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

[Azira]

Probably

 

[Jaedar]

This confuses me. Does this mean we can now revive anyone, even if they didn't get stasis pod'd? That would be... insane. We could revive Cleve! Really excited to get that cloning facility online.

No. I thought so as well at first, but it's not. The first revival tech you get simply requires that the soldier at some point got ko'd before death so they get the commendation for that, this tech works on anyone with an assigned stasis pod and a recovered corpse.

Heavy freighters are weird. A lot of tanks, bodyguards, fuckton of operatives... and then the loot they carry is kinda useless and worthless? I only did one of these missions as a result.

 

[std::namespace]

Heavy freighters are weird.

first power armor i saw, thats probably the loot

 

[Jaedar]

Heavy freighters are weird.

first power armor i saw, thats probably the loot

Guess so, the enemies might be the real treasure. Same with science vessels I guess.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Anticlimax

Let the carnage resume!

Turn 22. Long fight for a crash site, but I can't complain, kills have been steady. There's just a lot of dudes to kill. Shame I couldn't snag a ton of slaves like I'd originally hoped.

Though we did manage to grab one of the bodyguards. Didn't feel like it was worth the risk back when they were working with exoguards.

Slut is, of course, fine. With the amount of stun she had built up from smoking half a pack in 2 turns (I've got this mental image of having like all 10 in her mouth at once) getting stunned before dying was pretty much guaranteed. Between that, her armour and resistances, a weapon would have had to hit for.... ~200 pierce damage to kill her, and even then only if it landed directly after another hit took her right to the threshold of being stunned. I suppose a tank could have done the trick. Or those crazy laser cannons the exoguards had. Where is mine anyways, I should have brought it, would be good vs tanks...

Regen still working fine, 13 hp/turn when you factor in the wounds. God damn. If we had one of those surgery kits we could bring her back up to like 120 right away and she'd be back to full health in like 2 rounds.

~Just ignore the burning hellscape collapsing in behind me~

They did, in fact, have a fourth tank apparently. Since we're running low on options, I try the shredder. 212 damage seems like it might work, and it does thrash armour...

Well, not nearly enough apparently. I suppose it has massive stabbing resistance.

Though it was kind enough to get really, really close. I actually tried an electric lasso here too, but that didn't work either. Bypassing 50% armour doesn't help when the target ignores 50% damage too.

Ah, the head honcho came out. Was wondering if one would be aboard. Mission was probably worth it just for this. Certainly an easier snag than the two we found previously.

This is the actual spot I had to stop yesterday, I didn't evne have time to finish writing shit up.

Scrounging for weapons, I realize magic cards might actually be decent for Slut. She's got enough voodoo skill to make up for her shitty throwing, at least enough to get to 100% accuracy on an aimed shot. It'll do fuck all damage, but it'll train throwing up, which I've been wanting to do.

30 turns...

Well, we snagged the rep. And the flight plan too? Not sure if this is useful.

Lightbane is at 0 freshness, but the steady kills are keeping morale going.

I even sent Lenneth a ways out to scout, but no sign of enemies, tank or otherwise. Wish I had her in the dragonfly armour instead. The stormy is tankier, but I use her mostly as a scout/ninja at this point anyways. Her innate armour bonus is nice, but I could have really used a flying unit with massive nightvision right about now. Still torn on what to do with her. Weirdseeker and throw her in biosuit? With her bonus armour, she'd be nigh indestructible. Zombiegal, so we can just revive her easily and be way more agressive and make use of her stats better?

Well, if the enemies aren't arriving, may as well collect a few more prisoners. Lots of engineers to be had. Got the freighter documentation too. That'll be helpful to at least know it's stats.

The map is annoyingly large and forested. Tank is out there somewhere, but I'm reluctant to send someone out looking for it and end their turn when a tank could roll up and shoot them twice.

Finally, it shows up again. Uh, two actually. Both injured. I guess one of the ones I thought I killed earlier actually rotated out with a fresh tank that died instead.

Sadly, without the HVAP rounds, we can't just snipe the tanks.

I tried a chem grenade on one, and it stripped a decent ~20 armour, but that won't help unless I can get a bomb under it as well. Should be some hellerium grenades on the enemies...

Slut actually tanked a full on battlecannon shot and didn't even get a scratch. This armour is bonkers.

Pretty sure it was a direct hit too, judging by that tank's position. She retaliates with the magma fist. Accuracy is a bit lacking, but it's good enough to hit a tank.

Maria actually got nailed with a gauss weapon while running back inside after scouting. Seems the cavalry has arrived. Just a small hit though, probably only a rail rifle, not a proper gauss gun.

Snipey gun putting in more good work. Normal rounds are still plenty for the operatives, and even took down a bodyguard for us.

Lenneth picked off the rest, shredder is still an awesome weapon, especially in her hands.

6th tank of the mission. Lacking other good options, I just pelted it with shredders over and over again.

Zug got the final blow, and it didn't explode this time? Must be randomized.

43 turns... ugh.

Finally managed to get close to the ship. Pretty sure they're out of tanks now. Probably. Interestingly layout. If we'd been able to set up at their nose this could have been a killbox.

One last bodyguard. Painbringer with chem rounds stripped the armour pretty well, though it took like 24 bullets to do this much.

In the end, lenneth took him down with a poison dagger anyways.

Dang, that's a lot of infamy. Lots of resources too. Also, 81 enemies! Might be a new record.

The hypno panels alone are worth 1.5 million or so. Nothing really special in here, but it's a lot of value.

Lots of xp and titles too. Lenneth is finally eligible for fusion training!

Damn, definitely worth carrying a rocket launcher around for these. We got tank versions too. Those cybedisks looking a lot less scary all of a sudden. Should annihilate those automatons in the rimrider bases too...

Well, that's a shorter list than I was expecting.

Nano verson only adds one more gal to the list. What gives?

Well, Oasis at least is a big win. This was a designer gal. At least we have a second one back.

Nano version is slightly better in regards to stat losses and recovery time.

Yeah, Gumsmith had a pod too.

So did average manatee, so it's not like just ogres were excluded. I suppose it's because we never got the bodies back? I didn't think the game was even capable of tracking something like that, the corpses don't even get named when you pick one up. Well shit, guess I'll put these two back in the recruitment pool. Explains why we couldn't use Syn Revival on Luka too. Damn.

Rogue courier midway through the 3rd year? Bizarre. Had a single tomb raider when we shot it down.

Nuclear laser batteries didn't unlock any new tech, but the ability to make Lascannon and Autlaser clips makes up for it. Going to be using those some more for sure.

Kinda makes the whole zombie revival thing feel a little useless though. Honestly didn't expect to unlock this ability so soon after the zombie version, which honestly felt a lot harder to research for to begin with.

