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

[Damned Registrations]

Bring back my guy, if it's possible!

That'd actually be one of my picks... but only gals are on the list.

 

[turkishronin]

Racism

 

[Jaedar]

Racism

Your body must be at least 50% hellerium by mass to leave a ghost.

 

[Average Manatee]

Racism

Your body must be at least 50% hellerium by mass to leave a ghost.

This could be a joke, or it could turn out to be an upcoming lore entry. Hard to say.

 

[Damned Registrations]

She got better.

I think I'm going to go with Firey Predator for the first revival attempt. She was the last of the original gals, first to attain the rank of queen, obviously has excellent stats, and wasn't assigned a stasis pod, sadly. Should also help me figure out what 'augmentations' means when it says it removes them. I'm assuming it means training titles, but the translation can be a bit janky at times and it'd suck if it removed racial or achievement based titles. Oh, but we've got no sectoweed right now. Will need to start up a farm.

Finally got around to researching this, it's been on the todo list since we got the damned thing. Never realized they function off voodoo power and skill. Should make it very accurate in the right hands. Sadly, it didn't unlock anything, not even the means to create ammo for it.

This is interesting. I never realized this was the stealth suit, or at least a version of it. Invis is an incredibly powerful tool, obviously, but I can't exactly replace this, it doesn't have the crazy TU boost of the grav boots, and the armour is so flimsy she can still easily die to collateral damage. And I don't know if spotter/sniper just ignores the whole invis thing. If it does, that'd be super lame. Still probably a great option for scouting in certain circumstances, and making for a melee expert with ungodly evasion.

Well this is disappointing. The defense is good, but goblins that can't enter caves aren't of much use to me. And 20 weight will basically leave them screwed when it comes to weaponry as well.

Take that, harmless ambulance full of prisoners!

This popped up with the shade summoning. Who can say no to some demon god shrine tourism? Seems like I'll need to recruit more goblins.

This must have been the type of ship we encountered before. It's actually got very mediocre combat stats for what it is. Taking it down isn't out of the question once we get a Predator class fighter.

A flying vehicle with 175 purple shields piloted by a gnome? Fuck yes I want this!

Seems we'll have to research a specific variant before building is an option though. 14mm sounds good enough to me.

Finally found out what the deal is with this outfit. Aside from being anti chem (duh) it's also highly burn resistant, which is facisnating. I should totally make a set of these and do that burning town mission. Would be fairly easy with this outfits I think. They'll be great for a ghoul town fight too.

Results from all the rubble we broke down. That's where the mystery box came from! I forgot you could just mine those things out of the ground, albeit at exhorbitant cost of labour. Will have to remember that if we ever get more money than we know how to spend.

Damn, it even looks sexy. And it has decent armour, resistances, and obviously provides a decent chunk of bonus health since it's equipment, rather than an auxilliary. Of course, gnomes are inherently fragile so that health boost won't even bring this thing to ogre levels of hp, but hopefully it'll be abusing it's shields to great effect and avoiding most direct fire.

Yep, this is basically how the armoured cars I unlocked in a previous run worked. You build a chassis, then turn that into a specific variant. And you can strip the variants down into a chassis against to convert them to another type.

Just one problem; we don't have any cyberdisc wrecks. Fuck. Well I know what I want for xmas now.

I elect to go after some small raider vessels after all. I don't really care about recruiting the raider girls at this point, therir morale penalties are too extreme; I'd rather just use ogres and bugeyes instead and hope we find more castaways and the like. So I'm just taking them down in broad daylight with laser weapons.

Despite eating a boarding gun shot, we're barely injured. Plate mail is fucking awesome. A grenade at our feet earlier didn't even scratch us.

Burn, fuckers!

Some decent xp for all. Well, not Lenneth, but she got some titles instead.

Damn, stealing more reticulan gear is actually kind of tempting right now. If I had a proper assault ship I'd do it, I think. They're not that hard to deal with if you're not taking prisoners and don't have anyone with cripplingly low bravery or vpwr.

I'd love to build this thing, but we're lacking the energy weapon parts. Guess I should have disassembled some of what I had rather than stashing it on the ship for a rainy day.

Rimriders huh? I wonder if they have another Fatty I could steal...

Finally researched this. Now we can craft them, pretty cheaply at that. They ignore 20% of armour and do 50% minimum damage, which, coupled with high accuracy and fast attack speed, makes them very reliably melee weapons.

And they unlocked research towards something fancier.

Ooh, more mystery letters.

