The Shadowbat is not for us Green Codexers
Ah, that explains why I couldn't get the fucking thing to show up. Would have become obvious on the next run. I'd just assumed it was some weird quirk of what I'd researched. Could have sworn I'd had it before on a no codex run... guess the runs kind of blurred together.
Do you know the bonuses for all the countries/regions?
I've got a notepad with them listed down, at least the obvious stuff they tell you right away. Plus a few things that aren't obvious and are revealed later in a run.
I think trying to go for hard stuff in general is a bad idea. Advanced tech options won't save you, they are expensive to research and will have 50 other prereqs before you can get something useful out of it.
Oh I know that. I am trying to research all the low hanging fruit first. But the nature of the tree is so incestuous and tangled it makes it difficult to figure out if a tech is actually early game or not sometimes. As a useless (I assume) example, take Pimpcraft. We unlocked it by capturing a hoe like 2 years into the run... how can I tell if that's a tech you could get in month 2 or if it's somehting only recently unlocked after we did the back to school tech? I only have a rough idea because of when I got it in a previous run.
It certainly makes things far, far more difficult to be researching blindly like this, but I find it way more fun as well. If I knew where everything was I could just beeline for the most broken shit and like 80% of the items would never even get used most likely. This way I end up using weird shit because I happened to unlock things in a suboptimal order. This run has been wildly different from my previous decent runs, where I had squads of night-ops snipers clearing almost every map with total impunity. Instead I've now got a bunch of minigunners in heavy armour trading shots in the open and catgirls with friggin' plasma knives.
The other side of things is that captured loot, like the fatty, really can just be wildly effective compared to stuff you can build by comparison, and it's entirely possible to skip parts of the tech tree with interrogations and found loot. And it sure as hell feels satisfying capturing a shrine ship and getting golden shields instead of just shooting down civilians for 2 years and playing with whatever crap you can get from highwaymen. I think it makes for a better read too. The mansion, for example, was glorious. I'd have never done that if I just wanted things to be easy. Maybe sent like 1 sacrificial party with green peasants to learn the map layout and general rules of the mission.
I do think it is a bit sad that the run dies with a whimper (a base assault or missile strike that kills everything would be more appropriate), but this is how x-com works. The run is almost assuredly in a death spiral.
That's my estimation as well, but it seems most people disagree? At any rate, what I'd most dislike as an ending would be missile strikes to the main or secondary base wiping out our income until I end up having to literally just sack our soldiers and wait for death by infarmy loss when our hangars are all gone and all we can do is defend the base over and over again with a handful of elites. That'd be super fucking lame. The overall response has been fairly ambivalent, with nobody outright suggesting we're totally screwed, so for now we'll play cautiously and try to rebuild yet again. If we get another massive setback (like losing the money base or parts of the main that leave us totally fucked) I'll go for a final ride.
So, the roster at our main base is certainly diminished. We've got 5 castaways here, but they're pretty much all very green still. We're actually in a similar place as we were back the last time we nearly lost the run; we've still got Pierre, Azira and Jaedar kicking around, and they've all got like 140 accuracy. We've got some catgirls too, one decent ogre and a scrub, and a bunch of peasants, among whom Belem Belle is the only really trained one. Our work is cut out for us.
Part of that is going to be securing a ship. Our funds are going to be painfully tight doing this, but I think it'll pay off in the long run. We're building the kraken.
I'm very curious about all these different voodoo related events and techs, really wish I had the brainers to spare for going after it.
But we've got more immediate things to work on. I recall getting 3 of these in my best game previously. I can't recall what they gave exactly, but I know it was really good.
Huh. I guess this is referring to enemy missions? Whatever, free cash is free cash. I'll actually research some other stuff like this. I'd been hoarding some of these infamy reward techs in case we had a month where we hit the low infamy threshold and needed to avoid it happening a second time and triggering a loss. But we need the cash, so it's time to gobble them up.
Another thing I'd been hoarding for a rainy day. Or a potential crazy windfall- having some sort of tech that allows for cloning gals from stasis pods or modifying them into super soldiers or something is just the kind of thing I'd do if I were making a game. Regardless, we need more competent hands, and it doesn't get better than this.
And our random lootbox contains...
Heh. A bit ironic, that. We'll need more research to use it, of course.
Fuck. Well, I was expecting that to happen sooner or later. Not a major loss at least; it had like, 3 buildings finished.
Huh, thought they'd have more NV than that. I guess it felt that way in previous runs due to my extensive use of night-ops gear.
Fortunately we're stationed in Europe, where this is totally natural and fine.
Final perfect gal is out of the tank. I've named her after a valkyrie. Well, a fictional, artifical valkyrie, which is even more appropriate. May she rally our troops, living or dead, in the final war!
Got this researched as well. It's actually a massive upgrade over the previous version, firing more shots at much higher accuracy.
More notably, it has a built in cattleprod which scales damage with strength! This thing will deal like ~90 shock damage in the hands of a trained uber., at only 10% hp damage. Excellent for stunning tankier enemies without killing them, which fits the role of it's electrical ammo as well.
Materials are finally assembled. Kraken will be finished by the end of the month, but with only a few days to spare. Better be worth it!
Decided to research the other wands in case I was sleeping on some nice weapons. Pain is, predictably, not great for much except making enemies lose morale. Though access to mind damage is interesting, and it's a bit easier to use than airlessness, except for the morale cost. And unlike the airlessness, this will work on enemies with full face masks. Maybe we can use it to some effect on mercenaries?
I've started going through the data disks again as well, hoping for some lucky results. Just another god dossier though...
