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

[Jaedar]

Are these collectible cards something added in latest version? I never found any.

Platemail was a thing I spoke about in spoilers few pages back: It was my goto for like a full year in game, first thing I got after back to school tech. I'm not sure it's actually much better than heavy armor, but I got it way before heavy.

I think the ratmeister robes refers to the senses of the summoned rats.

 

[Average Manatee]

Are these collectible cards something added in latest version? I never found any.

It's the "Piratez Cities Lore" submod that comes included.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Hitting ass and leg.

I'm not sure it's actually much better than heavy armo

Oh it's significantly better; heavy armour only has about 35 armour on the sides. Plate has 60. Heavy is still useful for not getting knocked out by poison grenades though, and being lighter.


So, on milk run I decided to do a different test with the smoke, since I felt like it was limiting LoS.

Sure enough, it's cutting the LoS for making shots here by 5 tiles, basically in half. I was going off the revealed tiles before, but that seems kind of buggy. This is pretty definitive that the smoke generated here is, in fact, quite thick. Would probably pair pretty well with the smoke-ops gear. But having your whole squad and ship based around a gimmick that some enemies (like reticulans and their hybrids) just outright ignore, would be pretty lame.

Lenneth finally gets to go on a mission when we get a warehouse bust. I definitely farmed the xp a bit here, having her equip cat claws and ninja stars to tickle enemies to death while tanking shotguns to build titles.

It's here!

No rush though, this one sticks around for weeks iirc.

Another old tech I grabbed hoping it was a foundation for something. Nope. The narlocks use these guns in their village raids, making them potentially quite dangerous in the early game. This would bounce right off platemail though. Not that we have any yet; it takes 3 days to make a suit even with 100 runts assigned.

Well, this free up some workforce at least!

I check it out in the preview before sending it on any missions. I'm not sure about the lights yet, but it seems quite decent so far. Only one entrance at ground level, with a second onto the top of the hull to snipe from. Would prefer a ladder hatch, and it seems to lack a space for a tank to get out, but those are minor gripes. If it lacks windows as well, I'd almost put this up there with the Shadowbat. Shame it's a bit slow, but it's got armour and firepower to match. Or it will once we can afford 2 million for guns and ammo. The only other potential flaw I saw was some glowy bits by the lower entrance; if those are explodable power sources I'm going to be a bit disappointed. Still, a very defensible craft, and it's small enough to go on missions the shadowbat would be restricted from. The only other drawback is the lack of shadowtech slots.

We had a narlock raid queued up as the Kraken finished, so I just let the worm carry on, rather than risking it despawning.

Not exactly our best mission ever, but we got a couple prisoners, should be able to uncover a couple more gods from them, or maybe some weird narlock tech.

Monthly score has climbed back up towards 10k. I may have overdone it with those researches. Oh well, we can use the money. Almost certainly going to go up another rank through.

Actually quite a few missions available at the moment. I'd like to do both the arsenal and the zombie bait. We'll skip the arsenal though I think; I want better trained gals for that, those stick grenades can pack a punch the legion armour won't be able to shrug off, and I don't trust our new recruits to be able to go in guns blazing and win.

Time for the favled underbase facility mission.

We're mostly armed with these mini-smgs. Their damage is crap, but the fire comfortably from one hand, allowing us to use shields, which improve survivability a ton. They also weigh sweet fuck all and carry a fuckton of shots, which is great for these weaklings.

The initial spawn in spot is a bit spooky, being surrounded by cover and from all angles while we're lit up like a xmas tree.

Fortunately, we have great nightvision anyways. But since goblins can move aproximately fuck all before running out of TUs, I just face everyone outward and end the turn.

Our enemies swarm in eventually, after opening a few trillion doors in the shadows. It's rats. We're just here to massacre some rats. Hence the crappy guns are more than enough.

The overall map is about 4 quadrants of this size, we're in the lower left corner.

Even facing mere rats, we still end up losing a couple people. Mostly due to impatience; they wouldn't stand a chance if we stuck together, but we'd also be here for 50 turns if we didn't split up and look at more than 1 door each turn.

The lightning in here is actually quite varied, and makes for some strategic spots to shoot from in some places.

Rat morale, unlike dog morale, isn't infinite. But we still need to hunt them all down. I think it's a 'never surrender' flag or something like that.

There's a big hallway dividing the place into quarters. It's trivial to stand in the hallway and mow down any enemies that show up in it. However, likewise, it's a total pain in the ass to try explore each one of these doorways without leaving people exposed to either enemies sneaking up from behind or friendly fire. Our guns have about 35% accuracy in the best of conditions, so... yeah. Some losses are expected.

Fortunately it's not all tiny individual rooms. There's a big open one to the north of our starting position.

And another one east of that. Some interesting background fluff in here, but not much going on gameplay wise; just more rats.

All told, we dealt with 42 rats and lost 2 goblins. Not bad. If we had some elites we could have farmed them for monster hunter titles but... fuck that shit. I hate checking 1200 doors to find the last 3 rats in the complex.

We did get some decent xp out of it though.

Loot was... not impressive. But we got a couple unique items- the stasis pod is of most interest to me. The helicopter plans are definitely obsolete at this point. I'll research them in the future at some point just to show it off, but it's basically just another ship on par with the original helicopter, but slightly better.

 

[Jaedar]

Rat morale, unlike dog morale, isn't infinite.

Dog morale is also not infinite. They can panic/berserk. But they don't understand the concept of surrender.

