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

[std::namespace]

I wish it just said the numerical ranks. Like fuck if I know what iron or silver skulls are.

check it together under awards and with kill count in: hands -> diary

Spoiler

killing fools in power armor or tanks

meh, powerarmor dies to a wrench in first 3 months of the game...

and aint no way im going to faceroll tanks with shields, its just asking for reaction fire, they tend to stand around for a turn without spending tu
and i dont think evasion applies to these fuckers, especially if they have explosive munitions...
if im stripping shields with a laserburst from remote than im applying rpg also remote

i guess in close quarters 2 gals sweeping a battleship could lasersword it to death instead of hiding like pussies...
dont we already have plasma daggers? or was it all lost with the ship?

but this

is a gamechanger

 

[turkishronin]

Base Assault and capture of Cardinal reminded me that George Floyd (PBUH) also died of overstun damage. If only someone had beer nearby...

 

[Damned Registrations]

Everything's coming up Damned.

Since we don't have a craft right now, the game decided to shower us with easy and or interesting missions. Haha, so ironic.

I end up doing a few missions anyways, mostly milk runs or small craft shootdowns. God, this shredder thing is disgusting. ~100 damage at this range with perfect accuracy and infinite ammo? Yes please.

I try the spore launcher out too. It is indeed scarily accurate in this guy's hands, but it doesn't arc like I thought it would, so it's usefulness is kinda limited.

And we accidentally blew up this engine as well.

Also, two of the fucking researchers I knifed in here were holding suicide grenades. What the fuck game?

Worth it though- we finally have a usable mind probe. No more nasty surprises. Unless I just forget to use the fucking thing.

I decided to try the UAC shelter as well.

Turns out, scouting it trivially with rats doesn't work- the rats overheat and get stunned after getting a single turn of movement. Lame.

Our enemies were also rats, but I didn't feel comfortable sticking around trying to blast through walls with explosive when my team consisted of a measely 2 goblins.

One of the weapons from the previous UAC vault. Actually a pretty decent gun, all things considered. I'd have totally used this if I got one early on.

Nothing useful out of this. It trades for MA tokens, but only 25 a piece.

I think I found one of these in another run during an Eridian invasion? I remember them being tanky and annoying.

Influence? In antarctica? UNACCEPTABLE. Shoot it down!

Sadly, I'm not shooting down nearly enough. There are a ton of enemy missions like this going on right now, and it seems to be tanking our influence a lot.

Ok, the gnome stories are cute and all, but I could really use like, gnomish power armour or something. Cough it up already.

Speaking of coughing... we have Luka's new weapon. Cannon + Poison, what's not to love?

Ooh, but this might be even better...

2 manning a space mission is a bit dicey, but I think we can do it with our crew now and all the laser weapons.

Wait, you can bring gnomediscs to SPACE? God damn I want one so badly. And a ship that could actually bring it here, because neither the kraken nor the predator would be able to.

I thought this would be a great time to use Luka, but it turns out Syns are kinda screwed in space, losing lots of stats and vision. I did have the option of using a space suit... but I don't know how that will interact with the Syn, so I use it on a gal instead.

Turns out to be a pushover of an academy station. 1 drone and some explorers with light las pistols and such. Though now that I think about it... cyberdiscs could be in space too. There's a scary thought.

Nothing special this time, but we got some nice loot for manufacturing purposes.

VooDoo class is going... painfully slowly. I kinda expected that though. It's fine, not like we have much to use it for right now anyways.

God damn, what a fucking cocktease of a reveal from the reverend.

Wow, look at all this amazing church tech it unlocked! It's so secret I can't even find it!

Thankfully, researching something truly important like uber maids yielded results:

Heh, I knew keeping those ninja gals around was a good idea. Good incentive to take more raiders alive as well.

Another rimrider base? Jesus. Why can't we get like, a highwayman base or something?

Well, this is certainly tempting. It seems too good to be true though. Is it actually going to be a massive income boost or like, 20% better than apples or something? Guess we'll find out...

I can't see the recipe without making the mint first, so I don't know how much labour these take. But I do know that the purple ones at least require a resource that is rare enough I only can do it once. Seems fishy. Maybe it lets me convert worthless crap like scrap metal or plastasteel into a lot of money quickly?

Nice! Our Kraken is going to be ready in time I think; it's got like a day left.

Well, the ship was ready, but my gear was not. I spent all my hours making the ship so we didn't actually have the cleanser outfits and gas masks I wanted to bring. These theban aqua suits would be perfect instead, and we've got decent peasants... but I realized too late and the mission vanished. Fuck. Next time for sure!

All's fair in criminal enterprise!

Ooh, I do indeed like those options. Creating smoke is annoying, but it's a lot more forgivable if you're dealing mass death in an AoE so aiming becomes irrelevant.