...which unlocked 3 more researches, including what I recognize as an excellent goblin outfit for night missions, and 2 voodoo related things?! Shit, apparently the gods are worth researching. Wish I'd had more narlock captives. Not sure whether to go for the damsel training or the goblin robes. I'm leaning goblin- I'm curious why they'd be a 'Ratmeister' and it'd be somehting good for goblin only missions. I probably should even bother but fuck it, I want to play with magic.
Ah, I remember now. The boxes contain orbs. The orbs themselves are useless. However...
They are the materials used to constuct powerful shadowtech components for ships. Sounds good to me!
Since the boys are once again the backbone of our forces, I figured I should prioritize research this armor set for them. I wasn't expecting much but... this is actually quite good! It's no chainmail with shield, but it's a big step up from what I had mass produced for them before, and has nice laser resistance and excellent nightvision. Even has a bit of evasion, provided they've learned some melee.
Our third wand. Easiest to use of the three, and again, a nice weapon for busting through armored targets. I can see this being pretty decent in the hands of someone with like 70/70 for voodoo stats, though that would require training and special armour I think.
In my endless search for base turrets I've researched Longbows. Which unlocks full plate mail. Somehow. Of course. It's a shame we didn't have this done like 6 months ago when my workers had nothing better to do.
Since our main base won't be launching any missions any time soon, I've transferred a bunch of equipment to the secondary base, along with purchasing the WORM. Hopefully it can earn it's cost back and then some by the end of the month, as well as train up the shitty soldiers based there, which include a few zone stalkers that have had passive training, 2 bandit gals with 20 bravery, and a bunch of peasants.
I was hoping to crank out a bunch of these but it turns out they require a ton of work; you need to make the original gun and then upgrade it twice. Well, I'll make one or two at least.
The Worm's maiden voyage is a total milkrun, but it gives me a chance to see it's layout. Turns out, it's been the one ship without suicide lights on our roster this whole time. Figures. Well, it does have suicide lights, but not in the rear compartment. So sneaking out under darkness and sniping people would have been viable with this. I still dislike the fact that it has five fucking doors, but at least there are no windows. And the lights in the front area and even the middle to some extent are angled such that they cling close to the ship. It's actually a pretty cool design, but not one I'm terribly fond of, given it's other flaws.
Yet another goody I was hanging on to in hopes of better returns in the future. Welp, hopefully breaking one is worth it to get whatever is in the second.
Interesting. This would have actually been quite nice on the scarab to stack the armour up. If it can fit on the kraken (I don't think it's shadowtech though?) that'd be even better.
It actually unlocks 3 different versions; the bigger versions require combining multiple pieces together. Another concept I like, though it seems difficult to amass orbs of a single type through mystery boxes. Presumably you can craft them later on.
We find a medium ship landed near our base at night and I chance an attack on it; it turns out to be a mere civilian freighter!
In this mission I discover how the hallucinogen gas works! Apparently we can trigger it ourselves.
Fortunately, it's not that devastating, at least for a blood hound. I suspect they have some choking resistance? I should really check.
Ah, it's on that side too, obviously.
Definitely a bigger problem for the 40 bravery peasant. At least she has enough TUs to drop the mortar instead of blowing herself up next turn.
Blood hound gets used as a crap version of a werewolf to scout here with radar, ship is empty though. It only had like 4-5 labourers as a crew.
Well, if nothing else, the ship will make for an easy way to train bravery on milk runs. for expendable units.
Sadly, the ship's cargo is just some uber wheat, and not even a significant amount of it. Lame.
Well, we got some training in at least.
Also, even a medium ship still doesn't have a full sized engine. Maybe it's more a matter of tech level, and only fast ships carry full engines? Wish I'd paid mroe attention. I could of course just spoil myself, or even look back at the LP to glean some info, but I already bought the damned things and it's not like I'm going to pass up on hunting any ship I can get anyways.
LOOTBOX GET!
And typical lootbox results. Well that was a waste of time and 2 boxes.
Next up we fight a small megapol cruiser. These guys don't even have spotter or sniper! It's like playing on easy mode.
I learn another trick of the ship here; we can activate the gas from inside the ship. Interesting, and definitely the way to go to avoid fucking your own troops. It seems each trap only triggers once per mission as well. Of course, it also produces a fuckton of smoke, which is of dubious value, depending on the enemies involved. I suppose if you know what you're up against you can decide whether or not to use it, bring people with high THv stats, etc. However, one generally doesn't know what enemies are out there until you've left the ship, and even if you did, you won't know if they're in position to get blasted by the gas or not.
Ah, these aren't going to give a fuck about the gas though.
The smoke also spreads fucking EVERYWHERE. Thankfully these guys can't see through it either. Bugeyes would actually pair well with this ship I think, and it'd be pretty good for a melee based team if you didn't mind spending 30 turns waiting for enemies to come to you.
As an aside, I accidentally fucked over our peasant with the mortar again. But this time she lost all her TUs so she can't even drop the fucking thing.
This is solved, as all things can and should be, by punching.
Wow, his aim in all that smoke must be TERRIBLE.
Lost a peasant to a manhack. It actually took quite a few swings; seems they're not super deadly, especially not vs someone with decent evasion.
These harpoon guns, on the other hand, are quite deadly. I'm liking them for dealing with the enforcers here; the bio damage innately ignores half the enemy armour, and they're fairly accurate and quick to fire with a large ammo pack. A bit annoying to build, but totally viable as a midgame weapon imo.
More training stats, including some bravery on one of the bandit gals. We haven't come close to making back the cost of the ship yet, but we've got a couple weeks to go still and nothing disastrous has happened yet either. I'll take it.
Amusingly, the megapol officers can apparently be kept in animal pens, along with the really dumb zombies and deep ones. Enjoy the room service, boys!
, not a bad way for an ogre to go
