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

[Average Manatee]

My bad, I didn't do it intentionally. I'm not sure how it happened actually, when I quote now all of the spoilers are still there, but I'm sure I didn't manually remove them.

I think the way it works is that the quote takes it in the state you currently see it. So if you reveal and then quote it ends up as plaintext in the quote.

That's... weird. Good to know though.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Vegas odds.

That's... weird.

I'm not surprsed. Every time I post an update I have to snip tags because spoilering the post mysteriously wraps the whole thing as if it were a quote from whoever I quoted first in the post. Black technomagery at it's finest.


Let the update commence!

So, first exciting thing: We found a mind probe! These are just as useful as they are in the original game, basically a map wide, no LoS required version of the Brainer outfit's stat scanning power. We pulled it off a random academy ship with researchers and security. There is one hitch: We can neither use nor research this thing yet. I'm guessing voodoo is the requirement. I think however, after doing that, we might be able to use it without researching. Which would be good, because I'm pretty sure it's a destructive research.

We got another bounty mission! It's caves, and I hate caves, but it's also from Jack. And we take missions from Jack because I'm addicted to slot machines and also we're going to want to unlock the next tier of bounties soonish.

Our entry point here is actually very nice. It's about the only nice thing about this mission though.

Unless you like headless corpses. I won't judge you Major Blackheart.

Other features of this cave include twisty winding passages. And see how this tile our gal stopped on has a slightly different left edge compared to the bit left of our ogre to the north?

It's a secret passage! Yay! You either have to pixel hunt for these or click around randomly a bunch hoping to find them via pathing into nothingness. As an added bonus, if we stop on either side of this gap and an enemy wants to path through there, apparently the game will crash. At least the game itself warned me this would happen. Still, not cool. Caves suck.

Finding enemies in here is also a pain obviously, but werewolves help, as would a motion scanner if I used them as often as I should.

However, as I stated before, C tier bounty missions are easier than they sound.

Our enemies down here are mostly pussies like this.

Or like this rare specimen. Although, she's actually the more dangerous of the two. In these cramped spaces, they can easily sneak up on someone, and their charm attacks will cut right through our armour. Some outfits have massive weaknesses to charm damage too. Our werewolves, for example, take double damage from it.

Aside from the 600 (!) tokens we're going to get for finishing this missions, this guy is the real reason we're doing this.

These guys are about as tanky as an ogre, and pretty damned good in melee. Actually fairly annoying to try capture. But they're a new enemy type, and sound vaguely related to some spooky voodoo shit, so I want them and whatever they know.

Thankfully the cave is actually fairly small, both in total area and by virtue of being mostly solid rock instead of honeycombed rooms to check. So we're proceeding quickly.

Also, the enemies are helpfully shooting eachother in the back with shotguns. Kind of them!

This guy has a billhook and gets the drop on us, but chainmail with shield serves us well.

The disciples go down for a nap (well, we had to heal one back up and then put him back down again) so I bring some wolves over to babysit them. Don't want them dying because they got whipped to death or whatever. Howl is so useful for this shit. I used to fuck around with manacles instead and that shit took forever and wasn't even reliable. If we lacked werewolves I'd bring someone in that savage outfit just to fill this role.

Average Manatee is finally ready for missions again and is training up her throwing. Just for perspective, this is the equivalent of 75 attack power being fired for about 12% TUs. A tad weak vs armour but god damn. She's not even at crazy throwing levels yet, and she's in our best armour!

The cool pit in the cave isn't necessarily just for show, you can actually go down here, and I saw a layout with a cool bridge across it before.

Once dropping down here, there's no path back up. A fact which I definitely knew beforehand and have demonstrated for scientific purposes. Yes.

Those secret passages often form long chains like this. They terrify me because you could bump into an enemy here or otherwise unexpectedly run out of TUs and not be able to get back out without risking a crash.

More fun cave nonsense includes pathing that connects between two sides of the fog of war with utterly no idea how or where.

Finally we run across the mission target. We're already holding one of these guys. I might interrogate them now; I'd been holding off to avoid ranking up unwillingly later but I think we're past that being an issue. If we're still too weak to handle some rougher missions 4 months from now than we've fucked up so badly it won't have mattered either way. I'm going to need some other tech done first though.

Anyways, we throw our chainmail tank into melee with this guy and he's easily overwhelmed. I don't know his exact stats, but I know they're underwhelming, aside from some impressive bulk.

We even get a throwing star through his armour for some extra damage.

Nice and clean.

Oh, and Lightbringer somehow eared 3 voodoo skill by failing to scare a hoe a few times. I guess if one were so inclined it'd be very easy to ramp up that stat on bugeyes. I think he'd be cooler as a sniper and we can get massive skill gains from training later anyways, but maybe I'll start spamming terrify more to get a head start. Sadly we can't outfit with wands and shit yet AFAIK. They just don't even show up in the item list to bring with us. Maybe individual equipping bypasses that? I'll try and check.

Another neat find: apparently ninja stars give amazon ranks. I'm not sure if they did that before or this was a balance change. Either way, good stuff. Will make raising throwing to silly levels even easier.

This is pretty much exactly what I expected, albeit the firing cost is much higher than I'd like. Still might be good in certain scenarios.

Ah, imgur finally accurate spotted some pr0n. All it took was a photorealistic image of some tits in greyscale. Anyways, this was us interrogated a govt. pilot and recieving a ticket to claim a free brainer. Good stuff! Makes them pretty valuable targets if they can always do that, and I suspect they can even after they've got no more research to give.

Seemed like a tip you guys would be interested in with the recent discussion of voodoo. Though it's clearly got something funky going on with the math translation there, I think the 30 is meant to be 30%. At any rate, if you plugged in a character with 70/70 for power and skill, you'd get... ~30-70% displyed accuracy? Seems about right. Not sure what common VDEF values are, I'll have to look into that at some point. I know some of our armour can crank it really high, with bonuses that scale off our health and such.