First mission for our new ship: Destroying the fuck out of this poor barn with a mortar strike from 10 feet away.

One gal was so frightened by Jaedar's unmitigated creulty towards farmers she gained bravery.

So, about that whole 'poison cannonball' plan. Small problem- Luka has 0 bravery. So this thing is about 30% accurate within vision while kneeling. Not, uh, great.

Though we did manage to pick one of these up!

Shame the cannonballs aren't viable with Luka, they're a great non-lethal option. Tons of stun, massive energy and freshness drain. Great for crippling tough enemies.

In the end, I had to send her in to just punch the fucking engineer out. Knuckle dusters for the win!

Nice little chunk of infamy too. Nothing impressive, but it'll add up if I just take as many of these as I can for the rest of the month. And our coffers will appreciate it.

An even easier run. Well, aside from the annoying weather.

Modron finally landed a hit with that cobra staff. Melted the poor fucker into nothing with one blast.

Hell yeah!

Okay, this isn't super important, but I just loved the description here. The fact that the catgirls already had perfectly function body armour... and they stripped it down into a bikini for fun. This seems a lot worse than gravboots honestly, it hardly gives any bonus TUs at all and is barely armored anyways. Maybe it leads to a shielded version like the bugeyes got?

Ah, perfect. All the power of poison grenades, without the bullshit of having to spend 90% TUs to fire one, or needing throwing accuracy. And it'll explode on impact!

Well, that didn't take long. Guess that hp limit is quite low after all.

This demon altar was also a cakewalk, just spiders as enemies, and I brought an arsenal and rat mage. I even brought the gnome, who is rocking a 48 damage golden SMG. Not bad for a small unit.

Hell yeah! More avenger armor. I hope it's in every shrine so I can make an army of these to beat up ratmen with. We got another teachings of night as well, and a simulacrum brain this time, which sounds more important than arms.

Interesting, this isn't a goblin god AFAIK. Got it from the chaos cultist, which fits I suppose.

The other side of the industrial scanner techs. Honestly, I think this is the better place to spend the money. At the very least, it'll give me 100 more run slots, which is like a million/month income anyways. And maybe unlock some cool armour. Not to mention being able to fly through crafting other things. Sounds great!

 

[Jaedar]

God damn, what a fucking cocktease of a reveal from the reverend.

Dude gets the best reward from interrogation on first try and gets upset.
(techs in all cap means it's an interrogation only tech, which are the most important ones as they can easily block your progress)

The other side of the industrial scanner techs. Honestly, I think this is the better place to spend the money. At the very least, it'll give me 100 more run slots, which is like a million/month income anyways. And maybe unlock some cool armour. Not to mention being able to fly through crafting other things. Sounds great!

This is also why you can break down genius loci. Printer+mint = BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

 

[std::namespace]

holding suicide grenades. What the fuck game?

is this maybe because of sniper/spotter? i dont remember this happening
anyone else?

VooDoo class is going... painfully slowly. I kinda expected that though. It's fine, not like we have much to use it for right now anyways.

what about the mage's wand? what are the stats?

The other side of the industrial scanner techs. Honestly, I think this is the better place to spend the money. At the very least, it'll give me 100 more run slots,

manufaktorium base? yay! also dont lose it to ratman!

 

[Damned Registrations]

Friendship is Witchcraft

what about the mage's wand? what are the stats?

Bad. It's basically like a vastly inferior version of the Bugeye's psi attacks. It also has a hex mode, which deals mind damage. But that scales off voodoo mastery (skill times power) so it hits for kittens.

(techs in all cap means it's an interrogation only tech, which are the most important ones as they can easily block your progress)

I bet this is why my voodoo tech sucks despite all the shit I've done. Fucking mages holding out on me.



Just took down a runabout and it had 4 of these industrial scanner in the loot. This is why I don't understand the genius loci conversion thing. These things aren't THAT rare. We got another ship engine too! One more and I can start a power station. And an engineer! Really a nice reward for an easy battle.

Sadly, this training is only finished so quickly because Gnomes cap out at a lousy 15 skill.

Is it finally happening?

ItZ HAPPENING!!!ONE

Damn, I'm pretty sure I sold some of these off already. Anyways, Gandalf is the obvious choice here, with the best VPW. Also, +40 bravery, including 20 going past the cap? Hell yes! Feels like there must be a catch...

Glad I read this before destroying one of our hermit outfits! Also, I guess only gals with decent VPW are even eligible to begin with.

Ahhh now it makes more sense. -3 armor is kinda nasty but not crippling by any means. The higher stress could be a pain in the ass but I doubt I'd be doing this to many low rankers anyways.

I just realized I can't use the herbalist outfits without first training the catgirl as a herbalist. Durr. This is actually pretty labour intensive; it's 4200 runt-hours to make that much rum. At least I've still got a huge coconut stockpile. Definitely want a squad of these. Also, why isn't voodoo skill revealed? I have the school, we know their skill now!

