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

[Jaedar]

Leaving enemy bases around seems to be a REAL BAD THING to do

I am less sure. But it might depend on what faction owns the base. I've left a base of CoS alive for 2 months, and aside from them running supply missions there with strong ships (that are really easy to dodge so not biggie for me), I've noticed no ill effects.

Otherwise, you'll be stumbling in the dark, as seen in this LP, and risk falling behind and then losing because you didn't activate certain arbitrary flags.

Yeah. A lot of the requirements are really arbitrary. I especially shudder at how you'd reasonably obtain the various interrogation only techs, especially the ones that have preconditions. Even if you interrogate someone and get nothing once, it doesn't mean there isn't a mandatory tech left from interrogating that unit.

 

[std::namespace]

Ok the damage per hit isn't great, but find me another gun that puts 10 bullets a turn at 30 tiles away with 75% accuracy.

well, you do have to kill stuff instead of only shooting it...

I kind of was too tbh, but what else to do? Leaving enemy bases around seems to be a REAL BAD THING to do. Aside from Losing funding from the nation, you also get a ton of extra dangerous ships supplying the base and doing missions and shit. Probably a way to exploit that but fuck if I know how.

i dont think that was a base in a classical sense, it even says in the description "until they leave earth"
i dunno if intercepting supply is an exploit, but you do have a scarab and one of the contacts has heavy guns for it
when you do find a base though, looks carefully at it, its gonna look different than in this screenshot

Having a weird issue:

Spoiler

my random guess is that all the destination nodes are occupied so the ai is stuck
the ai moves in their ships on predetermined paths, i guess in bases its the same, they have nodes, those nodes are chosen as destination if the ai just wanders, it has not seen you yet
so in this situation all the nodes would be occupied and it deadlocks, if you show them youself or kill one with indirect fire, like toss a tnt box, its gonna go free

 

[Average Manatee]

my random guess is that all the destination nodes are occupied so the ai is stuck
the ai moves in enemy ships on predetermined paths, i guess in bases its the same, they have nodes, those nodes are chosen as destination if the ai just wanders, it has not seen you yet
so in this situation all the nodes would be occupied and it deadlocks, if you show them youself or kill one with indirect fire, like toss a tnt box, its gonna go free

Like 10 enemies were active and moving normally at the start. The stuck ones do take action if they see me but then stop. It's really bizarre, I did end up shuttling a bunch of grenades around to kill them but it was an absolute PITA that took forever and had most of my soldiers panicking and with 0 freshness at the end.

 

[std::namespace]

Pretty sure it's because I haven't touched a Lokknar mission and started the feud. There's a whole series of events and warnings there. Maybe that's a newer thing, dunno.

what a pussy
...
..
.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Say hello to my little friends.

Well, we could certainly use a good omen after that last engagement.

I was going to show the stats cats have, but apparently we haven't researched one yet. So here's a picture of our adorable bees instead.

We're getting some strange activity from the area around the base we took out. Also, the screenshot didn't turn out at the time, but the base had a different icon, a sort of large skinny crosshair. I don't think I'd ever seen it before, even from my previous base encounters. So it might have been some weird temporary base or something, I dunno.

All the shit flying around doesn't seem to have caused shipping acitvity...

But it's pissing me off and they're only small ships. Our pachyderm mounts our bio cannon, it's over 2000 speed and fairly durable. It should be able to handle whatever these are.

I have no idea what these are.

But apparently they can handle our ship just fine.

In retrospect, I think these might have been sky ninja bikes. Those are insanely fast, dodgey, and their prismatic shields could have been the perfect counter for our slow ass bio plasma cannon. Which is now gone forever. This is why I should have sent a car or some shit on a suicide mission instead.

Warhammer researched! Surprisingly, It's just a totally mundane warhammer.

The accuracy scaling with strength makes it a great weapon for an ogre, and it's stats indicate it can absolutely shred some armour.

This is the base the enemy craft were swarming around. Thankfully, the irradiator tower did it's job.

Bomber design finished researching. Cool picture, but hardly relevant to us now.

We research some laser weaponry components as well, to no avail.

