X-COM OpenXcom Thread

[Covenant]

Jellyfish

I tried this, I find it to be a deathtrap. You start up in a lit area, and enemies don't. The floors can be shot through even when you can't take the lift down and due to lighting difference and lines of sight its easier to be shot through the floor than it is to shoot through it.
I switched to the shadowbat, which also has many egregious flaws, but it's also really hard to shoot into.

In my experience, once you have gals with decent enough reactions/armour to get to the 'safe' spots without getting killed by reaction fire on turn 1 (don't gamble on this against enemies with explosives, or you might lose your gear pile to a rocket launcher), you're pretty safe if you leave your gals standing a couple of tiles away from the lifts, to the side. There are still positions you can be shot from but they're minimal, and the lifts are very handy for things like shooting rockets at tanks or pyramids and then ascending back into cover, or for slaughtering enemies crowded around/below your lifts. Sunblades/laser stars can clear 4 or more enemies a turn, with decent throwing. Not to mention the lifts keeping you safe from melee only enemies.

Having only six usable gals is definitely a handicap (albeit with 7 arcane ray shots), but aside from that the Jellyfish can be used to complete a lot of missions that you'd otherwise be unable to manage.

 

[lightbane]

For xpiratez, is there a way to check how a craft looks/functions on the battlescape before buying/researching it? The tech tree viewer shows all the other specs, but what I really want to know is how many windows/lamps/exit options it has.

Quick Battle in the main menu. You can select any craft and mission.

Man, why do all the codex crafts I have access to have so many suicide lights? Either directly on disembarking or allow disembarking in shadow but not moving away from the craft. Seems like suicide on night missions compared to the airbus, and the airbus has so many windows to get shot through it's not even funny.

Dioxine has a noticeable aversion to making craft that are actually good; the best you'll get is different flavours of 'not terrible', or, more likely 'only the one crippling flaw'. That's why it's pretty common to see people use a decent early craft (e.g. the Jellyfish) well into the Higher Studies era.

The "aircraft has fucking holes so that everyone shoots me!" is a feature to make the game more artificially difficult, as well as to prevent you from using the "pass turn 1" camping trick. I think Dio overdid it, but modders gonna mod. Solarius is almost as bad, but not that much, with XFiles.

 

[Jaedar]

For xpiratez, is there a way to check how a craft looks/functions on the battlescape before buying/researching it? The tech tree viewer shows all the other specs, but what I really want to know is how many windows/lamps/exit options it has.

Quick Battle in the main menu. You can select any craft and mission.

Man, why do all the codex crafts I have access to have so many suicide lights? Either directly on disembarking or allow disembarking in shadow but not moving away from the craft. Seems like suicide on night missions compared to the airbus, and the airbus has so many windows to get shot through it's not even funny.

Dioxine has a noticeable aversion to making craft that are actually good; the best you'll get is different flavours of 'not terrible', or, more likely 'only the one crippling flaw'. That's why it's pretty common to see people use a decent early craft (e.g. the Jellyfish) well into the Higher Studies era.

The "aircraft has fucking holes so that everyone shoots me!" is a feature to make the game more artificially difficult, as well as to prevent you from using the "pass turn 1" camping trick. I think Dio overdid it, but modders gonna mod. Solarius is almost as bad, but not that much, with XFiles.

I remember way back when you started xpiratez with a good craft. Iirc it had an elevated 360degree catwalk for sniping, a ramp in one direction and a hole in the floor for quick exiting (or scouting with a flying suit). So Dioxine is clearly not incapable, just unwilling.

Airtruck is really, really well designed and can be beelined for quite early.

Tried it in quick battle, but it has some flaws. There's no way to get sight in one direction, so moving outside the truck is taking a gamble an enemy won't move around a corner with 90% tu and whoop your ass. It's also lit inside, so exiting on the upper level is letting every enemy on the map take a reaction shot (case in point, this was the first thing that happened in the quick battle. I step outside and get instagibbed by a cyberdisk). It's not a true deathtrap since I guess you can just exit on the lower level, but that's slow and boring.

I kinda prefer the airbus to the airtruck, but I really like moving out aggressively on turn 1. Just wish there was a craft where I could scout the directions, pick one to clear, and then be somewhat safe from getting shot in the back. The airbus is almost this craft, but not quite.

 

[Average Manatee]

You can't really move out aggressively on hard missions. e.g. where there's a ton of spotter/snipers or its daytime. The point of the Airtruck is you can turtle hard. Open the door, take a shot, stay behind invulnerable cover. Have someone prime a grenade for someone else, they pop outside and throw it and get back in. Done properly you can essentially clear half a map before leaving your craft with next to zero risk. In fact I commonly have at least one or two catgirls providing bow/grenade/mortar assistance for the whole battle while not ever leaving the airtruck during hard battles..

