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

[Jaedar]

Also, the dreaded cyberdisks. Yes, I still say they're fucking terrifying. They are at least fragile compared to the firepower we now have. On the other hand, one of them killed a catgirl with full shields and health with a single shot. So yeah... fuck these things.

Their weapon does like 0-300 damage iirc. But their reactions aren't that good. Dangerous to rookies, but veterans should not have a problem.

We also need, literally, 10k hellerium to build the engine for our giant ship. I'm assuming that it's not intended to be built that way and we'll find a place to loot hellerium capsules at some point.

Spoiler

Basically no. You can buy the capsules later, but they cost like 300k a piece. You really are supposed to manufacture the hellerium and capsules over a long period of time as far as I can tell.

Oh hey, an apocalypse reference. Don't see that every day. Purple shields can be really good, but lasers ignoring them means you have to know what you are up against.

I think this was a result of that bogeyman research? Baffling place to have put it behind. Nice to finally have something to train our Syn with but... I kinda don't want to give her up for 2 weeks. 15 health and 3 armour is a nice extra bit of safety though...

I think the main reward here is the freshness, since syns cap at 15 by default.

Sadly, our new rank didn't unlock any new research or bounties directly.

The reward is the increased star god presence. Congradulations.

God damn, the things cost TWO gems to make? They better be reusable after they burn out or this is a total waste of resources.

I never actually tried, but I assume they burn out. Even if they are reusable in later missions, they're not good enough to give up a hand slot.

Finally, a vehicle we can bring to space that won't explode from a dude with a lasgun looking at it funny. Sorry Gnomedisc, but we clearly got you too late in the tech tree to really use properly. Seems our Lokk'Naars are going to get some more xp in the near future.

Remember "only lokk'narrs" means "lokk'nars and gnomes".

 

[Damned Registrations]

Just a few more steps.

So, first candidate for the new shields: healer catgirls! Could throw one on Belle too, then she'd have the armour + shield wombo combo. But this seems potentially quite useful, especially if I needed to have one run out into a battlefield.

More cash > token exchange. Not a useful prize, but it's the last SS Prize.

40-120 damage from these pistols on the catgirls. Not too shabby! Only 12 rounds, which isn't even enough for the 5 auto shots they could do in a round. But I mean, 12 shots is still a ton.

New hovertank got test driven on a zombie massacre. Good times. Tank is glorious, and painted red, which looks awesome. One of the best parts is that it's default weapon is an infinite ammo laser gun. So I can use that to mow down chaff and save the expensive ammo for hardened targets.

Weirdly, the shield doesn't give you an aura. That's a bit of a shame.

Also, bombard shells are still a ton of fun.

Disruptor does, in fact, get recovered after the mission! Nice. Next test: How do multiple shields stack. I actually fucked up on this particular mission, but on another one I verified that they do actually cover eachother's weaknesses! So with a red + purple shield, nothing can get through! Not sure which shield takes damage first when they share coverage of something, as that'd be a pain to test, but even just covering gaps would be amazing. Not like the game has a shortage of good one handed weapons. For that matter, you could use a two handed weapon, and just pop the shield onto and off your belt to fire it.

New armour! I'm assuming this is some kind of reference, because it's shit. I mean, it's 160 red shields, which isn't the worst, but they regen slowly, and you've got no armour so you'll die to... whatever gets through red shields. Which to be fair is like, mind and bio or something. But still! I want proper power amrour. The real issue is that if the shield goes down to an EMP or even just some chumps with shoguns, you're just cannon fodder at that point.

Next XG weapon! Honestly, I can't think of a good use for this. It doesn't pierce armour better than the custom snipin' gun, and it's not as efficient and light as the commando gun. Pass. Well, I guess you could snipe underwater, which is novel, and water tends to be fairly open.

Welp, that's it for Dr.X stuff until the plot moves forwards.

Ah, the lab actually has a new functionality, which will presumably unlock more tech or something. Guess we do need to build it. Time to wait 42 days...

Yep, we can make an XGauss version! Suffice to say, it's gonna shoot real good. And the ammo is way easier to make.

Oh, we got this after the Dr.X research too. Didn't lead anywhere though.

See? Even the game says we're almost there!

Surprised to keep getting new missions even this late in the game. There really is just an unreal amount of content in this mod.

Cool, different layout than previous ruins. Seems nice and open.

Ah, must have unlocked when we got the Bogeyman finally from that arcane tome last month.

As you can see, their stats are shit. They're kind of a threat when you're supposed to first encounter them because they have innate charm attacks that deal a ton of stun, and are very hard to find at night. Especially back when your crew is in like, chitin or maybe chain mail. These ones have some nastier weapons, but it's still just shurikens and daggers and shit.

Firebug gnome is good fun, though the range is rather hampered with the low ceilings.

Every fucking time I bring the rat mages to a cave. So annoying. Why are all caves super hot? It doesn't even hurt the goblins. The gnomes are always in skimpy outfits too. Does this fuck over dogs? Is that the point?

Enemy reinforcements on turn 5 were kinda nasty, apparently they get a turn as they spawn. Thankfully, no deaths.

Got a couple gems in the rewards, as well as the quicksilver daggers, which are new, but we can't research for some reason.

Knocking over another base, finally found a church one. Probably the easiest of the 3 factions, since their gold shields do nothing vs piercing, and all they really have for elites are melee guys. Admittedly dangerous melee guys, but still.

Err... very very dangerous melee guys, apparently. I thought Maria could easily handle an Exalt popping up through the elevator with half TUs left, but she got trounced.

Like, damn! Good thing I gave her that extra training after all. Well, maybe she'd have just gotten stunned one attack sooner if not. Either way, close call.

Happened AGAIN over here. Honestly didn't think they had so many exalts.

Thankfully the red shields did a good jump holding off most of the assault. But yeah, those things have an incredibly high health to stun ratio on their attacks, it's almost guaranteed to get a kill.

Took me about 10 turns before I remembered the vampire blade recovers health as well as energy. Derp. Back to full! Should have done it for Tits too, in retrospect. Ah well.

