voodoo power, and will probably make a good mage once we figure out how that shit works.

If the numbers seem a bit underwhelming for the TU cost and lack of armour, consider this: These zombies take double damage from this shit, and it bypasses armour entirely while draining TUs. Remember those freaky cyborg zombies we had to flee from ages ago? This shit would have melted them effortlessly. It also works on ubers, like our gals, at 100%, and therefore presumable raiders and sky pirates and such as well. I probably still don't want to throw nuns at ninjas, but this damage type is excellent.

I bust out those slayer rounds for Jaedar as well. They do a great job here like I expected, downing a zombie in two shots. Honestly, melting all these guys with holy bolts is a bit wasteful, as taking them alive is better and we could rack up a lot of training xp too. In the future I'll probably bring just the best couple nuns in case we need to down a zombie real fast and give everyone else slayer rounds.

Noticed some odd behaviour here: Zombies piling up against the window trying to get at our ogre, instead of pathing around inside. It seems they actually behave like zombies! Very cool and very useful to know.

We even give the catgirl a couple kills, training that melee skill with her bare hands after the bow ran out of ammo. Oh, and I apparently missed the screenshot, but we got some bravery ups here too! I think the rosarius trains bravery? Very cool if that's the case.

We researched the captured reaper cavalry and it unlocked the option to split them up into reapers and ratmen. Seems like a good idea. Honestly, the reapers take up so much space I'll probably just get rid of most of them.

A hybrid prisoner gave us the specs for their nasty plasma gun, which probably saved us a fair bit of time.

This interogation finished at the same time. However...

He gave us some very different intel. These things are a bitch to capture so I'm actually quite glad to have gotten this out of him.

And in turn we can now research the bracelet we don't have.

I don't think I actually want a tamed reaper, but the idea of making some poor runt try to train one for 50 days is entertaining, so I'm going to go ahead and do that. Hey, maybe it'll actually be useful somehow!

Hoo-boy, this is interesting. Definitely not a safe mission without a squad of awesome elites.

However, it's not as bad as I thought it might have been. 36 turns will be plenty of time, and we're actually free to bring gals and even ogres on this run. No grav boots, or heavy armour, but even so... I think this is doable if I don't get crazy greedy. And cool missions like this are honestly why I play the mod, so we're totally giving this a shot.

 

[Luka-boy]

Oh boy, here we go.

 

[Jaedar]

Oh boy, here we go.

Indeed. Mansion missions are a treat.

A piece of caution though: when I played the mission the game deleted all the non-infiltration gear I had on the ship. Bring only what you intend to equip.

 

[turkishronin]

Catgirls are made for BSC

 

[Average Manatee]

One thing I dislike about X-Com mods is that they all use the same set of custom maps and feel the need to include every one in its own special mission even if they are awful to play. The Mansion map being one of the worst.

 

[Jaedar]

One thing I dislike about X-Com mods is that they all use the same set of custom maps and feel the need to include every one in its own special mission even if they are awful to play. The Mansion map being one of the worst.

I did mansion properly once, and then used that knowledge to beeline some of the good loot one other time. Was offered the mission once more but skipped it. It is a pretty annoying map, but once you realize the regularities in enemy/item spawns it's not that bad. The games suggestion to try to get some loot and then get out is pretty shit advice though. It's way easier to kill enough important enemies to trigger surrender than it is to try and pick up good loot and make it to the evac.

A non-complete inventory of the good shit I found on this map: enriched uranium x2, treasure chest, liber occultus x2, airlessness x2, lots of govt files, some old earth books, data disks, sapphires. There's lots of loose cash and other stuff around too, but nothing you can loot without killing everything.

 

[lightbane]

XFiles also uses this map, and it's even more annoying as you have to kill everyone and capture a main target, with no chance to run. Even worse are the commercial maps with way too many buildings that seem to be extra-tough.

 

[Average Manatee]

Even worse are the commercial maps with way too many buildings that seem to be extra-tough.

Yeah I've always felt that buildings which can't be destroyed by the equivalent of OG high explosives in any mod go against the spirit of the game. At least if its common urban structures, specifically designed enemy buildings being hard to blast is reasonable (UFOs are the same after all).