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

[Damned Registrations]

Bombs Away!

I did mansion properly once, and then used that knowledge to beeline some of the good loot one other time.

This feels like the way to go for a lot of this game. Most missions seem to have some exploitable weak points you can learn after a test run, and are often only worth doing properly once due to the way the tech tree works. There's some other places you can plausibly try to steal loot and run, like ratmen villages and caves, or some of the temple layouts, while in a lot of others it's much easier to just kill everyone.

At least if its common urban structures, specifically designed enemy buildings being hard to blast is reasonable

I can't speak for other mods, but given that we're centuries after the invasion in this one, I think many urban structures are probably made with plastacrete and such as opposed to timber and drywall. Aside from like, mud huts or ruins. I feel like it's been pretty fair so far, but I also don't generally try for a lot of demolition. Though I am bringing some bombs to the mansion.

On with the run!


Or so I'd like, but it turns out our troops are pretty fucked atm. I wasn't planning on bringing Belem Belle anyways, not wanting to risk a potential witch on a new mission, but Turkish Ronin is coming along for sure. Those Holy Bolts consume freshness to fire off. Not a ton, as we can see by these numbers not being like, 50 or something, but still enough to delay this mission a couple days. Hopefully it sticks around that long.

In the mean time, we research the assault laser that helped win the last big fight. I already knew this thing was a beast, but god damn. It's like the perfect smg. Except we can't make ammo for it.

I'd been saving up for the M-Lasers prize, hoping it might include craft lasers. But I have a vague idea that Alliance Favours might lead to being able to recruit some mutants and we're desperate for bodies, so I'm going for it. It's only 600 at least.

This is another option, although one I'm not as eager to take. Glamour is hard to replace. Still, if there's a consensus on who to bring back as a veteran recruit, I'll probably go for it. To be clear, this is an uber gal with some stat bonuses. Not as good as the perfect gal, but a solid unit right out of the gate. Also, Oasis is off the table for... reasons.

This was a tad disappointing, I was hoping they might be recruitable or something. Apparently they're even dumber than the ogres.

We got this out of the interrogation, possibly because we've already got reports on every single country. Though maybe more research will yield info on alien civs? Anyways, we already had this half researched and it wasn't a long one iirc, so this was kind of a waste. Something of an incentive to not spread out research on a dozen topics while also interrogating, I suppose.

It did unlock this, whether from the siren or biomatter I'm not sure. But it seems interesting and it's quick, so it's getting done soon.

I also shot down a zeppelin, figuring I could send the boys (who aren't allowed in the mansion) and some gals for some free xp sniping a bunch of losers. Turns out this zeppelin is crewed by raiders. Which, I mean, would be awesome to capture some more raider gals and convert them.

On the other hand, this is a skeleton crew, and raider scouts have both sniper and spotter AND good night vision. I'm not interested in a 20 turn battle of hide and seek right before the mansion raid. We'll find another zeppelin I'm sure.

Time for the main event!

I bring a variety of gear, and in retrospect, wish I had made more nurse outfits. We've got the supplies for it; and it's basically like having nigh unlimited surgery kits, except they're faster to use and include stims and painkillers too. They've also got more room for loot than maids do, and we don't exactly need both hands for most infilitration weapons anyways. Definitely bringing like 5 nurses on the next mission like this.

Most, but not all of our crew starts out on this floor, and no enemies are in sight. Pretty good. A couple more are on the floor above, and a single gal (Iria, our melee expert in a white dress) is on the top floor, right under the roof.

It's hard to convey, but the exit is quite a ways away, something like 5 or 6 floors. The mansion is big.

The area we started in has some random crap lying around. Nothing valuable, but some improvised weapons like baseball bats and this saber are here, which is a nice upgrade for our ogre. He's got no backpack space so I just ditch one of the stick grenades.

We brought an actual cat along too. Honestly I'd have brought several if we had them. Aside from NV, decent mobility and excellent reactions, cats have SENSE 2, which means...

We can reveal this fucker through the floor from underneath. Cool huh?

Not sure how our kitty knew what kind of gun this guy was holding, but I'll take it. Seems our enemies will be guild members? Or maybe he's just security? Seems like substandard weaponry too.

Catgirls are perfect for this mission, being naturally inclined to darkness and having high reactions and evasion for guarding doorways. However, this one is our only somewhat trained one left. We had 3 before Echidna died, and the other I'd been training up, Merle, got ganked through a window on an easy bandit camp mission. Stupid turtle ship. Anyways, we've got 2 more with us, but they're absolute fresh recruits, having arrived just a day before we got here. Honestly I should recruit like 6 more. They're so damned useful and hard to raise.

Enemy phase. Juding by the length and sounds, there are a lot of enemies and a metric fuckton of doors. Joy.

A also spotted this out on the roof. Seems like a promsing spot for some decent loot. Once we've secured a route to the exit, this'll be our next goal.

The mansion is pitch black. We came at night too, but I'm not sure if that mattered; some missions force day or night by their nature. At any rate, I'm glad we don't need to go around shooting lamps to maintain stealth. Also, this makes that looter gear (which is what the other 2 catgirls are wearing) a lot more attractive here. It's got 6 night camo, with is practically invisibility vs humans in the dark. The gear also has massive penalties to nearly all stats though.

Did I mention the mansion is big before? It's fucking massive. Aside from the 6+ floors, it's also covering like 4 screens and seems densely riddled with rooms. I can see why people would hate this. I wouldn't want to do it all the time, but I think it's a cool challenge.

Two floors up we make contact with the first enemy; a different GO that ran up and tried knifing our uber maid. Fortunately he's shit and missed like 7 swings, so we quickly put him down and peek up the stairs.

Well... fuck. I was not expecting to deal with tommy guns on this mission. I mean, we can, but still.

The ogre went up first, but was just shy of having enough TUs to take a swing with the saber. Relm is next and tries the ninja gear, but whiffs the shot. God this would be so easy if we had some maxed ubers to bring. 100% accuracy with this weapon is just brutal, as would ninja stars. But our best thrower here has a skill of like 70.

Turkish Ronin is up next and manages to land some shots with the slayer ammo I brought (Hey, it could have been a zombie mansion, those things show up everywhere I swear) however, we don't do any damage...

Fuck, I forgot suspenders and a white collar dress shirt provide armour equivalent to a flak vest. It's like the male equivalent of a bikini.

I'm fairly desperate to NOT have a guy with a tommy gun get a free turn to hose down our girls, so I drag the catgirl all the way over as well. Worst case scenario, she can at least deflect his attacks with her massive evasion.

And she actually manages to cut him down with the last of her TUs. Poison dagger for the win. Glad I brought these. Hopefully we don't get some loser walking into the room and ganking her.

It turns out that floor is pretty much empty. We're starting to find 'loot' in some rooms, but it's mostly garbage still, like these combat drugs or some bandages. Nothing remotely valuable so far.