You know what, pretty much all our expert gals might be wounded or dead, but fuck it, party time it is!

So Parties work in a strange way: You can only bring accessories (probably jewelry too, I don't have any) and it randomizes you armour. Sometimes you get something nice like this white dress that gives funky voodoo kung-fu powers.

And sometimes you show up naked or topless.

Fortunately, our enemies also show up unarmed, and unlike us, they're a bunch of puny teenage boys about to get slapped around.

Our fresh recruits have abysmal stats, but they're still got that baseline 20 armour even when naked, and enough strength to knock these guys out. Do note however that parties can also contain sky ninjas as enemies, who are a lot more dangerous when barehanded.

Annoyingly, our gal with the void palm is isolated on an upper floor, and spends a lot of time walking instead of putting people on the ground.

Oh yeah, and the party always has the psychedelics effect, which screws with everyone's morale. Most of our fresh recruits, especially the former raiders, have like 10-30 bravery, so they spend a lot of time going insane or berserk.

Thanks again for the protip about the items showing on the minimap! You can see here the pile of stuff behind the bar. It's mostly booze, as one would expect, however...

Every good bar needs a customer service stick.

There's also a more easily noticed pool cue in the basement.

A true milk run, we obtained 26 neophytes, which ransom for nearly half a million dollaros.

And a big pile of xp as well. No bravery sadly. It's going to be a major pain in the ass fixing that on the former raiders. We can't even do the hazing ritual you get with the female paths.

This pops up again, and I once again turn it down. I'm not getting in fights with ninjas until I have a ship that won't get my entire crew killed by one ninja with a stack of dynamite and a death wish. Lost an early game that way, the cunt even destroyed all the loot in the ship so the lone survivor had no gear to bring back. Good luck fighting ninjas without guns when your tech tree is still stone age.

Instead, we go on another milk run, and this time we get to bring our new toys along for some test runs. This pretty thing is a bardiche. No idea what it's stats are, but I'm going to guess it does a fuckton of damage and has a lunge attack.

Scorpions aren't ideal, but we'll get a nice chunk of meat out of this, and honestly I'm just glad we get some more practice and the mission wasn't against enemy hunters instead, which I half expected.

The fatty gun we picked up last mission doesn't display how many shots it launches when you use auto fire.

But by my estimate, it was somewhere in the 10-12 range. Considering we could walk a bit, crouch for more accuracy, and then shoot twice, that's pure insanity. And it has infinite ammo. Easily the best gun I've seen in the game so far.

Scorpion stats, since I brought a brainer along. They're more or less what I expected.

Our brainer also brought along a 'Smasher' an infinite ammo laser pistol. But despite being a pistol with wicked short range accuracy and low firing cost, it actually fires 3 shots at a time like a shotgun. Very nice!

The bardiche does indeed have a lunge attack, and only costs 25 TUs to swing. Probably a big energy cost too. But 68% accuracy is a lot more excusable on a technically ranged attack that can bypass melee evasion. Very nice!

This gun is called the 'Stingy'. Just like the smasher, it fires 3 shots at once and has infinite ammo. It's actually slightly lighter, has longer range and a 3 round auto mode, which therefore fires 9 lasers for a pretty low TU cost.

Another much needed pile of experience acquired.

Gumsmith, for his noble service of letting the brainers play with him in the hospital, has earned a new rank.

The titles here reveal some interesting stuff. The Fatty, despite being a laser weapon, also counts as a heavy weapon. Which is great, because anyone using that thing really needs that extra strength, it weighs 40 units. Also, apparently the Smasher and Stingy count as shotguns, granting the psycho title. And the ninja sickle does too? That's a weird one, but whatever.

Yeah this is getting a little out of hand. I hope we don't get hit with some insane infamy penalty at the end of the month for letting this happen. We simply don't have the means to fight this AFAIK. Maybe the black scarab could handle it? I'm not willing to risk all our cash to find out.

There is now a slight uptick in shipping in that area now, but that might just be from blowing up our ship. It's honestly bizarrely low for that many ships.

The pilots of our downed craft return to us, none the worse for wear. Come to think of it, I must have forgotten to kick the gnome off and let Echidna actually pilot. I wonder if it would have made the difference?