Our score chart for the year so far. Seem's we'll be ending well in the black, though not as good as last month.

Seems we're losing a bunch in pirate straits? Where the fuck is that?

Oh. Right. Well fuck you game, I just started 2 more bases!

Also, at long last, near the end of our third year, we've managed to capture the weakest, most easily captured enemy in the entire game.

I swapped out our plasma charger for the gauss cannon on the scarab. Has a much, much higher damage potential, and we're sitting on scads of ammo for it. Easily shot down this enemy craft.

Oh, and then we got attacked on the way home. By something faster than us. And aggressive.

Err, I'm sure it's fine. The gauss gun has 50% base accuracy, and we've got 6 armour and 240 toughness.

Err, guys?

What the fuck, it doesn't even look scary!

Didn't doubt us for a moment.

Though uh, maybe I'm going to put in some pilots with decent reactions and firing instead of just whoever needs bravery training.

Stupid thing didn't even leave a crash site to scavange. Lame! Not sure if it's just a type that blows up, but we definitely didn't overkill it.

So, now that I've stockpiled 1000 jack tokens, who else thinks I should spend all of them on slot machines at once?

 

[Jaedar]

So, now that I've stockpiled 1000 jack tokens, who else thinks I should spend all of them on slot machines at once?

I think you're past the point where gambling makes sense, you need to start to acquire prizes. Imo gambling is really good early as it can net you a lot of medium tier weapons with ease, but I don't think there's much it can give you now that you don't already have something equivalent to. There probably are some things, wouldn't surprise me if there was a one in a million chance to get an unlocked plasma rifle or something but the odds are so low...

And yeah, underground missions kinda suck. My favorite is when you have a long chain of those diagonal tunnels, with an enemy standing in the middle. Absolutely no way to detect that there's a passage, you'll just (maybe) get shot in the back 3 turns later. I wish there was a commonly available armor with decent SENSE to deal with this shit.

What the fuck, it doesn't even look scary!

It's not the size of the ship that counts, it's how much bullshit you cram into it. As all your craft will attest.

 

[Average Manatee]

Does VDef only work on the OG PSI panic and mind control? Don't see how it could work on wands that shoot fireballs

Re: gambling. My logic would be that we already know diosine has no problems locking fairly critical stuff behind tokens, while the expected value of gambling falls lower over time as your tech level increases (less likely to find someone significantly above your tech level)

And yeah, underground missions kinda suck. My favorite is when you have a long chain of those diagonal tunnels, with an enemy standing in the middle. Absolutely no way to detect that there's a passage, you'll just (maybe) get shot in the back 3 turns later. I wish there was a commonly available armor with decent SENSE to deal with this shit.

Well the mission he got was trivial. For the normal lokknaar missions I mostly just camp with shotguns. They have great reactions, the enemies aren't armored and in slayer armor they can usually survive a shot. And if they die it's just lokknaar. I kind of like the simplicity

 

[lightbane]

Does VDef only work on the OG PSI panic and mind control? Don't see how it could work on wands that shoot fireballs

I think VDef applies against some magics yes, besides mind control and panic, but dunno which ones. One of the update notes state that VDef uses current morale level, as Gals that feel tough and ready are less likely to be mind-fucked.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The Singer zombies claim to have an attack that burns targets up from the inside, I suspect it would work with vDef. I suspect the original psi system got hacked so it can produce other results besides bravery damage, like causing stun or directly inflicting wounds. Probably not that hard. But yeah, at the very least it's not going to influence fireballs or whatever, that would be extremely weird.

 

[Jaedar]

Don't see how it could work on wands that shoot fireballs

I'm pretty sure all the wands/spells/etc are "guns" as far as the engine is concerned. Guns with exotic damage types that scale with vpwr and vskl, but still guns.

Well the mission he got was trivial. For the normal lokknaar missions I mostly just camp with shotguns. They have great reactions, the enemies aren't armored and in slayer armor they can usually survive a shot. And if they die it's just lokknaar. I kind of like the simplicity

The bandit tunnels are like 3x larger than the lokknarr only ratmen cache maps. I agree that the ratmen caches aren't super hard, although betting on winning reactions roll against ratmen in the dark is perhaps not a sound strategy. Especially since the LoS has a tendency to be a bit funky. I've sometimes been prohibited from moving diagonally forwards because there's an enemy in the way that I can't see even standing on the diagonally adjacent tile.

That being said, you should do some ratmen cache maps because

Spoiler

ratmen cache completion is required to unlock demon altars, and demon altars have a whole bunch of semi-mandatory loot for progression.

 

[turkishronin]

Gambling let's gooo

 

[Average Manatee]

There probably are some things, wouldn't surprise me if there was a one in a million chance to get an unlocked plasma rifle or something but the odds are so low...

If you look in the tech tree viewer you can see the odds on what to get.

Spoiler

<1% chance (only shows whole numbers) to get Neutronium and Zortium coupons. Best stuff that I can see for them is EuroSyndicate lasweapons/UAC plasmagun/Sonic Cannon/Autolaser/Splatty which are a few % from those coupons. I think he's already got an Autolaser? But I don't see something that would be truly transformative like an invisibility suit or a heavily shielded armor that would make you invincible for a while.

 

[Jaedar]

There probably are some things, wouldn't surprise me if there was a one in a million chance to get an unlocked plasma rifle or something but the odds are so low...

If you look in the tech tree viewer you can see the odds on what to get.

Spoiler

<1% chance (only shows whole numbers) to get Neutronium and Zortium coupons. Best stuff that I can see for them is EuroSyndicate lasweapons/UAC plasmagun/Sonic Cannon/Autolaser/Splatty which are a few % from those coupons. I think he's already got an Autolaser? But I don't see something that would be truly transformative like an invisibility suit or a heavily shielded armor that would make you invincible for a while.