Apparently they come back boxed? Funny, that's normally only accessible inside missions. Still have all our crazy titles and stuff, so she's already combat worthy, and once the base stats recover she'll be a beast. Thankully, voodoopower wasn't lost either.

The fuck? Lenneth got her storm armour outfit replaced with castaway? Did the training do this? Why?

With a cloning facility, new techs were stealth unlocked for us. Advanced Cloning seems promising. We still havne't found a use for longevity serum yet.

Tried to send Aziri on a bandit warehouse mission to get some titles, but apparently loader armour isn't allowed. Lame.

Thankfully, Maria went along too, and Slut (who is also naked, because no biosuit either) and Maria can easily solo this place.

I'd actually like to try killing people with the neural whip, I suspect there's a cool title for mind damage kills. But it does 95% stun damage. I also don't want that stupid lawyer title... I at least figured out that whipping bodies on the ground only works if there's not a wall behind them. Strange mechanic, that.

But this turned out to be the one damned time they came out of the basement instead of waiting for me forever. -1HP for Maria it is!

 

[Jaedar]

Well shit, guess I'll put these two back in the recruitment pool.

Or come back as ghosts?

The fuck? Lenneth got her storm armour outfit replaced with castaway? Did the training do this? Why?

Some trainings just do this for whatever reason. The research description should mention it.

 

[std::namespace]

Well, we snagged the rep. And the flight plan too? Not sure if this is useful.

ah thats the loot too

Slut actually tanked a full on battlecannon shot and didn't even get a scratch. This armour is bonkers.

sandbags weight 128, do eeeeeeet! give her a plasma dagger

The fuck? Lenneth got her storm armour outfit replaced with castaway? Did the training do this? Why?

i think some training might even destroy armor,
i think internally the game is not changing the soldier class, it works by deleting the original soldier incl gear and creating a naked copy of a different class
dont quote me though

 

[oasis789]

iirc the first transformation in the gal path the hands initiation one states to change their armor beforehand

 

[Damned Registrations]

Home invasion.

Or come back as ghosts?

That's an option but... the ghosts kinda suck. So much of the game relies on your equipment scaling up, and the ghosts can't use any. At best I could bring some back and use them as pilots. The image of the ghost of Echidna flying around murdering people for us is amusing one... but she'll never match the stats of an elite living pilot, sadly.



Time to enjoy our loot.


So, we've got plenty of power armor parts now. Time to make another biosuit!

Cool shit incoming?

Huh. Well, 'privatizing world peace' certainly sounds useful. Expensive as hell to research though. I'll do the damper first.

Oh shit, that's more like it! I've been aching for that gnome disc for ages. If we can just make the parts, it'll be a huge help in space.

*Fingers crossed*

JACKPOT!

Hmm, the parts are kinda rare and expensive, but still very doable.

Turns out the lascannons we have don't need ammo. I guess the clips we can make are for an inferior version?

God damn the biotank is satisfying. Burn, fuckers!

Some more spy missions went off pretty well. Was tempted to keep it rolling but decided to cash in some honors to get some decent recruits instead.

ITZ HAPPENING!

Or not. Motherfucker. Well, we've got the glamour, just a delay while I move it around...

Ooh, another nice event. I've been meaning to bitch about the fact we never got a single hero in our male focused run, but I'll take an ace catgirl for sure.

Damn, we even get her ship and some new gear.

Seems it needs to be studied first. This has to be fucking awesome right?

One of the researches made possible by the clone lab. Turned out to be a dissappointment though; durathread is still king. It's not bad though, giving a payoff on par with chemicals. I like that there are so many redundant techs like this for important things, makes the whole blind run possible and just runs in general safer from being bottlenecked by RNG.

Researched the battlecannon tank. 133 power is no joke. We can research HEAT rounds too.

Our ace pilot. Already a hero, and damn, those are good stats for a fresh recruit.

Well, that'd fucking do it alright. What an amazing title.

Damn, her flightsuit looks cool too.

The other suit she came with is neat too. Seems to boost melee rather than firing? And shittier armour.

Holy shit that's a solid pilot alright. I think our original gnome might be on par with that, but damn. She's not even properly trained yet.

Not holding out hope this is useful, but nice to complete it.

Huh, not the free tech I expected. Cool.

Oh shit, he was important after all! How the fuck did he unlock this but not the exoguard? Whatever. That's a key tech for sure. That heavy freighter has paid off bigtime.

Researched this too. Going to be awkward finding a place for it; there's so many functionalities in the various facilities I don't want to throw this in some random base with room and miss out on a tech that needs like, space comms + gambling + cloning or some stupid shit like that. I'm sure I'm already missing some stuff like that by playing blindly, but I'm doing my best to stack things in codexia and avalon mostly. Neither has room for this though, especially since avalon is doubling as a production facility.

This was a big letdown. Just lets me manufacture animal hides and shit. Bah. Can't even make synthmuscle out of it. Maybe with some merc tech...

Got some more promotions unlocked after buying up some chaff to man the two new bases. And by 'man' I mean 'throw out a landmine or two while hiding in a closet and hoping cannons can handle an assault.' At anyrate, Modron is our newest royalty. Congrats!

Doublechecked this, and it doesn't say anything about changing the outfit. I think it just... unequipped her when she shipped over? Was sure it didn't do that though. Not the first time I shipped someone around. We still got the stormy suit back at the hangar base though. Weird.

Damn, we've got way more of these than I thought. I ought to make more use of them.

Kraken cannon might be pretty shit on land, but it turns out it's kinda awesome underwater with the SC cannonballs. Definitely bringing this on water missions in the future, might even make a few more. Also, it can set fires underwater. Lulz.

What the fuck is with all these assholes showing up and moving in like they own the place?!

Hmm, if it's related to the necronomicon, I'm interested for sure.

Damned thing is so large I needed so sell off a bunch of crap. Fuck it, I'm hiring workers for the space. We've got more than enough cash to spare now.

Guild rep interrogation was a huge flop. Grr.

This is... interesting. If I could fit it on a Syn I'd do so in a heartbeat, she'd be nigh immune to explosives. Maybe I'll chuck one on slut. She's already highly boom resistant, but a lot more won't hurt.

More bio tank fun. It can blast through these (plastasteel?) walls apparently. I love this thing. Still no dice finding enemies with shotguns to give us that gal of steel X title though.

Damn, this is one hell of a suit. It's actually well armored for a catgirl outfit, gives ~15 to firing, reactions and bravery, has insanely good vision too. Sadly, did not unlock the means to get more. Seems like it might be given from a special training type for catgirls?

Dang, I'd want this thing even if it wasn't story related. Like the hypercomms, it's a struggle to find a good spot for it. However, since it replicates a lab, and we can't make labs, I think putting it in codexia would be silly. Unless we need this + mainframe for something. ARGH. At least we could refund it to get the parts back, apparently.

