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

[Damned Registrations]

Completely obvious.

Hmm, sounds like a more extreme version of the blood grasss on earth? Or maybe it's a monster or something. Interesting, at any rate. Fuck, I hope the shadowrealms aren't full of landmines like the boomfruit jungles.

No token trade then. Lootboxes? Lootboxes are good.

Well... that's pretty meh. I was expecting a bit more honestly, it wasn't that hard for me, but if I'd encountered them at a time where this stuff was actually valuable... we'd be getting wrecked by those warriors. Assuming I could even shoot this thing down, which I couldn't.

Hmm, not quite as good as I was hoping, but it'll do as a grenade launcher replacement for sure. I'll have to try that chem ammo too- I think Marsec guys were weak to chem, and even if it's shit vs armour, 80 damage with a 40% bonus or whatever it was will punch right through and melt people. I oughtta try fire out too. Maybe it's better than I think. I wonder if the gun still counts as a cannon.

Gas clips seem pretty deadly for what they are. This'd put a dent even in units like ninjas that don't take the 400% multiplier.

Finally did this one up. We got nothing out of him, not even a lore dump. Honestly, not even surprised at this point.

These are available again? That's weird. Did I find more? I thought I had a stockpile and had just exhausted their info...

Random production browsing led me to this. Seems this is the use for early game gems? I could see having extra shields on your early shadowtech ships being nice.

Was going to make this to see if it fits Luka... but damn, it needs 5 mesh? And that's all we've got! Going to need to farm some Megapol ships for this stuff. Or take on some mercs. We do have a nice new bio weapon that should take care of them nicely... though I expect it won't even leave bodies behind with how much damage it'll do to them.

Fuck, I keep forgetting my new ship doesn't have the loadout of extra shit my kraken has. Fortunately we just had some fish to beat up, but this could really suck if it happens on a more important mission. I don't really have the supplies to give copies of everything I'd want to each ship either, some stuff like the mind probe is unique.

This finished quicker than I expected. I should do more of this mid-high tier stuff. It's giving better value for investment than the really big stuff or the little stuff.

Well, it's not a new ship yet, but it feels like progress.

Alrighty, what have you got for me?

LAME. I already had 4 of these things, I was probably already researching them. And they're not even useful.

Wait, is this the...?

AHAHAHA FUCK YES. It's going to take a long time to train another up to Luka's level, but this is an absolute win. Now if I could just get Soldier: Syn wherever the fuck it's hiding so I can make armour for them...

Got another legit monster hunt. The rival hunters are easy enough to deal with now that it's totally worth doing these. I either send out some rookie gals in platemail to gun down the hunters, or a bunch of catgirls in gravsuits to pick on the monsters for easy training. Win-win!

Oh, make a fortune huh? Like the mint? ? I'm soooo excited.

Okay now I'm actually excited.

Fuck! The mini synth suit was for cats, not goblins! What the fuck am I going to do with a lightly armored, slower cat that can't fly? Garbage!

Well damn... that is indeed a very large number. For reference, chem production is making a little over 5 million/month at this base. However, this requires inputs. 3 chemicals and 1 plastasteel per production.

Obviously making the chems ourselves will be more efficient than buying them. 80 hours per cycle means 80 runts will demand 3 chems per hour. So we need a ~8 hour cycle on the x25 batch of chems to keep pace. Now I can just dial up the numbers while keeping the ratio.

It ends up at a 124:70 split. I'm sure I'm overbuilding the chems slightly, but it's not a big deal, I can just sell the excess if I need space, and I'd rather this than have the whole thing shut off due to lack of materials. Monthly cost for chem production will be 400k, which is peanuts compared to the profits. But what about the plastasteel?