Seems like a lot of fairly high level guild units here. With better weapons than I'd expect too. While catgirls are certainly strong here, ubers would be great too, as 20 armour is enough to shrug off a lot of these small arms and crappy shotguns.

We take him out with a plasma pistol shot. I brought both our gothic raygun and the bootleg plasma pistol we took from the reticulans. The latter is significantly better, with slightly better accuracy and fire rates, as well as an auto mode and a much larger clip. We can't research it yet so holding both at once and comparing the numbers is my best way to evaluate it.

Sadly, we took some reaction fire from a hidden enemy after taking the shot, and our squshiy peasant lost a big chunk of her small health pool.

We also spotted another dude at the last second with one of the catgirl scrubs. She manages to land a couple of the 15 laser blasts she sent in his direction. Her accuracy might be shit, but the Smasher is a great weapon. Probably should have brought more than just the two.

Scary time. Our wounded peasant is behind a closed door, but there's a living enemy close enough to get some shots off depending on the route he takes...

And he does exactly that. Fuck.

Ronin manages to head over and patch her up. She was damned close to dying, at 2 hp with 3 wounds before the healing.

The looter catgirls are the ones carrying the smasher laspistols, since they're basically mini shotguns that don't require much skill to use. They end up getting quite a few kills though, simply due to how strong these guns are. Shame they don't actually count as pistols, they'd be great for racking up titles, but all they grant is the Psycho one.

Spotted another candle lit bedroom tower thing on the roof in an entirely different spot. Not a priority for now but good to know about.

I didn't really get a good screenshot for it, so I'm just going to explain here. This floor is right below the large bedroom Iria started in, which is right under the roof. The staircase up to the south is the only way to that bedroom, and the staircase down to the north is the only way into this chunk of this floor. So theoretically, we could hole up on this floor for many turns, picking off idiots coming up through that stairway. But in my experience, that would take forever because the enemies like to trickle at you rather than swarm. So I decided to try using our stick grenade, which is pretty damned strong at 75 concussive power, to bust a hole in this wall next to that stairwell, which has access to a different section of roof and seems to be the bottleneck to that fancy room and where most enemies are coming from. This way we can have a much quicker route to the escape while exploring.

There was, however, a problem with this plan.

 

[Azira]

 

[Luka-boy]

Just beautiful

 

[Modron]

I love it when a plan comes together.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Medic!

So, yeah, it turns out a bunch of our crew was underneath that stick grenade, and the blast goes through the floor. Whoops. Thankfully, the damage was actually pretty minimal; it seems that we were all a little off centre from the blast, which only has a radius of 2. In retrospect, this would be a neat way to fuck up enemies if you brought cats or something else with SENSE and some bombs to blow people up through the floor.

So Theresa went back down, but is still alive, and the other 3 sufferd minor wounds. Also, we revealed a couple of enemies through the hole we just blasted.

You know what, I take back what I said about the enemies being poorly armed. Why the fuck is this mansion so well guarded BEFORE the 'cavalry' arrives? Christ.

Annoyingly, we didn't actually manage to blast a hole in the wall, at least not one we can walk through. I think we made a partial hole and would need another blast to expand it, but that'd leave holes in the floor so it wouldn't work anyways.

*Deep breath*

*Deep sigh* (This screen is at the very end of the enemy turn if you didn't realize no enemy actions were seen.)

Apparently the enemies decided to helpfully walk closer. Clarisse here downs the engineer with the ninja sickle. I love this thing.

She doesn't even have good stats for it! It's damage scales off reactions and throwing. And her maid outfit is giving bonus 5 throwing! Oasis probably could have fucking soloed this mansion using this thing. Also, Ronin managed to Patch Clarisse here back to full health before even getting the last wound. The behaviour of AoE damage and wounds seems a bit funny. Or maybe it's just a thing about stick grenades? I know there are other ways to get many wounds from small amounts of damage, like those weird weapons the golden automatons had in the Rimrider base.

At long last we find some actual loot! Lingerie might not sell for a ton, but it's certainly rare and I certainly want to take it with me.

...and we can't stuff it in our backpack because that'd let us benefit from it's stats without wearing it.

Welp, moving on...

Iria finally gets down out of the safe zone to start lending a hand. At first I was holding back the uber gals and Katt in case we had to abandon all the more expendable units and flee early, but I think we can handle this, so I'm bringing our best fighters to bear after all.

Void Palm easily dismantles this chump. Though in retrospect I should just give her a knife; I don't really want captives here, unless we find a noblewoman or something. Which was kind of what I was expecting, rather than all these guildies.

The Smashers do have a tendency to start fires. Thankfully they don't spread and extinguish pretty quicly. But it's a bit of a liability being lit up vs guildies.

Since we got unlimited ammo and I've seen it break down doors, I decide to try unloading the smasher at a wall up here and get a shortcut this way instead. No dice though, despite weirdly setting stuff on fire on the wrong side of the wall.

It does, however, manage to blast a wall open down here. Apparently these walls are a lot flimsier. If we'd brought enough smashers, simple blowing away most of the walls from a long distance and picking off enemies wandering near the flames would be a great strategy. I might employ it partially on this run.

Our catgirl managed to land only like one of a dozen shots, so we bring Ronin in to finish the job. This guy isn't armored so the pistol should work a treat.

Except we miss the shot and go down to reaction fire. I forgot Ronin was just a mere peasant and could go down this easily. I don't think she even has particularly good stats yet.

The crippled Theresa ends up getting the kill shot with the plasma pistol instead.

Clarisse tries to go in to pull the body behind the doors so we can hide and patch Ronin back up... and I make a discovery. Peasants spend 14 TUs to pick something up, rather than 12. Shit. Now we're stuck.

There aren't any enemies in immediate LoS, but our kitty does sense a guild hostess with a military shotgun down a floor near the stairwell. That could end very badly for any peasants she spots.

Enemy turn; some kind of nonsense happening over here in this courtyard area. People panicking maybe, or just walking while barely in vision of Bowser, who is still up there looking out windows. Actually, the map showed a ring of objects on the ground there. If they're moon flowers, I really want them. those are rare as hell.

Ronin gets woken up by a stim from the advanced medpack we brough. Sadly she can't patch herself up, but she'll live for now, and being awake let me check the stats to see how important additional healing is.

It might seem a bit silly, but we send the cat to go claw at this guy. It doesn't manage to kill him (and it might have, cats hit like, well, kittens but low tier enemies are very fragile) but just being near him means he can't fire his gun properly. Cats have massive melee evasion and therefore can deflect firearms as well. Which actually kinda makes sense; imagine trying to aim a gun while a cat is crawling up your face.

It's also difficult to live while catgirls are spewing lasers at your face.