Damn, now this is what I'm talking about. I've been holding off on the enemy base assaults partly because I don't want a repeat of sending in enough people to fill one room and leave another suicidally undermanned. I mean, we got that with a massive convoy anyways, but 24 is a hell of a lot better than 10. Still, might as well see what else we can research before committing to this; it's fairly slow, guzzles fuel like a motherfucker and can't go to space.

Yeah, now that looks promising. We've got that assault transport to research too.

Well, Oasis has recovered from being cloned. Now to go back into recovery by training her stats back up.

Forgot I had 2 of the necronomicons. I'll laugh my ass off if it means she shows up again next month and we can build a second tower.

In it goes. I decided on this base because the prison is easier to replace than big chunks of other bases. I foresee unlocking a bunch of new magic type facilities, and may as well put them in with the tower instead of stripping out stuff from avalon.

Dang... that's a paper tiger for sure. Fast as hell and about as tanky as a helicopter. I imagine the point is that with innate 40% dodge and the ace pilot, it's nigh untouchable... but I've got no details on enemy accuracy, so I don't like those odds. It doesn't seem to have a slot for gear either. I think i'll put a more expendable but still good pilot in here to use for sniping fast, weak ships, and have the ace join the crew of the crab to improve it's performance.

I actually considered dismantling the claw just to harvest this cannon from it. However, I don't know what slot it would fit in; it's not coded with the number the heavy guns have, and the light guns don't seem to have a number. This is a sick gun though, especially with a good pilot to fill in that accuracy gap. Does like triple the dps of our bioplasma and has enough rounds for thousands of damage that'll punch through armour. Even has good range.

Another month gone by. Nearly got enough rating for a rank up. Maybe we'll shoot for that next month.

Funny, Oasis seems to have gotten a battle title without being in a battle. Maybe it's carryover from the update a while ago?

Huh, built in micro-rockets. They're pretty decent; 80 power. Still, not really worth using such mediocre armour compared to gravboots.

Sounds like we'll be needing an IPL transport. I forget if the speedy rat qualifies; it might. If so, we're in business once that gnomedisc gets built. I'm already researching the lascannon version of it in anticipation.

 

[Jaedar]

Very eventful research and events this update. Steadily approaching the endgame.

ITZ HAPPENING!

The casino is great. 6.7 million income every month means you can skip so many missions and still be completely fine. And you'll finally get to use your best coupons.

Ooh, another nice event. I've been meaning to bitch about the fact we never got a single hero in our male focused run, but I'll take an ace catgirl for sure.

I never got this, event cool. I used shark jetbike a lot, which has +35 dodge, and the claw ship seems like a pretty decent upgrade to that. Still wouldn't want to send it against most serious ships though, risk is a bit too high.

The other suit she came with is neat too. Seems to boost melee rather than firing? And shittier armour.

Peacemaker suit micromissiles are cool. Not very strong, but very cool.

Guild rep interrogation was a huge flop. Grr.

But imagine when you loot one of these, this interrogation will have saved you 5 million in thieving brainer expenses.

Dang, I'd want this thing even if it wasn't story related. Like the hypercomms, it's a struggle to find a good spot for it. However, since it replicates a lab, and we can't make labs, I think putting it in codexia would be silly. Unless we need this + mainframe for something. ARGH. At least we could refund it to get the parts back, apparently.

Remember the refund ability, you'll probably need it later on...

The layout of this ship is so fucking bad. Also good luck having enough soldiers to fill 24 spots!

 

[lightbane]

Researched this too. Going to be awkward finding a place for it; there's so many functionalities in the various facilities I don't want to throw this in some random base with room and miss out on a tech that needs like, space comms + gambling + cloning or some stupid shit like that. I'm sure I'm already missing some stuff like that by playing blindly, but I'm doing my best to stack things in codexia and avalon mostly. Neither has room for this though, especially since avalon is doubling as a production facility.

You're supposed to cram slaves and Workers to replace Storages.

The layout of this ship is so fucking bad. Also good luck having enough soldiers to fill 24 spots!

You can put a few big tanks in the biggest transport ships instead. Works well too.

 

[std::namespace]

booooooooooooooooooooooring! merc base NOW!

 

[Damned Registrations]

Air supremacy.

You're supposed to cram slaves and Workers to replace Storages.

What storages? I've got 3 across all the bases combined, and they're mostly there for the flak cannon built into them. I've actually got a ton of slaves already, I should make a tally. Workers are a bit more annoying, but I suppose I can afford to hire more now.

booooooooooooooooooooooring! merc base NOW!

Think I'll go for the Rimriders first. Nicer weaponry, no tanks, more cool aliens we haven't captured and they have a ton of hellerium, which I could use with the fuel guzzling space ships.

Very eventful research and events this update. Steadily approaching the endgame.

Yep, progress feels so much better now that I've got 50 brainers instead of 15.

But imagine when you loot one of these, this interrogation will have saved you 5 million in thieving brainer expenses.

Lets be real, we both know if I find one I'm hoarding it in case it's a component to build a giant golden throne or somehting.


Discovered something weird here; almost none of these ninjas were visible until AFTER I fired the shot. No way they were in darkness so... what gives? Weird. At any rate, the minigun on the roof gave us some gal of steel titles for sister francesca at last. Good stuff.

I haven't mentioned it before, but this craft has one major flaw in regards to using tanks- once they exit, they have no way to get back inside if you need to abort the mission.

Not usually an issue, but this is a merc supply ship we shot down, and I don't fancy my odds of winning it in 10 turns.

We are getting a bit more intel on them though. Seems they're also quite weak to psi attacks. When we tackle the merc base, I'll be sure to bring all 3 of our cybermages, along with some wands of pain and those neural whips.

Fuck, I could have sworn these were at least like 12 or 15 turns. 10 is just way too short.

...and they have a tank. I was actually kind of stoked to try and take it out, but the fucking thing ran away right after being spotted. No way in hell we win this map in 10 turns now. Note to self: bring an extremely strong chem weapon to deal with these fucking things. Fingers crossed EMP works on them too, but chem is the only thing I know of to bypass this shit right now. Maybe daze was the other? *Checks notepad* yep daze too. So we either need to disable the shield (and emp burns down red shields, so probably not these) or bypass them with chem. Not sure what to use for that inside a base though... painbringers aren't really up to snuff, canister guns only have 1 AoE, chem grenades are too weak and slow. I need an acid rocket or something. Maybe the custom blunderbuss with chem rounds? There's got to be something... or we just overwhelm it with like, the vulcan and HVAP rounds. 30x80 damage is... 2400? Even at 25% that'd be 600 damage vs the shield...

These fuckers just threw like 4 grenades in a single turn. I was kinda hoping there was a small infantry presence because they have the tank, but clearly not. Hard to see them in this terrain too, especially at night with their camo.