Spoiler

Can't reclaim neutronium without a casino built, and I don't think that's happening any time soon.
There are some decent things in zortrium, but pretty sure LP has decent enough weapons to be able to kill a tank / power armor dude or two in a pinch so getting an extra won't really help.

Does xpiratez feature buildings being broken in base after being heavily damaged in base defense? Asking for a friend

destroyed building, corpses and remains that lp hasn't seen or built yet.

Despite half the floor being missing (ground floor is better but still a lot of missing walls), this counts as whole.

I'm also a bit upset that enemies can bring 4 tile units when attacking your bases, when you aren't allowed to bring large units when attacking theirs.

 

[Average Manatee]

I think it's a specific module on the upper floor that counts as destroyed or not. Never had a problem myself

You do get to use your 4 tile units in base defence. Would be kind of funny seeing a tank roll out of a living quarters

 

[std::namespace]

Though uh, maybe I'm going to put in some pilots with decent reactions and firing instead of just whoever needs bravery training.

why not put in a second gun instead? you dont have another?
you flew over the enemy base

2000 jack tokens unlock "recruit freaks"
shouldnt you be able to unlock the last type of customer missions?

 

[Damned Registrations]

See? I'm always right!

why not put in a second gun instead? you dont have another?

We have many other guns, but only 1 slot they can fit in. The 2 heavy slots on the scarab will only mount carronades, which are basically useless. Furiously researching potential heavy craft weapons as we speak.

2000 jack tokens unlock "recruit freaks"

Oi, shut up with these tips! I like to be surprised. I think I know of an easier way to get freaks anyways though we can unlock soonish. 2000 tokens is kind of a lot at the moment.

I'm pretty sure all the wands/spells/etc are "guns" as far as the engine is concerned. Guns with exotic damage types that scale with vpwr and vskl, but still guns.

I'm not so sure. I vaguely recall having some kind of mind fuckery wand before that granted the possession attack, and

Spoiler

the church's Cardinals have some sort of terrifying lightning spell that might ignore LoS. They certainly ate me alive when I thought I was in cover. Could have been blaster bomb shenanigans though, or maybe even just arcing attacks.

That being said, you should do some ratmen cache maps because

However, I probably will do a ratman cache in the near future, if only for showing it off. And because I want UAC vaults and suspect the game won't spawn them without a loknaar army or previous underground missions or something. ANYWAYS.



So, first up, this bugeye was named Lightbane this entire time. Definitely. Nobody has any evidence otherwise.

We shot down a ~fancy~ civiliian craft, so here's hoping it has some nice loot.

Well, that seems promising. I've only ever seen goons alongside fairly valuable stuff, such as...

Bingo! Very nice.

We snagged both the noblewoman as a captive, and her fancy cane, which we cannot yet use.

Not sure why I bothered to research this. I just liked the idea okay? I wanted like, boots of haste or kicking or some shit. Special boots are cool. Except these. These kinda suck.

We got a rat nest mission! Very nice, easy training and title collection. There is a slight problem... we're trapped in this tiny room.

The enemies are all over here somewhere and we can't reach. RIP kitty.

Eventually we bust our way through using a crowbar.

It's hard to find good chances for our boys to get melee training, so I put Jaedar in here as well.

Even with the DOOM armour, he gets chewed up pretty bad in a single turn. Well, we can patch that up at least. He's only getting that one round though, his armour is already thrashed.

Ugh, he didn't even get melee xp somehow. I guess the weapon I gave him awarded reaction xp instead. Lame. At least Gumsmith got a ton of reactions and other stats. Slut got some much needed strength as well.

I gave a bunch of people ninja sticks hoping they could overkill the rats and get the title for daze weapon kills (it awards strength) but no dice. Gumsmith got like, 10 different titles with his tech knife stabbing spree though. He's becoming a real force to be reckoned with.

Huzzah! We may not have gotten a hero to show up and join our ranks yet after nearly 3 years, but this trove of old boots more than makes up for it. This precious windfall shall serve us well in the future.

Speaking of precious windfalls, it's gambling time! Since only about a third of you supported the idea, we'll only spend about a third of our chips. This update. (I'll also get something lame like the silver snake I guess, Jack's current offerings are dogshit sadly.)

We'll need to sell some of this worthless hellerium to make room for our old boots and miscellaneous slot machine treasure.

Not a spectacular result, but it has potential.

We got one of these too. It's hilarious how many of our weapons converge on roughly the same amount of terrain damage. This does 33% terrain damage, with a power of about 250 in an Ogre's hands. So ~80 or so to terrain. Pickaxes have 66% terrain damage and have maybe ~120 power, so same result, more or less. Crowbars hit a tad lighter, but have by far the lowest TU cost, so they've been my main wall busters thus far. I think even the warhammer was in this ballpark. Maybe the bardiche can do better. I really want to find some sort of like, laser pickaxe or something. We've got the fusion torch but that thing is a pain to use, basicaly only a last resort for cutting into a ship.

Not bad! We got a new item even from the shitty copper tier items. I should probably hold it and hope for a free research, but fuck that. Onto the research queue it goes!

We find yet another academy ship landed. No researchers this time, all osirons. Well, I can use them as sturdy pincushions to train melee and throwing.

Although they are a tad dangerous with those CAW guns and battle rifles, we're pretty well defended and it's not like we can find those rat cellars every week. We gotta take our training chances where we find them.

The enemy apparently objected to me taking their people alive. Fair enough. We had some light wounds but nothing serious.

Nice, we broke the eight digit mark for balance! Our raw monthly income is getting very nice as well. Nearly 2 million just from the protection racket. We've definitely got room to create a bunch more bases now.

Keeping medics in prison forever and only interrogating them now that the easy stuff is done as paid off: We got info on a fairly rare item. I know where to get some of this shit. Not how to use it, but it seems obvious it'd be very nice to have, especially with our green codex.