Iria pops into the same room as our cat from a different spot and gets a good view of it. That western edge is all fake doors, that's the map edge. So this room would be good for setting up a kill box I think. More plans for a better run next time. I really should just bail and do this right the next time around.

Not gonna though, at least not yet. Terra moves to stand in front of Ronin, acting as a meatshield in case anyone tries taking a shot at our nurse.

We also spotted this guy in the area we started out in. However, he's far enough away he probably can't even see us. Shouldn't be an issue.

...and I was wrong and he walks forward and takes some shots at us. Luckily, he missed.

Problem solved.

I send our weakest uber gal down the stairwell to fuck up this dude with a pistol, but she ends up eating reaction fire from two angles, and more on the way back as she retreats.

It's hard to get out of the mindset I've been in piloting elites for so long while trying to raise new recruits like this. I'm not used to whips missing, or failing to hit hard enough to knock down a human instantly. I'm certainly not used to having sub 50 reactions and getting reaction fired while above 50% TUs. Thankfully uber skin is tough and we just get some flesh wounds despite eating several pistol rounds and shotgun blasts. Freshness is starting to fall though, it's a real weak point of uber gals, especially fresh recruits.

Guild hostess with the shotgun goes down, score another one for our catgirls.

Getting into the stairwell has revealed the existence of a basement. Probably a promising loot location. We'll have to check it out, we've thinned enemy numbers quite a bit now so I'm feeling more adventurous.

We finally find actual valuables, but there are three problems. First, our cat can't pick up anything except jewelry. Second this is only worth about 50k, which is fairly paltry for this level of effort. Finally, we don't really need money, we're sitting on 6 million right now. Give me spell books or something god damn it!

Overhead map of the floor we're mostly on now, which we've explored a decent chunk of. The mansion is very complex, with a lot of stairwells leading to storage rooms, little clusters of complex connected rooms and hallways like the office on the lowest west side, and just a ton of potential entry points to get ambushed from. There are safe strategies like hiding in closed rooms, but trying to explore this place is quite difficult without a way to bash walls down. Shame the crowbar wasn't an option to bring along.

Judging by the enemy phase, I'd say we've taken out somewhere between one to two thirds of the enemy team so far. No wild panicking yet unfortunately, so there's probably still some leaders around bolstering morale or a base defense effect or something. Normally you'd expect a G.O. to go crazy after this many deaths; their morale is quite low.

And we score another kill during the enemy phase, as this buffoon walks into reaction fire from one of our looter cats. Her aim might be shit, but her reactions are still great.

 

[Jaedar]

I have a suspicion this mission will not end well. Plenty of turns left though.

Can someone explain tanks/multi tile units / armor to me?
The actual problem (spoilers for stuff that hasn't been in the lp yet, and won't be for probably a long time.): I have a tank, with 166 hp and 175/130/90/60 armor and 55% concussion effectiveness. Enemy shoots a 100 damage concussive rpg, not sure if it was 0.4 or 0.75 armor effectiveness (could have been a heat or dp round). This instantly kills my tank, despite it facing the rocketeer.

I don't really understand how, because even 150 damage which should be the max roll for this, should not kill me in one hit even if I had 0 armor. I'm guessing I somehow took damage on each tile and on under armor, but I still don't quite see how it adds up to 166 damage.

It sure is making me feels tanks suck, because I've never had a gal in full plate die to a single rpg round

 

[Damned Registrations]

Istanbul was Constantinople...

Okay, now this is more like actual loot. These are worth about 200k. If we could find ~5 of these and run I'd be pretty happy.

Enemy turn, some dumbass opens the door for our whining cat. Never open the door for cats; only bad things will happen. In this case: death.

Catgirl tacks up two more kills with her fancy gun. Apparently I should have brought six green catgirls with smashers.

Another fucking engineer shows up and lands a shot on Iria.

Fortunately she's tough. And with all these kills, even 30 bravery is holding up.

We knock him out. I actually wouldn't mind catching this one, but for now we'll just take his gun and move on.

We spot an enemy down in the basement, but here our shitty aim fails us and he gets away. He only has a dagger though, not much of a threat.

Some more interesting loot, you don't usually get these without causing an incident. Not super valuable though as we already found some by killing government goons.

16 turns, nearly half our time is up...

Exploring the basement reveals it to actually be expansive. And an annoying clusterfuck of twisty tunnels.

We get boots on the lower roof. We could have shot the railing and walked off from above, but that'd be a one way trip.

Our Freshness is starting to seriously flag on some people. At about 50% is where it starts to impact energy recovery and morale. If it gets much lower those impacts will become severe and we'll start losing TU recovery as well.

The catgirils aren't doing much better.

Peasants are still fine though, it's one of their advantages.

Cat spots another enemy through the floor.

It's a PCM. We've never caught one of these, so if we can knock he out I'll drag her to the roof with Bowser I think.

Cat spots another enemy. This thing is seriously punching way above it's weight.

Sent Terra to grab some cash and head for the roof, but she actually found too much to carry. Urhk. The Nurse outfit would have had room.

Basement map is showing an item at the bottom, below the twisty bits.

It's just a lump of gold though. Weird.

One thing I need to be careful of is the light sources from the dead guildies dropping their stupid computers. It's fucked me before and probably will again. Nightvision mode doesn't show this effect.

Another bird's eye view, this time of the next floor down. Absolute maze. Nightmare for trying to stay safe.

This particular room... has no door. Trying to path in doesn't show a path. Now, maybe some enemy is blocking that path or it's just a support pillar; but...

Hah, jackpot! This is right under that fancy tower too. I've got a good feeling about this.

Turns are quite short now, and punctuated by lots of screaming and gunfire. We might actually just win by morale rout at this rate.

We spot a low level shithead in the tower. On the upside, that means it's not well defended. OTOH, it means we won't find a spellcaster to drag back and study. Unless there's one of those in there too.

This lower area has a windy path leading to a dead end with no item. Obnoxious. It's not like we can mine our way around to check for more either.

Nice shot from above through the stairwell to pick this guy off.

Bowser keeps exploring down here and finds nothing, not even the punk with a knife that ran away.

Not even any loot down here, those two blips are the gold bar and a corpse.

Iria finds an interesting room; barrel of (explosive) chems and a security guard. Where the fuck have you been this whole time buddy?

Void palm is good, but not THAT good, at least not in her hands.

We take some pot shots and then hide in the closet. If he wants to fight, he'll have to deal with our evasion.

Katt gets the drop on two more assholes in a stairway.

Only 16 turns left. At this point, I'm thinking about pulling everyone back. It should be plenty of time, and we seem like we might pull off a full clear, but I'd rather not get too risky.

Iria keeps missing shots here, but the explosives went off, either from the fire we started or the guard going berserk and shooting them. He's alive but fucked up.

We switch to auto fire and still miss 6 shots at 34% from this range. Aggravating.