Reaction fire isn't a problem if you have high reactions yourself and/or manage things properly (open door to check then don't move or only sidestep out, you will be safe). Keep in mind soldiers in quick battle are untrained retards with awful stats. Also don't move out on the first turn of course unless you know you're safe, enemies always have 100% TUs then and are able to reaction fire like 4x as well as they will on any other turn.

Airtruck is honestly almost perfect. I didn't even notice the indoors lighting thing because the doors shut after your turn. It's outside lighting that is the issue on night missions.

 

[Jaedar]

You can't really move out aggressively on hard missions. e.g. where there's a ton of spotter/snipers or its daytime. The point of the Airtruck is you can turtle hard. Open the door, take a shot, stay behind invulnerable cover. Have someone prime a grenade for someone else, they pop outside and throw it and get back in. Done properly you can essentially clear half a map before leaving your craft with next to zero risk. In fact I commonly have at least one or two catgirls providing bow/grenade/mortar assistance for the whole battle while not ever leaving the airtruck during hard battles..

This is really boring. If you clear out all the nearby enemies then long range combined with good armor is often sufficient (as long as the calibre of the enemy isn't too high) to not have to care about return fire. But a lot of good enemies will have the firepower or accuracy to make it nonviable.

Also don't move out on the first turn of course unless you know you're safe, enemies always have 100% TUs then and are able to reaction fire like 4x as well as they will on any other turn.

Skipping the first turn makes me sad, I almost never do it.

It's outside lighting that is the issue on night missions.

It's a lot worse, that's for sure.

 

[Average Manatee]

This is really boring. If you clear out all the nearby enemies then long range combined with good armor is often sufficient (as long as the calibre of the enemy isn't too high) to not have to care about return fire. But a lot of good enemies will have the firepower or accuracy to make it nonviable.

If you have high reactions (which its honestly hard NOT to have in Piratez past the first month or two for your A-team gals) there is no return fire so long as you don't start doing reaction-attracting actions within view of the enemy with less than ~25% of your TUs left.

On the hardest missions atm I have 3-4 catgirl archers and 5-6 melee/javelin gals who can all shuffle around and throw out 3 and 2 ranged attacks apiece with no counterfire or danger, for as many turns as it takes to clear the way. Then once an area is clear I set up the mortars.

 

[Jaedar]

After having done a few base defenses with "good" layouts (ie, hangers and lifts isolated by fire pit rooms) and a few with bad layouts (hangars with multiple access routes, in this case multiple rubbles) I am honestly not sure I prefer the former. The ai seems to lose a couple of dudes to fire traps, but then it just infiltrates the rest through the sludge, which is a pain in the fucking ass to deal with, as mobility and visibility is piss poor and everything connects to everywhere (in the latest one the enemies had stormrats, and I definately don't want to run into those in one tile wide corridoors with no ubers in base). Giving the ai space to just do a frontal attack seems preferable. Or at least making it so there aren't any bends but that's a bit harder to construct.

I guess this will change when the enemies up their game and bring more large units, as not having to worry about being flanked by a tank sounds really nice, but for now I miss my wide shooting gallery.

If you have high reactions (which its honestly hard NOT to have in Piratez past the first month or two for your A-team gals) there is no return fire so long as you don't start doing reaction-attracting actions within view of the enemy with less than ~25% of your TUs left.

By return fire I mean regular shots, not reaction shots. I agree that it's not hard to avoid reaction fire as long as you play a bit conservatively with your TUs.

 

[Average Manatee]

Use Aye phones to detect enemies underground. Shouldn't be a big problem past the early game.

 

[Covenant]

After having done a few base defenses with "good" layouts (ie, hangers and lifts isolated by fire pit rooms) and a few with bad layouts (hangars with multiple access routes, in this case multiple rubbles) I am honestly not sure I prefer the former. The ai seems to lose a couple of dudes to fire traps, but then it just infiltrates the rest through the sludge, which is a pain in the fucking ass to deal with, as mobility and visibility is piss poor and everything connects to everywhere (in the latest one the enemies had stormrats, and I definately don't want to run into those in one tile wide corridoors with no ubers in base). Giving the ai space to just do a frontal attack seems preferable. Or at least making it so there aren't any bends but that's a bit harder to construct.

I guess this will change when the enemies up their game and bring more large units, as not having to worry about being flanked by a tank sounds really nice, but for now I miss my wide shooting gallery.