I'll research them in the future at some point just to show it off, but it's basically just another ship on par with the original helicopter, but slightly better.

I don't understand the point of the helicopters. They're an early way to get crafts with weapons, but they're also too slow to shoot down civilian shipping, and too weak to shoot down anything that can fire back.

 

[turkishronin]

I don't understand the point of the helicopters. They're an early way to get crafts with weapons, but they're also too slow to shoot down civilian shipping, and too weak to shoot down anything that can fire back.

They're useful for killing those ratmen ground groups.

 

[Jaedar]

I don't understand the point of the helicopters. They're an early way to get crafts with weapons, but they're also too slow to shoot down civilian shipping, and too weak to shoot down anything that can fire back.

They're useful for killing those ratmen ground groups.

Do they even do anything? I guess a small infamy hit, but probably nothing in comparison to the bonus from aircar races?

 

[Average Manatee]

I check it out in the preview before sending it on any missions. I'm not sure about the lights yet, but it seems quite decent so far. Only one entrance at ground level, with a second onto the top of the hull to snipe from. Would prefer a ladder hatch, and it seems to lack a space for a tank to get out, but those are minor gripes. If it lacks windows as well, I'd almost put this up there with the Shadowbat. Shame it's a bit slow, but it's got armour and firepower to match. Or it will once we can afford 2 million for guns and ammo. The only other potential flaw I saw was some glowy bits by the lower entrance; if those are explodable power sources I'm going to be a bit disappointed. Still, a very defensible craft, and it's small enough to go on missions the shadowbat would be restricted from. The only other drawback is the lack of shadowtech slots.

Really don't like that ground exit, if the enemy has elevation on you they can shoot you from multiple directions and you can't really safely clear the area without walking all the way to the south. If there was a 2nd top level exit to the other side you could cover them better but as it is the left side is a giant blind spot.

I don't understand the point of the helicopters. They're an early way to get crafts with weapons, but they're also too slow to shoot down civilian shipping, and too weak to shoot down anything that can fire back.

They're useful for killing those ratmen ground groups.

Do they even do anything? I guess a small infamy hit, but probably nothing in comparison to the bonus from aircar races?

I'm pretty sure those groups are looking for your base to launch an assault.

 

[Damned Registrations]

____ Craft Ever

Picked this up in hopes of accessing the T-D Lockers. No dice. Though we did get a free esoterica, which might reveal some other voodoo stuff!

Zombie bait mission. These are always a little tense due to the possibility the RNG just overwhelms our reactions or a zombie trooper gets some lucky shots off, but they're too lucrative to pass up.

With the first reinforcement, we get a trooper from the far left side. Annoyingly, he seems to have a bead on on of our peasants and keeps trying (and failing) to shoot her from way over here.

Echidna runs all the way over to deal with him. Again, a bit risky since there might have been another ranged zombie nearby I didn't see, but the mission doesn't have that many of them, and trees make for good cover if you can fly. The trooper goes down to a stun baton, proving they can't be captured in that form.

Meanwhile, a singer on the other side of the map is trying to set us on fire.

I came prepared this time though. No burning building for us, thanks. I'm not spamming fire arrows everywhere either, to avoid smoke problems.

Echidna eventually knocks this one out too. Live singers are pretty valuable, I think. A good find! Was a bit close though, she nearly ran out of energy in the attempt.

More fire from another singer. This one we had to just stab and it died. Ah well.

Francesca ate a bullet being spammed from somewhere to the north. Luckily she survived; the troopers are inaccurate enough that getting hit more than once is unlikely from those ranges, unless theyre using shotguns.

Though at THIS range, they're pretty fucking scary. Dude snuck right up on us. Thankfully holy bolts put him down very quickly.

All told, no deaths, only 1 wounded, and we took out 45 zombies!

This mission really is ideal for training catgirls with hover boots. Once the handful of ranged threats are taken out, you can liesurely fly around, practicing with various types of weapons, taking reaction shots, and trying to gather any titles you see fit. I mostly focused on getting them lots of melee and throwing skill here, and it paid off pretty well. The peasants racked up a lot of firing exp, using slayer round pistols since the EP rounds I wanted for this mission weren't ready yet. Or rather, were at the wrong base.

Even while keeping the higher value zombies ourselves for parts, we got a good chunk of money selling all those captures too. A good money making mission, especially when you considering the infamy as well.

I have made a terrible discovery. The kraken can't load werewolves, for some reason. Worst craft ever.

On the other hand, it apparently has no lights on the entire ship! BEST CRAFT EVER.

It also has no windows. Yeah, this thing really is a god damned fortress. We could easily hide inside and murder any invaders with reaction fire as they come through interior doorways, since there are no actual doors there, they would be forced to trigger reaction fire. And just in general, it's a fucking godsend to have a totally safe place for trainees to hang out. The side without the door would also make a perfect prison- just dump bodies in there and leave one person to guard the door with a stun baton or whatever. I love it!

Anyways, the mission I sent it on was a comm tower with guilders, and it was a total cakewalk, since they couldn't even see us while we sniped them from our craft and surrounded them. Killed an engineer by accident, but we captured one too, along with some others that are going to be either sold or enslaved.

Man, this one took a lot of work.

And... eh. This stuff is cool, and I want it all, but nothing here screams 'game changer' to me. I'm curious about the mining laser. Finally having a superior wall breaking option would be cool. Or it might enable something like a mining facility or a craft weapon.

Esoterica revealed... chest of coins. Which is cool, but not what I wanted from that research, so disappointing.