Another milk run for the sake of collecting monster meat we need for the werewolves. Shamblers apparently have so much health it goes right off the scale.

We finish knocking it out with some howling, and the other one gets killed because I was too lazy to dig out more stun weapons and just lit it up with lasers and spear attacks.

Since vivisection only gets us 3 more meat than a corpse, and a pit fight gives us a corpse back anyways, I opt to do the pit fight with the once we captured for the 8 glamour.

Yes! Indeed! Why else would Gumsmith have been promoted when he wasn't even on that mission?! (It was because the gnome and Echidna were gone) He must be plotting to take over the base!

 

[Average Manatee]

I'll be honest I can't imagine playing true ironman when it comes to the air game. You need absurd amounts of meta knowledge or be willing to lose $1M + irreplaceable equipment every time you intercept something.

What's your opinion on stuff like Armored Cars/Tanks? I'm always wary about losing 3 soldiers but the fact that they add their stats onto the base soldier ones now seems like they might be nice. A tank with enough accuracy to reach 100% shots sounds pretty good...

This pops up again, and I once again turn it down. I'm not getting in fights with ninjas until I have a ship that won't get my entire crew killed by one ninja with a stack of dynamite and a death wish. Lost an early game that way, the cunt even destroyed all the loot in the ship so the lone survivor had no gear to bring back. Good luck fighting ninjas without guns when your tech tree is still stone age.

1. What do you mean, you have a ship with doors that will close before the enemy turn, right?
2. The mission text states whether its Sky Ninjas or Narlocks and I've never seen it lie about that. Narlocks is either a piss easy fight against the guys riding reaper cavalry or a harder but still reasonable fight just vs. the narlocks themselves (which usually has pretty decent loot). Plus guaranteed apples. These missions tend to be great.

 

[Damned Registrations]

1. What do you mean, you have a ship with doors that will close before the enemy turn, right?

Sure, but it's entirely possibly the first enemy turn involves ninjas A, B and C running up to the doors to open them up and try stab us to death, while ninja D follows in after our TU's are all gone and drops dynamite inside. I want a ship with multiple floors, or at least a decently sized indoor room with no doors or windows enemy can get through without first going through another room.

2. The mission text states whether its Sky Ninjas or Narlocks and I've never seen it lie about that.

Once you fight the first Narlock mission, you start getting sky ninja attacks, which carry major infamy penalties if you ignore them, much worse than the village ones. You also get sky ninjas flying around all over the place. Though that might already be the case... If we still haven't gotten a better ship by next month, I'll start the feud anyways, but I've got other shit to work on for now anyways, I'm not exactly itching to interrogate sky ninjas.

 

[lightbane]

Once you fight the first Narlock mission, you start getting sky ninja attacks, which carry major infamy penalties if you ignore them, much worse than the village ones. You also get sky ninjas flying around all over the place. Though that might already be the case... If we still haven't gotten a better ship by next month, I'll start the feud anyways, but I've got other shit to work on for now anyways, I'm not exactly itching to interrogate sky ninjas.

I think that was before, one of the patches updated the ninja route so that you're warned beforehand if you're going to piss off said ninjas. I played it years ago, but Narlocks and Ninjas are different missions related to the Loks.
Also, IIRC one of the newest changes is that grenades and explosives have a true timer. As in, you can't put it at 0 and throw it when necessary for an immediate explosion. You must time it correctly as it can and WILL blow up on your hands since the timer runs even when the grenade is in your inventory. But I suppose you already knew that one.

 

[turkishronin]

Yeah Sky Ninjas are too risky if you don't have a secure ship and guns that can one-shot them. I once just opened the door of my airbus and a reaction fire by Blunderbuss almost killed my entire crew.

 

[Jaedar]

Speaking of base assaults, I did my first one

Screenshot with potential spoilers of layout, dead enemies, etc. And some other generic info

ZOG, ITS LOIK A MEATGROINDA.
80 enemies total. Value of loot was 15 million, not counting everything I decided to keep.
Brought a lot of units by using an expedition (took 2 days to walk from nearest hideout). Definitely the correct choice. Bringing too few units would have seen me butchered by chryssalids or exalts. As it was I could play popamole from the spawn very effectively.