At infinite production, we can make 17.9 million in profit. Dialing the units to produce so we get a tenth of that profit reveal we'll need 113 ten times a month, or 1130 plastasteel monthly. We're not going to sustain that from loot (though looting plastasteel will now be a way bigger jump in profits than just selling it for fuck all)

If we have to buy plastasteel to fuel durathread production, it'll cost us 847k ten times a month. I'm doing this one tenth shit because clicking the quantity up to 1130 would take too long. I know there's an option to fuck with the mousewheel scrolling but my wheel is kinda shit so it'd still suck unless I set it to like, 1k and switched it back afterwards. Anyways. All told, this works out to a new profit/month of around 9 million from this base. More finnicky, but still a major improvement. With numbers like this, maybe I should just throw cash at the mutant alliance and recruit Saya. I think it'd be 30million, but we've already got some tokens piled up, so covering the gap should be like.... 5-10 million I think? The responsible thing to do would be to recruit a bunch of gals instead, so it's obvious what's happening.

 

[Jaedar]

I oughtta try fire out too. Maybe it's better than I think.

Probably not. 40 damage is really low at this point.

Fuck, I keep forgetting my new ship doesn't have the loadout of extra shit my kraken has. Fortunately we just had some fish to beat up, but this could really suck if it happens on a more important mission. I don't really have the supplies to give copies of everything I'd want to each ship either, some stuff like the mind probe is unique.

Are the ships in the same base? Use save/load of loadouts every time.

All told, this works out to a new profit/month of around 9 million from this base. More finnicky, but still a major improvement. With numbers like this, maybe I should just throw cash at the mutant alliance and recruit Saya.

That's a lot of money. I would like to throw "global radar coverage" into the pile of things you consider

 

[Damned Registrations]

I mean, doing stupid things is my specialty anyways.

Probably not. 40 damage is really low at this point.

It's certainly nothing compared to that arena flamer. But fire bypasses armour and some enemies have large multipliers...

Are the ships in the same base? Use save/load of loadouts every time.

I tried but must have not remembered the hotkeys correctly. Will check.

That's a lot of money. I would like to throw "global radar coverage" into the pile of things you consider

Oh it's on the docket. I've been throwing up hyperwave decoders in all the bases already. I bet there's an even better radar in the tree somewhere that'll make it easier.


Onward with the violence and the plunder and whatnot!

Huh, they're a bit wimpier than I'd thought. Not that there's any reason to shoot them down, unless you wanted to tank your infamy to avoid a rank up, I suppose.

These, OTOH, are pretty much what I expected. slightly faster than fighters to make them seem not that dangerous, but actually way, way more powerful in combat.

New mission? Sign me up! That Deep One Destroyer badge isn't going to build itself.

Excellent, just what I was hoping to see.

Err, this part not so much. These people are fucked. Maybe if I'd brought the kraken and some snipers here, but we got no angle to snipe that aquaman.

Plus we're mostly armed with fun toys. Like death spores!

Luka could possibly run down here to fuck this guy up... I'm not exactly worried about javelins or bone clubs taking her out.

Oh fuck there's more of them. I absolutely AM worried about a bunch of electric attacks taking us out.

*Panicked zoidberg noises*

These 'death spores' aren't exactly living up to the hype. What gives? The lobsters take 500% choking damage!

Fuck, we brought some werewolves along for the ride and just lost one. Whatever those aquamen use to attack, it can dish out 100+ health damage apparently.

I was promised pleasantly warm weather, not scorching heat! I suppose it's just a lesser version of the same, but we're still eating a lot of stun damage. I suppose it doesn't really matter, I've got the catgirls aboard handing out stims.

Aquamen being little aquabitches, hiding in the bushes till the end. I suppose it makes sense, they have good range.

Lenneth gets tagged by a fish grenade. Turned out to be a good thing honestly, it let someone get bravery for healing the wound.

Okay, this triggerhappy title is bugged or something. Tight Note did NOT kill anyone with reaction fire using a minigun. Maybe it's counting extra accidental kills as reaction fire? Or miniguns trigger it too for some reason? At any rate, she's racked up quite a few bonus firing points now, which is funny because her actual base firing skill is still crap. I need to give her an smg or something to get xp properly.