Apparently I tried for possession a bit too much and Lightbane decided to go for a walk. Luckily nobody seemed to have spotted him because he didn't immediately get lit up with heavy gauss weapons or grenades. Note to self; bring the ratmeisters along for the merc base raid, both for sensing and for sacrificing to gauss tanks.

I really wanted to snag some loot before we left, but Lightbane is a big liability now and the nearest bodies are... not near.

Hmm, seems being inside the ship doesn't count for this craft, we need to be in particular spots. Another flaw.

Hah! I think this is the last of the big 3 engineering techs.

Ooh, those all look real good. Fuel capsules might be lame, but it might also be a prerequisite for craft that use them.

Took another look at these; apparently they require rocks. Fuck. That means we'll need to set up a mine. Or get a base blown up by missiles. I'm gonna try for the mine.

The lascannon variant of the gnomedisc doesn't replace the launcher, it gets the cannon AND the rocket launcher! Sick!

Ripper cannon turned out to be a light weapon. It's actually really, really good, aside from the annoying ammo being in batches of 50. But both the cannon and ammo are easy to manufacture, and this thing is way better than gauss cannons, let alone the 50mm we got on the speedy rat. I could totally see us setting up one of those nightmares with a pair of these and backup missiles for scary targets.

Gah, of course the cannon takes a lot of parts to make too. I can actually just buy MOST of these, but not the intergrated devices. Those are actually quite hard to get, we can't even dismantle stuff into them like we can for optronics or these other parts.

Between the crab and our new fighter, I decide it's time to stop letting those bombers do whatever they want. Took them down pretty easily. That's a big shift in our favour.

Damn it feels good seeing pilot exp reports.

Ah, so this is what those weird dildo looking things were. Seems they lack the ammo variety of a proper mortar, and they don't get the massive kneeing bonus either, so no 150% accurate shots into the fog from across the map. OTOH, we could easily stuff one of these in a backpack and get to a decent position with spare ammo, or even stick it on a flier to shoot from the air without risk of hitting a tree. Might use this after all.

Dunno why, but we can FINALLY research minilaunchers. Honestly, it's so late I'm not even that hyped for it anymore. Mini emp bombs and stun grenades seemed awesome like.... 30 weapons ago. Now they probably won't scratch our targets.

Seems the vehicle lascannon needs clips too. Mildly annoying.

Assault transport lives up to it's name with a full 4 weapon slots. Slightly more room than our current transport too, but also slightly slower. Maybe worth it if it has a nice layout, but I think we want to see that heavy transport first.

Something weird happened this time when I tried to send a pair of craft out to take down an eridian dominator (it's surprisingly weak!) I can't seem to get the speedy rat to act as a backup escort for the crab. It's faster, so it stays right on top of it...

But when combat starts it's not pulled into the fight. I thought this was because it is a transport, but I then had similar behaviour with the Claw. I managed to get them both in the fight later by having them both target the enemy ship, but then the claw was in front because it's too fast.

Damn, that's a beefy cannon. 50% armor pen as well. And yes, we can make the fancy advanced ammo packs for it. Stoked to try this out.

Craft lascannon is a bit less impressive, certainly less powerful than the ripper. But it's respectable for an ammoless option.

The real prize there is that it unlocked more research. I hope laser battery is a battery OF lasers and not a battery FOR lasers. If I can replace those sam sites we could open up a lot of space in our hideouts while remaining fairly safe from assaults and missile strikes. Particle weapons is also obviously very promising.

Hunting down supply ships for enemy bases now, and trying to figure out the weird escort behaviour. This was actually a flub; the supply ship landed and then we got ambushed on the way back home. Thankfully that ripper cannon did enough damage to kill both fighters before the transport exploded. The claw has been good for chasing down some random transports and such too. We're racking up a ton of infamy now just from craft battles.

Are you ready to be terribly disappointed? I know I am!

Yep. That's both tickets. I suppose we could roll the slots another 1000 times. There's got to be somehting decent in there. Kinda saving jack tokens for that plasma blades option he has though. We're rich, but not quite 'spend 30 million dollars to get 3000 tokens' rich. Yet.

Ah. Well this looks like a nice source of tokens. Time to give that gnomedisc a workout!

 

[Jaedar]

Can't quote the post for whatever reason.
The drakkar is quite nice, since it has IPL and the right crew size for some other endgame missions.

You got bamboozled with the ships again. The way it works is that ships that are hunting will pull in all your nearby ships when combat starts, but if the ship is "passive" (ie doesn't have a radar circle) you have to target it. But you can just minimize the interception window until all ships are engaged.

Slave witch isn't a terrible pull if you can research it.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Broadside of a large, stationary object.

Game is nice enough to reveal the enemy tank before the fight starts. I suppose that means it's immobile? Why is a tank immobile?

Dang. I suppose with that much armour (275 on the front!) you can e whatever you want. Would be interesting fighting this thing with like, a satchel charge or something.

I've got other plans. Incidentally, I wanted to bring the mind probe to see it's stats. Can't find it. Might have gotten blown up somewhere? Can't imagine when or how. Very annoying. Hopefully it's just in some random base I transferred a ship to or something. Or we find another one. Academy seems to have them fairly often and we're due for some more missions vs them.

Aziri apparently can't hit the broad side of a tank, but we can play popamole.

More whiffed shots. I know it's only 56% accuracy but even so!

Modron tries for a rocket and misses as well.

Aziri lands a rocket... but it's an EMP rocket I didn't intend to fire. The rocket launcher looks all futuristic and lasery, okay!

After a few turns of missing, I fuck up and don't have the TUs to get back into position. Unlike infantry, the disc need 8 TUs to fall down a space instead of just one.

Lenneth tries a rocket next to save the day... and whiffs. Something screamed over there and it didn't sound human. Not a great sign.

I think part of the problem is the 'hull' of the tank is like cover for the turret, which is technically on the ground level but mostly hidden from LoS.

Maria sinks the shot though!

Oh damn that's satisfying.

Celebratory rockets for everyone!

Dang, didn't even knock out a single dude with that. Even at 10%, that'd be... 15 emp damage + 60 stun vs 2 armour. I guess it's a wide roll though.

At any rate, we did pretty well. Technically, we didn't even let the enemies kill a single civillian!

Aziri making pretty good accuracy gains in the disc. Going to be more of that, playing with this thing is fun as hell.

Loot is lame, but battle tank parts might be new? We've got the dossier on the tank already so if they are useful for a recipe it'll be nice to have.

Lenneth got a cool title out of it too!

Only a third of the way into the month and we're past 6k infamy. Going to shoot for the next rank for sure with a start like this.

Found a terror ship over here. Having dossiers and decoders on everything sure is a godsend for figuring out what is safe to target.

Interesting crew compliment.

These things guard the trader bases too. In case you couldn't guess, they're kinda dangerous.