I also got my first "story mission". Pretty wild stuff.

Monster hunts past the early game are bit annoying. Either it's a true hunt in which case it's a pointless milk run except for the xp / trophy farming opportunity. Or it's rival hunters which is kind of a challenge but also requires different gear setup.

1. What do you mean, you have a ship with doors that will close before the enemy turn, right?

Doors close on half turns? I thought they always closed after enemy turn.

I'll be honest I can't imagine playing true ironman when it comes to the air game. You need absurd amounts of meta knowledge or be willing to lose $1M + irreplaceable equipment every time you intercept something.

Yeah, and a photographic memory of all the tiny red dots, speeds, circles etc and what ship type each of them correspond to. I think it is possible to know what basically everything is just by looking at the info, but I can't even remember half of the ships after I see the 2d sprite after engaging.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Worst. Update. Ever.

We're starting off with an easy temple raid. Werewolves are great for knocking out the kids to take for ransom later.

Huh, this is a new one. Free money? Free money.

After the mission we research one of our new guns. Not a terribly impressive one, but could be nice on a stealth mission, despite the small ammo clip. Probably not a lot of other stealthy weapons a peasant could use to blast a hole in a wall.

We research some doge armour too. Sadly it didn't unlock giant spider riding harnesses or anything. Yet.

Pit fights result in cleaning bills, which are fairly trivial but one of those neat touches I think makes everything feel more immersive.

Hey, still better than that mass produced shit, right?

Black cats researched as well...

Which apparently unlocks catgirl recruitment? Huh. Guess that makes sense. That's the shitty version though where we need to trade away young ubers. We don't need that.

Ah, time for a massacre!

Oh, but this finished en route. Nice!

And we got to keep the box we researched?! VERY nice!

Since Gumsmith wants to be the big stronk wallsmasher, Modron is going to be the one I'll train in reactions and bonus TUs. One handed smgs will do the trick there, and this one is a great fit for an ogre anyways. Give em hell!

Werewolves pop out first to scout. God, this mission is so insanely easy with ships that have roof hatches, you can just stand on the roof and kill everyone with arrows and rogue outfits. Having to walk out into a fully lit area before firing at them is a huge pain in the ass.

Well, that's why we brought werewolves. Bullets successfully caught!

Fluffy Mamba is still holding onto that Fatty gun. Spraying lasers acros half a dozen targets is very satisfying, even if they mostly miss.

Average Manatee is on the other side of the ship, getting shot at by over a dozen enemies. They don't even scratch her, even after a dog makes her turn her back to the guns. They do manage to kill or maim several of themselves though.

Huh, I have made a discovery: Walking gunfire seems to provide no xp for hits or even kills. Maybe accidental kills don't award credit?

It was also at this point I remembered I gave her the gun because she had the hover armour and can use it to rain death from the sky. Highly effective, much reccomended.

Not bad for a fight that was over in 6 turns.

More piles of xp. Frustratingly, no bravery awarded though, despite patching up over a dozen wounds. I'm now convinced that raising bravery from 10 to 20 has the same difficulty as going from 90 to 100.

Oh, right, the hyperweapons chests. Hmm, rather underwhelming, honestly. Well, if we didn't already have a bunch of stuff like the smashers it'd be impressive. And the rail rifle is new!

Sadly, the rail rifle also cannot be fired, as indicated by it not being an option in the loadout screen. That ammo under the mouse is for the particle accelerator guns to the right. Which I think we can fire. Hot damn! Above that is 'Gauss Musket' ammo, which we can research, and apparently does 50-150. The Rail Rifle ammo is above that, and listed at 30-90. I'm not sure why I'm allowed to know the ammo damage for these clips but can't even fire the guns, or research the rail rifle yet. Weird rules.

Welp, we need another gunship for out main base so I went ahead and bought the black scarab. It's got 2 heavy slots, but the only heavy weapons we can get right now are carronades. And they take a long time to make. And a lot of scrap metal, but frankly making some space by using that is a bonus. Still, time to get started.