Well, this is disappointing. The bonus stats don't even bring her up to like, baseline human, and the defenses are nothing to write home about. I suppose this was supposed to be unlocked much earlier somehow.

Time to try out another new toy. Hoverbike seems too fragile for catgirls to use, but on an ubergal...

Aw fuck, I didn't think I'd need to manually load it with ammo. I can't even use the assault laser. Stats seem respectable though, it can unload a lot of shots, and rockets from a high vantage point are way more useful since they won't clip a knee high wall 3 feet in front of you or go sailing over a target's shoulder to land 30 tiles behind them. I should probably research the assault version of this. RPGs are kind of shit, I bet I could use that lascannon or some other nice weapons with a bit of research.

Heh, I finished the month with fuck all in pocket and still came out ahead a couple million. I forgot how high our protection racket had gotten, I thought I'd need to sell something. Still investing in new base infrastructre like crazy. Room for brainers is expensive, but it'll pay off soon I hope. I should put more of those industrial scanners to work too. I could be passively pulling in over 20 million a month easily.

God damn, if the other synthsuits were disappointing, this makes up for them both and then some. First off, that's nice armour for an ogre. 10 less than liquidator on the front, but way better on the sides and bottom. Combined with the resists, and he's basically bulletproof. Lasers and plasma would sitll be a problem, but it's the best so far by a mile. Also, ogres with massive evasion. It's a shame Gumsmith isn't around to wear this, he'd have had a field day.

The REAL benefits are down the page though: Massive TU boost, and melee and strength bonus. More strength on an ogre might sound like overkill, but it's actually nice because you already want them using strength weapons like hammers or a javelin or whatever, so making those even better is great. Now I'm torn between making Modron into some sort of god damned ninja, or have him keep using voodoo weapons. He's starting to acquire some battlemage perks after all.

I remember this fucking thing! This is Rimrider tech! Some of the crazy shit it wouldn't even let me use.Apparently it's like, a laser shotgun?

Hmm, the damage dropoff is pretty trivial, so this is basically a 15 range laser shotgun. Firing time is quite high, but it'll surely turn a dinosaur into dinner in a hurry. What the fuck would even survive this to take that morale damage? It weighs an assload as well. I hope I find a use for it. Hell, maybe I just throw it on someone like an ogre with capacity to spare in the off chance it comes in handy.

Cool, I can even make the ammo. Or I could if I had fusion power. I wonder how far off that is. You'd think the reticulan fusion reactor would enable it... do I need to kidnap some of their technicians and grill them for some reticulan engineering bullshit? I've been seeing their ships fly around since getting their contact. Seemed like pointless dickery to attack them, but maybe I should after all.

Lucky number seven. Oh, to get the next rank, we need to interrogate a VIP? Cardinals don't count do they, they mean like an actual named entity I assume. Interesting. Seems like I can go all out on infamy without ranking up for once.

Couple new contacts. White dragon huh? Is that an actual dragon? With like, 65535 hp and shit? Anyone else ever play shadowrun?

 

[Jaedar]

These 'death spores' aren't exactly living up to the hype. What gives?

They're just kinda shit?

Whatever those aquamen use to attack, it can dish out 100+ health damage apparently.

Aquamen are really fucking annoying, I think they have sniper, and their shots arc and deal huge damage.

Apparently it's like, a laser shotgun?

If you think 150x4 is comparable to something that deals 20x8, then sure.

Oh, to get the next rank, we need to interrogate a VIP? Cardinals don't count do they, they mean like an actual named entity I assume. Interesting.

Cardinal totally counts. I am padding this spoiler text to make it less obvious what it contains.

Also I just saw the ending of the game, and I am slightly upset.

Spoiler

I had titor and Zander contacted, seems the former was just a trap to spawn with fewer units and the latter is TBD....
The amount of unfinished stuff in the endgame is atrocious.