Found a good use for these kinds of milk runs where it's barely even worth the fuel- psi training. I just loaded up all our bugeyes so they can torture this poor yeti. I could do this with other voodoo stuff too, like the master's cane, but most of the other people I'm training voodoo on have better stuff to spend their freshness on. Mabye after i get a luxury spa. That's looking kind of tempting with all this magic I can start using properly now.

Not too bad!

Oh, well, that explains everything.

Nice. Now we just need to find one.

Got a couple new research options stealthily added into the tree from the golden witch. This one looks particularly exciting. Tome of Lightning unlock? Something even better?

You know, after the star gods, I think we'll need to dedicate ourselves to wiping out these spiders.

Well, it's not a ghoul town mission, but I think we can handle this one as well now, and I'm curious what owning the place will mean.

You know you're in for a fun time when the screen filter changes this drastically. Also, somehow the shield lets us take about a third less damage than normal platemail. Weird. Sadly I don't have the fireproof shirts I wanted for this, but we're probably fine.

This shit happens about 20 times across the map every fucking turn.

And there's imps everywhere. The imps seem to be firing randomly as well for some reason.

Fuck, I didn't check her freshness. I forgot she got tagged with the poison earlier and is going to take forever to recover.

Seems even with the cleanser outfits only taking like 25% burn damage, they still lose hp just from the background, even without getting hit by a fire burst. Well, we should be fine. Also, Strange Fellow hadn't been getting much use lately since I was trying to avoid the murderer tag and stun bolts weren't really cutting it any more for anything I actually wanted to take alive. But he got the murderer tag at some point (fighting the star gods I think?) so we may as well load him up with some EP rounds and use him like anyone else. He's very well trained at this point, at least for firing. VooDoo power is lacking though.

It's like, turn 3 and this is what the map looks like already. Also, apparently there are bystanders, as I can hear them screaming and found this corpse up here.

The inside of the buildings isn't safe either. Can't find any of this loot that supposedly exists.

We're killing so many imps that morale is stable despite the low freshness. I decide to bring her out to help finish things up.

Fuck; I though hiding by the doorway would be a good way to avoid getting torched but I forgot they can melee you as well.

Damn, close call. Cleanser armour is not meant for melee.

Found one of our allies. No wonder they're all screaming.

Finally found some of this loot. Seems like it's stashed in little armored vaults scattered on the map.

Anything outside is pretty fucked. Aside from the imps, the barrels keep exloding from the fire. Not many safe places to stand.

Well, that certainly qualifies as loot worth grabbing and running with. We seem to be doing well though, so I stick it out.

Most of this crew is actually peasants in aqua suits. The suits themselves offer 50% burn resist, which isn't terrible, and they have 66/6 gold shields. Gold shields take lots of extra damage from fire, but it's still effectively immunity to the background fire damage and even the occasional imp shot.

Seems sketchy out there. I'll just hide here in this armored room next to this giant stack of metallic dicks. I'd love to climb those stairs and go up onto the catwalks, but there's literally one entrance to them on the entire level that hasn't been blown up, and this isn't it.

Fuck, some stuff I took to be invulnerable background objects was apparently giant chemical vats or something. It started a chain reaction that set off about 30-50 explosions across the entire level. Pretty sure we lost some people in the chaos. In retrospect, I think you're intended to use foam grenades to suppress the fire around the barrels and such. I doubt the fire bursts did this, but rather the object being on fire itself, like when the stairs burnt down in the mansion.

Not even the inside of our ship is safe from the fire!

All in all, the mission progressed pretty quickly. Not a lot of reason to go slow and careful when shit is blowing up everywhere.

Shit, we actually lost infamy due to all the bystanders dying. What a shitty mission.

Well, okay, it rewarded us nearly 3 million in cash so I guess I can't complain. I bet there'd have been a ton of chemicals and shit if I'd kept them from exploading too. We need like, a fire suppression mortar or something.

Lost two peasants. They were both pretty decent ones, but nothing we can't replace with 3 million dollars.

These things really interest me. I can't wait to find out what they're for. Still no leads though.

We've run out of data disks but I recently got one as loot and it gave me a dossier on the hopper. I was disappointed until I closed it and this popped up! Apparently knowledge of enemy craft is what I'm missing to research more of our own. I'll have to see about taking down some more enemy craft and maybe looting their documentation. Or just getting more data disks; they're not that hard to craft at this point.

This was the other tech revealed by the golden witch encounter. Pretty stoked to see what I can get here. Purchasable filthy rags at last?

Weird, it let us craft a bunch of stuff instead. Some of that is new at least.

We can buy a few things too, but only this was new to me. It's basically a great club that also scales off voodoo and gives some elec resistance. Very nice! The 33% TU cost to swing kinda sucks though.