Oh, and we interrogated this guy. No surprises here.

And he gave us this very helpful information. Thanks buddy!

Pilot experience results after shooting down 3 of the helicopters flying over our base. Nice job ogre boys! Next up is a water mission.

Well shit, that's new.

Hmm. Looks spooky. Considering how easy these missions normally are though, I'm not THAT worried.

That is... less damage taken than I'd like to see from something shot with a crossbow. Still, we can hurt it easily if it has no armour, and it's a big target. That voodoo power is concerning but also a potential asset. The body might reveal insights!

We manage to kill the thing in turn one. Given that is the case, I'm confident we can win this, even if there was another one right behind it.

Ouch. Our only gals have terrible bravery stats, making them vulnerable to the voodoo. There's an easy solution though: We drop their weapons. They can't really hurt us much without them, and the boys aren't going to be shook so easily.

Apparently they like to melee too. Given how much the shields stopped, they must be dealing daze damage. Nice!

To be fair, a lot of daze damage...

And I didn't pull our boys back inside when they got close, because our weapons have kind of shit range. Err.... fuck?

It's still fine though, our troops are just stunned, Gandalfine's 50 bravery seems to be enough to shrug off most of the psychic crap, and we've got a bunch of scuba tanks to recover stun damage very quickly.

Man, she was REALLY stunned if two inhales didn't cure the overstun. Still, we can just hide in here until we're patched up.

OH FOR FUCKS SAKE I HATE THIS SHIP.

Well, after that exciting break and enter, Azira is the only one left standing. Well, Azira and that mind controlled gal out there.

As much as I hate to do this... we're fleeing. I'm not risking the ship, all it's gear, and the crew we CAN save on the slim hope that Azira can avoid getting killed. This is even worse than the island was, and we got real lucky there.

The most frustrating thing is that after writing this up and seeing the screenshots again, aside from the obvious things like staying inside the ship and closer together, I realized we had a room (the cockpit) where the fucking jellyfish couldn't reach with melee! If I'd stayed inside there, I could have pretty safely spent another few turns trying to save everyone.

RIP Cleve. And Gandalf. Again.

 

[Jaedar]

I encountered these guys on my first underwater mission. Not a fun experience, but I savescummed so I didn't lose anyone in the end

 

[Average Manatee]

Huh, surprised you had problems there. They go down in like 2-3 javelins for me, I found them very easy since you practically can't miss. The X-Bow is statistically really awful, shouldn't use that.

Also what armor are you wearing? Look like its destroying your stats. I'd just go with whatever hurts your TUs/accuracy/throwing the least. Strong soldiers can tank the stun/turn if there is any.

Doors close on half turns? I thought they always closed after enemy turn.

Automatically closing doors close at the end of your turn and at the end of the enemy turn. They also close before timed grenades go off, so you're safe lobbing high explosive radius things blindly outside. At least assuming they don't blow the door. See my tip on spamming crates of violence when you have a hot LZ, a mission that would normally be suicidal to try and fight your way out while surrounded can become trivial when you throw out 4-6 of those on the first turn. This is part of why camping behind doors in well designed ships (e.g. Airtruck) is so powerful.

Yeah, and a photographic memory of all the tiny red dots, speeds, circles etc and what ship type each of them correspond to. I think it is possible to know what basically everything is just by looking at the info, but I can't even remember half of the ships after I see the 2d sprite after engaging.

Yeah, you need some kind of ship identification cheat sheet.

 

[Luka-boy]

You didn't believe in Cleve hard enough.

 

[turkishronin]

Playing Terror From the Deep saved me from getting surprised by jelly boys. Immediate escape.

 

[std::namespace]

Huh, I have made a discovery: Walking gunfire seems to provide no xp for hits or even kills. Maybe accidental kills don't award credit?

Only first shot/pellet counts.

 

[Average Manatee]

Case in point: a bandit camp was here on turn 1. Could have been deadly. But all my girls started the map with an already primed (right click in the pre-loadout) Crate of Violence. One lobbed hers out the window and the results were like 10 kills in a fight that I'd otherwise probably need to evac. Instant chain panicking ensues.