The Church controlling the Deep Ones somehow is IMO still different from the Church of Dagon of XFiles, as the latter worshipped the Deep Ones and wanted to become like them. The Church in Piratez seems to use whatever they have in hand to keep power.

I now have more info on this:

Spoiler

The church seems to be allies to the deep ones. In the ending the deep ones use the chaos of star god reign collapsing to grab more land, and are joined/supported by church, although they get thoroughly defeated afterwards.

 

[std::namespace]

Combat Drugs Production might pay more than durathread?

 

[lightbane]

I now have more info on this:

Spoiler

That's new. I remember the ending being "just" about blowing up the brain like the OG game. No idea there was more.

 

[Jaedar]

I now have more info on this:

Spoiler

That's new. I remember the ending being "just" about blowing up the brain like the OG game. No idea there was more.

You get a cutscene/slideshow as an epilogue. Very advanced tech, it is even used after a few special missions.

 

[lightbane]

Shame I inevitably end up bored whenever I try to play these mega-mods. I suppose the idea is to administer it in doses, rather than just playing this until you're done.

 

[Jaedar]

Shame I inevitably end up bored whenever I try to play these mega-mods. I suppose the idea is to administer it in doses, rather than just playing this until you're done.

I had a lot of fun with xpiratez for a long time. But man the final 25% or so (in in game dates, no idea how it relates to playtime) has been a struggle. I can't even be arsed to play the final mission, I just used debug mode to hack through it, since the special ending I was promised is apparently TBD.

There's quite a lot of variety in xpiratez, especially early on. But the end just kinda falls apart due to grinding and TBD content. LP still has a bit left to go before it falls apart at least, and the constant deaths might make the final grinding less boring.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Coverage.

the constant deaths

Woah there! These deaths have been sporadic I'll have you know! I'm not some amateur here, I know how to keep things exciting.

I suppose the idea is to administer it in doses, rather than just playing this until you're done.

I think doing it as a LP has helped me stay interested. I'd normally have been distracted by something else and put this off long enough to forget what I was hyped to do next, but every time I came back just to do an update I got reminded of how much I like this. And on the flipside, being forced to take breaks to do the writeups has kept the combat from getting monotonous. I've tried getting into some epic length games before, like Eador or the Space mod for factorio and lost interest after a while, despite really liking the concepts for each.

Combat Drugs Production might pay more than durathread?

Good call. I had that thought initially when it showed up and promptly forgot about it when chems gave so much cash. Still, lowish priority right now. The tech tree is bleeding treasures right now.



The ball is really rolling now!


Man, they are really going at it with these cullings huh? Whatever, I'm not that desperate for a warchief capture.

These guys are extremely weird. No evasion is something I pretty much never see, their weapon is built in and extremely strong, and they have low armour but high resists. I couldn't study the live ones either, I guess they're basically zombies.

Alas, no new training types made available.

I, uh, maybe need to take out some enemy hideouts. Still doesn't feel worth it though; I need some better armour. Plate is nice, but it's not going to hold up to things like tomes of lightning, force lances, anti tank rockets and so forth. We basically won the church base by cheese. I need a team that can reaction fire kill the enemies multiple times per turn.

Hmm, this is probably overdue. Still going to put it off though. It's not like the ninjas are the actual annoying faction anyways.

This seems important. I should have researched a strix earlier.

Ah, I realized why the death spores are shit. It's like fire damage, the damage listed means nothing and it's all about the hp damage multiplier. Weirdly, the plague bug is the same way despite being Bio damage; it's 450% multi is only on 5-10 damage, not 30-90 like it seemed.

Damn, we can't actually make this. I've no idea where we could even try get robotic arms. Rimrider base and captture an automaton to strip for parts maybe?

The only ones we've seen so far are from dismantling the terminator bots in space. Haven't seen them since though, and we've only got a single corpse stashed.