Wow, we are REALLY bad at aiming rockets.

Fortunately, we had an emp grenade. Note to self: make more of those. Didn't have the dossier so I'm glad my guess about it being emp vulnerable was right. Was kinda hoping/expecting a stun though, not a kill.

Aside from the dinos, enemies are pretty weak, a couple reapers and mostly PCMs with crap weaponry.

Another dino over here behind the ship.

Lenneth manages to shoot herself in the foot. Actually took a chunk of damage too, since her armour is all elektrimical.

Surprised it lived through that one. Guess all that bulk isn't for nothing.

Finished it off with an emp rocket that actually landed for once, vaguely near a target.

Ship is surprisingly small. But still roomy eough to let a gnomedisc inside! Muahaha!

Sadly, they surrendered before I could explore more of the ship. Seems the engines were already gone, but we got plenty of other components. 1 slave AI = 10 optronic parts, so we could make plenty of our own engines.

Ooh, fancy research room. We've got the analytics one too, and I actually have enough databases saved up to build one... somewhere. I almost feel like I need another base dedicated just to researchers.

Hmm, could this replace the old earth lab and let us build labs anywhere? Would be a game changer for sure.

Did the double follow and then start the fight thing for another passive enemy, worked like a charm. Just things I should have known 3 years ago.

Seems we've managed to tie our last month's score already. 12k is our target.

Dang, that's what I've been waiting for! Expected output of ~425 compared to just 280 for flak cannons. SAMs are on par with this but...

SAMs don't include these in the base defense. Honestly, this is kind of a sidegrade from flak turrets, which include a large blast radius. But I think the armour piercing makes up for that, would be great having a turret that can cut down a tank.

Nice, two more immediately useful paths! I wonder why this unlocked quarters... is it a combined laser defense and crew quarter? That'd save a ton of room.

Got 2 of these from the tank battle. Plasma blades, here we come!

In general, I've been doing a lot of little side missions I don't cover too, just enjoying our new level of overwhelming power. Bandit town is a fun one, they can't scratch the bio tank. And that gas gun...

Well, we're collecting some titles for sure.

Sister Francesca is becoming pretty damned powerful for a peasant.

Figured I'd grab this before building the laser batteries... but this is a bit less useful imo. Expected firepower is ~595 instead of 425... but I don't like that hit ratio. I want reliable damage, not spikey high average damage.

Gauss turret is in a similar vein; 250 power is insane, but it's less accurate and can only make 2 shots a turn instead of 4.

Well, time to unlock something real fun though...

 

[Damned Registrations]

I'd have savescummed over this if I could.

So, we're starting off with a huge cock-up and I don't even have a proper screenshot for it because it happened so fast. While hunting down a supply ship, the enemy attacked us as we were leaving, and engaged with the transport instead of the crab. Transport didn't make it out this time. I fucking hate this shit, it's why I stopped playing battlebrothers and mount and blade. If an enemy is suddenly attacking me from very close by, give me a fucking chance to pause the game and change orders. It makes no fucking sense that the crab would leave the transport behind while a hostile ship approaches them. But that's what happened, and now we're down a ship and all the gear on board. Fuck, all the biosuits and shit will take forever to replace. Nevermind the weapons I can't replace, like force blades and poison tentacles and that lascannon. At least the crew is fine, since it went down over land.

Last of our transport options. I kinda want this thing for base raids I think. 36 troops is a bitch to manage, but it'd help a ton for overwhelming the initial area around the spawn point. Too slow for normal missions though. I guess I could use it for certain ones if I wanted to bring like 5 tanks.

Dang, this is better than I expected. Was kinda hoping for a gnomish flight suit, but this is even better I think. A turret won't have the problem of falling asleep in bad weather like rats do, and EMP voodoo is potentially amazing. A bit lacking in other areas, like defenses and stats, but those are some nice built in weapons.

Fuck, I've only got 1 emerald on hand. Buying these from jack will suck. I suppose we can hope some drop from mining rocks to make plastacrete?

Huh, the daze on that ammo is better than I expected. Maybe these will be handy after all.

As expected, this leads into unlocking the plasma weapon line. Cool, but not a priority right now. Who knows how far off heavy plasma weapons are in terms of research, I've got lower hanging fruit to grab.

Like this! It's more or less what I expected. Replacing our large quarters with 4 of these would give us a fair bit of firepower and 25 more crew space. The only problem is, that'd require dsmantling big chunks of existing bases. Ugh.

Little over a day left before we get our crew back. Of course, a party popped up during this. Shame to miss that too.

At least we kept the armour. I couldn't recall how that works. That downgrades this from absoluete disaster to middling inconvenience. Largely because I won't even remember all the shit I need to replace now. Healing supplies, environmental gear, weapons, ammo, grenades, stun tools, stealth gear....

The one upside is I found our mind probe and skull, both sitting on the kraken. We're still massively undergeared right now though.

Seems to be some weird bug with refueling too? Took like a full day at 0% before this thing started to refill.

Fuck, I don't even have the parts to remake some of this shit. The only things I know of that drop integrated devices are academy nerds. Seems weird I can't create them since they drop off nurses.

Well, this should boost my mood a bit.

Holy fuck, or a lot. I was expecting a new suit or two, but 5? And these sound awesome. I'll go for harbinger and jugulator first, since the ones sounds evil and the other is for Syns. Honestly this all sounds good though. Ogres probably need a powersuit the least, but I'm still curious, maybe it has way more armour. Testudo might be melee focused? We haven't even researched the centurion human armour yet. And medispider, obviously, sounds cool.

Ooh, new mission. And for the mutants! Still trying to build tokens for them after blowing them on Saya.

Thankfully, Kraken isn't a wide craft so we can bring a decent crew in. Looks like a fortress alright.

Seems the entrance is over here. Probably where the mines are, so I'll avoid that for now.

Fuck, apparently the mines are over here too.

Dang, that's some decent punch to get through vindicator armour. I mean, it is a mine. In retrospect, I should have brought a bunch of flightsuits.

Anyways, lets make our own entrance, shall we?

We shall not. Several turns of attempts from 2 people failed to break the wall. Gee, sure wish we had a MINING DRILL.

Slut clears the rest of the mines along the way for us. Nothing she can't shrug off.

Enemies appear to be laughably undergeared as well, thankfully.

Turns out the front door is the weak point.

We've seen these before, but not captured one yet. Good opportunity. Gotta catch 'em all!

Yeah... they've controlled the difficulty here by giving enemies shit weapons to compensate for the minefield and fort. With our armour, this is a cakewalk.

Possessing an apeman gives us a peek inside the building. Weirdly, he's locked inside his little tower though. We'll have to cut our way in if we need to kill them, or snipe through a window.

Seems the side walls were the weak points? This is quite the defense.