I don't have a dossier on this thing or the rod of bliss yet. Anything called a 'magma glove' has to be pretty awesome though, right? I'm surprised it doesn't require gems or something like that to make.

 

[Jaedar]

Glad I read this before destroying one of our hermit outfits! Also, I guess only gals with decent VPW are even eligible to begin with.

I guess this got buffed recently. It used to lower the stat cap for str/melee/firing/throwing. Now it seems like a pretty strict upgrade.

Also, why isn't voodoo skill revealed? I have the school, we know their skill now!

I think ? here means 0, at least for what they have. The game seems to have some boolean opinion on whether someone has undergone voodoo training or no.

You are supposed to count your money before you sell it!
Personally I prefer to stockpile it for a rainy day.

 

[Modron]

Fuck, some stuff I took to be invulnerable background objects was apparently giant chemical vats or something. It started a chain reaction that set off about 30-50 explosions across the entire level. Pretty sure we lost some people in the chaos. In retrospect, I think you're intended to use foam grenades to suppress the fire around the barrels and such. I doubt the fire bursts did this, but rather the object being on fire itself, like when the stairs burnt down in the mansion.

Closest thing to having the PEPCON explosion in a game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEPCON_disaster

 

[Damned Registrations]

Gandalf is going to enjoy using that...

A disappointing result after a lot of hours invested; I'm not a big fan of cannons, let alone ones with AP rounds, and it didn't unlock any research. I was expecting EMP rounds or BIO or somehting. I suppose I could keep one around for fighting tanks, but it feels like explosives do a better job of that. Or ninjas with force blades.

Another magic thing we can just make now but... we need bounty tokens from a new faction? Interesting. Better hoard all my demon skulls and such.

So I finished a refinery so I could build some gas grenades for Luka... turns out they also provide way, way higher profit margins than Grog. Throwing one of these in each base basically means our money problems will be over. Hell, even just having this in the same base as the printer is going to be a massive income boost. And if chemicals are this good, what is the mint going to look like?

An item for safely keeping prisoners from waking back up. I like it! It counts as a medkit, apparently.

What the fuck is this shit? Just randomly lost a nation for no discernable reason. I'm guessing either all those 'sway government' missions did it or there was a base down there I hadn't discovered. Not sure how the fuck I was expected to stop a fleet of like 6 large or extra large warships from doing those missions. Whatever, I don't need your stupid money anyways! I got my own! And blackjack and hookers!

The fast transport... isn't that fast. I mean, it's way faster than the kraken, holds more troops and can fit a tank inside, so I definitely want it. But some on, how the fuck is a ship able to go to another planet but not outrun a fucking hoverbike?

Realized the soldiers I trained over here are going to take just this side of forever to recover. Exchanged them with some peasants at our main base.

Hmm, it'll require 2 more ship engines and most of our remaining life support systems. Probably still worth it, but I want that power station as well... I guess if we keep shooting down craft and harvesting parts we can simply do both.

So now instead of church cruisers I can get myself killed by Eridians. Lovely. Funny how all those hyper aggressive ninjas vanished once the kraken was up and running.

Damn, this thing is even better than I'd dared hope. Slap this on an ogre and it's basically pinpoint accurate, arcing plasma death. The energy and stun cost are trivial as well.

I'm curious if this will unlock new missions right away or we'll need another tech. Also curious how the game will cause us to take multiple days to do a mission based on the geoscape system.

Time to stop sitting on our asses and earn some infamy.

Yep, that's a good fucking weapon alright.

Lighting an enemy you just dealt ~100 plasma damage to on fire is just so trivially spiteful. I love it.

I decided to have Lenneth run around with the laslock gun to rack up pirate weapon kills and try for that fusion arts training. 3rd iron skull is only like, rank 4 of a title, so it should be pretty doable. I can always switch to a cutlass or something for melee later as well. She's got so much skill and strength any melee weapon is good enough in her hands.

Every fucking time I think I'm in for an easy run against these assholes, I find shit like this. I swear the devs just wanted to lull you into false security with their other shitty weapons.

Well, this is why demon gods invented grenade launchers.

Hah! Take that shithead!

Err, okay then.

Fuck, I forgot to give her a gasmask for this mission (or rather, I was worried about cold snaps so I gave her cold weather gear) so naturally they started hucking poison grenades. That's going to take forever to recover from.

Well, we got our decent infamy reward at least, along with a young uber that survived! Nice.

Finally saved up enough for this. Freaks seem to work basically how I expected.

Damn that's pricey though. Especially since half or more of them probably have some crippling stat deficiency somewhere. I'll put this off for now until I get the economy really rolling. Money would be better spent getting some nice catgirls and goblins instead for now.