Checked the ANAL page for eridians to see if their refusal to surrender was listed here. Nope. Just their bonkers 10 health regen and functional stun immunity.

Okay, this time I brought ammo for the hoverbike... except it uses quad rpgs, not normal ones. Whoops. I did load it with the laser amo though!

I accidentally clicked the 'Full Throttle' button that refills your TUs in exchange for morale and freshness. But I get 34 morale back from a kill. And this thing uses like 5% TUs to fire the lasers. Is this broken?

Turns out it is not, the guns use energy to fire. About 400 for lasers and 650 for rockets.

That's okay, the hoverbike isn't the only unit that can move across the entire map with time to spare.

Got decent accuracy training out of it too. The way xp and vehicles interact baffles me.

Oh, and we got shot rather a lot by shotguns. This is a way easier way to farm the gal of steel title, enemies can't miss even if they want to. Overall, it's a really solid vehicle. Makes me a lot more interested in the assault version; with a bit more energy efficiency and durability, this thing could really pull it's weight.

A challenge? I accept! What's the challenge?

Hmm, stone age equipment... I assume it restricts armours as well or that's not even a challenge. Still, doesn't seem too difficult if we can send ubers. Monsters just aren't a real threat to a spearwall.

Was looking around for stone age weapons and noticed this- it seems to be one of those rare weapons that does actual burn damage instead of that 5-10 nonsense. Quite a bit of it too. Though it also has to contend with armour. Still, probably really good for certain enemies, I should prepare some.

Another potential stone age weapon- though I'm honestly a bit afraid to try using it. I suppose the thing to do would be make sure everyone is in charm-proof gear? It'd certainly be handy to have a way to stun enemies through shields...

Howver, a glance at the stone age equipment reveals two more powerful weapons, Pipes of Doom deal ~80 chem damage, with massive morale mods, which could easily fuck up some weird giant monster if one appears. And the demonic essence would pretty much be completely cheating, so obviously we need to bring those.

Ah, no thanks. I suppose this qualifies as a place that gladiatrix armour could be used, but this just isn't worth the trouble. Maybe I'll do it for fun later if I can trivialize it. Right now, not interested in losing a gal because some asshole pops out from a hedge with a big iron and drops ~200 damage into our crappiest armours.

Finally followed a ship on it's 'sway government' mission to antarctica. Apparently that mission is how they set up bases? Because there's a fuckton of them here now it seems. What a pain.

Dang, was hoping for a special reward for capturing these.

This better no disappoint...

Hot damn that's what I wanted to see! Pretty much everything here seems awesome except defender armour, but even that is probably leading to better stuff. I wonder if one of these would lets our SS troops fly? Dragonfly is from the OG right? Getting the top two first though, as they seem to obviously cover SS and gals, respectively.

It's on! Well, presumably it will be next month. Needing a hunt party is a bit annoying, I hope it spawns somewhere nearby. Logically it'd be in Thebes, which is fairly close...

Image of our radar coverage, for reference. We've got almost all the nations on this hemisphere covered, aside from fuso and whatever is at the tip of south africa.

This is the biggest coverage gap. Mostly ocean, but still annoying when enemies fly through it, popping in and out of radar.

Ah, this is why I haven't used the save/load loadouts feature. It's bound the the F5 and F9 keys, and my cheapass walmart keyboard requires me to hold a modifier key to use them so I tend to forget they exist. Still, probably worth using in this case.

Science vessel you say? Sounds... fragile!

Trying to get my two warships together to fight the thing and this stupid supply ship gets right between them. Wait... it's JUST the supply ship? There's no escorts?

There were fucking escorts. Whatever.

The science vessel sped up a bit and the kraken couldn't keep up. Still wanted to tail it though, but I got a bit too close and it turned on me!

Yep, that's a big dumb looking ship alright.

Fuck me. It has shields, it's faster than us so we can't escape, and it's got powerful, accurate weapons. We're fucked.