Glorious loot! Not shown: 34 force circuits. We're set for a while now, I might even make a ship shield.

Also found out the last thing about disruptor shield: It doesn't get recovered if you use it up. Well that's fucking lame. Basicaly means only the purple and red ones are viable at all, and even then only for finishing off mission or super short ones. Probably not worth investing in unless we get a new source of gems. That's a shame, would have been very nice for missions with restricted equipment where we can't just use power armour and shit.

 

[Luka-boy]

Indeed that armour is a reference.

To the Julian Gollop videogame Rebelstar and its totally not homoerotic cover.

 

[lightbane]

Said armor isn't probably a thing in that game though. I thought it was a reference to Rebelstar Command IIRC, the GBA XCOM game.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Should have seen that coming.

Star gods are back! Honestly, they're not even that difficult with our current tech. Sectopods are still terrifying, but even they go down quickly enough to a mono claw in the hands of Maria.

The purple ones that are invisible are still annoying as well. Thankfully, they don't use heavy weaponry and there's no waspites to deal with.

We've got them mostly dealt with and are inside the enemy ship by turn 4.

Oh yeah, also easier to deal with when we just want them dead, and don't try to take captives. Interestingly, they're labelled as 'gone' instead of 'dead'.

A nice stack of robes, we'll have that pile of 30 for the cat folk in no time.

Oh yeah, and Oasis got taken out by a sectopod bolt. Oops. Thankfully we can just bring her back.

Another new mission!

Hmm, room with like 8 entrances feels a bit sketchy. Wish I'd brought more goblins. At least the rats won't cook to death for once. Thematically appropriate for a subway dive.

Oh god it's taking forever. Turns out the enemies are just rats. So many rats. And so many doors.

40, god damned rats. And they fight to the death. This was a slog with no real reward.

Alright, lets try our hand at that new solo gnome vs demons mission!

Oh god, the level is massive. Like, this isn't even a quarter of the map, and it's 3 levels deep.

Oh yeah, and it's the shadow realm! No gear or armour for us. We did find this nifty box though!

Oh, reinforcements, great. Actually, that button there, I've seen before a few times and skipped past by accident. Does that...

Ah, you can click on it! Cool. Good thing I did, we got some directions.

Oh yeah, and we apparently have infinite freshness for this mission! Nice!

These guys are everywhere down here. Thankfully, they go down in a couple kicks and seem to never actually hit us.

Tentacle hives scattered around too. We just run past.

They're way, way less dangerous in the shadow realm, basically harmless.

Navigating was a nightmare until I tweaked the lighting setting.

This place actually looks pretty cool, wouldn't mind a proper mission here with weapons.

After many kicked groins, we find the exit.

Only reward was the box, which was one of those super rare and valuable mystery boxes! The contents were lame though, just those T-D lockers tht give more room for loot.

One of the shields is apparently easy to mass produce. Might make some of these, could come in handy.

Pet doctor being useful!

Info gleaned from a star god novice. Yeah, lets not fight one of these ships any time soon.

Speaking of star gods, we shot down another ship in the arctic.

Man, I need more of these future bows. Feels like the begining of the game again where I just abuse LoS to bully helpless bandits. Except now I can do it while flying, with infinite ammo! No reaction shots though, sadly.

Hovertank works beautifully here too, whittling away their shields. turkishronin is the pilot btw. Stats are still crap (probably a bad idea considering the tank doesn't grant extra health) but who needs stats when you've got awesome guns?

Note to self: Buy more cobra staves. These things are awesome for melee vs star gods, in the hands of catgirls.

Though catgirls don't like this cold! Thankfully we ended the mission quickly, so they only had a few recovery days.

Well you're new.

Not a bad haul! No deaths this time either!

Wow, higher rank than I expected. We really must be pissing them off.

Game teasing me with potential new tech. That new lab better have cool shit.

Speaking of cool shit, I refitted our fighter with a shield, 2 extra thrusters, and a tesla cannon. Obviously less punch than before, but now I can send it to hunt down every last annoying enemy fighter without needing repairs or spending ammo. And realistically, it's the crab that takes out the nastier enemy ships.

Speaking of enemy ships, I just discovered something: They get racial bonuses. Which can include changes to their maximum speed! This explains some of the fuckery I dealt with before with ships I thought I should be able to escape from but could not.

Forgot these existed. Results of a novice butchery. Got to reseach it this time, but it has no description and revealed nothing. Was this a component for something? Did we give it away for something? Was sure we had one before...

Also, I finally found the source of Magischen motors! Or maybe I found this out before and fogot because I hadn't seen a sectopod in ages. Either way, we'll have some soon!

Yet another star god battle. This time they're annoyingly scattered throughout a village.

The new laser cannon works wonders, punching their shields to nothing and killing them in a single shot.

Alas, our red shields are actually flawed here; they let mind damage through, which is what the purple robed cunts seem to use.

Snagged another operative though!

Haha! Dumb thing can't fire back.

Yeah, turns out wooden buildings aren't great cover vs a vulcan.

Did slightly fuck up and leave him stranded on the roof though.

Assasin squad getting ready to take out the sectopod. Actually, I want it alive. I've got a (I think) new plan: Herder staff! They only take 10% charm damage, but that bypasses shields and armour. Should do the trick. If not, Maria can take it out.

Well fuck me. I did not expect it to reaction fire that soon. Or to instakill or girl. Poor Pyrite.

Nearly had the bastard too, it's got like 2 health left not stunned. I mistakenly assumed the staff was draining TUs as well, as most charm weapons seem to.

And even after stunning it, we still only get a wreck! LAME. No idea how you'd get a live one. Morale, I guess? Not possible and it's a red herring?

Worse yet; we can't bring Pyrite back! She didn't have the valkyrie title for some god forsaken reason (no kills durng the mission maybe?) and the body got vapourized. RIP.

Going to crack a motor into gems to see if we get a nice pile. Maybe this will let us mass produce hovertanks, which require 2 diamonds a piece.