Also, the hoe has given us some important secrets! Though this is actually less useful than it sounds; any 'courtesans' we decide to employ will require a prison space to work from. A tad grim, that. At any rate, they'll provide a monthly income, but need to be captured and recruited first, so the ROI is... not great. But maybe it has some tertiary benefits, who knows. We'll probably set some up sooner or later.

I feel like we've taken a few of these down before. Would like to see a few more for potential raider recruits, even if they are fairly shit. Good to know their stats.

Next tier of slots has some cool shit too! Hypno Panels are easy to get later, but demonic essence is kind of hit and miss, relying on capturing demons. It's also potentially a very useful consumable- demonic essence can be thrown for a 100 damage mind attack. Probably good to keep around in case we run into certain types of targets that are shrugging off our other weapons.

Ooh, I like the sounds of new armour. That sonic pistol might be good too, probably amazing underwater.

Inferno pistols are probably less amazing underwater. Bit disappointing for our final coupon. Still, we got 2 so we can research one and use the other if it's destructive.

Or, well, we could if researching them was even a option. Perils of getting stuff way before we're ready for it. Whatever, fancy pistols might not be an option, but we can research the armour! This could be huge if it lets us replicate it.

The inferno pistol is, apparently, not a pistol but a flamethrower of some kind. Makes sense. I do wonder how useful it could possibly be if fire damage is as limited as I've heard. I'll have to experiment some.

Only our slave soldiers (of with the zone stalkers like Jaedar here are a subtype) can equip the defender armour. Apparently the research wasn't destructive, which is good news, because I forgot I could check it's stats before doing that. It certainly looks pretty solid. No mask though, so poison clouds could be an issue.

Hot damn that's some nice armour, it puts the DOOM armour (which we still can't research) to shame. We've finally got an armour on par with chainmail and tactical on the gals, we can really just throw Jaedar out to the wolves to go ham now.

 

[Jaedar]

Would be kind of funny seeing a tank roll out of a living quarters

Tanks are sadly a bit shit in base defence, due to low accuracy and their secondary weapon being arcing (and thus useless).

I'm not so sure. I vaguely recall having some kind of mind fuckery wand before that granted the possession attack, and

Spoiler

the church's Cardinals have some sort of terrifying lightning spell that might ignore LoS. They certainly ate me alive when I thought I was in cover. Could have been blaster bomb shenanigans though, or maybe even just arcing attacks.

Possession sure sounds like mind control, ie old psi.

Spoiler

The cardinals "lightning spell" is very much a gun, and it does not ignore los. Cardinals might have some sniper/spotter shenanigans, but that's it.

Huzzah! We may not have gotten a hero to show up and join our ranks yet after nearly 3 years, but this trove of old boots more than makes up for it. This precious windfall shall serve us well in the future.

Not sure if serious, but you should be serious. I would happily pay 1 million for 100 old boots.

A prison full of courtesans is actually pretty good money/tile, although it takes a while to fill up and it's definitely something you wanna put in your 3rd base or something.

 

[std::namespace]

Oi, shut up with these tips!

wat and why

and how did you know about m-lasers?

 

[std::namespace]

after nearly 3 years

u start at jan1 2601

 

[Damned Registrations]

More Jack tokens spent!

wat and why

You know what, fair enough, I should have read those. I didn't, but reasonable expectation.

and how did you know about m-lasers?

They're unlocked in the manufacturing page because I already took the 2 steps before them.

I would happily pay 1 million for 100 old boots.

Foot fetish, eh?

Let the incompetance begin!

So, we hung the fancy lady upside down and juggled her until her secrets fell out. I was excited to catch one because, duh, voodoo.

Instead she tells us about the origins of the Academy. I guess that's actually voodoo related. Damn this mod and it's well designed intricate web of connections! I wanted laser eye beams, damn it.

A data disk however, pays off. Where the fuck would I get these and what prereqs would I have normally needed to research them? Who the fuck knows! We won't find out this run because we just finished this shit for a song and a disk. This is why I want to get rid of the fluff and burn through a stack of these data disks.

A very nice bonus for last month's score, 20 glam is a good haul.

And we finished researching this. However... 350 fucking personal data?! God damn. I definitely did not build one of these previously, so I'm excited to see what it'll unlock.

More Narlock Pantheon from the scripture we got out of the slot machine.

And we snagged this prize from Jack, because it was the cheapest and confederate weaponry sounds vastly outdated already.

This is not bad as far as revolvers go, and would be good in the hands of a gnome (They get like 200 bravery) but it's of no use to us now and I much prefer the silenced pistols we got from Saya ages ago.

And the next data disk we read gave us this. Ugh.

Found a slow moving medium ship close to the ground and tried shooting it down with the scarab. Extractor?

It was not an extractor. Our gauss cannon bounced right off and it killed us in like 3 shots. Whatever the fuck that was it was deadly.

RIP Scarab. And fusion drive. Shit.

I buy up a space van to replace it. They've been popping up once in a while and I wouldn't mind more space loot.

Rapid regeneration sounds nice! Or vampire crewmembers to go with our werewolves would be cool too I guess.

Got this researched, but it didn't unlock the method to craft more, sadly. Nice to know it's resists though.

Also, it didn't mention the evasion rate so I checked the ANAL screen. Apparently it's only 10% of melee, which is utter crap. Duly noted, do not engaged in melee with this. Also shows the stat penalties at the top, which suck but are worth the tradeoff on an elite zone stalker.

Got some fun stories, I think these came from pillow books? I like the first one especially. I want to meet these Boogle dudes, they seem cool.

Data disk has also started giving me some dossiers on random rebels. Neat, but not useful. Though I kind of want a lamia now, that's some major defenses on what looks like pretty crap armour.

So, uh, I can't start on that analytics room just yet.

I maybe kinda sorta already spent like 200 databases or more on creating data disks. Whoops.