Okay, this is the kind of shit I was looking for. Novice Robes are extremely rare. I've never made use of the so far (they require some special type of gal) but they're obviously voodoo related. That secret room I blasted into is paying off.

The ring of items in the yard, however, was a bunch of apples. I mean, would be nice if we won, but I don't have time to grab this shit.

After all, we got henchmen to fry! Though in this instance, the bastard is saved by the railing.

Huh, the security guard is nowhere to be seen... but a GO showed up. Well, he's fucked.

There's an advanced medpack in the tower as well. I'd like to grab it, but I don't want to spend all my TUs when there's still a guard about.

I was planning to send Terra in to take the novice outfit and run but... apparently the room can't be entered any more. Perhaps the fire destroyed the floor?

Underneath the secret room is... another secret room. What the hell is this weird patch of wall?

Another turn gone by...

Something is wrong. This enemy phase lasted much longer than some previous ones. Either more enemies have spawned or a bunch that were dormant have become active. Like, a dozen or more. It's time to fucking run.

Sadly, we can't even run quickly due to our lack of freshness.

And there are enemies in the way too. Mr. Security has returned and he brought a friend.

Two friends, in fact.

And one has a tommy gun. Awesome.

After all the effort to get here... there's no door over here like I'd thought. Pathfinding lied to me.

We do finish off that guard though, and then back off and hide around the corner in case he's not alone.

Hiding is kind of the play everywhere at the moment, with everyone now too tired to move their entire range each turn.

Turns out this isn't actually a door like I thought. I don't have any weapons to blast it open though, sadly.

Enemy turn again.

It went badly. Iria got shot several times. She'd been positioned around a corner, just barely lacking the TUs needed to close a door. The enemy ran past her and then shot her in the back repeatedly.

Inside the tower we find a fancy wizard room.

With fancy wizard loot! Ironically, the one person that found awesome loot might not be able to escape. I'm hoping we can blast a railing off the top of the tower and jump down.

Bowser is getting shot at too. I couldn't see who did it so I spun and found this guy... who clearly didn't do it. Wtf?

Everyone grouping up as we beeline for the exit now, without much loot to show for it. Everyone is still alive though.

We find yet another enemy roaming this floor and take him out with the ninja sickle.

Not a lot of time left now, considering how slow some people are moving.

Yeah, that's where I thought the bullets came from. Ogres have NV though, who the fuck saw him from beyond his vision?!

He got shot a LOT that turn. Good thing he's a tank.

Katt spots the enemy... another fucking PCM, this time with a UAC rifle. I hate those things.

Freshness getting alarmingly low on the catgirls and gals. Also, yeah, she's got 31 firing and has still been taking dudes down this whole time. Smashers are awesome.

Oh hell yes! A spellbook; this is so good I opt to shuffle the inventory to carry it out. We'll be fucked if we get in a fight now though.

While she's waiting, I decide to have Theresa shoot at the damage wall to see if I could make a hole... and it works! I should have thought of this early; damaged walls are likely weaker than in their original state. Our shortcut is established, this might save some lives.

Another fucko down here, just going crazy and firing at walls.

Katt gets the drop on the PCM that fucked up Bowser, and puts her down.

ANOTHER PCM is over here. Jesus, this map has gotten so much harder. Nasty trap, we could have fled easily if we hadn't thought we were winning so hard earlier and over extended.

This fire continues to go out of control. Weird, the other ones kept going out on their own.

Enemy turn, and distaster strikes- Bowser gets annihilated by someone with a heavy gun. He wasn't exactly elite, but I was really hoping to get out of here without any deaths.

Okay, he's not dead yet, but...

Turkish Ronin is. She was already headed over in this direction to patch him up along the way because he was on the verge of being stunned out. RIP. Bowser is almost certainly dead now too; we don't have the med supplies to get him awake again, even if we patched the wounds.

It's the same fucking PCM our cat spotted first! This cunt evaded us this entire time and has now gone up the same stairwell we camped on forever and killed two people in one turn.

Meanwhile, the one lucky uninjured peasant keeps finding treasure. Seems like a metaphor or something.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Cliff-

This fucker also shoots at the door one of us is hiding behind.

Time for revenge.

Terra got fucked up, the PCM blew the door away and landed a shot on her.

Relm is the first one to get a shot at him.

And she misses. Fuck.

Long gets here next, and lands multiple shots, finishing the bitch off.

And in a two for one deal, she also takes out this guild hostess that was hanging out on the ground floor.

Clarisse is free! Blasting the railings did work!

We might even be able to save bowser, we do have a few bandages here and there, and he does have a lot of base hp, and crucially, someone is also carrying a canteen to recover his stun meter.

25% remaining. Or less, hopefully.

I thought there was a PCM down here! Luckily, the fucker ran up and tried punching us instead of using the shotgun. Must have been out of ammo or something.

We had to dance around behind to negate the significant melee evasion, but we scored the kill in the end.

Wow that is... really bad.

But we've got healing gel! I should have brought more of this.

Well that gives him a few turns at least, if he can get to someone with bandages too...

We juggle some people around and manage to use the last charge of gel on him as well, bringing him to 17 health and 5 wounds. Gonna be real damned close.

Terra... is fucked. The issue is the Freshness. Even if we healed the wounds, she'd fall asleep every turn and die from overstun quickly if we didn't wake her back up each time. We don't have the time to spare for that. It's a damned shame to lose another gal, especially one with decent brave.

Another turn ticks by.

For some reason, the shortcut we made stopped working. I guess more floor burned away or something? It's hard to tell with all the smoke and terrain in the way. There's clearly a hole in the floor there we can drop through.

Katt takes out the crazy dude with a shotgun in her way. I swear these guys must have spawned out of nowhere, it makes no sense to have so many this close to use so suddenly.

But we have a bigger problem. Early, high on the success of blasting the railing away with the smasher, I tried shooting out a window as well for an even better shortcut. That didn't work. However, despite aiming away from the stairs, the wild accuracy of the shot hit the stairs... and set them on fire...

And now they aren't stairs anymore. Guess that explains why we could get out of the tower the other way.

So uh... that's the only way to the roof. And it's not there any more.

Yep.

 

[oasis789]

Something is wrong. This enemy phase lasted much longer than some previous ones. Either more enemies have spawned or a bunch that were dormant have become active. Like, a dozen or more. It's time to fucking run.

this is the OG "enemies know where you are" mechanic that comes into play past a certain turn to wrap the missions up faster in case there's some straggler in a corner that you missed.

 

[Average Manatee]

Wew, this turned into a horror show fast. Yeah it really gets hectic when the 3-dimensionality combined with the AI knowing where you are mean that things just constantly ambush you from behind. I'm surprised it was going so well for so long.