Sadly, this did not reveal to us fabulous new research options.

I finally remembered I can just buy this shit if I need it for crafting say, EMP rounds for a fancy SMG. Or platemails, or practically any of our high tech shit really.

Damn this tech takes a ton of time to research. Anything else with 15 allocated would be rated excellent. I've invested too many hours to put it off now though. We're finishing this thing.

...and it revealed nothing. Fuck.

Well, nobody reduced payments this month, so that's a plus! Honestly, I didn't expect our base income to keep climbing at this rate. It's incredibly helpful in keeping us stable despite all the losses we've incurred.

You have no idea how tempted I am to try tending in some samurai in full plate + catgirls to fuck this place up. It'd be easier without trying to take prisoners, and knowing their weakness to stabbing weapons. I could get back all that gear I lost! Or we could get team wiped because we have an inferior team this time, albeit with better armour. *Sigh* we'll play it safe for now. A quick dip to capture an automaton or green chick is tempting as well, but honestly probably not worth it. If we're going in we should go in force and loot the whole base.

Another useless (for now) tech I was hoping would unlock new craft.

Well, this is going to be interesting.

This base is defended by... 3 catgirls with shortswords. Honestly, they're just there to let the turrets do the work, and maybe finish off a dog that manages to run by or something.

I just have them hide in small rooms and let the turrets do the work.

And do the work they shall. Lots of screaming. Lots of exploding. Lots of gunshots. I have no idea what kind of raid this is. But they can apparently shoot into the room above the turret, which got a catgirl killed. Shit.

Ah. That makes sense. My first ninja raid!

Apparently they use flamethrowers sometimes. And apparently that actually hurts a turret somehow. Whatever, not like it's going to take morale damage and go berserk. Wish I could see through the turet to get a better look at the enemies arriving and their weaponry, but the turrets are like the bees and workers- 3rd party units doing their own thing.

Fuck, they actually managed to kill one of the turrets. To be fair, they shot it with a LOT of chem blunderbuss rounds and probably hucked some dynamite or something too. I got to take a peek at their stats, at least their dossier. 75 armour across the board, with resist's you'd expect on a tank. No idea of their health pool, but I'm guessing it's plenty.

I risked one of the two remaining catgirls to see what was jacking my turrets up. This... might have done the trick? It probably resists cutting damage very well, but these swords can inflict massive damage in the right hands, and I'd assume that includes these ones.

Aw shit. Pretty sure that's some kind of plasma gun. I think the rimriders had those? And even if not, this bitch has to have some crazy stats. They were using some kind of electric or emp attack as well which prevented the turret from attacking last turn. Not looking good for us.

I tried to backstab the assassin, but that failed. Not too surprised, we had 97% accuracy, which is decent, especially for a back attack, but they probably have insane evasion and maybe a bonus vs backstabs.

Shortly after the remaining turret dies too. Shit.

Well, that sucks. Too bad I didn't get credit for all the dead ninjas to at least give us some infamy. Losing the base sucks, but it's was the last of the basically defenseless ones that were still barely constructed. Not a huge blow.

I got everything I could from narlock soldiers and did a noble next, who gave me this. Might explain how those turrets got destroyed. I wonder if it goes off when you put them to sleep too. I bet it does. Meaning we'd need to cause a morale loss (probably not easy on a suicide bomber) or possess them and get them to drop the item. What incredibly dirty tactics.

Ooh boy time for the shrine! I hope it's not too nasty; we're still lacking in the goblin department since we haven't seen chitin in forever. I'm afraid to send the gnome on a potential suicide mission too. We'll have 1 slayer goblin, 1 armoured dog, 2 somewhat trained goblins in longcoats and 4 fresh recruits. But wait... we can send a shade? Wait... we have a dossier on shades? I never did summon one, but we got the weed now from some bandit fights and it only takes a single day...

Spacesuits? Energy shields? Radiation weapons?!?

Boo.

I wasn't expecting much from this, but I'm still disappointed. Heavy ground vehicles? Is that even a thing? That could actualy be a pretty cool thing... A version of the trucks or convoy with like... a giant plasma tank or something would be cool. But sticking this one trucks would be retarded. I guess you could use it to shoot down a blimp, maybe? If it didn't feel like running away?

Dang, the various national guards are pretty cool. Seems like a lot of work for enemies we basically never encounter. Perhaps later we'll run into them more often.

Well, her stats and titles are intact. She's still an escaped lunatic, so doing this to a perfect gal would retain the armour bonus, for example. But what the fuck is 'Shade' armour?