Spoiler

 

[Gumsmith]

Say hello to my little friends.

This pops up again, and I once again turn it down. I'm not getting in fights with ninjas until I have a ship that won't get my entire crew killed by one ninja with a stack of dynamite and a death wish. Lost an early game that way, the cunt even destroyed all the loot in the ship so the lone survivor had no gear to bring back. Good luck fighting ninjas without guns when your tech tree is still stone age.

You might want to check out that Worm craft in that case.

Certain guns with high firerate only have a 50% chance to award xp on a hit which is why the Fatty girl got none.

 

[Jaedar]

Yeah, you need some kind of ship identification cheat sheet.

I wish you could access bootypedia while the interception dialogue is up. Some of the faster ships will escape in the 3 seconds it takes to bring it up if you catch them during a turn.

Case in point: a bandit camp was here on turn 1. Could have been deadly. But all my girls started the map with an already primed (right click in the pre-loadout) Crate of Violence. One lobbed hers out the window and the results were like 10 kills in a fight that I'd otherwise probably need to evac. Instant chain panicking ensues.

Spoiler

Seems good, but also like there'd be a decent chance you die to reaction fire after tossing it. Also, couldn't you just have exited on the right side of the craft and been completely safe, either by using it as cover or by disappearing into the darkness? The fact that you also haven't scouted 180 degrees makes me nervous. There could be funky zombies there!

 

[Average Manatee]

Seems good, but also like there'd be a decent chance you die to reaction fire after tossing it.

Not very likely when you have 100-150 reactions soldiers. Also like I said, pre-prime your explosives so you only spend TU for throwing and therefore are less likely to take reaction. You're also not hurting them so only those directly looking at you already can even make the reaction check (they only turn around to reaction you once you damage them). And its a soldier in my best scale armor available at the time making the throw so I could take a pistol shot or two.

Also, couldn't you just have exited on the right side of the craft and been completely safe, either by using it as cover or by disappearing into the darkness? The fact that you also haven't scouted 180 degrees makes me nervous. There could be funky zombies there!

I actually reloaded the level shortly after starting it since I forgot to screenshot and wanted to demonstrate the power of pre-primed turn 1 crates of violence. Initially I did peek out with my catgirl to see everything north. There were in fact multiple enemies to the east (you can see one of them ran up to the east window and got reactioned).

 

[Damned Registrations]

They had it coming.

Also what armor are you wearing? Look like its destroying your stats. I'd just go with whatever hurts your TUs/accuracy/throwing the least. Strong soldiers can tank the stun/turn if there is any.

The armour used underwater was frogman suits for the boys; it's good stuff that enhances underwater mobility. The galls had either refractors or a brainer outfit. both offer reasonable stat boosts. The problem is that all 3 gals were fresh recruits- they didn't have enough throwing or strength to make the javelins hit for their usual numbers, or the TUs to spam them. And the boys have terrible throwing stats and strength, so javelins aren't great there either. As bad as the X-Bow is, it's still better stabbing damage at long range than the harpoon gun I think. Though I might be wrong on that front, I should double check before another water mission.


On with the update!

We're starting off with a comms tower mission. I wish these showed up more often; they're like shooting fish in a barrel. Academy fish in this case!

I think we've ecnountered these guys before, but not captured any. Hopefully we change that here.

Another high priority capture target. OTOH, she has an actual fucking cannon that could easily kill or cirpple a gal, and as a higher rank unit probably has sniper and spot and shit.

Not taking that chance, she goes down in a hail of lasers. I don't think this gun has failed to kill what it's been pointed at yet every time it's been fired, including when the enemy had it.

Werewolves may not be able to make snapshots, but howling through the windows wreaks havoc on their forces, causing a lot of berserking and insanity before we even have to face them. Good stuff.

Operation capture a ton of people by yelling at them has been a rousing success. Got xp on a bunch of newbies too, although not a ton since a lot of the work was done by howls.

Also, we snagged 101 apples. Very nice! Sadly the engineers didn't make it, the first died instantly and the second choked to death after being shield bashed and howled at. Ah well.

Exciting new mission opportunities for next month. I've fought these guys before, it's gonna be a fun one.