This bitch was supposed to reveal the chest of coins! Well, what did we get instead?

Hmm, interesting.

And with that, we've made it through the month! Was expecting a lot more base raids and missiles than that. Not that I'm coplaining. We start the next month with a nice nest egg as well. With our finances stabilized like this, things are looking up!

 

[Azira]

Famous last words?

 

[Jaedar]

I have made a terrible discovery. The kraken can't load werewolves, for some reason. Worst craft ever.

Yeah, it's really annoying that some craft won't load auxilia, and there's afaik nowhere to even check before building them.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Bringing the Pain

Right. So. New month. I've got a few major concerns:

We haven't found that 'family ties' tech yet, so we're probably going to get ass blasted by government forces in some form or another.

Still no fucking base defence turrets. I'm begining to suspect they were removed from the game.

I've sunk a massive amount of research into voodoo and zombies for zero payoff so far.


We got a nice cellar mission to pop up, so Lenneth goes in to solo it in full plate.

We actually found an esoterica as a bonus! Nice!

Though the real prize was a fuckton of melee titles, including 5 tiers of monster hunter. I love cellar missions.

Another of these stupid grain transport ships.

Fuckers don't even have the decency to fly overland so I can shoot them down quickly. Had to follow this fucker until it was halway across europe before I could shoot it down.

Decided to micromanage our warparty and found another annoying detail of the Kraken; it doesn't offer many places to put crew. They're all kind of crunched together in the middle, which makes moving around at the mission start awkward. Annoying.

Since we're going to presumably be using a lot of platemail, I decided to bust out these and start equipping them everywhere. It's not immunity to gas attacks, but it helps a ton.

Crackhouse mission gives Lenneth another chance to farm titles and throwing skill.

Between those two missions, we've racked up 4 points of bonus armour on all sides. Coupled with the 5 she starts with, and she's a god damned monster of a tank already. Now we just need to work on all her other stats.

Narlock soldier gave us this rather than another god. Interesting, I don't believe I've ever seen one of these. I'd certainly enjoy the chance to blow up some helpless slow ninjas.

I've no idea what this stuff means, if anything, in terms of gameplay. But it's another side of the lore that I enjoy in this game. It feels very... well rounded. Different groups have very different sorts of backgrounds, and even ways of writing reports or being reported upon.

We got a bandit cave mission too. I rushed through it though, and didn't manage any captures, sadly. This guy had a wand though, which is interesting.

I equipped our bugeye with all 3 wand types a while ago and he happened to reaction fire on this guy. It probably saved our gal here actually; the fire is supposed to drain a lot of TUs and those guys can hit hard in melee.

Another young uber. Looks like we get another crack at that ninja spy attempt.

This popped up again. I think we could handle this with the Kraken, since they'll have no way of breaching the doors to using their rocket tanks on us.

FINALLY. Fuck, it's expensive though. But I have been absolutely dying to know what the fuck all these ships are doing before trying to engage them. This will be a game changer for sure.

Bit of a trivial tech, but I wanted to show these off. They're basically like ninja stars, except they get more fire modes, have 1 less range, scale off voodoo a bit as well, and have a 52 count for ammo, which is amazing. Sadly, they also require voodoo training to use. I don't think having like 5 points from using a wand counts either, though I'll certainly be testing that theory.

Intel from a tomb raider. Very cool. I wonder where we can find shit like this or those crowns? I'm assuming higher tier bounty missions perhaps, or enemy bases? Maybe if we interact with the witch in the pink desert we'll find some new missions...

Bah, this stuff is obsolete now. Well, actually the 50mm shells are nice; our hunter killer is still rocketing a 50mm cannon in one of the light guns slots and we can neither buy nor craft them.

Kraken can't go on the raider factory mission. Shit. I wonder if the cloaking field would fix that? Worth a shot anyways, I don't fancy having to dedicate a hangar to a fucking convoy or whatever to do this mission, but I will if I must. Owning a weapons factory sounds rad.

Optimist nearly bit the dust in a narlock village raid. Apparently those mutant chupacabra can fuck people up pretty fast! Also, I havne't shown off ranks since the fight with the star gods, but there were a lot of promotions to replace fallen positions. Optimist here is our king now.

This sounded really cool, but didn't actually unlock anything. Lame! Gimme fucking, armored shamblers or a pet hydra or somehting. I didn't even get pet zombies out of this.

Got another megapol ship shot down.

I swear these guys were not nearly this well armed in my previous games. They're fucking terrifying now, rocking plasma and gauss guns all over. Jesus!

Must be relatively shitty plasma guns though, because Pierre here didn't even lose health from this. Or he's insanely luckily.

Well, if we're insanely lucky, we should probably make good use of that right?

I've been wanting to do this for so fucking long.

Muahaha! Taste the wrath of the Kraken!

I brought the hunter-killer along as an escort too. Neither have full ammo stocks, but we've got a hefty supply between the two craft nonetheless.

First enemy ship is down! It seems the kraken is tanking for us as well, which is ideal.

Shit, we're pretty much out of the heavy weaponry. Hopefully lasers and 50mm shells can finish the job.

It took quite a while, a fuckton of ammo, and our kraken ate a lot of damage, but the second enemy goes down as well. It occurs to me now I should have seen what the fuck they looked like. Whatever, I'll take a peek the next time these cunts try this shit. Sadly, the escort craft got blown to bits rather than being shot down. No easy merc class vessel parts for us. This was fairly expensive to do as well; seagull missiles are like 60k a pop and the ramjet shells 20k each.