So I've realized Luka isn't actually immune to choking damage, only like 90%. So basically, health damage won't happen, but losing all your freshness still can, especially for a Syn that has a cap of like, 20. But I've discovered an easy solution: Smoking! Smokes cost 1 health and give 3 freshness. Luka regenerates 3 health per turn anyways. Basically, we've got infinite freshness recover here. Nice!

Voodoo armour? Sign me up!

Oh hell yes. I want all of that so badly.

Hmm, rat people with super tech? Interesting.

Speaking of beastmen- I'm going to abuse the fucking out of the megapol patrols now that I've got like 4 bugeyes and access to voodoo training. They're just hilariously easy to terrify and mind control.

Damn, now there's a laser weapon I can respect. That'll punch a hole in some armour for sure.

Nice, it has vehicle mounted options too. Tempted to make an armored car for it, but I think I should hold out for a proper tank instead.

Oh damn, these are exactly what I want. Plasma and daze deal full damage, but plasma is rare and daze tends to not be that much of a threat. Having virtual immunity to lasers, stabs, piercing fire and concussive would be insane. Sadly, it didn't unlock any outfits just yet. Time to focus on those in the near future I suppose.

Forgot these come from the socializing research. I'll have to do some more of these, seems like it'll lead to some cool training options.

 

[std::namespace]

why are you not researching power armor parts?

voodoo destruction is not the green way

Luka regenerates 3 health per turn anyways. Basically, we've got infinite freshness recover here. Nice!

and they say smokng kills lel

 

[Jaedar]

why are you not researching power armor parts?

Power armor kinda sucks imo. I prefer plate armor over the first few variants of power armor. Might come down to playstyle though.

Not sure how the fuck I was expected to stop a fleet of like 6 large or extra large warships from doing those missions.

Cap'n if the ships be landing to konduct diplomacy, mayhap we could pre-empt with diplomacy of our own, since our bases always be landed?

Damn, this thing is even better than I'd dared hope. Slap this on an ogre and it's basically pinpoint accurate, arcing plasma death. The energy and stun cost are trivial as well.

tu% attack cost = throw it in the garbage bin.

Also curious how the game will cause us to take multiple days to do a mission based on the geoscape system.

It won't. All missions are instant.

So I've realized Luka isn't actually immune to choking damage, only like 90%. So basically, health damage won't happen, but losing all your freshness still can, especially for a Syn that has a cap of like, 20. But I've discovered an easy solution: Smoking! Smokes cost 1 health and give 3 freshness. Luka regenerates 3 health per turn anyways. Basically, we've got infinite freshness recover here. Nice!

Congratulations, you have invented bender

Hmm, rat people with super tech? Interesting.

All the ratmen we've seen so far have been the lowest tier of bandit. I suspect this is a warhammer fantasy (skaven) reference?

 

[lightbane]

and they say smokng kills lel

I like the picture of Alita smoking to regenerate.

Power armor kinda sucks imo. I prefer plate armor over the first few variants of power armor. Might come down to playstyle though.

Doesn't late game power armor rock?

Also, why don't you use the latest patch, Damned?

 

[Jaedar]

Doesn't late game power armor rock?

In a word: yes. Think 100/25 blue or red shields, 90+ armor all sides, less than 100% damage from most sources.
But lategame and babbies first power armor are far apart.
The first power armor I actually wanted to use was assault marine armour, which has as a primary dependecy a tech that is required to reach the 2nd highest captain rank

Also, why don't you use the latest patch, Damned?

It seems prudent to wait until at least the first bugfix after dio adds new content?

 

[std::namespace]

Power armor kinda sucks imo. I prefer plate armor over the first few variants of power armor.

yeah

but it does have 100 frontal and 0.9 pierce resist - a nice buffer to tank those gauss reactions...
add a shotgun shield and its up to 0.8 resist.
plus the armor titles and you are looking at tanking 140 dmg gauss hit without taking hp dmg. (140*0.8 == 112)
i really hate piercing dmg...
he is also really close to the bio suite i think, just voodoo communion and reventant armor short


have to to start somewhere

 

[Luka-boy]

Worth the wait.

 

[std::namespace]

Worth the wait.

 

[Jaedar]

Worth the wait.

A good syn could probably solo a merc base actually
As long as you remember to shout WRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY the entire time.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Just a quickie.

why are you not researching power armor parts?

voodoo destruction is not the green way

From what I recall of power armor parts, it initially only unlocks the option to assemble a suit from pieces. We have... 2 pieces. And the finished product that gnome was riding didn't even look very impressive, to be honest. That said, I really want red shields, so it's back on the menu along with every other outfit we can research at the moment.

And it's not my fault we got voodoo destruction first! I suspect the ghoul town mission might have things more aligned with our codex. Hopefully it shows up soonish.

Also, why don't you use the latest patch, Damned?