I've been waiting to build this thing for SO FUCKING LONG.

And... I don't know how much damage it does. Or what damage type it is. But we got bullets for it, and given that shadow orbs typically get used to make entire vessel weapons, I'm hoping it's fucking awesome. If nothing else, we can bring it to shadowrealms, and it'll wildly outclass pretty much anything else we can bring there for sure.

 

[lightbane]

Hmm, room with like 8 entrances feels a bit sketchy. Wish I'd brought more goblins. At least the rats won't cook to death for once. Thematically appropriate for a subway dive.

Sounds like it's MEtro lite.

40, god damned rats. And they fight to the death. This was a slog with no real reward.

No loot? Shame. Also that alternate realm mission, you're meant to run away naked, literally.

Info gleaned from a star god novice. Yeah, lets not fight one of these ships any time soon.

These are troll ships basically. Not worth the effort.

And realistically, it's the crab that takes out the nastier enemy ships.

I remember you used to be able to hire a mercenary fighter at some point but it was patched out. No idea if it's still around.

Yet another star god battle. This time they're annoyingly scattered throughout a village.

Seeing you fight star gods so frequently and win means you're close to the end, yep.
I hope you do a different end-mission besides the XCOM OG one, if there are new ones.

And even after stunning it, we still only get a wreck! LAME. No idea how you'd get a live one. Morale, I guess? Not possible and it's a red herring?

I think you're not supposed to take alive certain terror units anymore, so likely you have to capture ethereal engineers or something.

Worse yet; we can't bring Pyrite back! She didn't have the valkyrie title for some god forsaken reason (no kills durng the mission maybe?) and the body got vapourized. RIP.

Not even as a ghost?

 

[Damned Registrations]

No loot?

Technically there was some old earth stuff, but that's long obsolete.

I think you're not supposed to take alive certain terror units anymore, so likely you have to capture ethereal engineers or something.

The wierd thing is that there's a recipe in manufacturing for butchering a live one.

Not even as a ghost?

I can check, that's probably an option. But ghosts aren't terribly useful to begin with. I could maybe make her a fighter pilot ghost?

 

[Jaedar]

Info gleaned from a star god novice. Yeah, lets not fight one of these ships any time soon.

I never managed to down one of these, but I think there is a pretty decent reward in it. It's just too fast and regens too much shields.

And even after stunning it, we still only get a wreck! LAME. No idea how you'd get a live one. Morale, I guess? Not possible and it's a red herring?

I never managed.

 

[Damned Registrations]

'Tis but a scratch!

Apparently I had to research these (again?) before unlocking them.

Magischen motors > gems is a shit exchange apparently. Won't do that again.

First base attack in like over a year, pretty sure. Honestly, I'm surprised it took 3 shots to go down, it was apparently a ratman raid.

Found a use for the shitty gun training: restoring stats after revival!

Damn, this deserved better art, it's kind of a big milestone, ya know?

One of the weapons I couldn't find the entry for (or remember the name of) that I noticed while doing some shopping. Dioxine needs some cannoneer titles to boost HP so we can give the indestructible training. This seems like the perfect toy for that.

Got this out of a star god operative. Weird. I assume it'll be relevant in some sort of mission.

Finally got a space mission, so the hovertank got some more target practice in. This was just the easy fuel depot one. There was one problem: Massive lag. I think this is new with the latest patch. I even tried reloading the game and it didn't fix it. Thankfully it's such a quick mission I powered through in a few turns, but each enemy phase took like 3 minutes to process.

Nice loot for a milk run; more stasis pods and 300 hellerium. Also a big pile of ship engines we don't need any more.

Oooh, that's a big ol' ship. Maybe I need those engines after all- I've been thinking about converting a base to hold ~5 hangars and just load it up with interceptors. I'm sure with a force like that even a big nasty ship will go down, even if we might suffer some losses.

Also, I promoted two of the more experienced Theban catgirls to pilot duty. I don't know what the exact calculations are, but this ship is dodgey as fuck.

That Triarius armour we needed the motors to make is finally done! It's glorious- Dioxine has more armour than our bio tank and has ~100 carry capacity with a ton of slots. And he's barely even got any mission xp. Once he's racked up a hundred kills or so we should see another real monster.

To that end, I sent him on a pirate treasure hunt, where he cut down over a dozen lobstermen. Much nastier than the last version of this with just wimpy crabs. But way better loot too- two chests is enough we can now make another hover tank and 2 more bio suits and 2 more blitz suits. Very nice.

Another milk run, blowing up possed gunners with that grenade launcher to farm titles.

Hmm, Marsec Gunship isn't in my dossiers. Considering there's like 3 gunships in there, and some are twice as strong as others, I'm not eager to throw our ships at this one just yet. Man, I really wish we had a ship that could use all those boardside weapons I've unlocked so far.

Ooh, I was wondering when we'd get to loot this, I was expecting to need more researches and shit. Good thing we've got a flying tank!

Well, shit. I've been bamboozled again. I was expecting a much tighter canyon with lots of cover. This is a killbox.

Like, a bigass fucking killbox.

And they've got their own tank, and it's a new one to me. Though it's not shielded at least, so probably less threat than a gauss tank.

Various dudes in the pillboxes. This guy's weapon is dogshit, ~45 damage plasma with 50% accuracy at best. Stormtrooper indeed.

These are probably more of a threat, if only because of the AoE. Their frontal armour is enough to be annoying but we've got some stuff that can punch through. The problem is, can we punch through fucking 6 of them before eating reaction fire.

Overhead view. There's field guns on he south side as well, just at a different elevation.

Well, Catgil's have crazy reactions and their pistols use few TUs, so we can take some shots safely at least. Worst case scenario, we just fucking leave and I come back with more hovertanks and fewer support units. Sadlyy, our gauss pistol failed to do the trick here.

Next attempt is Maria shanking the tank... but we don't even damage it's armour. Damn, should have grabbed a force blade instead.

Welp, Hovertank to the rescue. Takes a few shots, but Turkish Ronin scores the first kill of the map.