Well, that just means we need to get our money's worth out of our main target.

I don't know what the fuck they've got waiting for us down there, but they're about to get fucked up.

 

[turkishronin]

Are you doing a base assault with like, 9 people? o_0

 

[Jaedar]

Still no fucking base defence turrets. I'm begining to suspect they were removed from the game.

They're in the game. But the early ones seem kinda shit, if you're hoping to shoot down missiles or assault carriers (as opposed to ratmen raids, if that is even possible) I wouldn't get my hopes up.

I love cellar missions.

I dislike them. They always spawn in a stupid way that requires me to spend 5 turns knocking down walls. Sturdy walls too.

I've no idea what this stuff means, if anything, in terms of gameplay.

Remember TFTD? https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/T'leth,_the_Alien's_City

Kraken can't go on the raider factory mission. Shit. I wonder if the cloaking field would fix that? Worth a shot anyways, I don't fancy having to dedicate a hangar to a fucking convoy or whatever to do this mission, but I will if I must. Owning a weapons factory sounds rad.

There is a single craft in the game that counts as "undetectable" (and the engine doesn't support dynamic craft compatibility, which is why troop maximums are enforced by craft type) and it is the Jellyfish. There's also the rail pod, but it's a single seater so it's not a serious option.

At least you'll finally get a real benefit from picking males

 

[std::namespace]

in before second wipe

u picked the wrong base kek

-edit-

no wait, was it a landed base supply ship? so probably no tanks... maybe...

 

[Azira]

Yeah, it's "just" shipping. It should be fine...

 

[Damned Registrations]

We laughed, we cried, we rejoiced.

Remember TFTD?

Never played it! I played the original off some bootleg games disc my brother got from a friend, along with Baldur's Gate and some other stuff. Never even knew there was a sequel until like, 15 years later.

There is a single craft in the game that counts as "undetectable" (and the engine doesn't support dynamic craft compatibility, which is why troop maximums are enforced by craft type) and it is the Jellyfish.

That is very weid. Gray Codex seems to have the cool ships. Jellyfish is undetectable AND has that weird blasterbomb style cannon AND they get the shadowbat? I'm jealous. And they get early voodoo access too. All we've gotten so far is immunity to the common cold and 3 admittedly fucking awesome recruits.



Well, we've landed, opened a door, and we're not dead yet. That's a good start!

I'm sure as fuck not stepping outside on turn one though. Wait... why the fuck is there a turn limit? That makes no sense. It's a craft landing battle.

Whatever. We spot our first hostile. Of course it's a fucking merc. Well, could have been worse. I mean, it also could have been some nigh harmless clients or supply transport or something, but whatever.

Time to see how well he holds up to a particle accelerator.

Just fine apparently, didn't even do health damage. Fuck. At least he didn't return fire.

Since their reactions are apparently not completely godlike, I opt to send our catgirl out to recon.

Well, these guys are probably weaker, at least. I'm not planning to stick around and find out what that timer is for, but capturing some of these goons seems viable.

Well. Shit.

I primed some dynamite in case there's a good angle to throw it at the tank next turn. Unlike most grenades, dynamite can be primed for multiple turns, letting you prime it ahead of time and then throw it later, instead of spending 95% of your TUs on a throw like with grenades, or having to do stupid hot potato shit where one person primes it before passing it to another.

Of course, there's a fucking merc right outside the door where I want to stand and throw the dynamite. Toxo gets sent out to play interference. She's got sky high evasion, so she should easily deflect any shots this guy tries to make while Robroy throws the package.

Couldn't get a direct hit due to geometry and that fucker in the way, but that is damned good imo.

Might as well try capture this punk while we're at it.

Lenneth's electro-smg finishes the job. We bagged ourselves a merc, boys!

Didn't even lower the shields. Kinda expected as much, but still a tad disappointing to see.

Now I just need to hope one of those guys in power armour with electro fists doesn't walk into the ship and murderize us all.

Tried hucking an electro flare over into the smoke for better sight, but we missed and now I'm concerned it might be revealing our dudes on the wing.

Merc had a helerium grenade, which we can apparently prime? Maybe we can try take out the hover tank with it if it gets too close.

Annoyingly, we just get more goons closing in instead. I'd be thrilled if we weren't on an extremely short time limit for some god forsaken reason.

Robroy throws some javelins over the wing and lands a hit with one. Seemed to do a big chunk of damage.

Ladson here is kind of useless. Half our team is really; I didn't have time to prepare well and bring our best troops, and we're still missing some gear I'd like to have brought. That painbringer isn't going to do dick vs their armour, and I don't want him getting killed by reaction fire for nothing.

Playing carefully has eaten up our turns though.

Luckily, they gave us one last little gift before we had to leave. The tank is still nowher in sight, and the way these guys are lined up gives us a chance to abduct this guy without risking the others seeing us and opening fire.

Catgirls for the win!

A shame to flee after all that ammo spent and such an easy mission so far, but I don't want to find out the turn timer instakills us, or summons reinforcements with blaster bombers or some shit.

This has to be the lamest victory screen I've ever been satisfied to see.

Heh, we even scored some bravery from healing an enemy.

2 prisoners and their guns, and a single grenade. Hope it leads to good things...

The ship itself gets up and flies away afterwards. Assuming 3600 is it's top speed... that's not terribly fast. Our hunter killer can chase that I think? Food for thought.

Hmm, yet another type of assassin? We're popular for sure!