Luckily, there's a quick way to get more- we can trade 50 goblin tokens for 20 databases. A pretty good deal, honestly, considering how rare the respective items are as rewards.

We can also just mine the web for them, but it's pretty labour intensive. We'd get like, 10 per day if I put everyone in both bases to the task. No thanks. Hell, it's probably more efficient to make money, trade money for tokens and then tokens for databases. But goblin tokens are easy to come by regardless, and his other stuff is mostly mediocre weaponry.

This strongman armour snuck into our research list at some point, not sure how or why. Going to start it up out of curiosity, but I really ought to do the crusader armour instead. It's part of with I wanted that romanica contact- it's basically chainmail for our bros.

Well shit. Not much to be done about that, the fucking place didn't even have any crew space yet. More money down the drain.

Hell yes! We got so screwed from our previous mad scribblings. They can get these awesome shadowtech items when you use them.

But we got another maid outfit. Dunk the bitch back in the sludge!

Our scarab pilots come back to us, though I think missing their equipment. I'll have to check on that.

Fucking hell, this is like the 3rd or 4th time we've gotten this. It's basically a forced purchase of 20 workers at a slight discount. If I wanted workers I'd recruit them from prisoners and get culture out of it. Whatever, just another fucking money tax.

Finished researching this. It is yet anoter weapon with ~70 damage vs buildings. It's actually very close to the barbaric axe, just slightly more damage and faster. Like, very slightly. 1 TU difference. Whatever, it looks cool.

Not exactly overwhelming but hey, more bonus stats is always nice. Hopefully the training is fast.

Another C level bounty hunt. I believe we skipped this before. We're not doing that this time, I want those tokens and these guys are pussies.

While in other missions vs the humanists, they've been annoying pricks scattered across a large map sniping from all angles, in this one they're all trapped in this bunker. It has one entrance. They are fuuuuuucked.

Oh yeah, these guys and some guard dogs are here too. Also fucked.

They are more than a little bit outgunned.

Having a light source reveal our position would be annoying if I hadn't already assumed we'll be spotted when leaving the craft and therefore brought only heavy armour out.

Gumsmith tried getting a shot off as well by carving through the roof of this building, but he mostly succeeded in taking out half it's walls instead. New PS bullets are nice!

They're in this sniper rifle too. Fuck me, that's probably near a guaranteed kill. That's what, 80% chance to do at least 60 damage? Ouch.

Ceres parks in the entrance and just absorbs bullets for that gal of steel title. Shame they didn't have any shotguns.

They're using stuff like this though. This gun literally can't harm her from the front.

Though the grenade they threw can. I specifically sent her in alone to avoid having them toss grenades, but apparently they didn't give a fuck. There's 2 weeks in bed right there. Grenades are so fucking annoying in enemy hands. It's one of those areas where I feel like gameplay should trump realism; obviously enemies should just toss like 50 grenades at us every mission, but fuck, there's no defense against that shit.

The mission tries to scare you off with the time limit, but honestly, 24 turns is massive overkill; the enemies are all inside one fairly small building with one entrance. We'll be done in 10 turns. It's a great mission to send people in chainmail to practice melee or other short range weaponry like ninja stars.

We have Robroy bust in through the side like the fucking Kool-aid man as well to speed things up.

Gumsmith follows him and and plays ninja, racking up throwing skill and reactions on these nerds.

Easy peasy; only the one injury from that grenade, decent xp on several gals and 600 more mutant alliace tokens in the bank.

Speaking of tokens, this will be our next purchase. Can't remember what the fuck his favours are, but probably nothing terribly impressive. But I think unlocking the favours of all 3 clients is needed to unlock the next tier of missions or a new client or whatever the fuck happens next with this system. I never got that far because it involved a mission where I sent in like 8 naked peasants to a reticulan prison to get slaughtered. We uh, maybe won't do that one this time.

 

[Average Manatee]

If you're looking for a heavy craft weapon then the Naval Gun that Zaxx offers would do it.

EDIT: Ohh, RIP scarab. And RIP base. Early base assaults before you can get anything built make me rage. It's really the ultimate "fuck you, lose $2M and a month of progress" event.

 

[Jaedar]

Early base assaults before you can get anything built make me rage. It's really the ultimate "fuck you, lose $2M and a month of progress" event.

Yeah, they do feel unfair. The academy nurses and ratmen attacks don't even seem to follow the normal logic of "ufos scout and if they see base, base assault appears". Instead they just seem to pick a hideout at random and teleport there (at least for ratmen, the nurses seem to sometimes appear with a ship). Doesn't even seem pre-rolled at start of month, or you could at least be guaranteed to have 30 days to build a crew quarter or something.

I started building all my new bases in pairs so that even if one of them got instagibbed I wouldn't lose too much progress from it.

 

[Average Manatee]

I'm pretty sure it is pre-rolled at the start of a month, I've never seen a base get attacked the same month its built and you can inspect the save file to see that there is a base assault "planned". But there's definitely attacks that are just random with no UFO scouting or anything required. It's possible shooting down ships in the region increases the chance but I think its still almost entirely RNG. And its annoying because even if you build the living quarters day 1 of a month and load it up before the next month you can end up with a really fucking hard base assault because you have no depth and 40 enemies are squished into two rooms. And for some reason base assaults for me seem to love to come very early in the month, like days 3-6.

btw, recently found that miniguns for intentionally farming the lady luck title are amazing. I'm guessing that the title is balanced for using weapons like pistols at long range, so it only requires 30 hits to max out the title. Enter the minigun on a zombie mission that can potentially max it out in a single go for +7 accuracy +3 HP

 

[Damned Registrations]

Dirty, stinking rats.

Instead they just seem to pick a hideout at random and teleport there

According to a game tip, the chances of a hideout being invaded scale with the number of tiles filled. Sure doesn't feel that way though. I suppose losing bases is a lot more memorable than all the times I shoot someone down at the main one though. My strategy is to basically start a base with nothing until it has AA defenses, then start developing it. I could start with a burrow or outpost or something and send over crew and shit but... now they can just get ICBM'd apparently. Fuck that.