Nope, I was just impatient after the swings at the front failed a bit. We're in.

Modron's backup is off exploring the side routes (which go nowhere) but it turns out you don't need backup if you have a gigantic fucking axe.

Seems there's some escape tiles in case you wanted to do the stealth route and sneak in, grab the prisoner and flee in an enemy apc. Not our plan, but a cool detail.

Is this the guy? He looks dead. He better not be dead.

Well, these looked dead too and they aren't, so he's probably fine.

Overall, basically a milkrun, aside from Modron getting hurt by the mine.

Bunch of captives and a bit of loot, nothing special though.

Our space comms finished! This is the only new research... might be cool? If it just lets us skip some training it's not really that important though. But maybe it'll lead to other cool shit.

Turns out the data centre needs our mainframe, just like personal labs. Ugh. Guess I need to rebuild our main base to fit these in. 9 more brainers isn't something I'm willing to pass up.

Well, this is a nice bit of luck. Spawned right near a base and we won't be needing our lascannons for this one.

Dang, that's a rougher start than I'd expected. 5 of the werewolves right next to us in a line. 3 more off to the left. Can't really make a spearwall against that.

Well, maybe if we use this corner. There's some bushes and such that can limit their approach, so all we need to do is kill 2 of them and have enough TU left over to overwatch a few holes in the wall.

Yeah, these guys die in 2 hits, this should work.

Bring it on!

They did not bring it on, however. Half of them just wandered aimlessly. Weird. Well, that makes this even easier.

Was 9 werewolves in all. We even captured a couple, though they're not very useful now. Unless I want to fill a leviathan with 30 and land it at a stargod pogrom to howl a sectopod into submission. That could be fun.

Ooh, and we got an emerald. Sadly, we didn't seem to get anything else though, like the chitin sword or huntress training. Weird, I thought we'd get something nice, this was easily the most dangerous one so far.

 

[Jaedar]

Killing a battle tank in one shot(?) seems like a real lucky thing. I was expecting losses on that mission to tell you the truth.

Last of our transport options. I kinda want this thing for base raids I think. 36 troops is a bitch to manage, but it'd help a ton for overwhelming the initial area around the spawn point. Too slow for normal missions though. I guess I could use it for certain ones if I wanted to bring like 5 tanks.

The layout of this ship is really amazing. Speed can be fixed since it has 2 utility slots.

At least we kept the armour. I couldn't recall how that works. That downgrades this from absoluete disaster to middling inconvenience. Largely because I won't even remember all the shit I need to replace now. Healing supplies, environmental gear, weapons, ammo, grenades, stun tools, stealth gear....

This is why you should always save your ship loadout, then when you try to load it the game will tell you everything that is missing.

Fuck, I don't even have the parts to remake some of this shit. The only things I know of that drop integrated devices are academy nerds.

You can build integrated devices from optronics, but I can't remember if it requires some super special tech.

 

[std::namespace]

the enemy attacked us as we were leaving

u knew the base is defended...

Enemies appear to be laughably undergeared as well, thankfully.

cause u r bit late...

milkrun

m e r c
b
a
s
e

 

[Damned Registrations]

m e r c
b
a
s
e

You really want to see the whole squad get annihilated by gauss tanks, huh?

 

[std::namespace]

at least send a horde of peasants to find out how to deal with blue shields and then its all over for them

 

[turkishronin]

I lost a base to mercenaries in my playthrough take revenge for me

 

[lightbane]

Last of our transport options. I kinda want this thing for base raids I think. 36 troops is a bitch to manage, but it'd help a ton for overwhelming the initial area around the spawn point. Too slow for normal missions though. I guess I could use it for certain ones if I wanted to bring like 5 tanks.

36? Christ. You're meant to use tanks yep, or be insane enough to train almost four dozens of guys. The endgame ships have this problem. The issue is that you can't use vehicles against bases for "reasons", darn it!

At least we kept the armour. I couldn't recall how that works. That downgrades this from absoluete disaster to middling inconvenience. Largely because I won't even remember all the shit I need to replace now. Healing supplies, environmental gear, weapons, ammo, grenades, stun tools, stealth gear....

Use the ship loadout feature.

I fucking hate this shit, it's why I stopped playing battlebrothers and mount and blade

Isn't Battle Bros turn-based though?

You can build integrated devices from optronics, but I can't remember if it requires some super special tech.

The mods that automate production stuff are amazing, there was one that I dunno if it works anymore.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Unlimited Power!

Isn't Battle Bros turn-based though?

It's kind of like xcom, in that the battles are turn based, but there's an overworld map that operates in real time. You can be strolling through the woods when spiders or zombies show up and you technically have time to run away... but it's a fucking reflex test to see if you can issue the order in time.

Use the ship loadout feature.

Yeah yeah. I should just change the hotkeys for it. It won't really help now because it's outdated; it'd recall a bunch of old shit I forgot but leave out new shit I'll forget instead.


Time for the fun!

Worth 800 tokens. Along with the smoothies, we pulled in 1400 tokens altogether from the prison raid. Not too shabby.

Nice! Though I really want more of those derelict craft with a syn on board, or a station guarded by the terminator things.

Fuck, Lightbane lost his shit. Freshness was kinda low but still...

Does space fuck with morale? This seems kinda low too. Might just be weirdgal stuff though? But for someone with 120 bravery...

Anyways, was just a bunch of guild spacemen. Pulled in a fuckton of hellerium, including a pair of those capsules I can research. Nice.

Found intergrated devices in production after all. Must have hidden it by accident at some point.

Ooh, was hoping for more of these.

In setting up for this run, I realized tesla coils are pretty much the perfect weapon to pair with the skull. Low TU cost, high damage and accuracy, and doesn't burn energy while attacking.

No wimpy spiders this time, we got spooky ghosts to fight!

Of course, being highly weak to lasers (40%) the ghosts are totally fucked vs our land weapons.

Or so I thought. Roll better, Orcinator!

Has a cool ritual room with like, a lava pool or something too. Should have turned off the nightvision for a better look.

And instead of those weird bodyparts, we got 2 liber occultus this time! We also finally got a new teaching, and another avenger armour of course.

Damn, this is going to take a while to craft. Will be totally worth it though. We're also lacking enough force circuitry to build the second. Gonna need to hunt down some church nerds. If only they had a base somewhere constantly being supplied with ships.

Speaking of ships... the rimriders are trying to set up a new base and I spotted their craft. And after checking the dossier... this thing is totally somehting I can take. Weird that it didn't state the DPS though, only weapon power.

Ends up being irrelevant, as the thing lands before I reach it. A landed transport is fine too.

Time to acquire some firepower.

Dang, they weren't kidding when they said we landed close by. Lots of enemies outside right away too.

Aside from weapons, I want captives. We missed out on getting literally any when we sacked their base.