Looks like we can actually research that sniper gauss. I'd love to, but we can't fire the fucking things yet anyways. Maybe the mercs will spill the trick.

Results from spy attempt #2. At least she didn't die this time!

Finally grabbed this... wait, this is where the fucking lasso comes from? Motherfucker! I should have grabbed this ages ago.

I mean, the eagle is dogshit, but that lasso is a super reliable way to take low-mid tier prisoners.

Yeah, their ransom really was shit for how strong an enemy they are. Well, the real reason I caught him was for secrets though...

And he gives us crap on some random aliens. Fucker.

Robbing him would provide synthmuscle mesh. This seems to be the next tier of personal armour material. We already have a piece from megapol though, and can't research it yet.

Tested out the worm underwater. Halluc gas still works, and smoke underwater is even more annoying than on land! Bah.

We got a couple of stasis pods for our trouble, but both empty.

Hmm, easy pickings?

...Nope. Blew our hunter apart in like 3 shots. I forgot to use the 50mm but I can't imagine it'd have made a difference. Serves me right for not keeping a full complement of missiles I suppose. Fuck. There goes our air supremacy until we can replace it. At least it only needs small engines.

An intriguing list. I know of basically none of the top half. But I've an idea of who some witches are, and the sky ninjas are a rival for sure.

We've got so many prisoners still just hanging around. I want to research them all but I've really got to find certain techs soon.

Took this on the off chance we could do somehting with that other robot corpse we collected from our first space mission. No dice though.

...but it unlocks ultimate vaults? I mean, anything 'ultimate' sounds cool, but vaults are pretty low on my priorities right now.

And the list of useless garbage techs I reluctantly research grows! This armour is totally pointless AFAICT. It offers no protection, it's less effective vs weather than like, Night ops gear, and underwater it's outclassed by the brainer outfit by a mile.

...So naturaly, it's a key tech that unlocks spaceship cooling. Figures. I'd love to chase that rabbit hole for an even better ship, but this is, yet again, not what I'm after. I'd been hoping there was some connection between cooling and guns, but nope.

Well, with our hunter-killer blown to bits, we had room for a convoy. Fuck it, lets try.

Sadly, I fucked up the timing, so we're arriving in daylight. Shit.

Well, problem one: This map is full of sniper positions and enemies with decent vision to snipe from said positions. Doubly painful in daylight.

Problems two and three: There are annoying catwalks crisscrossing the level, making cover pretty much impossible to have reliably. And they have armored cars, of course.

At least it's te shitty ones. We could actually easily clear this map, I think, with a squad of elites in platemail. The cars can be avoided by staying indoors mostly, and the raiders have weak guns.

Cheeky mortar shot one turn one?

No joy. Hit the catwalk above instead.

Well, since I brought a full crew including the werewolves, the reaper, and some peasants and gals in night ops gear, doing this during the day will be a bloody affair.

The map is fairly large too, especially when you account for multiple levels.

Fuck it, I'll come with a better team next time and do it properly. Shouldn't be that hard with the correct squad.

You know, at this point, I wouldn't mind some fucking ninja invasions just so we could steal their tech.

I take it back!

Haha armored vaults go brr.

Another fairly useless tech I grabbed because hideout shroud is maybe related to defensive turrets? But no. These actually seem kinda nice in theory, but they're rather expensive for such an unreliable effect.

Huh, I wonder what that does though. Sounds way more useful. Maybe it fucks with missiles, or dispels stealth letting our radar find more shit?

Healing with voodoo sounds awesome! This didn't let us do that though. This did nothing. I am sad. But maybe powerful, or ranged healing in the future? Or better medbays?

Alright, yet another attempt at moving towards base defenses. Will probably just let me make grenades or some shit though...

Jesus fucking christ. Yeah, this was a cornerstone tech alright. Holy crap. We're on the right track at last.

Man, the ability to make 50mm shells sure would have been handy like, a year ago. Seems a bit pointless if we can make craft lasers though.

Fuck off, I'm researching your doom over here!

Oh, right, we can buy these. They're not even expensive. Going to make taking prisoners a breeze. It doesn't hit as hard as that net, but it's got a fixed firing cost instead of like 60% or some shit, and is otherwise pretty good provided we've got respectable throwing skill.

Yeah, this was the way.

Fucking CANNON DEFENSES. Plenty of other good shit here too. Heavy craft weapons will make our Kraken a force to be reckoned with without bankrupting us as well. Maybe we can get heavy craft lasers?

 

[Jaedar]

All we've gotten so far is immunity to the common cold and 3 admittedly fucking awesome recruits.

I think you are close to getting some really cool shit from your codex.

A shame to flee after all that ammo spent and such an easy mission so far, but I don't want to find out the turn timer instakills us, or summons reinforcements with blaster bombers or some shit.

I haven't actually done this particular mission, but I assume it is instakill.

An intriguing list. I know of basically none of the top half. But I've an idea of who some witches are, and the sky ninjas are a rival for sure.

I assume rivals means piratez and ninjas. Princesses has been mentioned before, I think I know one or two. Shadowmasters and overlords might refer to the naar/lokk pantheons? 3 factions are 'obviously' guild/church/academy.

Blue shields are a fucking pain to deal with until you figure out their stats. In terms of metagame knowledge, the various shield types and their vulnerabilities are probably the most useful, at least if we discount early game research order to unlock missions.

 

[lightbane]

That is very weid. Gray Codex seems to have the cool ships. Jellyfish is undetectable AND has that weird blasterbomb style cannon AND they get the shadowbat? I'm jealous. And they get early voodoo access too. All we've gotten so far is immunity to the common cold and 3 admittedly fucking awesome recruits.