I started building all my new bases in pairs so that even if one of them got instagibbed I wouldn't lose too much progress from it.

I'm starting to feel like the optimal way to go is build 1 or 2 early worker bases before the enemy gets busy, cash permitting, and then hoard cash until you can just do like 5 at once. I've lost like what, 4 bases now or something? I only ever had 3 really established. Feels pretty assinine that the small ones keep getting picked off in the first month of existence.

If you're looking for a heavy craft weapon then the Naval Gun that Zaxx offers would do it.

Doesn't matter much in this case since I don't have the tokens and won't before it's obsolete, but a 'probably' would have made me feel a lot better about that tip. I'd actually assumed the naval gun was just another shitty pirate hand weapon. Which makes no sense in retrospect of course. But, neither do handheld ballistae.




So it occured to me that peasants can probably wear this too, and sure enough, they can! Now that we have a way to keep one alive, I'll probably start sending a peasant along on missions as well, since it would really pay off to have at least one proper elite peasant for special missions like that vault shelter one. I'm thinking I'll go with Belem Belle, since she had the best voodoo power when I was testing out the nun outfits.

Checked her gear and it's still here... so maybe downed vessels let you keep equipment on crewmember outfits? Or it just auto filled the slots with copies. I dunno.

Damn, this officer training takes 30 days? Hospital will cut that down to half but even then... not really worth it for such small gains. Maybe I can cycle the boys through one at a time. It seems only the master chiefs are eligible.

We get another bandit cave bounty from Jack! Very nice. This one has a stupid layout where we're all split up though and don't even know where to go.

Eventually I find my way out and into another clusterfuck- this weird pit is like a fucking Escher painting. Can't even see some of the walls when looking directly at them. Whatever, the cave was a milk run.

Racked up a lot of xp, especially on Slut, who jumped down the hole first and ran into the boss early, and he kindly sat around while we reacted by throwing ninja stars.

I'd been putting this off because I thought there was no direct benefit, but that's not exactly true- it unlocks the B level missions, albeit only one per month. But we get to pick! Honestly it's just as well I put this off, because we likely weren't ready until now anyways.

I'm going to go for the goblin one. I did the mutant alliance one before, and it involves sending peasants only to be captured and then break out of a reticulan base. The reticulans have shitty stun weapons mostly and the peasants actually get really nice wrestling attacks so it's not totally hopeless in the super cramped hallways and shit. But the real problem is the psi attacks that bypass LOS. Without a team that has capped bravery and decent voodoo power, it's not even close to being worth the risk. Jack's mission might be a cakewalk if I just carpet the level with missiles and shit, but that won't turn much of a profit from the mission itself, and we might take losses from some assholes with mortars or something, who knows.

Ah, we had enough tokens from the cave so I grabbed this. I regret it already- we have no need for gems, and if we did, I sure as fuck wouldn't want to get them this way. What a ripoff.

Interestingly, the freaky green ladies aren't pictured here. Honestly this image is hard to even parse. I've no idea what the blue thing is and the thing in the back looks like it has wings and a gimp suit on or something.

Apocalypse cult you say? Seems like we found the descendants of RPG Codex.

He gave us an ancient log in exchange for freedom. I suppose this also makes sense, given that they mostly relate to the end of the world. Nice to have another source of these more common than the old earth books, as I suspect those, like the data disks, can reveal more useful info besides lore.

Oh hell yes, this is cooler than I was expecting. The armour values aren't fantastic, but 75% piercing resist is not too shabby.

It gives a ton of nice stat boosts as well, including things I wouldn't have expected, like health and reactions. And nice evasion. Seems we found a decent melee outfit for the SS soldiers.

Well, actually, we've got two. Crusader armour has slightly better, well, armour, but instead of decent piercing resist, it has excellent cutting and daze resistance.

And stabbing too, and the shield bumps up the armour values a bit as well. This would be great stuff for letting Jaedar or whoever farm a rat cellar or chupacabra hunt. Decent vs lasers too.

And it unlocked two more promising research avenues. Legion armour must be pretty sick if it's unlocked by crusader armour, and Iron Warriors is too fucking metal to pass up. I'll start with that.

Got around to doing this one.

First up, it will let us unlock this mission. Which I want to do, because zombies are good for xp farming.

Secondly, it lets me finally butcher all these zombies and corpses I've been hoarding this whole time. Depending on the type, we can get hellerium, zombie juice or 'living blood'. The latter two seem like they'll have medical application eventually, so I'm glad I held onto these.

Challenge sent! I didn't know exactly what this would entail, but it mentioned gnomes, which I sorely want to have. Honestly, this sounds right up our ally. Maybe I'll make some extra stun mines or electro nets or something, but melee in tight quarters with all our gear sounds great to me. Ooh, I should bring teargas too. And demon essence. And blowdarts... and werewolves. Muahaha.

I was actually planning to do this with pirate hounds when it popped up, but apparently only regular dogs are allowed. Seems I'll need to train up those loknaars first. Which was what Kunlun was supposed to be for... ugh. We'll get there. Honestly the cache isn't even that hard, I'll just make ~10 of them and set them on training at the secondary base, and throw them into the fire with slayer armour when this pops up again. Maybe some will die, but they should pull off a win. Also, I thought gnomes were allowed in small areas too? We do have one, it's strange no armour is listed. Though I suppose we have no gnomish armour researched either.

Well, we can't raid their cache, but we can fuck up their town!

Quick reminder that these cunts might be squishy, but they've got better NV than a gal, excellent camo and reactions, and both spotter and sniper. Truly annoying little pricks. Oh, and they work with dogs and hounds.

Gumsmith saves the day by applying an appropriate amount of damage to the target.