We can't research all the really fancy shit, but we've still got some laser weapons to examine sitting around. Hopefully it's all building towards something good.

Researched this and the other spy vessel. Near as I can tell, the only point of these is to sit around as tiny radar circles or visually scan for enemy bases (which is a different stat not shown here.) Though it also carries 20 crew for some reason? Maybe just for realism? Or maybe it technically could be used for missions it'd just be a giant waste of time. I dunno. I kind of want to make a spy vessel and see if it finds some cool shit, like ruins or something that only get found that way. Seems plausible. I think we have a spare hangar at base 2 now that we ditched the cars. I'll add that to the todo list.

Next mission is a simple spider hunt. Only, that's not a spider.

I've never really fought these guys before, since the other time I encountered them I was totally unprepared and just fled. They've got mostly decent rifle weapons, like infantry and hunting rifles.

And this is apparently their prey. Not gonna lie, she's 100% doomed.

Were ill equipped for this mission, as I was hoping to train some newbies with spider squishing. However, I decide to give it a turn while we wait in the ship to get an idea of how many enemies are out there. This phase takes... a long time.

Scouting from one of the catgirls gives us a good picture. Blue dots are enemies. There's at least a dozen I'd say.

Some of them have these, which can probably punch for around 70 damage in their hands, multiplied to even more with the RNG.

Now, with the resists and extra armour modifier, that still probably won't kill a gal in chainmail, but these newbies are fairly low on health, relatively speaking.

Also, apparently they have bombs? That's some non standard hunting equipment right there. Fortunately they seem to have used it on themselves after going berserk. Hiding in the ship and howling at them is working a treat.

The mission takes quite a while. Aside from really only having howls as a decent ranged option, I have to spend time checking if enemies have dropped their weapons to pick good targets. Urgh.

This guy has a laser hunting rifle, which IIRC is basically a laser sniper rifle. It's not great, but I want it anyways because snipers are awesome and the main drawback is having to reload a lot.

Still not confident we're going to win this decisively, so I drag one of the bastards into the ship. We've got a cubby we can keep him in safely.

We do have one gal that isn't weighed down with chainmail and shield; Ceres was going to practice reaction fire from the air along with the 3 cat girls. Now that we've exhausted the nomads a bit, I have her start poking out and taking potshots. She's using an Advanced Lasgun, which seems to basically be like the lasgun we researched except with infinite ammo. Very nice!

Now the enemy phase includes a lot of screaming. Music to my ears.

At this point I fuck up and leave a wolf boy stranded outside the doors. Oops. He'll almost certainly live though, he's already got a lot of stun built up from the jungle heat, which the gals have been fighting off with weed water.

Having eyes outside lets us actually watch the idiots drop their guns and fire around randomly.

He held up better than I expected, he got shot a lot, including by a reaper rifle. I think they have innate piercing resistance.

We're doing well enough so far, but this is getting tedious and I'm not interested in leaving the ship to chase dudes through the jungle. Time to bring out the fun toys.

Except I forgot to move her all the way behind the ship after stopping half way to clear some guys that would have reaction fired on her. Whoops.

Echidna gets the honours instead. Mortars are weirdly light. Though the TU cost is a tad high. And with accuracy that low she might hit the ship and blow herself up.

Ah, apparently kneeling triples accuracy. Makes sense, firing this from the air would be a tad broken. Still might be worth doing honestly.

Ceries survived pretty well. Hoever armour ain't too shabby, and the heat stun knocked her down before she could eat too many bullets.

Mortar uses so many TU's we need to employ another cat as a spotter, which works just fine. Catgirls are so awesome with grav boots.

Scratch 2-3 enemies. I love the skull motif on the explosions.

Another gal took some enemy fire, this time because I just really wanted her to get some xp. And was too lazy to do it by having her be a medic or grab some javelins. God I hate training weak recruits at this stage of the game.

Enemies chucked a firebomb in the vague direction of Echidna here. Not sure if that was intentional or not, but luckily she didn't get hit.

'
That's okay, we've got fire bombs too! These 'WP' shells sure are fun! Warcrimes? Wuzzat?