Green gave you an early laser craft weapon with infinite damage, quite cool. Shame you lost it. Grey Codex is harder to play with, supposedly.

I haven't actually done this particular mission, but I assume it is instakill.

If it's a supply ship that behaves like the bigger ones, then

spoilers

It explodes once the time-limit is up, supposedly. Even if you survive, I bet the loot inside will be ruined.

 

[Average Manatee]

That is very weid. Gray Codex seems to have the cool ships. Jellyfish is undetectable AND has that weird blasterbomb style cannon AND they get the shadowbat? I'm jealous. And they get early voodoo access too. All we've gotten so far is immunity to the common cold and 3 admittedly fucking awesome recruits.

Green gave you an early laser craft weapon with infinite damage, quite cool. Shame you lost it. Grey Codex is harder to play with, supposedly.

I get the feeling a lot of the codexes have been kind of neutered over time in terms of their early game impact. Red for example apparently used to give some chainmail early but now only gives "Aggressor" armor which is basically just warrior (armor 30) without the -15 TU penalty (which is good don't get me wrong but doesn't compared to 45 armor + potential 15 from shield). Not sure if this is the case for all of them but it seems like a lot of the great perks have been scaled back and your codex choice only really shines in the late game unless their early game stuff is something you happen to be particularly behind time on researching.

Personally I can't stand how the Jellyfish works. You can't go up/down an elevator safely without drawing reaction fire in X-Com. The mutual surprise rule to avoid reaction fire only works for walking, not floating up/down, and because the exterior is lit you're potentially drawing reaction fire from the whole damn map. Meanwhile opening doors can't draw reaction fire and at worst you can always take a single step out of the line of fire safely. And only 7 crew spots (6 really once you discount the stuck gunner with 7 shots) is bad, 10 minimum plz.

I haven't actually done this particular mission, but I assume it is instakill.

If it's a supply ship that behaves like the bigger ones, then

spoilers

It explodes once the time-limit is up, supposedly. Even if you survive, I bet the loot inside will be ruined.

I'd guess that the mission just ends with a "they exploded and you die" thing. I don't think the battle map timer is connected to something on the battle map exploding. Could be though, just have to spawn a primed explosive with 11 turns on it.

 

[turkishronin]

Shadowbat is overrated tbqh

 

[std::namespace]

Spoiler

I'd guess that the mission just ends with a "they exploded and you die" thing.

nah, it blows up proper

academy supply ships have osiron sec with nukes running around too, imagine sniper/spotter and nukes in a single sentence xD

 

[std::namespace]

That makes no sense.

it does, read the supply ship description, i think you have it
used to be 20 turns though

 

[Jaedar]

Grey Codex is harder to play with, supposedly.

As someone who is playing gray codex, I will say it felt like it gave very little early on. Astrosensorium is nice and all, but 3 extra brainers is a boring bonus. And it also tricks you into researching voodoo early, despite it not being very useful. However, having gotten past early shadowrealms, I am starting to lean more and more towards it being very strong, bordering on op. Although it's not easy to compare since I haven't played any of the others, just looked at the tech tree.

Personally I can't stand how the Jellyfish works.

Yeah, it's a suicide ship. A very cool suicide ship, but "stylish coffin" isn't what I'm looking for in my craft.

Shadowbat is overrated tbqh

It's really not? It's not the end all of troop transports, but it is very good for when you get it. Decent crew size, excellent design for popamoling hard missions and speedrunning easy ones. Decently fast. It has some drawbacks: the lights are kinda dubious, but also not really harmful. It can't fit large units, but you probably won't have any anyway.

My only real issue with it is that enemies can sometimes sneak up on you since the back of the ramp is a dead angle, and on the whole it's a lot easier to shoot up the ramp than down it. But the wing exits more than make up for this.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Did not see that coming.

Yeah, it's a suicide ship. A very cool suicide ship, but "stylish coffin" isn't what I'm looking for in my craft.

I think the intended playstyle is to stay inside while sniping people with the turret for 10 turns. By then the enemies should be thinned out enough that you can at least face them as you descend, and it only costs a few TUs to get down, so reaction fire shouldn't happen if you've got good troops. Maybe exploit smoke too? I dunno, I didn't use it after trying the shadowbat. I'd have certainly preferred it over that convoy though.

it does, read the supply ship description, i think you have it

I do not, actually. But I remember something along those lines from an earlier attempt. I thought it just meant they blew up rather than get shot down though.

Green gave you an early laser craft weapon with infinite damage, quite cool. Shame you lost it.

True, I'd forgotten about that. To be fair, the only things I could mount it on were slow as fuck, so they were doomed to get destroyed by some random bullshit.


Update!

So, it turns out these things also require full sized engines. Fuck. This feels like the spot where the tech curve has fucked us the most- without sufficient firepower, we can't shoot down the ships that might drop these. Yeah, I could buy them, but the difference between buying these or selling them as surplus is massive.

The stupid thing that shot us down. Not that I had any way of knowing what the fuck it was until it was too late.

Honestly, there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the ship visuals. This one is way bigger with more... windows? Gunports? But it's far less dangerous.

This thing visually looks much larger if you don't notice the scale in the background, but it's basically a gnat compared to the other two.

This thing is massive, heavily armored... but has about the same damage output as the fighter, and is even faster than it. Whatever.

Apparently we can build these? Doesn't seem worth the trouble, at least not right now.