Freshness getting alarmingly low on the catgirls and gals. Also, yeah, she's got 31 firing and has still been taking dudes down this whole time. Smashers are awesome.

Spoiler

How are stats that low possible? That's below what my ufopedia says they should have. Does the method of recruiting them that you have available deliver weaker than minimum?

I have a suspicion this mission will not end well. Plenty of turns left though.

Can someone explain tanks/multi tile units / armor to me?
The actual problem (spoilers for stuff that hasn't been in the lp yet, and won't be for probably a long time.): I have a tank, with 166 hp and 175/130/90/60 armor and 55% concussion effectiveness. Enemy shoots a 100 damage concussive rpg, not sure if it was 0.4 or 0.75 armor effectiveness (could have been a heat or dp round). This instantly kills my tank, despite it facing the rocketeer.

I don't really understand how, because even 150 damage which should be the max roll for this, should not kill me in one hit even if I had 0 armor. I'm guessing I somehow took damage on each tile and on under armor, but I still don't quite see how it adds up to 166 damage.

It sure is making me feels tanks suck, because I've never had a gal in full plate die to a single rpg round

Each tile of a 2x2 unit takes damage separately from explosions and it hits under armor. So the math is something like

60 armor / 0.55 concussion effectiveness * 0.75 RPG penetration = 82 effective armor. From there you take 4 hits of 50-150 damage - 82 armor.

 

[Jaedar]

60 armor / 0.55 concussion effectiveness * 0.75 RPG penetration = 82 effective armor. From there you take 4 hits of 50-150 damage - 82 armor.

Wow, big units are shit. And yet I feel when I use rockets against tanks they are insanely hard to kill from the front. Maybe I need to aim to the side so it hits the ground? Or do rockets always do damage to underarmor and I've just been getting unlucky?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Hang 'er.

this is the OG "enemies know where you are" mechanic that comes into play past a certain turn to wrap the missions up faster in case there's some straggler in a corner that you missed.

Yeah, I figured something like that is going on, but the way it works is weird. Enemies don't necessarily attack when they know where you are. Remember the gun runner mission way back at the start? Fuckers clearly knew we were in that shack, but only sent a couple dudes at once until only 5 were left. Come to think of it, I could test the idea by having someone with insane night vision/camo watch some ruffians bumble around for 30 turns or whatever and see if they all charge me on a certain turn instead of wandering aimlessly. Thought this would have been easier to test like, 2 years ago.

60 armor / 0.55 concussion effectiveness * 0.75 RPG penetration = 82 effective armor. From there you take 4 hits of 50-150 damage - 82 armor.

Is this accurate? I was under the impression damage effectiveness functioned on, well, the damage, rather than the armour. So you'd be looking at 4 hits of 27.5- 82.5 - 45 armour.

Makes a big difference I think with stuff like Uber bees or those ghosts, which only have 1 armour but crazy high resistances. Supposing it was 10% effectiveness and 1 armour on a 10-20 damage hit... 1-2 damage -1 armour is way different than 10-20 damage - 10 armour.




So. We're absolutely, utterly fucked over by that bit of RNG and my shortsightedness and lack of knowledge concerning the fact that apparently, stairs can fucking burn down. Good to know.

We've got one option left: clear the fucking mansion so we don't need the escape route, like we should have done from the start. No time for healing Bowser now. It's fight time.

This southwest corner of the map is the least explored. Enemies are screaming like crazy every turn again, even after inflicting some deaths to boost their morale. This means most of them are irrelevant. What we need is to find whatever high level prick is left, because they're the only thing holding enemy morale together. They're in here somewhere. (Or it's like, a fucking dog, because those never break morale, and it's in that sealed room we can't get in. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (Why is the mystery ghost only a post reaction and not a smily? I'd use it so much! )

We find an enemy, but it's a lowly grunt. We give him some plasma and hide behind the door, because that apparently wasn't enough to put him down. Guess he's amped too.

Eventually we find the bitch, at the bottom of the southwest stairwell. Guild Reps are fairly high up, above engineers. They're also squishy little bitches. Alas, we've got not enough spare energy to take her out when we find her. But she can't go far.

5 turns remaining. Their turn.

Our turn. 4 turns remaining.

Lend us strength ogre bro! If we make it through this you're getting a successor.

The guy we shot with the mini plasma gun is still standing despite wounds and burning damage. What a fucking chad. Our team (what's left of it) is once again converging, this time in a different place, with a different goal. We have to kill that guild rep at all costs.

Our cat was off in another corner just in case we were wrong about where the rep is, and it managed to find a pair of grunts. It takes one down, and the other shouldn't be a threat, as they were both unarmed.

However, a THIRD grunt found the cat, with a shotgun. RIP kitty, we'll see you in hell. You realize we're all going to hell right? We're terrible people. This is some random person's home, they did nothing to us.

Yet another grunt busts open a door on the west side as we approached the stairwell from another angle. Fuckers seem endless.

Just three turns left.

We get closer, and find ANOTHER enemy. They're swarming us now. I've seen this pattern before- enemies trickle at you until only a fraction are left, then they leave their hidey holes and rush at you no matter what.

Two turns left.

In my desperation, I'm overextending every single turn, leaving people in vulnerable positions, mostly hoping nobody is left to find them and take a shot. Or that if someone does find them, it's the queen bitch and we'll have her location again and take her down.

This is just a guild hostess. She's armed, and we don't have enough TUs to get in melee or behind proper cover. The best we can do is hide behind this corner.

Last turn. Or maybe we get the very last turn too? I'm not sure how it works with surrender victories, since they kind of roll into the next turn.

Fuck. RIP Clarisse. So long and thanks for all the cool wizard loot.

HAH. We found her. We found the bitch! However... we've got 2 energy left. This is as close as we can get. Enough TUs for 3 shots. Is it enough? Will the kill even let us win? Join my Patreon to see 3 updates ahead! Only 19.99 CAD/Month.

 

[Average Manatee]

I hate situations like this where there's 20 enemies running around crazy and one unpanicable guy you have to hunt down to finally get the mission to fucking end. F**king dogs man. Losing a whole team like this due to not being able to find them is the ultimate xcom horror story.

Wow, big units are shit. And yet I feel when I use rockets against tanks they are insanely tanky from the front. Maybe I need to aim to the side?

According to the wiki if the explosion isn't a direct hit then armor works directionally (i.e. you might have up to 175 from the front rather than 60 from the back). This is all for OG x-com though so I'm not sure if anything works differently in Xpiratez.

Yeah, I figured something like that is going on, but the way it works is weird. Enemies don't necessarily attack when they know where you are. Remember the gun runner mission way back at the start? Fuckers clearly knew we were in that shack, but only sent a couple dudes at once until only 5 were left. Come to think of it, I could test the idea by having someone with insane night vision/camo watch some ruffians bumble around for 30 turns or whatever and see if they all charge me on a certain turn instead of wandering aimlessly. Thought this would have been easier to test like, 2 years ago.