At least we didn't lose equipment this time, since I half expected it to be total bullshit. I should keep a shark bike around to test enemy speeds, we can easily afford it now.

This was disappointing. The damage output on this is pretty crap. It's not going to blow up terrain or people very easily unless they have fuck all armour.

Well, they might be pricey, but we got cash to spare now. Will hire a batch and pick some out for Masochist Slut (Unless you want a Freak instead? They're cheaper and could have some weird stat specialty) and (checks notes) that's it? Azira and Optimist wanted to be dudes and I haven't seen any more Zone Stalkers since we did the update. Turkish Ronin is on the list too, but wanted to be a peasant I think? Note to self: Do that, it's not even expensive.

Well, there's 'veterans' and then there's people with hundreds of kills, capped stats and a ton of titles. So we're doing another zombie massacre, this time letting some rookies take potshots instead of feeding them all to Luka, since they don't even counter as monsters weirdly.

Bit of friendly fire. Zombies aren't the only brainless idiots around here.

It's FINE.

Nice gains as usual.

Feels weird that this is gated by rank for some reason.

Excellent. Degenerate lootbox opening shall resume shortly! (I assume?)

I mean, this isn't useful to how I'm playing at all, but as a nazi member of this prestigious magazine, I had no choice but to pick this up.

Oh, it turns out that while the voice attack was shit, the armour itself is pretty decent! ~30 armour is what they get with shields normally, having it with access to two handed gear would be great.

Setting up the craft and noticed our new Syn had a plague bug in her hair. Not where I'd choose to stow such a thing, but good to know it's possible I suppose.

Our mission? Fucking up this guild craft trying to pacify iceland. There was actually another, larger one nearby as well. Craft vanish after doing a mission, not sure if this qualifies as a two for one or a lose lose when it comes to infamy hits from there missions, but I don't really want to tangle with a Terror ship right now so we're taking out the Envoy instead.

Well, at least he doesn't have red shields.

Oh yeah, remember how mind attacks go right through that power armour? I forgot to load wands of pain. Or demon essence. Fuck.

 

[Optimist]

Doing God's work

Happy to get r63d into an... Optima? Optimista?

Not sure if I mentioned it, but your playthrough and the relatively recent update encouraged me to have another go at it, this time as Gal-focused Golden Dumbass. Having a bunch of fun, but I did forget that Uber Farming gates off quite a lot of important techs, so I'm approaching end of Y1 with no chainmails in sight.

Still love the stupidly expensive tech tree.

 

[std::namespace]

Freak

freak on combat drugs, mosdef

 

[turkishronin]

I want to be goblin now

 

[Damned Registrations]

Oh please, someone help me, it's spilling everywhere!

I want to be goblin now

Goblin goblin or gnome? Because we've got no named gnomes and I just queued a few to get recruited.

freak on combat drugs, mosdef

Can do. Any desired stats? I'll recruit a batch of say, 10 and go with whatever fits the best. Melee still?

Optima? Optimista?

Can also do a gnome here if you're okay with that, otherwise I'll make you a freak as well. Shame the Syn showed up too soon, you could have been Optimist Prime. I expect we'll be using at least one gnome a lot once the vehicle tech gets going, judging by how strong that flimsy hoverbike was and how good gnomes are with vehicles.


Well, at least I remembered to bring the mind probe along this time. Knowing how many TUs these guys have is incredibly helpful for not getting splatted by their gigantic weapons.

Speaking of which... this looks like a massive bomb. I hope we don't get to find out how strong it is before the mission ends.

Fuck, almost forgot the PCM guys can fly too, had one hovering right over our ship here.

Putting that plague bug to the test. No dice on their shields though.

Boarding action already!

Fuck me, looks like he brought some crazy bomb with him as well.

Another guy right outside our door. Good thing I remembered the motion scanner as well.

Behold, the firey hand of OGrekind!

Well, it didn't snuff him out like I'd hoped, but it seems to have left quite an impression on him. 40 TUs well spent.