Alright brainer, this is your last chance!

...Ok that actually sounds fucking awesome.

Sadly we can't research/replicate it.

It seems to function as an electric shotgun with really low TU costs to fire.

Didn't burn a lot of energy or morale either.

Unlike a shotgun though, it's got a respectable max range. There's an autofire mode too, which fires like... 8 fucking times in a row. And still has a low TU cost. This thing is bonkers. We need some kind of tank mage to put it on.

So, why have I been harping on about wanting these things for so long? Well, three reasons. First of all, it provides a gun emplacement in case the enemies actually get into the base. And that thing is beastly; massive armour, fires explosive shells, plenty of hp. It's an excellent first line of defense for wiping out crowds of enemies in the access lift before they get a chance to spread out. Second, because it's a defensive emplacement, I can plug it into slots I'd normally leave empty to control enemy movement. Thirdly, thes things are cheap! I could buy 4 for the price of a single irradiator tower, and they'd be done far sooner. Really, these things make it trivial to start new bases up safely. If we'd gotten these a year ago we'd be filthy rich right now. Now that we do have them... I might consider going full turtle mode, only taking the easiest of missions and generally not being concerned with our infamy as long as we don't trigger a loss condition. If we can piggyback off these things to reach a 5 million+ surplus with 8 bases, global radar coverage, and facilities to spare, or tech deficit won't matter much.

Now that I no longer need to search for ways to reach flak cannons... it's term to search for ways to reach some useful voodoo. We've got to be on the brink of finding something way more useful than fucking fire wands.

We do manage to find a space mission. These honestly feel like windfalls, they tend to contain really nice loot and aren't actually that difficult once you've got laser weapons. Also, apparently the generic space suits can be worn by bugeyes, and they can use wands of pain in space! Cool.

Not useful this time though. Our target is a small derelict craft guarded by... academy drones? Easy!

I notice during the battle that their corpses drop to the bottom of the map. So it seems dropping an item in space doesn't cause it to be lost forever. Good to know.

The loot seems uninspired except... what the fuck is a damaged syn? I assume it's short for Synth, as in an android of some sort? That could be awesome.

It's worth a ton of money, but we apparently lack the tech or tools to research it or otherwise interact with it in any way. Shitty.

Oh baby, bring on the giant plasma cannons!

God damnit.

All we can do is build these and their ammo. I mean, it's about on par with the ramjet cannon I suppose? And the ammo won't bankrupt me. But that accuracy is dogshit and it's liable to explode things rather than downing them.

Time to cash in some bounty tokens. Boomosaurus? Hell yes!

...except we actually just get a giant booze mule. Fucking lame.

The other S-Prize is the omega rifle. We've actually obtained and studied one before from the slots; it's basically a slightly superior assault rifle. Bah. Yeah it's accurate and light, but so are lots of things. It doesn't even have good ammo options.

Apparently these things cost 300k if we don't have our own boomasaurus to convert. Fuck it, I want one anyways.

Our spy efforts finally pay off. Kinda.

Not exactly a massive reward for our investment.

Yep, that's about as minor a 'secret' as we could get. Urgh.

Okay, this might be cool though. Longterm though.

This is interesting; I didn't realize there could be training programs with minimum stat requirements. I think our damsels are too shit for this however. Maybe a loknaar can qualify.

...this didn't even unlock anything. Guess our tech is too far behind still. Whatever, by the time it's not, the bird will be even more obsolete than it already is.

Next I load up a 'Guns of the Patriots' mission. Was pretty sure I did this before and it was a milk run, but this looks very different.

Jesus christ, they've got rockets and lasers now? So much for waltzing in with armour and massacring them all.

Well, this is why I brought mortars.

At least their laser weapons kinda suck. This wouldn't get past chainmail, let alone plate.

This is concerning though. These things can be scarily accurate, and that damage is no joke.

Seems there are smaller pillboxes over here too. What an obnoxious map. It's fucking cold too.

I thought this was that easy one wihere everybody was stuck in the little fort with a single entrance.

Oh shit, apparently they didn't store their munitions very safely. A stray shot set off a crazy chain reaction.

Also, Robroy ate like, a dozen fucking bullets or more this turn while approaching that pillbox. Apparently I angled him the wrong way.

These might be shitty guns, but at close range they're still a threat, especially if we're hit from the sides. Need better ogre armour.

The main building is a smoking crater. Bombs took out everything inside on multiple floors, straight to the roof. I assume that means we miss out on most of the loot but I don't care at this point. Get me the fuck out of here.

This is followed up by an insane counterattack. You'd think losing a dozen guys at once would trigger a rout, but no, it triggered a ton of people to open fire instead.

Fuck. I thought Robroy would be safe standing at the door to the pillbox, but reinforcements literally spawned behind him and dropped a grenade on his ass. Total bullshit.

It's these fuckers. It has only been like 5 turns or some shit. I was not expecting to have this problem.

We're dropping like flies out here. The team is spread out everywhere, the cold has fucked the stamina of the catgirls too much to recover the fallen quickly, and enemy morale is being buoyed by constant fucking reinforcements.

I think we've had like 3 waves by now.

They aren't just scrubs either, these fuckers are spawning in with grenade launchers! Their frontal armour is pretty good as well. I had to send Echidna out to start knifing fuckers because our machine guns were bouncing off them, and if I start firing lasers it'll be a smokey clusterfuck in no time.

Jesus christ. I only really held on to try and recover him, I hoped his titles would keep his health afloat for a while.

Look at all these cunts!