If you have high reactions (which its honestly hard NOT to have in Piratez past the first month or two for your A-team gals) there is no return fire so long as you don't start doing reaction-attracting actions within view of the enemy with less than ~25% of your TUs left.

By return fire I mean regular shots, not reaction shots. I agree that it's not hard to avoid reaction fire as long as you play a bit conservatively with your TUs.

I would strongly recommend just filling all your bases except for your main two with ~12 SAM sites so you don't need to worry about crackdowns again. And you can trim that number down as you start using luxury quarters, armoured vaults, etc. Then for the main bases I like to play aggressively by bombarding the lift room with explosives in order to stop the enemy having time to beeline for the sewers (I don't care how many Aye Phones you have, hunting enemies in there is tedious as fuck). Just pray you don't get a Star God crackdown in early-mid Year 2.

You're still somewhat at risk from harbingers of doom teleporting on top of your base out of nowhere, but the enemies in that faction are dumb, so you should be able to garrison against that effectively with a few rookies and mine dogs (and it's a very rare occurrence anyway).

The above advice probably isn't helpful if you actually find crackdowns fun, as the whole point of it for me is to spend as little time dealing with them as possible.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Average Manatee]

My problem with crackdowns is the ahead of time management needed to have everyone equipped. Xcom UI wasn't great for this originally and piratez makes it worse when you can't simply churn out 15 laser rifles per base to have everyone combat effective.

 

[baturinsky]

The "aircraft has fucking holes so that everyone shoots me!" is a feature to make the game more artificially difficult, as well as to prevent you from using the "pass turn 1" camping trick. I think Dio overdid it, but modders gonna mod. Solarius is almost as bad, but not that much, with XFiles.

I remember way back when you started xpiratez with a good craft. Iirc it had an elevated 360degree catwalk for sniping, a ramp in one direction and a hole in the floor for quick exiting (or scouting with a flying suit). So Dioxine is clearly not incapable, just unwilling.

Isn't that the same craft. Bonaventura was the starting ship in earlier version, and now it is relatively early one. And while it has ramp, roof etc, it's indeed very hole-y.
If you want a really good ships early, go the "Peasant revolution" route. They get https://xpedia.netlify.app/##STR_WAR_HARVESTER

 

[baturinsky]

Jellyfish

I tried this, I find it to be a deathtrap. You start up in a lit area, and enemies don't. The floors can be shot through even when you can't take the lift down and due to lighting difference and lines of sight its easier to be shot through the floor than it is to shoot through it.
I switched to the shadowbat, which also has many egregious flaws, but it's also really hard to shoot into.

Is it impossible to turn off the Jellyfish lights alongthe other with L button?

 

[Jaedar]

(I don't care how many Aye Phones you have, hunting enemies in there is tedious as fuck).

Yeah, this is my feeling as well.

I would strongly recommend just filling all your bases except for your main two with ~12 SAM sites so you don't need to worry about crackdowns again.

Haven't unlocked any sam sites (or equivalents yet). 12 also seems like a very large number. That's like a third of the total base layout?

My problem with crackdowns is the ahead of time management needed to have everyone equipped. Xcom UI wasn't great for this originally and piratez makes it worse when you can't simply churn out 15 laser rifles per base to have everyone combat effective.

I don't have a big problem with guns, just have to remember to ship over lots of shotguns and stuff when first building the base. But the armors are fucking annoying, there's no way I'm actually shelling out for 100+ sets of armor.

Is it impossible to turn off the Jellyfish lights alongthe other with L button?

Are those lights actually real or just to make it easier to see your troops? I don't think I tried but the lights seem to be a side effect of the anti-grav so I'd assume no.

Bonaventura was the starting ship in earlier version, and now it is relatively early one.

Probably, Bonaventura rings a bell. Relatively early is also a funny thing to say in xpiratez, could mean almost anything (no spoil plz).

 

[Average Manatee]

I don't have a big problem with guns, just have to remember to ship over lots of shotguns and stuff when first building the base. But the armors are fucking annoying, there's no way I'm actually shelling out for 100+ sets of armor.

Well, you want some shotguns and SMGs. Also at least a few rifles to shoot down long corridors. Along with melee weapons. And stun batons in case of something like an easy academy attack, captures can net you half a million bucks. Then you want something to counter anything super tough like tanks. Of course don't forget the grenades and aye phones either. Remember to upgrade your equipment every few months or so.

For Armor I think its fine to stick with Pirate clothing just because it offers stat bonuses rather than stat penalties (your secondary bases probably have shit troops that can use it). Getting +5 TUs from Pirate armor rather than -5 to -10 TUs from heavier stuff is a substantial improvement, and well constructed bases have tons of cover to use those TUs to hide behind. Eventually upgrade to something like Tac armor but that's a while coming.