Huh. Not quite what I was expecting, but pretty cool. I don't think it'd be a good idea to send her underground, but she could make for an amazing scout; simply flying 10 tiles into the air and sitting there abusing a 30+ nightvision stat (on top of title bonuses and a SPOT of 5!) would be incredibly useful all on it's own. Could also make for a invnicible unit on a ghoul town raid, unless they bust out flame weapons, which they are also fond of. However... those still won't do enough damage to instantly kill a ghost even with the crazy multipliers. It seems VPWR is incredibly important for shades, determining their evasion and energy recovery. That's honestly pretty rough for the energy side of things, but again, if they're just there to be a floating eye in the sky it's not a big deal. Lastly, they have a terror and spirit lantern as built in weapons. But I can't get a dossier on either. Seems we may have unlocked these because of our victory against the ghost island. If so, that's a very cool reward.

 

[turkishronin]

How can you stab a ghost

 

[Jaedar]

And I don't know if spotter/sniper just ignores the whole invis thing. If it does, that'd be super lame

Afaik it does, although they still take the halved accuracy penalty from firing outside of vision. INVIS is sadly a lot better for the enemy than you for this reason.

A flying vehicle with 175 purple shields piloted by a gnome? Fuck yes I want this!

Yes, you do. Also, the game is poor at communicating it, but gnomes can pilot all vehicles, even ones that say "lokk'narr only".

Rimriders huh? I wonder if they have another Fatty I could steal...

If you had followed the ship, you could have (maybe) ambushed them while they were setting up the base, getting a landed ship instead. Which might or might not be easier.

Heavy ground vehicles? Is that even a thing?

Probably? But ground vehicles seem kinda shitty in general. You're never going to catch anything that flies, so any weapon is purely for self defence (which will almost assuredly lead to the attacker escaping or killing you).

How can you stab a ghost

With relative ease apparently.

 

[turkishronin]

Yeah painted catgirls get like 7 camo so they're actually more stealthy than outfit with 5 INVIS lol.

 

[oasis789]

so can you resummon a dead shade?

 

[Jaedar]

Yeah painted catgirls get like 7 camo so they're actually more stealthy than outfit with 5 INVIS lol.

Only at night, and only against enemies with "poor" nv. I think invis also ignores spot values?

 

[turkishronin]

I think invis also ignores spot values?

SPOT affects both camo and INVIS. That's what makes it tricky since units with high NV usually have units with SPOT near them

 

[Jaedar]

I think invis also ignores spot values?

SPOT affects both camo and INVIS. That's what makes it tricky since units with high NV usually have units with SPOT near them

I did not realize spot affects invis. So a unit with INVIS 5 being looked at by a unit with SPOT 5 essentially has INVIS 10?

 

[Average Manatee]

SPOT affects both camo and INVIS. That's what makes it tricky since units with high NV usually have units with SPOT near them

I thought invis ignored the spot stat? Not sure on this but its what I've heard. And I'm like 99% sure that NV and spot don't stack unless its the same unit, and even then invisibility ignores NV or DV. Either way its a cool armor to scout with during daytime. Have a few mortars in a corner and you can clean up most missions. It definitely doesn't get around the sniper/spotter combo though. Supposedly if you kill something with melee attacks without being seen you can avoid triggering sniper/spotter, but that sounds incredibly risky (after all you have to do a lot of running and enemies can turn around to see you if you don't kill them in 1 hit). Though the armor does give a huge reactions and some melee boost so maybe that's how you're supposed to use it?

One interesting thing is that there are actually indicator lights in the inventory that tell you whether any enemy sees you. Blue = unspotted, Red = spotted.

EDIT: Just tested and spot does indeed work against invisibility. Its still very useful though, most enemies only have a few tiles of spot. I think its the enemies with psi-senses or smelling ability or w/e you have to worry about since invis does nothing against them.

 

[turkishronin]

One interesting thing is that there are actually indicator lights in the inventory that tell you whether any enemy sees you. Blue = unspotted, Red = spotted

wtf where

 

[Average Manatee]

One interesting thing is that there are actually indicator lights in the inventory that tell you whether any enemy sees you. Blue = unspotted, Red = spotted

wtf where

Specifically for the unipuma armor.

 

[Damned Registrations]

One interesting thing is that there are actually indicator lights in the inventory that tell you whether any enemy sees you. Blue = unspotted, Red = spotted.