I'm really not sure how it works but you're right its definitely not like they always beeline right for you. It might be that its RNG whether they do so on any given turn? But either way they are definitely always more active past turn 20.

Is this accurate? I was under the impression damage effectiveness functioned on, well, the damage, rather than the armour. So you'd be looking at 4 hits of 27.5- 82.5 - 45 armour.

Ohh, you're right. My bad. That's a little better for the tank.

 

[Jaedar]

This is some random person's home, they did nothing to us.

Nah, it's a guild mansion. Fuckers are rich at the expense of oppressing hardworking mutants, and slaves to the star gods. Kill em all and let the shadowmasters sort them out.

Is this accurate? I was under the impression damage effectiveness functioned on, well, the damage, rather than the armour. So you'd be looking at 4 hits of 27.5- 82.5 - 45 armour.

Guess it was actually 0.4pen rpg then, because otherwise there's no way.

 

[Average Manatee]

Also I think enemy tanks have generally better armor than yours. Which is kinda fair since you'll have way better other stats (most notably firing accuracy) from your pilots being trained

 

[turkishronin]

"Don't lose hope, lads. The Star Gods are raining plasma on us but as long as we have the doggo, we have nothing to fear!" - Ruffian

 

[Damned Registrations]

I mean, this outcome was obvious, right?

She's dead Jim.

IT OUR MANSION NOW.

And of course we get a totally fair and balanced 756 infamy for this feat.

And no bravery increases. But at least we got... 7 points of attack skills for killing over 50 people.

Well, time to check the loot then. 3 Novice Robes! Not bad...

3 Wands, but all the same type, and a type we already have. But hey, maybe that's one of the better ones. 4 Advanced medipacks is... very nice. I think one of those was ours thoough. Solmine Sake is junk but we can research it... Finely Distilled Rum... now that's the good stuff. Absolutely worth the loss of 5 hands. We also got 24 exquisite lingerie. Guess that wench outfit is an option now.

Oh and approximately... millions of dollars worth of loot. Like the cash bags alone is over 2 million. Those 86 apples? Another 2 million. Treasure chests? I'm not sure, but I would guess between 500k to a 1 million, since they reward one of each gemstone and a bunch of coins. Zaxx is gonna be thrilled.

We also got 4 old earth books, which are very rare, 3 liber occultus, which is the primary reward for taking the black codex as it teaches you FUCKING MAGIC. 9 Gun almanacs at this stage of the game is going to reveal some cool toys as well.

Lastly, we have the raw actual credit chips, and a bunch of shitty prisoners.

RIP Kitty.

Also RIP five hands. So much for rebuilding a team of elites. That's gonna take forever.

Well, lets not end on a down note though.

...and RIP random peasant.

Aside from the sirens and peons outside, (I didn't think they'd have snapshot range that far, apparently reticulan lasguns are good at that) there were more hybrids and a peon inside, but the werewolves took care of them easily enough.

I think we got this from a peon interrogation. Neat lore, not sure if relevant. Probably is somehow. Everything seems relevant somehow.

Behold our glamour recruit! I decided to name it after Gandalfina because the request was for a HOT babe, and the boss starts with the Star title (+2 all stats) because she's such a babe.

This one we just straight up researched ourselves. I don't think it'll be useful any time soon but it's quick and amusing.

Reveal from a gun almanac. All the shit guns are discovered by now, so we've got 8 more guns like this to find. We can't get this yet, sadly. It'd be nice to have for breaking walls or dissolving zombies and ubers.

Lastly, we got this. The Skyranger is actually kind of tempting, I can't recall the layout but it's at least elevated with one entrance, so we don't have to worry about zombies biting people through walls or covering 3 entrances. OTOH, it's loot is in a big pile people can throw bombs at so... probably not. The Alliance Files aren't super useful iirc, basically they give the basic tips I think? I'd rather save the rep for M-Lasers.

This is the real prize. This will mean we actually need to defend pogroms, or we'll take much larger infamy penalties. It also means, I'm pretty sure, that we'll be able to recruit Bugeyes, who, obviously, would make excellent snipers. It was either this tech or hitting the next bounty rank, but I think it was this. Maybe some other things will unlock too. Fingers crossed.

 

[lightbane]

Now you know why I hate Mansions. There was an old mod that made mansions half as big with half loot, which was a fair trade, in the Open XCOM forums.

 

[Average Manatee]

Skyranger in piratez has its weapon pile at the back of the craft, left side 1 spot from the back wall. It's otherwise the OG craft. Good for training up gals, put them in the back naked with no weapons and they'll make bravery checks after a few turns. Wouldn't use it for real missions though, lack of doors + ramp is an annoying obstacle + enemies shooting your feet

 

[Jaedar]

We also got 4 old earth books, which are very rare, 3 liber occultus, which is the primary reward for taking the black codex as it teaches you FUCKING MAGIC. 9 Gun almanacs at this stage of the game is going to reveal some cool toys as well.

It's not actually the liber that teaches you magic in grey codex, it's the book of witchcraft.
The liber is how plebs learn magic. I look forward to you learning the process for that

I only ever got 2 libers from mansion missions, an extra is a good pickup.

A lot of losses, but probably worthwhile in the end.

 

[std::namespace]

But we have a bigger problem. Early, high on the success of blasting the railing away with the smasher, I tried shooting out a window as well for an even better shortcut. That didn't work. However, despite aiming away from the stairs, the wild accuracy of the shot hit the stairs... and set them on fire...

this was an absolutely insane ending! real shame about the rep though

In the mean time, we research the assault laser that helped win the last big fight. I already knew this thing was a beast, but god damn. It's like the perfect smg.

u have such a weird tier system for gunz, you call a 65 plasma dmg krueger meh but this trash tier pewpewpew "a beast" lol

20 armour is enough to shrug off a lot of these small arms and crappy shotguns.

also a weird definition of "shrug off" - that double barreled shotgun has 20 dmg and 10 pellets per shot, super accuracy, so someone rolls on you around a corner, expect them all to land
so half of the pellets do no dmg, but 5 do, around 30 dmg vs 20 armor, thats 50 HP gone, and 25 stun == a maxed out gal half dead, your current lineup of grunts straight up dead
and thats one shot! they have 2...
and thats not even the worst case scenario, this is expected

because even 150 damage

is it not 0-200? also, up to 0.1 is default armor rending, so it might actually apply sequentially 4 times too...

I was planning to send Terra in to take the novice outfit and run but... apparently the room can't be entered any more. Perhaps the fire destroyed the floor?

maybe you cant automatically path through fire, you might have to move tile by tile? you walk into a fire tile, then the next one, the next one.. etcpp

why not update the gayme?

 

[std::namespace]

That base had me spooked but realistically we're fine I think.