OI! NO SOLICITORS!

Seems the bodyguards have severely lacking TUs. I wonder if that's even enough for a snapshot he has left there.

Doesn't matter, he goes down to the snipin' gun anyways. This thing is great!

There was an exosuit guy hovering out here too, so I tried the cobra staff on him. Went to write down that bio doesn't bypass red shields... and remembered it's blue shields we haven't uncovered, not red. Derp. Red is weak to mind and warp and EMP, none of which we can apply right now. Shame about that scourge gun, stripped their shields with emp bullets would have been awesome. I wonder if electrified weapons might unlock an EMP gun of some sort? Ooh, or an EMP melee weapon! That'd be AWESOME for captures. Fuck, I'm all hyped to play some more now.

Much like the mutant culling, we're facing a lot of action right off the bat and getting a lot of kils. Unlike the Eridians though, these guys aren't getting back up. Once I realized what could damage the shields, I started wearing them down and finishing targets with the Cobra staff, not to mention sniping anyone without shields.

Damn, this manly dude is NOT dressed for this weather. What a chad.

The bioplasma rifle might be 90% of the damage without the freshness or stun costs, but damn if this glove isn't useful for it's size. I can swap it in and out of my offhand for like 10 TUs total while still having my staff ready, instead of having to unequip the staff, then equip the rifle, both to the backpack slot for 20 TU each way. Arcing fire feels inherently more accurate too I think; even if you 'miss' the shot is probably trying to hit the ground right under or behind the dude and hits him anyways.

Probe just saved a life. Maybe multiple lives, this guy might have had some crazy rocket launcher or something. Also, fuck him for having 93 morale after watching me melt his buddies in exosuits right in front of him.

I tried a chem grenade as well actually. NOW I remembered that it's red shields, not blue.

... and yet morale went up. Okay then.

Takes a while to whittle down those shields. They recover 30 each phase, so 60 in between our turns. And they only take full damage from cutting and plasma and like... bio and daze? The sniper rifle only does half, but thankfully dishes out like ~180 damage per attack anyways. Stabbing, sadly only does 25%, so using our vibro spears to take down the shield and punch through the armour (they bypass 40% and deal armour damage besides!) is not a good option.

I'd say I should buy more cobra staves, but really, whoe else can even rock 100 voodoo power like this to make it viable? Maybe if I gave it to some catgirls as a capture weapon? It's got great stats for melee... Bugeyes could use it but lack the TUs and reactions to do it safely. Modron's stats in this suit are just so good everything is awesome on him. I should do more UAC stuff in hopes of getting more mad gnomes.

Getting kinda busy out there!

Eh, it's mostly idiots without power armour though. Normal Marsec operative with a heavy plasma rifle? Pfft. No threat to the crew of the Defiant Rat!

Woah, that's a lot of firepower near our door though... time for Luka to but the rifle down and pick up a dagger.

2 more exosuits over here. They're not lacking for hardware, that's for sure.

Another toy I remembered to bring was the rod of bliss. It makes funny sounds when I 'heal' our enemies.

Downed an exosut with the poisoned dagger. That thing is way too good for it's tech level. That's a tempting body to retrieve...

Hah! I'm wise to your tricks game. Trying to bait me into picking up the body and turning my back so you can snipe me from the air. Not this time!

The ship might be safe, but trying to finish everyone off in this cluttered terrain when they can run off to regen shields and I've got to worry about snipers and giant bombs and shit is slow going.

I believe this may be the heaviest gun we've found so far. I think the only thing I've seen that matches it is the Mammoth shotgun, which we sadly haven't found in this run. That thing was fun.

I noticed some missing health and realized that I didn't make the obvious choice to give everyone their cold weather gear before we started. The stun damage hasn't been a big deal so far, but it was still way worse than it needed to be. And the stun is getting nastier as our freshness (and therefore abiltiy to recover from stun) gets lower. Can't turtle forever. I mean, most of us can't. Luka totally could.