Next trick to pull is trying to possess a field gun after we killed the tank and a humanist leader to hurt morale. No dice though.

Thankfully, miniguns do the trick just fine on these ones turned to face away from us. Man, I love ogres, wish we hadn't lost so many before getting stasis tech. If I ever play this again, it's going to be an ogre fest with miniguns everywhere for sure.

Managed to get a catgirl behind their lines as well. Honestly a squad of them would do nicely too, once you have enough of them you can just kinda alpha strike the enemy in an insane range before they can fight back, and then hide behind doors and use evasion to stay alive.

Slut finally gets to fire the new magical autogun. I have to say, it did good! That body is from one of their elite dudes in power armour with 2 minigun arms. Still no idea what damage type this is, but if it can punch through 110+ armour and score a kill that easily, it was worth the motor. I want more. Shame it also costs Ethyr orbs, those are in high demand and harder to come by.

Even Bellem Belle scoes a kill on round one, with some acid minibombs. Seems return fire from the field guns isn't going to happen. Perhaps they have near 0 reactions.

Lastly, we put the new ATGM to work. Was expecting to use this to fire over a wall or something, but hey, not going to complain. Honestly, I could have just brought like 12 people with 12 of these guns and annihilated the enemy on turn one, but where's the fun in that?

Sadly, Maria is basically useless on this mission. No ground level entrance to their positions. I could throw some shredders or whatever, but we've already run out of targets.

Poor Ogre got a taste of the new autogun as well; I thought a shot was blocked by a wall and tried shooting through it, but shot through him instead. Thankfully he survived. Gives some more info about the gun at least- it seems to bypass armour, rather than overwhelm it. Massive morale damage. Hell, it might be doing mind or warp damage for all I know. Probably not warp or Robroy would have been swiss cheesed, I'd wager. That vindicator suit has a big weakness to it I'm sure, all the power armour does.

Well, turn 1 is over, and we've got one main problem left: Our pile of very explosive gear sitting out in the open where the enemy might fire a rocket at it. Honestly no way to stop that, best I can do is move some people forward as decoys.

Thankfully the one surviving field gun shot over here instead, probably couldn't even get an angle on our gear, honestly.

With all the big guns dealt with, we could easily walk across the field to the exit... but fuck taking the easy way out. We're here for fun and glory!

I like that the elevator actually goes up in the map.

Left side has infilitrators too, another catgirl and Lenneth. Note to self: More assault armours. Flying is too good. Sadly I think they compete with bio suits for rubies, and we can't bring them underwater or to space.

Another fun trick: sensing a dude through the walls with Lightbringer, mind controlling him, and lighting his superior officer on fire at point blank. I love this game.

Another shot of the cliffs. As you can see, it's a multilevelled, uneven warren of staircases and tiny rooms. Total hell to track everyone down.

Well, now that I know there's a barracks on ground level, we can dig our way in. I should use more vibro axes; decent enough for melee kills and also respectable for chopping through walls. Mining laser would have gone faster for sure, but the axe is very convenient.

Another map view. As you can see, each little perch has it's own stairwell connecting back to the main hallway. So many fucking doors, so much backtracking. Ugh. I do want some of these guys taken prisoner though, we don't have a dossier on storm troopers, for example.

Finally cleared them out. Onto phase two!

Of course, it's another killbox scenario. Thankfully we're all in more or less mint condition, except no freshness left for Lightbane and Robroy is missing a few HP. Still, I like our odds. They don't have a tank pointed at us this time. Though they DO have some new guns I haven't seen before, they look small and weak.

Oh, and this guy, who has red shields. Honestly, he'd be more threatening without the gun. Well, the hard part will be taking him alive I suppose. Probably a waste of time like most unique units, but it seems doable, we've still got all our gear with us I think. Should be able to isolate him and maybe use the herder staff?

 

[Jaedar]

Damn, that's a very convincing killbox mission. I did it way earlier (and at night), so I couldn't kill all the guns t1 and didn't have many flying armors. Ended up with me sending a single dude to either side and very slowly and methodically clearing them out, while my main force took a lot of fire from sniper units.

But lets see how the mansion goes!

 

[Damned Registrations]

You may not like it, but this is what peak humanity looks like!

Welp, first order of business, pick off the squishy henchmen with gauss pistols. These things are great for this sort of thing, extremely few TUs spent for a kill at long range.

Turns out they have two new weapons! This one looks a lot more dangerous, so I'll prioritze taking these out first.

God, this place has a million floors too, and the windows are all barred for extra defense. What a pain.

Thankfully, unlike the canyon, we've got cover not far away. I mean, it's currently occupied, but that can be easily solved.

The whole map is relatively small too, aside from the whole 12 floors thing. To be fair, only every second floor has people on it, the others are spacers.

Which is handy for this entrance, it lets us fit the tank in without crowding people.

Ah fuck, apparently they can just shoot through these weird doors? What the fuck? We can't see through the doors though, are they one way?

Another black knight shows up to attack us. Again though, pretty shit equipment.

Slut unloads on him but doesn't seem to do much damage. It does bypass the shield though. That narrows the damage type it could be down quite a bit- warp, bio, or mind. All would be quite useful. But I imagine warp would have done a fuckton to this guy.

Yeah, that did fuck all. We shot him 9 times, so he's nigh immune to whatever we're throwing at him. Thankfully, we;ve got a big pile of troops in LoS with him. Lightning, minigun and finally some lascannon shots take him out.

Maria, OTOH, is clearly not immune to their new weapons. This was from a single hit. EMP, Electric or Warp damage, probably. Didn't notice at the time, but it did a good chunk to her armour as well, which likely rules out the first two and adds the chance for maybe just massive piercing, concussive or laser damage.

Thankfully, the mansion is, well, a mansion, so we can duck into a room like the kitchen for relative safety.

First floor basically cleared now. Not bad for only turn 2.