Meanwhile Optimist is fucking around with poison arrows, trying to train and get the poisoner title. And because no mission is truly a milk run, we somehow managed to have a werewolf die. It got bit to death by a fucking guard dog. Right next to the ship doors. I've no idea how the fuck it even reached that tile without dying, let alone die enough damage to kill a werewolf in a single turn. Total horseshit.

Well, that sucked, time for something easy!

Oh, this was a pleasant surprise. Got this out of an old earth book, strangely enough. Now I really want to burn through those apocalypse disciples before using the rest of them.

Heh. Ehehee. Or perhaps I won't need to use the old earth books for that purpose.

I'm not even going to explain why this is so fucking awesome, even as late as it is. We'll see soon enough.

In the meantime, we've got big armored pimps to chat with.

Hmm, this might be cool too. I've seen the mission description for this but never finished it; it references 'claiming' their factory if we win. Not sure if that means we get something besides a big pile of weapons or not, but it sounds intriguing!

This also seems intriguing. It popped out of the Socializing! research, which I started doing in hopes of thinning out the list of rebels and whatever the data disk kept revealing. Now I want to see the other six Ways of Trounce, maybe it'll unlock some cool shit. And I want that spear!

So, this pogrom is uh... quite different. I suppose it having only the normal -100 penalty was a good hint at that. It seems we're up against rat men.

Oh! And these fuckers. Didn't think I'd see them outside of the ghoul den. This might be very lucky actually.

Very long enemy phase. Much screaming. Either a lot of dead rats or dead peasants, but my money is on dead peasants in the long run.

Lightbane finally gets a chance for some safe target practice, and proves the inferiority of reticulan weapons by landing 4 shots on this hound without knocking it down.

Shit, it seems I can't totally relax here if they've got RPGs in hand as well. This guy goes down before he can fire though.

I tried carving a shortcut to this guy with Gumsmith, but some furniture was in the way. Instead, Belle here gets to take the punk down. She's rocking the defender armour and the gyro-autogun with PS ammo. It's working a treat so far, kills most things with high accuracy and range, and should eventually get her ranks in Reaper to boost her strength.

These ghouls tend to carry chem weaponry, both in the form of shotguns and chem grenades. Probably other weapons with chem ammo too. There's also a chem version of a flamethrower that can be quite deadly, and their scientists can use spore launchers... hopefully we don't see those fired at anyone today.

You may be asking why I riddled the bastard with 7 wounds instead of trying to capture him. Well, I am trying to capture him. These fuckers regen faster than werewolves. It's actually quite obnoxious.

At least they get up without their gear and aren't much of a melee threat. Fire would fuck them up a lot more as well, but they see through smoke quite well and wounds will cripple their stats and make them less of a threat if I miss one getting back up.

Back down you go! It's actually nice fighting these guys here; we can practice our shield-fu.

And Gumsmith can display his voodoo:

PAAWNCH. It's actually hilarious how deadly this is. I suspect it has a different formula than for gals, it costs a lot mroe TU and doesn't seem to require both hands for accuracy.

Something in the shadows has a fucking minigun. I can't imagine what, because ratmen surely can't carry such a thing. There were a couple highwaymen, but neither they nor the ghouls should have one either...

At least it's a weaksauce one. Modron ate a LOT of bullets here. Didn't even damage the armour.

Ah. That checks out.

It's the weak ass version of the armored car too, not that brutal one that was firing rockets the humanists had.

I had Average Manatee fire the sniper rifle at the thing first on a whim, and she destroyed it in a single shot. God damn.

Clearing so many enemies, especially annoying camo'd ones and dudes that get back to life every 3 turns takes a while, but we're an overwhelming force here.

There's even a second fucking car hiding up here. I didn't even realize, seems it was afraid to fire at us after it's sibling died.

This time the sniper shot did 0 damage. Yep, that's damage variance alright.

Now, obviously I could pull out the fatty, or just generally pelt the thing from safety. But you all know what I'm about.

One chop- one kill! No explosion either! Good to know.

Man I love snipers. Having 100% accuracy from the complete far end of the map with this much damage is so nice.

Well, unless a white picket fence gets in the way, apparently.

Anyways, it's a clean run aside from some minor scratches on Modron. And all the dead innocents. But, uh... we avenged them? So we're heroes!

Well trained heroes at that. Lots of high numbers here, very nice. Echidna even got to practice some melee on a ghoul. They're great for that; if I really wanted to I could have cheesed the fuck out of this mission by dragging a bunch of them into a room and having people punch and heal them for tons of reaction, melee and bravery training. Hell, any kind of training really; enemies regenerating that much hp is very abusable.

Slut spamming the minigun in this mission racked up some nice titles. Lots of titles all around really, the plentiful ratman scum made sure of that. And we got a couple more tank killers too, which award nice stats.

Finally did this one up.

Hot damn. I've never had any of those before and I want them all. I had a smart ammo autogun before, it was busted; you could fire beyond LoS with excellent accuracy. Levitator might lead to hover tanks or ships or better personal flight suits, I've got a stash of like 17 government files in case something like this happened, and who knows what forgery might let me do.

 

[Average Manatee]

I had Average Manatee fire the sniper rifle at the thing first on a whim, and she destroyed it in a single shot. God damn.

Also, I checked what the requirements are for lady luck. It says:

Total number of shots by the soldier that hit a target who was futher away than the weapon's firing accuracy.

I'm not sure what this means. e.g. 20 tiles away = need less than 20% accuracy?

 

[std::namespace]

mission where I sent in like 8 naked peasants to a reticulan prison to get slaughtered. We uh, maybe won't do that one this time.

as if you get to choose, thats a top3 mission

at least one proper elite peasant for special missions like that vault shelter one

start hiring them in x20 packs and filtering for the sixty niners, leave 8 in an onsen for training until the time comes
it used to be the only way to get a reticulan elder, but now its cheap and easy... lame

Optimist is fucking around with poison arrows, trying to train and get the poisoner title

isnt he a stalker with 10hp regen?