Cold weather at the landing site is a bit annoying, but we're so much better equipped to handle it now.

Praise be! We have found a holy relic!

Quirians are trying to mindfuck us, but we've got no weak links this time. Tits here is about the weakest and she's still got 50 power and 100 bravery.

They brought a new toy for us as well! I wonder if I can research these things now. I'd have thought plasma weapons are higher tier than force blades, but jack sells plasma blades apparently, so maybe not.

Combat is mostly just a lot of frankly. Easy but not exciting.

After a little while the enemies mostly migrate way over here. Annoying, I don't have good long range weapons for this situation. Note to self: add mortars back to ship loadout. And emp rockets. God, those would have been nice.

At least I brought the minilauncher and emp minibombs. Actually, based on how lethal these are vs the automatons, maybe the rockets would have been overkill.

The automatons are the biggest threat really. Their plasma spam can't pierce our heavy armor, but it sure can whittle it down quickly.

Tits is failing pretty hard with the minilauncher honestly. Lots of missed shots considering the AoE we can work with.

Man, the enemy weapon variety is great on these guys. We've gotten both of these by now, but still cool to see. One of them had a force blade as well.

Alas, Tits takes some reaction fire while trying to capture androids. Thankfully we're fairly tanky even in our flight suits now.

Lots of berserk enemy sounds. Always good to hear.

Target #3 acquired. These guys are such a bitch to capture.

The clickor with the fatty is way off in the distance. It's good because we can avoid the weapon being used on us easily, but it's bad because it's hard to take it down and retrieve the gun.

It's more or less a war of attrition, our ammo supply vs their bodies. We simply don't have a lot of EP ammo for the linux rifles, or much decent weaponry for handling the automatons at all. Gold shields + their armour is a nasty combo out in the open like this, where we can't simply cut them down in melee.

Eventually the one we caught wakes back up and dies when we try to EMP it back down. I guess this is where the bliss rod might have been useful; we've got nothing we can use to build their stun up safely while their asleep.

Well, trading an automaton for a mistress is probably a good deal!

Dang, the sure switched tactics hard here. We're nearly out of emp bombs too, this is just plain hard to deal with, never mind capturing one.

And our emp just kills this one and leaves the other I stripped shields from still standing. Aggravating.

We did end up catching another though, and then another at the doorway! Honestly tempted to just flee with the prisoners now; no idea how long it'll take to win the ship or how long they'll stay down for.

Slut's chunky ass blocks the upper doorway so one of our flygirls has to hunker down outside for a turn. Thankfully nothing went after her; enemies are pretty thinned out at this point.

Fucker didn't stay down very long. Wish I could scan the bodies while they sleep.

Still a pile of enemies way over here, but the enemy morale is fucked at this point. Shame the automatons don't drop their weapons when going insane.

I tried sneaking out to grab the fatty so we can either bail or use it to mop up, but the enemies all recovered their morale and sent after her. I forgot they can use grenades too, which wiped out our cover.

Tits will make the next attempt, and I realize this ledge here is the perfect nearby cover to use.

Love seeing them murder eachother while berserk.

Tits ended up taking some serious damage as well. I also ended up moving inside the ship. Was a bit of a sketchy situation with lots of automatons and no useful weapons to fight them.

We lucked out though, and their morale broke before it got out of hand. VICTORY!

Big xp gains for our returning heroes.

Plenty of toys!

Including TWO Fatties. Now I feel ready for the merc base. We're go after injuries are healed. With two fatties and a vulcan, we should be able to fuck up even a tank's shields. I'll bring some nice bombs too, maybe a microwave cooker. I forget the stats on that thing, but I recall it put out a ton of inaccurate damage.

And our prisoners! Amusingly, it was the catboys we didn't manage to get many of; they were too tanky for the EP rounds and played keepaway too much for our other tools. With 4 each of the others I think I can clean up on rimrider intel though, which will be nice. The animatrons might make good scrap too... We also snagged 3 ship engines. I actualy need more hangars at this point to house all the craft I want to use and have space to shuffle a hunting party to take the frogs on, but we'll have room for that soon enough. It's actually cash I'm short on at the moment, those luxury crew quarters are pricey, but I want them in the new bases for sure. I've been slacking on the manufacturing too, just make chems instead of durathread at one base. Still wildly profitable, but we could be doing better. I'd rather just run missions and sell shit though.

 

[Jaedar]

You're meant to use tanks yep, or be insane enough to train almost four dozens of guys.

To be fair, you can easily build a base with 50 training slots and let some peasants stew there for half a year, and then bring them as fodder.

I've been slacking on the manufacturing too, just make chems instead of durathread at one base. Still wildly profitable, but we could be doing better. I'd rather just run missions and sell shit though.

Yeah, micromanaging production kinda sucks.

Merc base will be interesting. Remember to bring tools for live captures.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Good eats!

To be fair, you can easily build a base with 50 training slots and let some peasants stew there for half a year, and then bring them as fodder.

That was one of my plans initially, but the base got blown up like 3 times in a row. At this point power armour and tanks are a lot more appealing that giving 30 orders a turn though.

Merc base will be interesting. Remember to bring tools for live captures.

Oh definitely, it's why I've been putting it off largely. Elec won't work well for them, but neural whips and poison will be great, so I'll bring cobra staffs as well. Should be fun times, provided we don't get annihilated by tanks or something totally new. Since the rep hit is trivial, I'll probably just bail if we get a bad spawn or a chance to capture an engineer or VIP quickly.

Onwards!

Annoyingly, despite murdering their landing party, the Rimriders still set up an outpost here apparently. I guess it doesn't really matter, they don't even send out patrols AFAICT.

Fatties are getting paired with the bio suits for sure. The suits add a nice 20 points to strength, but they also weigh 50 themselves, which means a lot of the really heavy stuff isn't an option. Fatties weigh 40, which leaves a bit leftover for some utility items as well. Firing is also the least fucked skill with the suit and it can't do snapshots, so it's a nice match in multiple ways.

Crew is pretty worn down after that fight, but this is what healers are for! And large quantities of nicotine. Or whatever is in those smokes. Probably meth.

We've racked up some annoying wounds recently, but a transfer to codexia to enjoy the half dozen medical facilities speeds it up a ton. We'll be ready to go in about a week.

At long last, Syn armor! It's actually a tad underwhelming, to be honest. It doesn't provide a sorely needed health boost, or shields. It also doesn't solve the overheating problem. What it does do is provide even more armour, especially at the front, and enough resistance to concussive, laser and plasma to be a god damned wall. 150 damage plasma shot would bounce right off. Well, except it'd probably have massive armour piercing so... can I get one with shields or health, pretty please? Or flight? That said, I'll probably still use this, as it has better nightvision but most importantly, it actually has inventory slots. Not a lot mind you, but the option to carry around energy recovery items would be a godsend. Killing 10 people in a single turn with melee and the skull is probably on the table with this armour.