Freshness is a big problem now. Note to self: start using Pillow Books! They restore freshness without the health loss of cigars. Exactly what we need for the catgirls on these long missions. Or, well, I could have brought the healers, but they'd have died to explosives for sure.

Still a ton of enemies left, clearly.

Lenneth moves over to the other elevator in the corner of the map, a sort of tower. We found another black knight over here while the catgirl was trying to secure it, so we brought the herder staff, and it took him out in a single hit. Man, I really wish we still had 2 of these. Or more. Easily our most powerful weapon vs elite targets. Like 200 stun damage, bypass shields and armour AND stun immunity, from melee for like 15 TUs.

Another knight rushed at our guys in the entrance and got the same treatment (plus some zapping with a wand of pain) and revealed these fuckers carry diamonds around! Jackpot!

Honestly, it was relatively uneventful, all things considered. Half the enemies are instructors, leaders or soldiers, easily killed in one shot on sight. The stormtroopers are tankier, but still die quickly in melee.

Apparently peak human genetics is a combination of Jay Leno's chin with the legs of Peter Dinklage. Are we the bad guys? Maybe we should be serving these glorious specimens of human perfection after all?

Hit a small snag while clearing our way up the main building; these storm troopers resist melee more than I realized and Maria ran out of TUs trying to kill one. Thankfully we were able to run in a few more people and nothing came of it.

With their numbers much thinned out, I feel comfortable moving the tank into the open and have it take position up top to give us some air support.

Another hit from one of their new weapons. God damn this hurt like a motherfucker. And it bypassed the shields. This has to be warp. Mind nor bio would have done that kind of armour damage. Honestly I'm surprised we even survived the shot given how high the damage multi for warp is vs power armour.

Also, these fucking knights keep getting back up. The one drawback of the herder staff is we can't pile on additional stun to a downed target. The pain wand doesn't seem to be hitting super hard either, and they're clearly regenerating a lot of both heath and stun each turn, even with basically nor freshness left.

It ends without any real climax, I guess the knights and mage were their top tier troops. I think I might have skipped another story screen before this one by accident, it went by in a flash because the turn ended unexpectedly and I was already pressing another button as it happened. At any rate, I was not expecting a sword or a book from this, pretty cool rewards!

98 enemies downed between the two missions. Probably a couple more from friendly fire between people going insane, I don't think we get credit for those.

Not a bad haul, we captured some hih level targets, got some gems and a ton of their new guns, like 20 or so of the small ones and half a dozen of the big ones.

Turns out the ammo is cheap to make. Going to use the hell out of this gun!

Behold, our grand prize! A stick! To be fair, this thing hits like a fucking axe, doing about 90-279 in the hands of our elites, and it's very accurate. But it doesn't pierce armour and cutting is kinda a shit damage type. Maybe it has some cool hidden vampiric property? No way for me to check AFAIK aside from testing. One thing it does have going for it though: It can be taken to the shadow realm, unlike a vibro axe. We're going to tear that place apart.

Gudrun gave us some intel on the cult after the mission.

The smaller of their new weapons. Warp damage indeed, and a relatively small amount. Honestly, we'll probably get some use out of these vs Marsec, their exo suits will crumple under hits from these real fast. I think. They have red shields right? It's the aliens that have blue, pretty sure... mind you, those are weak to warp as well I think, so we might use these vs sectopods too.

You know, every time this screen comes up I think 'Surely this time the income won't go up so much. It can't just raise by like 10% each month, it'll get out of hand way too quickly!'. Well, it does, and it is. At this point our monthly income is so high all those money printers are kind of obsolete. They still add a good chunk of production, but really, a year from now we'll have so much income from our protection rackets that it'll be a waste of time to make money instead of ship parts. I think I'll start shifting everyone over to doing just that already. Also, we can buy an academy provost for 100 million if we want. We might end up doing that given how easy money is to get at this point.

The bigger of the warp guns. Pretty sure nobody got hit by this, or they'd have exploded.

Our fearsome african american foes. (I'm assuming, their face is all covered after all.) Yep, massive regen and apparently high warp resistance. Probably why the Meridian wasn't hitting very hard. I bet it is warp damage.

Gah! Not only is it a WIP item, it's the wrong school of magic! Why need a tome of like, necromancy or life or something. Well, it wasn't a total waste...

It let us research this bad boy. Now, an orb of alacrity is another extremely rare and valuable item... but 200 concussive damage on demand at range for 30 TUs is pretty fucking awesome, even at the cost of 3 freshness. I think we'll want at least one of these. One of our Bio suit pilots can just chug cigars to pay for the freshness. Hell, if it's one handed, we could give it to Slut with a crystal skull and do the same shit Gandalf does, but with a bigass hammer instead of a book.

Hmm, that reminds me that we never did finish off Aurora, we had to pass up the mission to capture her IIRC. I'm sure it'll come back eventually, hopefully soon.

Codex option time! I doubt this matters a whole lot; probably gives us a slightly different reward like a weapon or something. I think I'd opt for Knight personally, but we're not in a big hurry so I'll leave the choice for a day or two.

 

[Luka-boy]

Knight!

 

[Damned Registrations]

Woah woah woah, votes don't count unless you brofist my posts. Why do you think I've been doing all this in the first place?

 

[lightbane]

Codex option time! I doubt this matters a whole lot; probably gives us a slightly different reward like a weapon or something. I think I'd opt for Knight personally, but we're not in a big hurry so I'll leave the choice for a day or two.

Lady, obviously.

 

[Gandalf]

?Gudrun the Knight?

 

[Jaedar]

Not a bad haul, we captured some hih level targets, got some gems and a ton of their new guns, like 20 or so of the small ones and half a dozen of the big ones.

Good job capturing the mage. When I did this mission it was turn ~60 in total, and everyone was super low on freshness, and this guy is actually pretty lethal with his knife, so I had to kill him. Thankfully this is not the only mission where you can get one, although they are really fucking rare.

Codex option time! I doubt this matters a whole lot; probably gives us a slightly different reward like a weapon or something. I think I'd opt for Knight personally, but we're not in a big hurry so I'll leave the choice for a day or two.