 

[baturinsky]

On base defence you are not limited by the vessel capacity, so amassed cheap and/or 2x2 units can be handy. Dogs, reapers, gyrocopters worked fell for me.

 

[Jaedar]

I am continually amazed by how much stuff there is in xpiratez. Every time I think I've got a good idea about what's going on, the game will throw new factions (doomons, marsec, mercs most recently) at me, and each new faction will immediately open up what feels like a dozen research avenues, which I just don't have time for. Sometimes the new enemies are easy, sometimes it's total vietnam. And you better grab what you can while you can, because some of these guys are rare and will not show up again for a looong time.

Thankfully, there is no personal armor invented that is strong enough to withstand a 'nothing personnel kid' manouver.

On base defence you are not limited by the vessel capacity, so amassed cheap and/or 2x2 units can be handy. Dogs, reapers, gyrocopters worked fell for me.

That does seem really good, but I haven't gotten the ability to make any large units yet (this is not a request for hints).

 

[Average Manatee]

It's probably also a good idea for the fact that those units don't cost a monthly salary and don't count towards having more soldiers (= your old soldiers rank up and cost more). Doing some rough calculations I think going from 30 to 60 soldiers increases your monthly upkeep by around 500k, which is a lot if you're just throwing down 3 starter bases with 10 soldiers apiece who won't do much aside from assaults.

 

[Jaedar]

Getting PTSD from this mansion invasion. 33 turns of torment, trying to drag out some loot and then when I end mission I realize the game deleted every piece of gear that wasn't infiltration compatible and in someone's backpack.

 

[baturinsky]

Getting PTSD from this mansion invasion. 33 turns of torment, trying to drag out some loot and then when I end mission I realize the game deleted every piece of gear that wasn't infiltration compatible and in someone's backpack.

Weird. Have you eliminated all opposition or evacuated through exit zones?

 

[Jaedar]

Getting PTSD from this mansion invasion. 33 turns of torment, trying to drag out some loot and then when I end mission I realize the game deleted every piece of gear that wasn't infiltration compatible and in someone's backpack.

Weird. Have you eliminated all opposition or evacuated through exit zones?

exit zones.

Anyway, I reloaded, did it with killing everyone. Much easier, much less tedious, and the loot is insane. Did lose a catgirl, which is a bit unfortunate (first time I lost no one, but everyone also got heavily injured). Think I'll skip future mansion missions though.

 

[lightbane]

Not sure if it's been mentioend, but these two mods are worth a try:

https://mod.io/g/openxcom/m/unexcom-directorate-17

https://mod.io/g/openxcom/m/unexcom-bureau-11

The second one is still unfinished I think, but both can be completed. Either way, it's a slower-paced XCOM, with more focus on investigation and fighting humies, kinda like XCFile. I tried the first one and found it hard, as your soldiers are expensive and die quite easily, in the usual XCOM way.

 

[Luka-boy]

I dig UNEXCOM's approach, at least in theory.

Four mods following the setting's alt-history in chronological order, with each one taking place in a different decade (1950s to 1980s) so you get a different kind of vibe each time while getting references to the previous ones and a sense of how the world changed.

 

[Jaedar]

I really lost control over my xpiratez campaign. As soon as I got the rank from visiting pogrom (2 months after first pogrom for some reason), I've been ranking up once per month without even intending to. Currently Big Boss.

I fear I'm about to get wiped by some super mega base attack.

 

[Average Manatee]

Decided to take a bit of a break from XPiratez before I burned out completely and picked up XCom Files again.

Spoiler

I'm not sure if its actually changed for the better in terms of pacing since I last played it or I've simply developed much more tolerance for lots of small group missions thanks to Piratez, but I'm finding progression better. Could also be the little meta knowledge I have from the first game. That said 95% of the monster missions still feel kind of useless. You don't get much loot, the research tree doesn't really have anything important locked behind captured monsters (technically they are required but there's a wide swathe of monsters that satisfy the unlock and I always had it well before finishing all cults for a given promotion), and the missions themselves aren't that interesting (either you land, see that you're surrounded by stuff that will rape you in 1 turn, and leave immediately, or you land and spend 10 turns farming reaction/firing XP with long range snipers). I guess the rating is the reward which translates into increased funding (which is a huge part of your income here unlike normal xcom), but the mechanics behind this has always been unknown to me and it seems like insanely good ratings only barely increase your income by a bigger % than barely good ratings. If there was some kind of direct payout for points like XPiratez does it'd make monster missions feel more rewarding.