Eh, I tend to avoid updates on principle. They tend to bring bugs and crashes. My general policy with computers is: If it's not broke, thank your lucky stars because it will be for no reason once you change somehting.
Besides, it's not like I'm lacking for content right now.

A good syn could probably solo a merc base actually

Feels like this is true of almost any type of soldier honestly. The power creep with enough accumulated titles and transformations is insane. Our syn is probably nowhere near 'good' right now though. There's got to be a nice outfit that provides even more amrour, a better shield (I'm guessing not purple or red since they seem voodoo related) or some crazy stats or stealth or somehting. I'm working on it though, both equipment and amassing titles. For now, Luka is a useful support unit taking safe shots from the ship mostly. I've still very worried I'll lose her to something dumb like a priest with a cannon or something. I hope we can find a mission with real weaklings to farm soon, some extra armour from monster hunter or gal of steel, or a bunch of reactons from a massacre with light weapons reaction firing each turn, would go a long way towards survivability.




Going to try shooting for our 8k target for the next rank this month. Maybe it's greedy, but it feels like we're back in the swing of things and most of the rank ups have brought pretty nice rewards independant of our tech level, which still seems to be lagging in some key areas.

This thing was on top of the ninja's APC, which is thankfully an immobile craft, rather than a giant roving war machine.

And this shit right here is why we're staying inside the kraken for turn one.

Luka is abole to get a firing position on this turret by stepping a few tiles out onto our roof, and then get back indoors. The accuracy is crap, but this is the perfect chance to rack up Lady Luck titles like I wanted.

Sure enough, we're up to 6 now. The mission itself was fairly unrewarding; we took some prisoners, including a single warrior, but most of the bystanders died so there wasn't much infamy, and ninjas use shitty weapons. Still, better than nothing, and the titles and xp are always nice to get. We picked up poisoner on a latter mission as well, a church comm tower with lots of neophytes to murder with a grenade launcher.

Hoo boy, this seems like it'll unlock some fun stuff. And it even gives 3 brainers! Not that expensive either, and doesn't require special materials. Either that accidental summoning during defenses is a huge drawback, or this is an awesome facility I want in nearly every base. I think I'll put it in Avalon to start with; we've got a few brainers and a library there already, along with a ton of work space and a double prison. I should take a screenshot of our 3 bases later.

God damn that's a big fucking gun. I think I've only ever seen one gun heavier, and that was a reward from slots IIRC. I dunno who this Sentinel Order is, but I like their style.

Our industrial printer is up and running, but we don't actually have the crew space to take full advantage of it right now. 161 isn't that far off though, especially once you factor in extra space occupied on some projects. I think we'll sell one of the 2 farms to make room for a crew quarter and some other nice stuff, like a power station and a mint. Gotta get the money together first though. But the printer + chemical sales will certainly help a lot in that regard.

Revealed from a humanist instructor we captured. That is certainly a fucking tank. Damn. Sadly, didn't unlock any tank tech of our own. Note to self: prepare chem weapons to deal with something like this. That's not going down easily to even an RPG or something like a heavy laser or plasma weapon.

Got this off a data disk. The grenades themselves are whatever; I dislike grenades for their insanely high TU costs to prime and throw, and their tendency to land at someone's feet or get stuck in a tree, often hidden in some visual clutter. However...

It seems like this was our foot in the door towards unlocking other electronically locked weapons. Neither of this terribly excite me much, but if that rail rifle leads to being able to use looted gauss weapons...

 

[Jaedar]

s. Either that accidental summoning during defenses is a huge drawback, or this is an awesome facility I want in nearly every base.

Spoiler

The summoning circle is a high priority spawn location for 1 of your guys, and one of the enemies, as well as a few extra low priority spawn locations for your guys. It isn't catastrophic, but if a rocket launcher dude ends up spawning there it's bad.

I think it might also spawn in extra dudes, or teleport dudes to it every few turns?

3 brainers in a single facility with no other prereqs is a huge amount of brainers though. The hypno panels are kinda rare if you haven't done a base assault.

I dislike grenades for their insanely high TU costs to prime and throw, and their tendency to land at someone's feet or get stuck in a tree, often hidden in some visual clutter. However...

If you open the minimap primed grenades will show up in red. But I also find grenades a bit finicky to use compared to other throwing weapons. 96 damage is pretty good though, even if you need two people cooperating to comfortable deploy it. The ability to pre-prime them at the start of combat can also be fun.

 

[lightbane]

Eh, I tend to avoid updates on principle. They tend to bring bugs and crashes. My general policy with computers is: If it's not broke, thank your lucky stars because it will be for no reason once you change somehting.
Besides, it's not like I'm lacking for content right now.

This update has more stuff for catgirls though, and you want that, no?
Either way, it's an understandable sentiment.