Choice explanation spoiler :

Spoiler

Lady path is smaller / more wip, although it seems it actually has a unique mission now, and some unique rewards.
Knight still has a lot more content though, and imo more interesting content.

I will abstain from voting, either outcome is fine to me.

 

[Azira]

Go for the knight. Whoop-assery in the horizon.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Shiny!

I think this is a revamp of the system at the start of the game where you send out expeditions? At any rate, we can't do anything with these.

First result of our new biotech lab. I should probably build a bunch of these, but I'm not sure I'll bother. I'll build a couple at least.

A more interesting result. On the right units, this is a massive amount of bio damage. Armour is x2 effect vs it though, which limits the use quite a bit, and losing energy as you attack sucks. Still, could be a cool way to heal up units before a battle ends.

Apparently we are dating! No reward from this though.

Unless this was the reward? It seemed to pop out of nowhere and also didn't do anything. Feels like another 're-unlock' from updating.

I mean, we don't need to purge ALL the degeneracy...

Yeah, this guy had a Laslock pistol when I found him. Considering the damage on those scales quadratically with rank, I was a bit worried he'd do some crazy damage.

Interesting reveal from him, but probably not useful without the item itself.

Aww, we need to give up the cool sword? That sucks.

I have to say, was not expecting this much plot when I started this LP.

It popped up again! Fine, we'll do it. I got more bitz cats this time..

Yeah, between the blitz armours and the new XG pistols, this was a cakewalk.

Their scariest units were these exalts and some fartbags, but neither are that scary in the open in broad daylight vs a gauss firing squad.

We did manage to lose a catgirl though; got blindsided by a matron with a flamer, and it overwhelmed the shields and set her on fire. Didn't bring an extinguisher, unfortunately.

Reward was lame. Arcane strongboxes sound cool, but tend to have lame shit we already have, like some void salts or a demon essence. It's the mystery boxes we want. We did rescue a cat though, so we can replace the catgirl at least, if not her armour.

You know, getting a hero in exchange for the black falcon isn't the worst deal...

Apparently the glitterstone was needed for the next step for red mage. I'm assuming we were supposed to find it in shadowrealms instead? Whatever.

We can't make these yet, but we've finally got some buildable armour for shadowrealms. It's pretty shit in the real world though.

It's not great in SRL either, but it's a hell of a lot better than nothing.

Well then. This is pretty awesome. I was hoping we'd get something like this from Saya a long time ago.

These are some awesome resists, it's not weak to warp, shrugs off mind attacks... yeah, this'll be awesome.

Hmmm...

Ah, a shadowrealms weapon too. Neat. We already have a fair number though.

Apparently we can strip the armour off her? I'm not sure why we'd do this, I don't think anyone else can wear it.

Seems we'll have a killbox mission on the moon next month. Or maybe something easier, this looks repeatable. Better get those hovertanks online!

Powerful new training option, but we'll need that glitterdust. 5 armour alone would make it worthwhile though.

Got a few of these from a mad scribblings event. We can get more by trading souls to one of the gods too. Neat.

Last of the prizes, spent nearly 20 million to get this out because I'd rather do that than 3 of those stupid goblin missions. Mind you, I might still do another of those exterminator rescues just to steal his Chryssalid gas ammo- we can't build it and it might be great vs ninjas or some other targets.

 

[lightbane]

Truly lots of content... Shame the game will never be finished.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Truly lots of content... Shame the game will never be finished.

For a particular reason or just in the general Dwarf fortress kinda sense?

Weird coincidence: I was browsing the mod forum just now for evidence of the former, found someone was doing a catgirl only LP (Madlad apparently did a no market run before!) and checked his latest twitch vod out of curiosity. By cosmic fluke, he started the stream off doing the exact same witch quest I just did in the last update! Clearly way earlier in the tech tree though. Figured I'd link it here in case anyone wanted an idea of the gameplay in motion or more details on that mission in particular.

Link: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2164557647

 

[lightbane]

For a particular reason or just in the general Dwarf fortress kinda sense?

Autism and the second one. Dio stated he wanted to have an endgame, but he adds stuff in every update, so I don't see it happening anytime soon.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Self Insert

Ewww. Are they like those hairless cats?

Combat suits? Meh. Flight suits? FUCK YEAH. Can't buy ace pilot suits, but even the basic ones are a major stat boost. On top of the theban cats, we've got top tier pilots on demand now if we want to make an elite airforce.

Turns out that the persuadotron prize unlocked another- And it's just as expensive in tokens, but this time I don't have a stockpile of 4k tokens built up. Fuck it, spend the 50 million!

Combat suit they offered is pretty shit at this point. Maybe if you could get this much, much earlier but... by the time you've killed 30+ star gods, haven't you gotten their shield tech already?

Hopefully this leads to something useful.

Damn, it's pricey.

Well, fuck. That's what I get for deleting a flak cannon to build the new garden thing.

So, the good news is, Gudrun is here to kick ass for us. The bad news is, Gudrun is here to get killed and be gone forever when we lose. Also, this is the main base and has some other important shit probably, though we can make mainframes so... probably wouldn't be an unwinnable game? More bad news is that my stocks of gear here are shit. This base was so heavily defended until recently I didn't consider troops to defend it worth the effort. So, no force blades, no XGauss, no soldiers in power armour... we're pretty fucked.

We've got an MP Lascannon... and one ogre who can actually carry the thing. And he's brand new. Also, we've got JIM! He'll apparently help us defend the base. He's also apparently a fucking bomb for some reason. No, I can't disarm him, and didn't arm him in the first place. He's also a hat, like the plague bugs. Actually, plague bugs should be nice, mercs have terrible bio defenses.

We also have our second hero. Also brand new and untrained but, at least he starts with pretty good stats. No armour is a pretty big drawback though, and the stats aren't high enough to really turn the tide.

Base sure has changed a lot since the last time we had to fight in it.

Also, while the base layout is still fairly defensible due to the hangar being behind the access lift, it's not ideal like it was before, where all the barracks were right near the lift so we could swarm out and contain them.