I always wondered why they had that belt. Very cool.

maybe that's how you're supposed to use it?

I can imagine it being very effective against certain enemy types, especially if you've got smoke cover, other units spotting for you, and something tanky to distract them. Once you get melee into the ~140 range your accuracy is often so high you'll never miss and it only takes like 24 TUs to hit something for hundreds of damage. Would be great with grenades (or giant satchel charges) too; run up, drop the grenade, run back. No need to test reactions. Definitely more powerful in the day though; night camo is often so good you've got like a 15+ tile advantage over the enemy anyways with an elite unit.

so can you resummon a dead shade?

I'm not sure. We'll probably find out soon enough. You can't resummon them indefinitely though, since they take a vpwr hit and you can't retrain that.

If you had followed the ship, you could have (maybe) ambushed them while they were setting up the base, getting a landed ship instead.

I was tempted, but that thing had 5500 speed and could have annihilated us if we got there late and it started leaving or something. Actually, my plan for the rimriders (and anything else with psi powers) is to generally avoid them for now, until I can get a team together with high voodoo defenses. Would have made such missions vastly easier.

How can you stab a ghost

Worked well enough for me when I was doing it, so I suppose I shouldn't complain. Well, maybe a little. They weren't taking THAT much damage.

 

[Average Manatee]

I can imagine it being very effective against certain enemy types, especially if you've got smoke cover, other units spotting for you, and something tanky to distract them. Once you get melee into the ~140 range your accuracy is often so high you'll never miss and it only takes like 24 TUs to hit something for hundreds of damage. Would be great with grenades (or giant satchel charges) too; run up, drop the grenade, run back. No need to test reactions. Definitely more powerful in the day though; night camo is often so good you've got like a 15+ tile advantage over the enemy anyways with an elite unit.

Well if you're OK with grenades then you might as well throw them. Or use the Mortar. In fact Umipuma on a mortar would work really well, you are never revealed for the purposes of sniper/spotter as long as you don't directly hit something, and mortars have like 150% accuracy so you can precisely aim that thing to hit right next to your target. Other invisible characters could spot for the mortars.

I've never actually tried stealth melee kills but I think if you hit and don't kill the target then they "see" you, which would make you visible to spotters as well. This would happen even if their reactions aren't high enough to let them turn around and whack you back.

 

[BrotherFrank]

I'm starting to believe the death spiral is not inevitable after all:
-survived macross missile spam
-salvaged finances
-the one base that got invaded was a disposable one anyways
-found a way to bring back our old gals and have the dead fight for the living
-getting ok air even if lack the means to build them, with more high tech options imminent
-gnome hovertank on the horizon

 

[std::namespace]

I'm starting to believe the death spiral is not inevitable after all:

J
I
N
X

 

[Damned Registrations]

Must be tuesday...

Ah. The missile mystery is revealed at last; it is caused by ships firing missiles. I'd love to take this one down, but we can't even catch up to it.

Anyways, this is of far more interest to me. I'm surprised nobody commented on it being unlocked in the last update. Guess you're all catgirl lovers.

Deployment is split up, but at least the map isn't too big.

Shrine was very nearby too. Seems like it'll be a quick mission?

And our enemies are merely spiders. Excellent!

They managed to bite someone though, which is not excellent...

Not what I expected, but I'll take it!

Overall, an easy mission.

With some cool rewards! I hope that avenger armour is worthy of that pricetag.

We got a new title as well! Didn't know this existed. A strong title indeed, a good incentive to have a team of goblin elites. Also, our doggo got it too, along with a few other titles.

Hmm, interesting.

More interesting, but not useful, surprisingly. Didn't unlock a single thing.

Fuck, I hope those aren't all missile ships.

They didn't seem to do much, though our infamy has tanked. Whether that's from them or the 4 bases chilling on the planet now I can't say.

New Rimrider base has joined the other one. I'm starting to get antsy about this shit now.

Got this one done; no inroads to better guns unlocked though.

This didn't unlock anything either. Also, LOL, no way in hell am I using 50 pods for this any time soon.

Hmm, I don't know what an 'Ordinator' is, but it sounds dangerous. Unknown flag on govt. business too? Arghh. We got get fighters back online.

This was a cool tech though. Unlocked by out vibro blade research. Insanely accurate 100 stabbing damage at fairly long range for low cost with infinite ammo? Yes please!

Another cool weapon.

Finally took our shade out for a spin. That terrify attack is insanely accurate at close range.