Realistically, you have 3 months till your 2 years anniversary.

 

[Average Manatee]

A lot of losses, but probably worthwhile in the end.

I don't know. Finding a bunch of stuff that is generally useful in the future with a lot of research doesn't replace depleting the roster now. Imagine if he got a base assault by something seriously tough like Mercs.

Feel like he should just sit tight, do easy missions for a while to rebuild the lineup and invest in teching up.

Spoiler

Not using the tech tree to beeline certain things honestly means that collecting more stuff at this point makes it less likely he'll get important unlocks soon like plate armor, stealth armor, better air game stuff, and economic upgrades

also a weird definition of "shrug off" - that double barreled shotgun has 20 dmg and 10 pellets per shot, super accuracy, so someone rolls on you around a corner, expect them all to land
so half of the pellets do no dmg, but 5 do, around 30 dmg vs 20 armor, thats 50 HP gone, and 25 stun == a maxed out gal half dead, your current lineup of grunts straight up dead
and thats one shot! they have 2...
and thats not even the worst case scenario, this is expected

This is part of why I hate mansion. Far too easy to take casualties with only 20 armor, let alone what catgirls have. I don't think you can even take any shield-bearing attire into there? What's the ultimate mansion loadout? Having better guns doesn't do much (everything is low armor and dies to most weapons at this point), so its just a game of cat and mouse you have to win every time.

 

[Jaedar]

I don't think you can even take any shield-bearing attire into there?

Looking it up: It seems there's a few late game super armors you can bring. If you're on Gal path you can also use batglad armor, which you can get fairly early. Only for SS though, which you probably don't have a lot of on gal path.

Imagine if he got a base assault by something seriously tough like Mercs.

Yeah, that would be bad.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Time to hit the books.

It's not actually the liber that teaches you magic in grey codex, it's the book of witchcraft.

Right. I remember getting 3 libers from the codex, but the witchcraft book was the more important thing. Also, the ability to repeatedly study the codex itself for a bunch of stuff was helpful. We're definitely on the long road, but it feels good to have something definitively magical we can study.

this was an absolutely insane ending! real shame about the rep though

I know right? It was fucking awesome, my heart was pounding. Shit like that is why I still play games. And yeah, catching the rep would have been nice.

u have such a weird tier system for gunz, you call a 65 plasma dmg krueger meh but this trash tier pewpewpew "a beast" lol

I value reliability a lot in weapons, and that means spammable shots, preferably with accuracy or AoE. A gun that I'm afraid to waste shots with isn't as good as one where I can fire blindly into the darkness for 6 turns without a care in the world.

why not update the gayme?

Fear of breaking something in the savefile. Don't worry, we'll update when I inevitably get the run destroyed by a base invasion from some VIP ninja with 2000 red/green/black oscillating shields and INVISIBILTY:2. Or whatever other fair and balanced things the game has in store for me.

I don't know. Finding a bunch of stuff that is generally useful in the future with a lot of research doesn't replace depleting the roster now.

I'm inclined to agree with this. I'm not expecting a merc assault any time soon, but having the roster depleted actually makes it much harder to train people. Missions I could have safely sent 5 swabbies on with 3 elite babysitters now become nail biters when I can only send 3 swabbies and 5 mediocre soldiers at best. Not to mention people being too exhausted or wounded to even attempt missions that would have been milk runs. If I could do it all over again, I'd preferred to have fled up that staircase without getting 3-4 extra people killed. I'd feel different if we could just recruit hands, mind you. Not being able to do that (or at least get a bunch of rescues from brothels) feels like the biggest handicap of this run so far. If it weren't for that glut of werewolves we'd be in a real sorry state by now.

What's the ultimate mansion loadout?

Well, if we still had our perfect gals... they can get up to 30 armour while naked fairly easily. Barring that, an uber or catgirl with high stats, ~120 throwing, as long as you end every turn in a room facing the only entrance, you're basically invincible. When I said Oasis could have soloed this place I wasn't joking. Elite units in this game really are a whole other animal.

Update time!

So, I failed to catch the screenshot properly because you apparently can't hold an unarmed craft at a distance to shadow, but I encountered something where the visual was just a red screen saying JAMMED. Kinda spooky. It was a small craft with only 1000 top speed though. Oh, and we have a shark jetbike now, because we're filthy rich, swimming in fuel, and I want more intel on craft before I fight them. Like I should have done before we lost out infinite ammo bioplasma gun

This is going to be a fairly dull update, as we really are sticking to research, milk runs, and generally licking our wounds. The good news is, we can do all of that fairly productively thanks to the prisoners and loot we have amassed.

The bit at the bottom intrigues me; I've seen reference to appeasing/angering a god in a title before (the one about catching pirates alive) so it makes me wonder if there's some elaborate piety system running in the background, influencing who knows what. Hell, maybe it's why we haven't seen any brothels. Who knows.

I'm changing my research strategy a bit too; instead of just throwing one or two people on a ton of projects, I'm condensing it down to stuff that seems promising or efficient. I had been avoiding putting 4+ people on projects because it feels like a waste to overkill the research in the last month, but it beats having a prisoner tell me about a gun I had spent two weeks on already right before it was about to finish.

I don't think I mentioned this before, but there's some kind of trophy we can get if we gather 300 deep one corpses. I'm going to try for this, and so will be more inclined to take such missions where we can collect them.

A new prize revealed now that we took the alliance favours. I've never gotten her before. I really, really want to. She's some kind of elite uber ninja gal.

Another potential use for deep one corpses. Not sure what the point is, aside from selling them.

Loot from a pair of treasure chests opened up. Sadly, we get bars, not coins like I thought. A shame. I'll hoard all of this for now, gems are used for alchemy or something later, and gold probably has a use too.

Our new 'elite' recruit isn't strong enough to wear chainmail without getting overencumbered even before gearing up. Nice firing stat though, and melee isn't too shabby. Oh that reminds me, someone asked about how the catgirl stats were so low (30's) in the mansion raid: it's because of the gear. Looting gear is like a 20-25 point penalty on all the combat stats.

Doesn't get much easier a milk run than that. We don't have the ammo to keep shooting down biplanes though, the cannon balls are a no go, dealing fuck all damage and having no accuracy. I could spend 100 and not take this thing down. Might have to swap the scarb out for another pirhana or something that can use missiles or light guns.

Weird ass reticulan guns scale off voodoo stats. Explains why they're so accurate with these. I should give one to Belem Belle, even with 0 voodoo skill she'd be a crack shot with these things given her power stat.

Still trying to grind out all of these. Nurses are good for getting them; they're easy to catch and quick to interrogate. Once we can no longer grill nurses and these tips are all used up (There are like... 200. I haven't counted but estimate we've got over 150 already) then we can start using the decrypted data disks to get real tech advances instead of useless tips. That was a massive leap in tech power when I did it in previous games and it was a mistake to not try for it harder here. Well, now we're trying for it harder.