They're not scrubs either. Plenty of captains, commandos, and they've got plasma weapons and blaster bombs and shit.

Our best weapons are several heavy gauss, which are pretty shit vs mercs (~50% resistant) and some plasma pistols. Also some UAC plasma rifles, which are quite decent for raw firepower, if inaccurate. No extra ammo for those though, we'll have to use them strategically.

We've got that fancy disc of death thing too! Pretty nice weapon for base defense honestly, we can fire it from a very safe position, especially with our robo parrot to spot for us. I did botch a few shots though, thankfully it's not a blaster bomb so I didnt blow myself up when I shot the doorframe here.

Also, mercs have all the spotter shit and pretty good reactions, so we lost a LOT of people as soon as the fight broke out.

Oh, and they brought hovertanks, of course. We've got hardly anything that can even scratch them. We've got some rocket launchers, but having a fresh recruit haul that around to get one shot off on a hovertank with 500 blue shields won't do much good.

Gudrun is, thankfully, well trained. Not on par with our best, but she beats anyone else here. Wish I could have dropped her sword and given her the lascannon, she'd have cleaned up.

Lost the ogre before he even got to fire a shot, sadly. Got some plague bugs off while they were clustered at least.

Yep, lotsa losses. I think about 6 people on turn 2 alone.

I tried dropping JIM in an out of the way spot in case he really was a bomb or something. Nope, just spawned in. Maybe it's to ensure he appears if you didn't equip him?

I had some hologal pads too. Will be a nice distraction hopefully.

The first thing JIM did was run over and kill the hologal.

The mercs are already in the air vents, and killed off one of the guard dogs. I gave them armed mines, but those won't do much at this point.

And they have a fucking commander with them. Shit.

Still, despite all that, we manage to hold on fairly well. We don't have great troops, but we do have half a dozen or so trained gals, albeit in shitty armour, and a bunch of other randos I kept here to train up and never sent away when they were done.

We've also got 4 catgirls, all with decent, but not great stats. 2 even have grav boots! I expected to get a lot of mileage out of them with the vibro swords and spears, but they got busy fighting the hovertank. They did rack up some kills besides. The vibro sword can't really harm the tank, but the spear can, and the spear shreds armour too. The UAC rifle puts out a lot of plasma too and is perfect for wearing down the armour on this thing.

Our new hero manages to score a kill. I gave him a medical slicer since it scales with bravery and he has 140 and 140 melee as well.

Gudrun was the MVP for sure, cutting mercs down left and right. She's far from invincible, but it's hard to get a lot of firepower aimed at her in these tight quarters if I'm careful.

The merc commander is floating in our hangar. I tried taking some potshots at him but he reacted and wiped the gunner out.

Thankfully the gauss tanks are retarded, and mostly stayed in place or fucked corners. We'd have been screwed if they went around blasting walls down.

Oh look, it's JIM! Yeah, contrary to the description, he doesn't help defend at all. He's a fucking enemy. He's put a bunch of gals asleep and killed a dog by putting it to sleep and then walking over the mine.

Now, JIM is extremely resistant to pretty much everything. I did, however, have the foresight to give Gudrun some demon essence as a way to kill elite mercs with the mind damage. Worked a treat here. RIP JIM. Guess I didn't need to pay 12 million to get rid of you after all!

Finally managed to take out the first hovertank. If we can get these down I'm sure we can win, Gudrun can wreck the humans with a bit of support.

Alas, the second tank has retreated into the hangar. Can't really play peekabo with the 1 tile doorways and the catgirls if it's in there. Well, maybe if we use the vents... it'll be sketchy.

So, I move one of the catgirls closer to make that happen... and stumble into TWO shocktroopers just as I run out of TUs. Fuck.

Turned out they didn't matter, as a nearby merc blew her and the room to bits with whatever the fuck this was. Blaster bomb? Plasma scorcher?

The silver linging is that the hovertank got lured out. Gudrun and the other catgirl are nearby, so I was able to strip the shield. The Lascannon is too heavy to carry properly, but we can pick it off the ground, fire a shot, run back to cover. We're in the perfect position too, with a shot at the thin rear armour from real close.

Naturally, I whiff the shot.

I try to get some damage in with the nearby healer cat and her plasma pistol, but got too greedy and she died to return fire. The problem is, when this thing gets it's turn, it'll likely round the corner and unload on our new hero, killing him instantly.

Another gal comes out of the woodworks and fires suicidally at this thing with a plasma rifle. All good hits, but not enough.

I even had the spear catgirl go at it, but couldn't finish it off. Just noticed she's got the stealth suit on. Probably could have taken advantage of that somehow.

By some miracle, the tank didn't kill Reg on it's turn, and we managed to finish it off, just barely, with Gudrun.

The merc commander has left the hangar and we're finally cleaning up. You see, I haven't told you our real secret weapon: I'm fairly certain we've got more workers than they have ammo. Eventually they'll be overwhelmed by workers mostly wielding our crappiest weapons, like old shotguns and shit.

I have to say, I wasn't expecting to even last to turn 17, let alone in this good a shape.

I also gave Gudrun a pain wand to make use of her insane voodoo power, but she couldn't even take out a single shocktrooper. Must have been terrible rolls.

Thankfully, I landed the lascannon shot this time and it punched right through the frontal armour and killed him.

Another problem: I'd thought the halls mostly clear, but I forgot the commandos have some stealth properties, and one got into the room that had most of our remaining weak troops. Thankfully they were able to overwhelm him, but we took more losses here.

The commander is the last man standing. Stylish kill with the disc-o-death incoming! Except not, the shot whiffed. Not my fault this time!

The catgirls are all dead at this point, except the one with the stealth suit I think. But we did have a gal coming in with a vibro spear, and she managed to deal the killing blow after Gudrun tore down the shields and crippled him.

EASY. A merely 14 lost hands. And 16 workers. And JIM. Fuck JIM. I saved the cat at least. The actual cat, not the catgirls.