 

[orcinator]

Shit, missed out on this, wanted to see what's been going on with the mod since I first beat it (Jack Sparrow but a with save scumming)
Looks like they still have those weird damage calculations and a need to break out the calculator, no not the basic one the graphing calculator they made you buy for school back in the day, to figure out what weapon is the best. (STANDALONE FUCKING WHEN?)
And they added cats.

 

[std::namespace]

I should take a screenshot

so who killed the most creeps in base assault? lenny?

good syn could probably solo a merc base actually

really? right now or later with shielded armor? even later that be a lot of smoking to keep freshness up, 66 mercs is a lot

 

[Damned Registrations]

E1M1 is still the best track in the whole fucking genre.

3 brainers in a single facility with no other prereqs is a huge amount of brainers though. The hypno panels are kinda rare if you haven't done a base assault.

It does require a library actually, but yeah. And I figured the hypno panels were rare and probably needed for some facilities, so I've hoarded them.

so who killed the most creeps in base assault?

Lenneth, but not by much. She had 15 kills, while Rising Angel and Gandalf has 12 a piece. To be fair, a lot of these kills were ones that didn't really matter; just enemies getting reaction fired by the whole team as they came up the lift. Risin Angel probably did the most actual work, popping down the lift to make key shots. But she also had full plate to rely on. I stand by Gandalf Z being the most impressive member there, really performed better than I'd expected for an undertrained unit in subpar equipment.

Update!

I keep hoping and keep getting disappointed by the monster hunts. Give me a fucking spider hunt already so Luka can go solo it!

I always get my hopes up a little when I see a new faction element like this pop up, that it might reveal new contacts, possibly even a bounty collection. No dice so far though.

Damn, that is potentially ~720 plasma damage in one turn. Very high rate of fire indeed.

I mean, how can I say no to that? I hope it lets us build more. I think the legion armour might actually be better, but it's hard to say.

Screenshots of our bases. Here's the main one, mostly focused on researchers, unlocking researches with various 'functions' like the social from the mess hall, but also lots of medical facilities to recover our assault team quickly, which kind of synergizes with the research. Running out of room though, and it doesn't have adequeate missile defenses. Maybe when I research SAM sites that'll be better. Also, once I get another base up nearby I'll dedicate it to interceptors and we can ditch one of the hangars. I kind of want to ditch the dojo as well, but maybe it's enabling a lot of the training programs? It's honestly pretty frustrating that a lot of the research is tied to the old earth lab, otherwise I'd make some other base the research one instead.

Avalon used to be just the money maker, but it's become the manufacturing base now I suppose. I'll probably ditch one farm in the near future to build stuff, and the other one (and the beehive, sadly) eventually once we have so much cash it's no longer needed. This also has our double suite prison and 3 extra brainers, soon to be more. The prison is partly because it's easy to convert them to slaves here, but I think I want a dedicated prison base as well at some point. Also, this base is immune to T3 missile strikes. It'd be rather light on defenses for an actual base defense though, so I'm worried it might get invaded by ninjas or something some day. Again, better AA guns would be nice here. Though to be fair this is also where I'm currently stockpiling werewolves, but we're down to like 4 or somehting actually trained. Note to self: ship over some meat and grow more weed at 3rd base.

The third established base. This is just straight up money production, both from farms and runts making grog. I probably won't change it too much- maybe throw in a refinery or mint to make the runts more efficient, or a summoning circle for the extra research.
It's definitely the most easily defended in a base assault with all those flak cannons and no hangars AND a beehive, but ironically it's also still technically vulnerable to a missile strike if the RNG hates me enough. The farms aren't a huge money maker at this point in the game, but they are still useful if I need weed or boomfruits, so I don't really want to get rid of them. The 4th base is literally just an entrance with 2 flak cannons under construction. I started it at the beginning of the month so it shouldn't get raided until I get some crew in there and the cannons can handle anything sort of a ninja strike force. It'll cover Asia with radar and probably be another major money making base; I want a massive surplus before I start trying to make massive airbases or training facilities.

Luka might not have been able to farm monster hunter or steel gal titles yet, but she's been racking up plenty of others and the stats show it. Also sitll not down gaining base stats in the weapon categories. She'd already make an excellent sniper or adequeate ninja, but I'm really curious to see where the limits are at. Also, I keep forgetting because she's slim, but she's got Ogre levels of muscle too, if not hp. Would be cool having someone with this many TUs run around with a warhammer and oneshot tanks.

Church heavy gunship on a 'secret base' mission landed here. I don't know how rough this fight will be, but I'm pretty sure it'll be easier than another fucking church base raid so we're going.

Yep, that's more or less what I expected.

Christ, they all have gauss weapons. The good shit too.

Even the fucking neophytes have them.