Cults are better and where the meat is. You're gonna be doing a *lot* of cult safe houses and similar missions. Thankfully they are pretty fun done at night, with lots of throwing flares and sniping tons of stupid dudes with pistols and bats from a mile away with 100% accurate shots. You're also always finding at least a few bags of money which means decent returns. It's seems like the weighting on missions is ~66% cults 33% monsters which is good because like I said, monster missions are boring. What I don't like is that the cults feel really similar and it seems EVERY enemy above the lowest tier is spotter/sniper (unlike Xpiratez you aren't told who has these traits but at this point I'm fairly certain its everything above the lowest level). There really needs to be a better mechanic than how sniper works right now because it really isn't great. Like it'd be good if sniper only allowed enemies to see twice as far as normal rather than infinitely across an entire dark and smoke filled map. It's also really annoying how enemies are totally fine spamming you with dozens of what must be 0% accuracy SMG shots per turn on the off chance that you randomly take a hit. Players could never do that but the AI with 30+ enemies able to shoot 10-15 shots per turn with those SMGs are just so annoying. It's the kind of thing where usually you're totally fine (even if they hit your armor means you'll never go down in one shot and usually take no damage), but its just constant RNG and they will win battles of attrition if you're not popping heads every turn. If you prioritize sniping the enemy units with sniper rifles and rifles you'll generally be able to outshoot them though.

The research milestone unlocks are... mostly OK. The only problem I had was promotion 2 kind of sucking. Its set up as needing 4 different things: 1 alien unlock, 1 cult and 2 monster. By far the hardest is "cool alien gadget". There's like 100 different alien gadgets that can unlock this... none/almost none of which you can actually research because it requires a laboratory which is only unlockable after promotion 2. I haven't exhaustively checked the entire list of unlock requirements but it seems the primary thing you are likely to obtain is Psiclone, which is a random find from EXALT cult missions. Since EXALT is only 1/4th of cult missions on average and there's only a chance to find it, you basically just need to do a ton of cult missions. Which is annoying because you THINK you need to do these super hard alien missions (alien craft shot down or missions where you have to be in shit surfer or w/e gear), but in reality you should just continue grinding cults. If you get annoyed by cults and start skipping them to wait for the alien missions to show up you'll basically torpedo your game. This happened for my first game where it took almost 1.5 years to get to promotion 2.

Mini guide to get started.

Spoiler

Placing bases based on radar coverage/funding country coverage is useless in this mod. What you want is low build cost (you get charged the build cost on your starting cash based on where you set it up) and range coverage on your craft. For this reason the best base placement is central asia around mid India. This will give your shorter ranged but larger crewed craft range to barely cover eurasiafrica, and it's rock bottom pricing (500k vs. 1M if you do the usual "start in europe to cover all those countries" strat). I think a strong argument can be made for quickly setting up a 2nd base in central america to cover north and south america (for a long time you'll be able to use helis for those missions with 6 soldiers rather than vans with 4) but I didn't. You don't have to worry about base attacks at all from what I can tell so it's fine to just have a simple base with a skeleton crew. Getting more labs is insanely expensive and probably not worth it on base 2 for a long time. If you only have the India base you'll want to send a van of agents to just sit in central america waiting for missions to show up since otherwise it takes too long and they'll time out if you leave from your base.

Immediately build 1-2 more gyms. They are insanely cheap and ensure all your agents are quite good past the first few months. Maintain something like 30 agents total just to have reserves that are in training.

Best weapons early on are shotgun and colt .45, along with a taser. Melee (e.g. stun rod) kind of sucks because it requires melee accuracy and I think Xcom Files has the same melee dodge mechanic as Xpiratez. Problem is, your agents aren't ubers and they'll never have great melee accuracy because melee is not powerful enough to constantly use and train up. Getting 60 from the gym is not enough to be worthwhile. Once you get Promotion 1, graduate to a colt .45 (you'll be trained up well enough to make this an excellent short ranged weapon) and the hunting rifle (amazing sniping, great snap shot distance and accuracy, just need to carry extra ammo). Once you get promotion 2 blackops weapons are generally the best and the shotgun returns with stun rounds for easier captures.

Need to get logistics to unlock vans for 4 agents per mission. 2 agents is suicidal. Then get Kevlar armor, it's good enough for a long time. Once that's done you're pretty well set and can handle everything for a long time. Recommend doing the early cult missions with 3-5 guys in day and just abusing cover and peeking out to take pot shots, but once you have the bigger cult raids always do night with thrown electro flares to light them up.