It drops off quickly with distance though, and can't be used through walls, unlike Bugeye psi powers. Also, this confirms that weapons which can trigger the psi attacks exist, and that there are variation among how they work.

Sorry boss, it's just a little hard to take you seriously with your ass hanging out of your pants like that.

Interesting results from that. I don't expect a mining ship to be very good, but maybe it has a cool special function?

Secret Base? Are they making another one?

Well, this would be disappointing except its more or less what I expected. Though I was hoping it'd lead to something better, which it did not.

This, on the other hand, is way cooler than I thought it would be. Training with requirements seems a lot better than the early stuff.

And it unlocked even more training!

Nice gains too! Anything that boosts bravery is good in my book. The recovery time is long, but that can be reduced a lot with enough medical facilities.

And even the doggo can use this one! Kind of tempted to buy a bunch of dogs and train them with this now.

Imperial probes generally lead to those reticulan bases right? So why is it flagged as 'the dark ones'? Aren't those the possessed gunners? Maybe it's a reticulan subfaction...

Nearly lost our best goblin on a stupid ratman cache. We really need some better gear for these guys.

Loot was decent at least. I'm keep the jewelry since it's needed to raise shades, though I probably won't raise a lot more, as they don't see useful for much beyond scouting.

At least we got some more titles.

Another interesting type of attack. I love when the game gives you weird stuff like this, scaling with the inverse of your morale.

That avenger armour was indeed really fucking awesome. The armour stats themselves are crap, but 44 purple shields (66 with the variation of this with a shield) that fully recover each turn, and a fuckon of stat bonuses. This can turn a goblin into a damned blender. Insane evasion as well. I wonder how good that TU recovery thing is. Would be insane if they can just spam that Shredder thing all day. But even if it's not that efficient, I can imagine it becing crazy for say, stabbing 10 rats in a single turn or something as they zerg rush you.

This sounds vaguely familiar and dangerous. But also cool and voodoo themed, so I want to check it out.

Yo, we can get smelly rags finally!

Ah, yeah that's a bit more dangerous potentially.

Theres a nice little stone wall to take cover behind nearby. 4 people is defnitely not enough for this mission, but necropirates are easy so maybe...

Aww, he has a cool laser sword! I want it!

Oh fuck. Now I remember why this mission is dangerous. I've got no way of knowing how many of these fuckers might be out there.

Thankfully he seemed to have trouble getting through the plate armour, but even so we lost a ton of freshness. We need to bail.

Good thing we were still huddle near the craft at this point, just picking off blood hounds and taking potshots and pirates.

Sadly, our ghost can't get back right away, so we'll have to get closer and make our move next turn.

Fuck me! A vampire attacked our ghost! We managed to evade the hit though.

Well, that's not a great score, but we were able to knock out and capture that vampire that attacked first. Sadly, we can't do anything with him yet. Which seems weird. You'd think at least a pit fight or robbery or something.

Huh. More items for sale?

Just the one apparently. Not terribly exciting.

This feels rather underwhelming for what it takes. Black widow isn't too hard to get, but still. 15 melee is nice, but the 3 morale penalty is pretty nasty. Maybe it unlocks other cool stuff though, or does massive amounts of base stat training?

Another building we can't afford any time soon. I'm really starting to feel the need for a training/medical base. That's what Kunlun was supposed to be. Just a place loaded with all the medical facilities and I can send people there to do training and recover faster. A base for intereceptors would be good too. I like that there's so many useful buildings you can't fit them all in one mega base.

 

[Jaedar]

Shrine was very nearby too. Seems like it'll be a quick mission?

I'm jealous. Done a dozen of these and never got that variation, or that teaching.

Imperial probes generally lead to those reticulan bases right?

What if there are several things they can lead to, and you have just been getting unlucky to always get the same one?

Sadly, we can't do anything with him yet.

You should have everything to research him. Or did your sickbay get broken my a missile strike?

 

[oasis789]

Hmm, interesting.

imgur ate the interesting part

 

[std::namespace]

They didn't seem to do much, though our infamy has tanked. Whether that's from them or the 4 bases chilling on the planet now I can't say.

time to assault the church base!

 

[lightbane]

You don't want to keep an enemy base, nevermind multiple, being operative for long. They tank your score by default, or at least they did in OG XCOM.

 

[BrotherFrank]

Since you can't bring gnome hovertanks to a base assault then there's no point in putting it off. Once you got a serviceable combat squad, it's time for a forlorn hope to keep your head above water.