With our windfall of lingerie, wench outfits can be contructed. They're quite interesting: completely unable to wield weapons or even punch people. In exchange, we get a massive boost to reactions, good evasion, the INVIS property (enemies can't see us unless within 12 tiles, regardless of their vision- though SPOT power negates this partially and snipers/spotters probably ignore it) and lastly, a couple of weird charm powers,

Good touch is a way to essentially transfer energy and freshness to another target. Unlike Purring, which is coded as a charm attack and therefore can be more or less effective depending on the armour of the target, this works like a medkit. Would have been nice to have on that mansion raid, especially if peasants can wear these outfits and feed the freshness to catgirls and gals. Alternately, this could be crazy on a gal with a ton of poisoner titles in a dire circumstance, letting her smoke cigars to trade regenerating health for freshness, and then sharing that freshness with the team to keep them operating indefinitely. Of course, she'd then end up in the medbay for a month or two after the mission, which would suck.

Bad touch, on the other hand, is an attack. Charm damage is very weird, ranging from totally useless to having 3-4x multipliers depending on the enemy type. Obviously, good for taking people alive. I believe it also bypasses shields. Training bravery is interesting as well, although it needs to be used on an enemy for that apparently. I suppose we could keep a unit with high stats but low bravery around to keep knocking prisoners unconscious if they get back up. Though that requires a safe place to do that in, which our ship is not.

Intel from a drifter or highwayman or something. Definitely nice to have, rather than having to guess when we find one of these in battle.

Perfect example of our depleted roster making it harder to train and rebuild. If we had even 2 gals with 120+ melee, I'd happily send all our gals on this mission to practice punching people out. As it stands, it's too risky. We only fought neophytes last time, but it could be raiders or sky ninjas this time.

Another mission I'd love to go on and rack up a ton of monster kills for titles, but don't feel confident in doing safely right now. We could probably handle it by just shooting them all though, but spiders are sneaky and it'd take forever to clear with only units that won't die to a single bite. Pass again, sadly.

Given how hard it is to train in combat right now anyways, and to keep myself from getting impatient and taking a fight I shouldn't, I opt for a simple solution: Giving everyone a bunch of base training. Probably should have done this a while ago. The recovery time for MMA is a bitch, but the stat gains are great. I do some other training too, giving peasants militia or solar training. I'll give the catgirls solar training as well later.

... and right after I put 90% of our roster out of commission for weeks I notice this. Didn't get an alert about it; it was just there suddenly. I think this is the spot where those ships kept landing with escorts before, actually. Apparently I should have fought them to stop it, though I don't think we could have.

Well, it's not an option now. I suppose I could send a team and then just flee on turn one, to see what we're even up against. 400 infamy is nothing to us, and I would like to know what is actually in there. Maybe it's ratmen and we can kill them all (hah, fat chance.)

This was a mission I was really looking forward to doing, but again, no way in hell is this an option right now. Which is a shame, because it'll grant us a ton of high end medical tech and some prisoners and shit that I really want.

Someone mentioned earlier the mansion mission deleting equipment- I did clear the craft's gear as a precaution (partly in case we lost, which I believe deletes all the craft gear anyways, even if it's not there) but I left a crowbar onboard as a test. Didn't get deleted.

Not sure if this avenue is worthwhile right now, but the comms device at least is very easy. Who knows, maybe it'll lead towards some voodoo training. And I know some of the more elite zombies have weird special fluids in them related to medical tech and shit. I'd love to extract and study some.

I payed up the 20 tokens for this to refresh my memory on what it does. You get an item you can research, much like a gun almanac or whatever.

And they give these! Well, maybe I should get some more of these, as they finish in only a day or two with 1 brainer. I'll try do a count to see how close we are to finishing the tip library, and buy up some files to fill whatever the gap is between what we need and what we can get with our nurses and such.

A nice little event. We've been getting a lot of dull ones lately; wanted posters and our fungus outbreak keeps repeating, I think we've got 3 or 4 right now draining money. I keep letting that one run in the hopes it leads to something cool when it reaches a critical mass. If it gets to 11 though, I'll sell them all off.

Uh, apparently this text box was too sexy. It was just the loot from the event above, we got another old earth book and some junk.

Well, this isn't an option right now either. I kept my promise though! We did one of these missions earlier already! When we're ready we'll do more; sky ninjas are a good source of rep with Jack and some more research.

But yeah, right now... basically only the zone stalkers are around for handling anything tougher than ruffians. If we get invaded, all these wounded people can still fight (and from now on I'm giving everyone crazy loadouts when we do a base defense so I don't need to scramble to find a plasma cannon if they show up with a tank) but offensively, we're basically frozen for another week or two.

Well, actually, I did leave the catgirls on their feet, so if this is actually just chupacabras, the three of them can make this a shooting gallery from the air and rack up some much needed xp.

Well, so much for that plan.

Definitely not interested it fighting even a single fucking PCM with 3 undertrained catgirls.

More reticulan tech. Apparently this has the same low damage as the pistol, weirdly. I suppose it has better range and the auto fire?

Well what the fuck, it only has 16 snapshot range. Alien bastards are straight up cheating- no way that reaction fire that killed a peasant in the last update was within 16 tiles. Good to know that's not safe I suppose.

Interesting. Didn't get any direct reward, but this seems promising in concert with the regeneration pods, stasis tech, zombie juice and our green codex. I would dearly love to have some improved medical tech in any way shape or form.

We cracked open an old book too, seeing as how we have like 5 now. I was expecting more lame old earth lore, but we got this instead!

It's actually infiltration tech! We could have taken this into the fucking mansion! Hell yes I want stealthy tank busters!

And we can even build them right now!

And it only costs some time and 4 scrap metal. Jesus. Sign me up for some of these. Bet this thing could have punched a hole in those mansion walls.

This we got from studying the ret. plasma chargers.

Which turned out to be a mistake, because if we'd gotten this research from a prisoner, we'd still have 2 chargers and could have built the damned thing! Argh. Well, I guess we keep hunting their craft and hope to find another.

Was hoping this would give us Rum research, but no dice. And we can't research the rum itself. Actually... I'm going to build an onsen. That might let us research rum. I feel like it might be one of those inane weird requirements.

And finally, we cracked open our fancy new spellbook. No direct results, sadly. Guess we need to crack a few more. I wonder if the whole slave sacrifice thing is the way to unlock magic the hard way. I hope so, that sounds cool as hell. Maybe we'll get a mission where we fight our own summoned demon or something.

Well, that was an eventful month. Still rolling in cash, and weirdly, the country with a base in it didn't decrease funding apparently. That base still has me gravely concerned; I've suddenly lost countries before, and that's a straight up game over if we lose too many.