I don't have the energy for proper hit and run tactics. I have to hope hiding among the branches works out.

Our one gal with platemail here is still holding on, barely. It finally occurs to me I should just hide inside a pillbox myself.

These nord guys are fucking bonkers. He spotted our mortar gal from all the way over there in complete darkness with no spotter. And he shrugged off repeated psi attacks too. These guys are worse than the ninja gals.

I don't know how, but our platemail gal keeps taking significant chunks of damage from enemies with like, 30 damage weapons. It's not like they've got AP ammo or anything.

We finally pull off the win, barely. I was a turn or two away from just fleeing and leaving our gal behind along with all the loot. 75 fucking enemies! Jesus christ!

What a fucking disaster.

Theres not even any decent loot. All we got was a bunch of prisoners, and I bet they're all shit.

The gal that hit the weapons cache was practically a total newbie. She got all 24 of those kills here I'm pretty sure.

Jesus, that seems like a nightmare to try and farm.

Apparently she got over 20 kills with that single chain reaction, in order to become a 'master' of blowing shit up with background object.

This is actually a cool title. If mines weren't such a pain to use, I'd consider investing for this. Having a characters with basically infinite morale that can hang out on a map forever would be cool.

If the hunter-killer is a pain to replace anyways, may as well try for something even better this time. A fighter with over 5000 speed would be a godsend. Sadly, no direct unlock here.

Spy honors showed up in my research after I left the spy mission on infinite. It must have finally gotten a good result!

Base defences still holding well. Honestly, Avalon is probably the safest base of all; I don't care about medical rating here so it's got multiple irradiator towers. Those things are amazing.

Not sure how much overlap there will be between voodoo and zombie stuff, but I suspect a lot, and it seems like it fits our codex too. Time to get back into zombie research!

Promising! Anyone want to volunteer to become a zombie?

Or perhaps a smelly hermit? I passed this up since it probably requires smelly rags like the ratmeister. Really need to find a source of those...

Spy honors let us recruit young ubers with some bonus stats. Which is good, because we need some recruits after recent... totally unavoidable circumstances.

Hmm, seems easy enough.

We apparently got an extra uber from the spy missions at some point? Very cool. I kind of want to let them keep rolling, but we need at least one recruit.

A nice haul for sure. This was from like 6 missions combined mind you.

Huh. I doubt it has any long term effects. Doesn't really seem worth the cost of zombie juice unless we get a way to farm that stuff.

Jackpot! We should get a castaway from this.

I came during the day just in case, and sure enough this time we're against these tribals instead of werewolves.

Their gear sucks, but the poison can be troublesome by bypassing a lot of armour, and they've got insanely good night camo. They're incredibly obnoxious to fight at night, especially with the jungle for cover as well.

Despite this basically being a milk run, I get a catgirl killed by simply forgetting I had her hovering in the air to scout. Whoops.

On the bright side, these canny gals are easy to capture, as they're quite tanky but have low armour, leading to good results from various stun attacks.

5 canny gals captured, and we got our castaway.

We're got a glut of prisoners actualy, and now that I've got those cannons found I think it's time to use them up. Where the fuck are these easily downed ninja ships that supposedly exist? Maybe I need that ninja interception tech. I'd assumed it only created missions but if it reveals stuff like this too...

Ooh, nice! If this lets us make a ship with +35 acc and dodge I'll be stoked.

While building some flak cannons I noticed this was an option- fucking game never told me it was unlocked! Must be the result of that 'love magic' tech. Anyways, the weed cost is immense, but we have it on hand and making our recovery times even faster sounds awesome.

Ugh, I just want an actual monster hunt to train some catgirls. Fucking ninjas and PCMs and shit always getting in the way.

I put Lenneth out there to draw fire but she drew a poison grenade instead. Good thing that gas mask was on or she'd be unconscious right now.

Lasso seems to work great on the sky ninjas.

Sadly, the lasso range is shit, and poison grenades don't work well on them. Lots of tree cover here too made this mission a giant pain.

They like to hang around on the far edge of the map too.

In the end, I lost yet another catgirl and one of the bugeyes. Neither were particularly skilled, but it's still aggravating.

These guys better give me some fucking good intel. Apparently this one didn't because I didn't bother to screenshot whatever it was.

These have been an option for quite a while, and I finally researched them. They're basically slightly better ninja stars. 12 range instead of 10, better damage potential. But the ammo stacks are smaller, and they can't simply be purchased en masse. Still maybe worth having a few around, long ranged cutting damage is interesting. The ninja stars do stabbing.

Sure doesn't feel like that much money right now.

Well, it seems we did well enough for another month at least.

Path of Herbs gave us this; I'd probably pass on this if we still had our advanced medkits and sivalingua stones, but those were all wiped out and the academy hasn't shown up to give us more. Maybe a catgirl medic is the way to go; she should have plenty of TUs at least.

 

[Jaedar]

Imo the real benefit of herbalist is the +30 freshness. As for guns of the patriots, I tend to just show up, throw enough random explosives to blow up the ammo depot and then gtfo. It is so not worth fighting humanists backed by constant reinforcements. I'm impressed you managed to win at all.

Nice to see some proper benefits from green codex.

, I get a catgirl killed by simply forgetting I had her hovering in the air to scout.

I make this mistake all the time. Really easy to forget you put a scout somewhere.

I might consider going full turtle mode, only taking the easiest of missions and generally not being concerned with our infamy as long as we don't trigger a loss condition

How are you going to pay for your upkeep costs like that?