See? Look at all that xp. Totally worth it.

Oh and... and we got JIM back... huzzah...

 

[Jaedar]

Eventually they'll be overwhelmed by workers mostly wielding our crappiest weapons, like old shotguns and shit.

The workers revolution cannot be defeated.

Gudrun is a beast with her 100 armor and large chunk of red shields. And since she's an auxiliary, she heals to full instantly, which also comboes well with her voodoo power, since it means she gets all her freshness back instantly as well.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Never did play Majora's Mask...

So, after that little fiasco, I think we need some more equipment. Fortunately, we're fucking rich, so that's not a problem. Actually, I spent probably more than half of this session just manufacturing various sets of weapons and armours, hiring troops (mostly catgirls) and doing all the annoying logistical stuff that entails because trying to build anything in this game means you'll be missing the 3 clothespins required to do it.

Hmm, for once I think we'll pass. The dream echoes aren't giving anything any more, and the zortium is sitting unused. Plus we'll probably get more of both from the other shadowrealms missions.

Turns out we never researched these. Well, I want some quick, reasonable able bodies, so we're buying a bunch now. I suppose I could have bought gals instead but they'd take longer to learn how to not shoot their own feet off.

Hmm, I wonder if there's a way to get this from the rimrider animatrons. I really ought to clear some of them out.

Ooh, I was hoping for a ship, but a way stronger radar is nothing to sneeze at!

Spent a fuckton of money for this, but we can get near global coverage if I put one in basically every base. I would later realize that will take way more investment than I thought, since they require personal labs, which require computer cores, which require power sources... yeah.

The other new alenium tech is.... a hideous outfit. Still, voodoo stats are hard to come by, and the way it scales makes this actually quite valuable for a Bugeye to hang out in the ship and mindrape enemies. Also, Sense 6 is pretty cool.

Well, it's smaller growth than I'd hoped, but still crazy good. I wasn't even trying for rating this month really, I just kept shooting down ships because I could.

More shitty Neko armour. Bah.

Guess we don't need to wait long for this!

Interesting. Was not expecting hovertanks.

Ah, they bear the windmill of friendship! Let us earnestly hail them with the universal greeting.

They're not responding. Perhaps they're retarded?

Yeah, this is pretty easy with the two hovertanks. Blue shields only take half damage from warp, and lasers melt through the enemy armour efficiently enough.

Can't see it here, but there's another of their tanks behind the roof of the eastern outpost.

Huh, these guys have less warp resistance than I thought. Maybe we should be using it against them after all?

They've got a bigger fort over here as well. Will be a pain in the ass to take, we had to take the drakkar, so only 4 crew with the 2 tanks. To make matters worth, we needed exosuits... which are all terribly weak to warp. Fuck. I wish I'd at least had the Syn wear the refractor outfit instead.

Well, I can't complain, we're just picking them off as they wander out. Easy easy.

A third hovertank way in the back.

Finally cleared it out enough to send Maria in. I'm terrified she'll get blown up but she's also our most mobile infantry, best suited for tight quarters.

What a loving painting. Also, this is the default lighting setting. Can you see the staircase? I sure as fuck couldn't, but I assumed it was there and found it after squinting a bit. Now, can you see the SECOND staircase?

even with full lighting it's barely a smudge next to the other one. Not a fan of this intentionally difficult to read terrain gimmick.

Anyways, I found my way down, but it seems to be a dead end. Surprising considering how many enemies came out of here.

Naturally, there was ANOTHER hidden staircase leading to their underground tunnels. Great.

The fourth enemy tank really took me by surprise, and it managed to survive the volleys from ours. Vehicles are kinda weird in that they can easily run out of energy before TUs when firing their weapons a lot.

Fortunately, Dioxine has us covered. Man, these ATGM things are awesome.

I think the moon drains freshness really fast, everyone but the Syn and Hero are looking drained.

Ugh, the underground tunnels don't just connect the buildings, they grid the whole fucking map. There's extra rooms in here too. It's a nightmare.

Turkish Ronin blowing off some steam.

Thankfully I put the tanks on opposite sides of this building so they couldn't murder eachother.

Still a distressing number of enemies remaining.

Finally found some more enemies with Maria. Scared the shit out of me actually, since he found me. Luckily it was a minigun guy instead of a warp cannon.

Jesus fuck he's proving hard to kill. I might have to stop using the mono claw. Even with the armor penetration, it barely scratches guys like this, who ignore 60% of the damage.

Sent Dioxine in as well. I can't send the gals in Biosuits because they're both about to collapse from fatigue. Apparently you can't smoke cigars on the moon. Or read the lightning tome, for that matter, which seems odd.

Anyways, the gold shields here don't have any special resistance to warp, so they'll shrug off a shot or two before letting it through.... and the suit takes triple warp damage. Even the rifles could tear him apart.

After a while I get into the main building and find... whatever this is.

And a while after that (we're on like turn 40) the game finally gives me the cheat sheet for the last 2 enemies.

However, someone died to one of those two enemies.

Dioxine got blown the fuck up by a single long range shot when an enemy opened a door and fired. I was expecting to get an overwatch shot and kill the fucker, but it didn't work out. The good news is, we've got him in a stasis pod so it'll be a quick and cheap recovery. The bad news is, the armour that he was using needs those fucking Magischen motors and the only stargods I've seen recently have been using fucking bombers and silver towers and shit. Give me a fucking sectopod or 6 already!

Well, seems we won't need to repeat that ordeal, at least. Not sure what I'd do different if we did, the only other thing we could bring would be space suits, and while they'd take way less warp damage, they'd get annihilated by the miniguns or plasma.

 

[lightbane]

The other new alenium tech is.... a hideous outfit. Still, voodoo stats are hard to come by, and the way it scales makes this actually quite valuable for a Bugeye to hang out in the ship and mindrape enemies. Also, Sense 6 is pretty cool.

A parody of the Eldar!

After a while I get into the main building and find... whatever this is.

A Nokia! Also, Super Aryan?

Spoiler