 

[Damned Registrations]

We named her well, apparently.

isnt he a stalker with 10hp regen?

If by 10 you mean 1 with an extra 1 for every 5 fatal wounds, sure. Poisoner would help out a fair bit, as it scales off low current health, not wounds suffered.

it used to be the only way to get a reticulan elder, but now its cheap and easy... lame

Weren't you bitching about how much I lost on that mission? We barely pulled that shit off. Anyways, no voodoo yet so hiring batches and screening for power isn't an option right now. I do have a decent pile of 20 or so in various stages of training though. Once we do get voodoo we'll at least have a head start.


Update time! Stupid game keeps making eventful shit happen. Let me sit around and research shit for 3 months!

We're running a comm tower mission in the desert. Nice to have it so open and exposed to overwatch. Slut can't overwatch with the minigun so she just opens fire, killing 2 people without actually hitting her target. That's, uh, one way to do things.

Gumsmith decided the door was too far away and made his own. Not sure if this would have worked on a normal wall or just the weird corner/window tile, but I love the result.

He even got himself a new title for carving through a good chunk of the tower.

Got this off a MP prisoner. Probably not ideal for capturing a gnome with a tiny hp pool, but these could be great for capturing brutes and the like. We'll buy a few and keep them with our dropship for special occasions.

This bit of shadow news always struck me as especially amusing when I'm going around knocking ships out of the sky on a daily basis.

Interesting that the stormrats apparently won't retaliate if you have a high enough infamy score. I wonder what the threshold is, and if it works the other way too, with high infamy triggering potentially dire raids.

This seems like another great chance for training. Lots of enemies, weak weapons, not particularly worth capturing alive.

Oh, and this finished while we waited for daylight. Nice!

At one boot per attempt, those 100 boots we got recently are amazing. We've only gotten 8 others so far, probably half from gambling. They're quite rare if you don't get that one strange event.

Oh, more mad scribblings eh? I don't even care any more. Fuck it. Throw 'em in the junk drawer.

Another -1000 infamy pogrom. I planned to attend even though I'd rather not, but it expired before night fell, and I sure as fuck wasn't trying that mission in daylight.

Back to the doomed farm! These guys are easy. And he's brought me some new kind of gun. Looks like a fancy shotgun maybe? These guys carry shitty UAC gear, and I know there's a UAC shotgun. I think there might be an original UAC shotgun you can bring to space too; that would be rad.

Daylight, because these fuckers have flawless nightvision and there exists a type of demon called a spectre that is basically a pinkie that is invisible at night. I don't want to find out if they employ them the hard way, so daytime fight it is.

I said they have shit weapons, but they do carry these things on occasion. Pretty nasty for something that can be reaction fired.

Slut over here destroying my precious apple trees.

God damned imps are annoying. Wide splash fire attacks that bypass armour with high accuracy. At least we have an extinguisher on hand.

There's something highly amusing about the concept of a marine in doomguy's armour using a fucking hunting bow against doomguy's enemies.

Lots of movement, but we're all inside the craft so we'll be fine-

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

So, apparently that fancy new gun was a fucking PLASMA RIFLE which I did not realize they could spawn with. Fucking hell. I suppose it makes sense as a Doom themed enemy, but everything else about them is so fucking weak and low tech! What the hell? And of course it was Slut that ate the shots and died. To be fair, I'd be pissed at losing anyone in that craft, they were all pretty high level.

At least we got a ton of xp on the survivors, and another angle towards plasma tech. But fuck that's frustrating after the amount of attention I spent trying to train her specifically.

In less shitty news, the 58 boots I used here have finished being examined.

Only 2 Gnomes for all that. Yeah, we definitely needed that event for this to work.

Just gonna do a little research...

While we wait for that we get another shot at helping the goblins.

This time it's goblin on goblin action.

I actually really dig their style.

'
Especially this guy. Classy.

'

Oh, and they use these as pets instead of dogs. Not sure why they don't get eaten by them, but whatever.

We got no room in our prisons (I actually started up another one, we just can't interrogate fast enough) but I still want to capture these guys. I actually brought Strange Fellow along to catch sky ninjas, but I forgot they don't show up until after you spank some Narlokks. Strange Fellow doesn't get brought out too often, but he's managed to avoid getting the murderer title despite an impressive record. Dunno if that'll pay off at some point, but I like the concept so I'm going to stick with it.

I also eventually remember that I can howl at things, which is effective on goblins with fuck all health pools.

Are we sure we're with the good guys? These ones seem creepier than the attackers.

Not a bad result, aside from Jack only paying us with a single fucking apple. Stingy bastard.

Well, we got some interesting captures too, and a couple of new weapons. The mini SMGs will be great for our own goblins to take on missions.

Ugh, the gnomes occupy prison space, I forgot. I'll ditch the MP. He might have some neat toys but it's probably lame shit like rubber bullets or a baton or something.

An interesting result of having built a base in Turan. I've yet to find a place that gives you monthly benefits for being there, but exchanging glamour for money isn't exactly bad.

Ooh, this is my favourite mission! I've only done it once before but it's really cool. And we can snag another noblewoman and some voodoo crap! It should be easy since I know the gimmick.

 

[Jaedar]

According to a game tip, the chances of a hideout being invaded scale with the number of tiles filled.

I think that's just the chance to get spotted by UFOs? But not sure I understood the game tip right.

I'm not sure what this means. e.g. 20 tiles away = need less than 20% accuracy?

Probably.

it used to be the only way to get a reticulan elder, but now its cheap and easy... lame

Wow, that's harsh. They're not *that* easy to come by still.

Only 2 Gnomes for all that

Only 2 he says. That's a lot of gnomes! They're very rare.

Are we sure we're with the good guys?

We're literally on the demon side of the pantheon