Fortunately, our popamole fortress is well equipped to handle this. We just cycle people through the door on the second floor to take shots while the bottom floor is guarded by a couple melee experts.

Eventually an exalt shows up but Sister Francesca snipes her down. I don't usually like day missions, and it's scary with all these gauss guns everywhere, but fortunately the zealots seem to have kinda shit reactions.

Of course they brought some of these as well. Way easier to handle here than in that base though; it's got one place it could attack us from and a lot of open terrain we can snipe it in.

Man, enemy morale is such bullshit. This is after I've killed like a dozen zealots. I get she's an elite but seriously, why even have a morale mechanic on enemies this unbreakable?

I actually forgot to bring this gal back indoors once, but rather than getting shot down she reaction fired a zealot into a puddle. Lucky that it didn't happen until most of the enemies were already dead.

The battle is long, but easy. And the weather is temperate so the freshness lost is manageable.

We eventually see this guy pop out.

That wand of airlessness is so good for these guys. It's like it was built just to take them out.

After like 40 turns we're down to the last 2 enemies, but one is a reverand on the other side of the map I kind of want to capture, and the other is a mystery unit deep in their ship. Our morale and freshness is starting to be real shit at this point too. I tried using the rod of bliss to fight that (it increases morale for the user by 20!) but apparently it's 2 handed only.

I even had tight note here go insane on the turn I was going to have her use the rod, and she moved from the inside of the ship where the reverend is sleeping, all the way out here. Really trying for that darwin award it seems.

Toxo gets sent in to handle the mystery unit. Annoyingly, it's a beastmaster with a rocket launcher. If it were any other weapon I'd be confident in just standing in melee to deflect the shots, but if she tries to fire that point blank our kitty is done for.

Eventually I kill both remaining enemies and we collect our prizes. Lots of infamy, and some excellent loot.

Some nice xp as well.

Man, the gauss rounds alone could sell for half a million. I really hope we unlock these things soon.

We also got TWO full ship engines, which saves me 2.5 million towards a power station or that deliverator. Not sure which I want more. Probably the power station? Fielding tanks would be nice, but I suspect power station is a key facilitiy that will unlock all sorts of energy weapon or shield related tech.

We got another demon shrine! It's awesome how frequent these have been. This time we get vampire bats instead of spiders, which seem about equally as dangerous, honestly. I fail to take any of them alive sadly, these were pretty green recruits and I wasn't comfortable trying to land hits with a ninja stick or something, and the tesla coils friend these things hard.

Simulacrum heart this time! I suspect I've been very lucky getting different pieces each time. The armour, I assume, is guaranteed. We got 2 suits now! And another cup to make a weirdgal with. Today has been a pretty great set of runs altogether.

 

[Jaedar]

really? right now or later with shielded armor? even later that be a lot of smoking to keep freshness up, 66 mercs is a lot

Later. By good I mean rocking lategame armor, and some strong commendations. It's not that hard to get a syn to like 60 freshness, and once you've maxed their stats killing 2 mercs per turn on average should not be a big challenge either. I believe syn lategame armor is also relatively easy to research, but I am not sure because I got my first syn really late.

I keep hoping and keep getting disappointed by the monster hunts. Give me a fucking spider hunt already so Luka can go solo it!

I think the odds of a real monster hunt decrease with time, 3 years in you seem to be practically guaranteed to get the "trap" variant. There's always zombie bait for farming monster titles, I guess?

It's honestly pretty frustrating that a lot of the research is tied to the old earth lab, otherwise I'd make some other base the research one instead.

Make another base the troop base instead. Sucks a bit because it makes the old earth lab more vulnerable to assault, but your primary troop base needs at least 2 hangars. If I was starting over I'd give my primary troop base 3 hangars with 0 hesitation.

Man, the gauss rounds alone could sell for half a million. I really hope we unlock these things soon.

How have you not unlocked gauss cannons for your interceptors yet? It has 0 prerequisites.

Also 40 turns to clear out a church gunship

Congrats on finding teachings of the night, if you had the gray codex it would unlock something incredible

 

[Damned Registrations]

Congrats on finding teachings of the night,

It's my third copy! If there are other teaching to find in these shrines, I'm clearly spending all my luck on those simulacrum parts.

Also 40 turns to clear out a church gunship

I don't really mind as long as the turns go by quickly, and these ones did. Just pop a unit or two outside, kill something, go back in, end turn. I've had 10 turn missions take longer because I had to move a dozen units every turn.

There's always zombie bait for farming monster titles, I guess?

I hadn't thought about it, but yeah, I assume Syns can go on those since they're not hellerium powered? Guess we'll find out next time one shows up.

Make another base the troop base instead. Sucks a bit because it makes the old earth lab more vulnerable to assault, but your primary troop base needs at least 2 hangars. If I was starting over I'd give my primary troop base 3 hangars with 0 hesitation.

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.