Alas, no cool unlocks here. Although, maybe that will change if I harvest one for it's parts. Note to self: Do that.

This stuff is a bit annoying to make (we're running low on grav units) but very doable. The only real problem is that it requires 3 facilities, which are only in a single base at avalon, which is busy with other stuff for the next little while.

We managed to shoot down a bomber and have it not explode for once! I didn't expect this to even be possible, honestly.

Hmm. Looks like the vehicle lascannons. Not something I want to fuck with.

Long time no see! We'll be taken one of these alive this time, if it all possible.

Inside has some weird spinning gizmo it seems? Maybe cool utility furniture?

Hmm, luckily we've got the droid dossier from our previous kills, but this thing is going to be a bitch to capture if it has 20 stun recovery.

Turrets are less scary than I expected. Low reactions, low hp, low TU. High armour, much like the droids.

Well, the droids have decent reactions actually. But yeah, with only 25 hp and recovering 20 stun per turn, we'll have to leave one for the last takedown.

Fortunately, we've got just the gear for murdering highly armored droids vulnerable to laser weapons.

I landed an EMP near the turret and scanned it the next turn. Seems these have insane stun recovery as well. Not a big deal, I wasn't expecting a turret to be capturable anyways. Actually, based on that damage and the 400% stun modifier, it must be outright immune to stun, instead of just having the usual stun immunity. Otherwise it'd have fallen asleep from taking 14 damage.

If we were a bit further away we'd be pulling in lady luck medals for this.

Looking for other stun options, I found this. It actually does 0 health damage, I should probably remember these for keeping prisoners down. Would have been handy last mission perhaps.

Seems droids are the only type of enemy. Popamole shall win the day.

God, using this gun never gets old.

Managed to land a couple zapper hits but... yeah. This isn't going to work. Damage is just too low, and they only take 40% elec damage, which balances out the armour pen.

Gah, the one annoying thing about the healers. I always forget to keep using their stims on themselves.

Eventually we whittle the enemy down to a single droid. Full plate should let us approach safely.

Heh, seems he wants to party in melee range anyways. Fine with me, he doesn't have a chance in hell of hitting us with that electric fist.

Sadly, it seems we also don't have a chance in hell of putting it to sleep this way.

Ugh, why'd it have to be a nuke swamp? I guess it's still better than a desert.

Time for some assistance with the capture.

Seems he's helpfully lit himself on fire. Nice!

Hmm, we could try again for the stun next round, and the fire would help whittle the health down slowly but...

Some napkin math says the tesla coil can't kill him in one shot no matter the roll, so this should bring him into sleep range.

Huzzah! Not to self: Try to examine the turret. I forgot it showed up as loot.

Interesting.

Isn't the HPA that ~100 damage gun we used a couple times before it ran out of ammo? I'd like one of those for sure. That thing was accurate as hell.

For now we can produce various shit tier plasma weapons. Meh.

Despite the cool description, this didn't do anything for us. No new research or training regimes. Weird. I forget what the other teachings gave but it was cool iirc.

Our new craft is done! It's a bit lacking in layout compared to the deliverator, but it's space worthy and has 12 slots, which is good enough for me. Seems to be a small craft too, which is nice.

Infamy going off the charts just about. Imagine where we'd be at without all those enemy bases.

Interesting, didn't realize these guys and the sythnmuscle too. Good to know.

And it unlocked an armour type? Maybe it's a synth suit for peasants?

Got this tidbit off an animatron. Not very practical as a weapon, but a good tool for stunning things like the droids with high armour and electric resistance.

Red tower is done, and this is the research it unlocked. Not a helpful description. Doesn't seem to be a mission? I hope we're not going to need a spa in the same base as the tower...

Some more conventional power armour for the gals. Seems pretty good all around, especially vs plasma. Piercing is a bit lacking, wouldn't want to get tagged by a gauss cannon in this. The real weakness though, is warp damage; it takes a whopping 300% from that. Considering warp damage probably bypasses armour, that's terrifying. Still going to want some of this though, would be a great underwater options or just for a lot of situations where the enemy lacks gauss weaponry.

Looking forward to seeing what this buys me.

The other real benefit of this armour is it's ease of production. All these components are easily bought or crafted, we could make dozens of these suits. Hell, I might just do that eventually, keep one or two stationed in each base on defense. For now though, that 100 work space requirement is going to put it on the back burner. Only avalon and wholesome silo can really handle that, and they're both busy.

100 glamour isn't trivial, but not overly expensive either. Assuming this is another ace pilot, this is a bargain.

Huh, the Sicarius armor is mixed in with the power armour. Maybe it's peasant power armour and the centurion and testudo are for the men?

Well, our cat warrior showed up with nice gear. Did we get an ace?

Tome is back in our hands at last! Amusingly, Maria could do respectable damage with this since it scales partially off rank. 24 damage is low, but with ~50 pellets...

Gandalf is the more obvious choice though. Respectable voodoo mastery on a chassis that can get up close and personal. Freshness cost won't matter because we can smoke all day, and energy cost won't matter because we lack the TUs to go sprinting around to burn our stamina anyways. Also, we can't sprint.

Yeah, that's the stuff!

Seems the ship has pair of side exits at the wingtips; just hatches to jump (or fly) out of. Pretty handy, should be good for sniping as well. Still hard to defend against a horde of zombies or really scary enemies that can open the door and expose us to long range attacks, but better than I thought initially.

Our first snapshot didn't manage the kill, so we had an excuse to do a full blast this turn. That was... way more accuate than I was expecting. This thing will be brutal at close ranges. Possibly another tool for stripping tank shields. Should easily dish out 1000+ elec damage in a single volley.

Plasma knife gets some action in as well. Doesn't seem terribly practical when it uses 12 TUs and the fatty needs like 30 to fire, but whatever. Stabbing is fun.

Hmm, the book is definitely lackng in oomph if it can't even take down these guys reliably in one shot. I'll have to use it from only 2 titles away I think. Or maybe give it a shot with someone else, like a gnome in a loader suit or Lightbane. I think what we really need is a proper mage outfit. We've got some for loknarr and cats, but none for gals really.

Seems our new catgirl isn't an ace, but is still a pilot. One more suit to research.

Dang, another strong tite. Not as good as ace but still...

Damn, that casino did work. We're raking it in now. If it didn't cost 700 glamour I'd make more of those.

Droid interrogation didn't reveal any cool new tech, sadly. Though it is nice to know that it's gun is plasma, not laser, and has 75 power.

So they won't have a zero tolerance policy, but they'll try for crackdowns? Whatever, good luck with that shit.

Moving down in the world!

Our two new techs at this rank appear to be merc contacts (seems unimportant, we can just rob them blind instead!) and something called 'Civilization'. What's that, is it tasty?