Well, didn't save any bystanders, but we did grab 15 prisoners!

Still no bravery increases. I suspect that healing the werewolves doesn't count or something. Or I'm just getting amazingly terrible luck. Or both!

Aside from the prisoners, we get a bunch of animal parts, including some rare hides. Not bad.

And Echidna gets a new title. Honestly might have her do this a bit more; she can get into great positions to use mortars very quickly, and some strength and hp increases would be pretty nice on her.

Back home, we manage to research one of the fancy new guns: The Gauss Musket. 100 damage a shot is pretty crazy, explains how the patrols (which uses gauss weapons) are so good at putting our gals in the dirt.

Hmm, that seems promising. Whatever else breaking the encryption requires, this is almost certainly part of it.

Also, the farming in our secondary base has finally borne fruit! This is enough for about 25 healing gel packs. It'll be labour intensive, but those things are worth it, especially since we still haven't unlocked fucking RUM for some god forsaken reason. I know it's not that hard! Stop fucking with me RNG!

In other piratey news, we finished making a pair of carronades for the scarab to mount. Sadly, we apparently can't buy cannonballs, and crafting them takes fucking forever. Shit. Some much for cheap and easy craft takedowns. At least we'll have something to fall back on even without our awesome bio plasma gun.

Got this off a priest

Nomads gave us a different sort of intel:

Never had one of these before. Might be cool if we can get one. Or might lead to mounted spider queen warriors. Fingers crossed. Recon cars were brought up before; I think they might be decent, but I'm holding out for armored car research, since those include some nice in built weaponry options.

Well, we can turn these guys into slaves, but apparently it takes 600 damned hours and they need crack as well. Probably not worth the trouble, I think I'll keep researching them to hopefully get intel on a bunch of beasties that are hard to capture alive. It's a chance like this that is why I've held onto our live spider queen for so long without researching it.

Hmmm. A tempting target. We're still not at full strength by any means, but we've got a lot more firepower now. Will at least give it a look I think to see if the terrain is favourable.

 

[std::namespace]

Sadly the engineers didn't make it, the first died instantly and the second choked to death after being shield bashed and howled at. Ah well.

Wtf, have you already researched one? Could be months till you run across one again. They were trivial to capture too... They sell for 60k, robbing them could give Exquisite Lingerie for all you know...

Also forgot to mention: those missions that dont give you armor, like "A Party!", yeah? I would not go there ever... but you do you ^^

 

[Jaedar]

Seeing you have so much success with werewolves makes me wanna bring them on missions. But they're so rare I only have 4, and I really would like to keep some for base defence in the various outposts.

I also got those ninja bikes flying around on my game. They're not ninja at all. They are the harbingers of destruction

Also god damn that gauss does a lot of damage.

 

[turkishronin]

I think you can safely take on Ninja missions now. Just need to grind Reaction on your soldiers a bit more.

 

[Average Manatee]

Researched this and the other spy vessel. Near as I can tell, the only point of these is to sit around as tiny radar circles or visually scan for enemy bases (which is a different stat not shown here.) Though it also carries 20 crew for some reason? Maybe just for realism? Or maybe it technically could be used for missions it'd just be a giant waste of time. I dunno. I kind of want to make a spy vessel and see if it finds some cool shit, like ruins or something that only get found that way. Seems plausible. I think we have a spare hangar at base 2 now that we ditched the cars. I'll add that to the todo list.

I did have a thought while running through some economics numbers. Hangers are actually very efficient buildings in terms of providing workspace for runts (most efficient in up front cost, only Extractors can beat them when you take into account upkeep). They also build quicker. This means spamming a few extra per new base mostly for their economic value and expanding your footprint quickly is viable, and then you can employ something like this to extend detection range and potentially provide some value in shootdowns (this is also a good argument for keeping around the relevant vehicles for the races). Though their radar is... really unimpressive. And it requires 5 pilots which is quite a lot for something that will never do anything else.

Unfortunately it just flat out is disallowed from doing missions, so I'm not sure what the other 15 crew are for. It'd actually be pretty good for big missions where you want more units, 20 capacity is just 5 less than expedition but its both reasonably fast and undetectable.