We took him prisoner but the fucker got back up after I patched a wound. I don't want to kill him accidentally though...

Oh, right, I can just probe him. He's got a safe enough cushion to stab a bit with the poison dagger I think. It's just barely getting some damage through on high rolls.

I was panicking about how to safely cover the door with spears for a while before I remembered these aren't zombies, I can just leave someone right at the door and they'll deflect the guns easily. Though this fucker fired his gun right into our weapon stash.

Another darwin award over here. This flying turd isn't even facing our door. Giftwrapped power armour!

Had to switch out to the bio rifle for these really far targets. Also realized another important item I forgot about: flares. Doubled my accuracy after the first shot started a fire nearby.

Hit this guy with the plasma rifle... So he took the morale damage it inflicts, but not the freshness damage? Weird. His TUs are still awfully high as well.

Welp, apparently morale that low is enough for us to see a demonstration of those fancy bombs the engineers carry. Impressive. Not quite bombard cannon levels of impressive, but hey, I would not complain.

Guild rep still, somehow, has not gone insane.

Well, we can just leave the body here. That plasma pistol is no real threat even if the Rep does wake up again.

I'm more concerned someone will now snipe the fuck out of Luka since we're not in the ship for once. We survive the round though, and spot an operative on the next turn.

This lucky fucker ate both rounds from our double tap and is still standing. With 6 wounds though, he's either going to fall asleep before his turn if any are torso wounds, or be unable to hit the broad side of a barn if they're arm wounds.

He just passed out. Our energy is low enough I decide to hunker down and recover for a few turns. We're in a good spot, with the deck of the ship able to spot for Luka.

You know, this Rod of Bliss really doesn't work well for it's intended purpose since enemies don't seems to recover stun or morale based on freshness like we do. Unless it's intended purpose is to just amuse me while we sodomize our prisoners.

Whoever is left must be in the ship. Time to send in the troops I suppose.

Actually, time to put on the winter gear. It finally occured to me I could do that, since I brought it along. It's very TU intensive though compared to moving something onto your belt.

Well, the fucker wasn't in this ship after all. And seems not at all upset about the Rep going down. Though maybe morale changes only happen on actual deaths? I should check that.

One more set of armour for the trophy case.

Only 2 left, so the game shows us mercy and reveals them.

It is at this point I realize, this is not a 'weird thingie'. This is a named gun. That means we can fire it. Well, Lenneth can't. She's wearing fucking platemail.

But Luka is even stronger and nearly naked with no inventory. LET 'ER RIP!

Err, that was perhaps a mistake. We left Luka outside and ate a grenade. We're fine though! Shields blocked it. Marsec frag grenades... maybe don't do concussive damage? Anyways, that giant laser cannon looks impressive, but it does diddly to red shields. Unless it's dishing out 400 damage hits, this is just for funsies. Cutting damage does 100% though, so I bring Lenneth out to strip the shields with a Shredder. If we bring them down, the lascannon can finish the job!

Err, the shields didn't go down as planned. Must have low rolled those shredders. Also, I can't find our poison dagger. In retrospect, the grenade we took blew it up along with our snipin' gun. So we do the only logical thing, and rush the man in glowing power armour so we can punch his shields into oblivion, setting Modron up for the Coup de Grace with the cobra staff. Don't miss!

Well, he didn't miss. But he rolled like, 60 out of 180? That's awfully shit luck from a double die roll. Like 1 in 8 odds or so? I hate doing probabilities with multiple independant dice. The point is, we barely scratched him.

Fortunately, it turns out power armour isn't great at melee combat with a fucking cyborg ninja. Who knew?

We still can't finish the bastard off with our bare hands though, so the well named Timely Bard tosses us a spare dagger to finish the job. I was tempted to throw it right at Luka but didn't want to take the risk it landed on top of rocks and made things complicated.

Impressive indeed. 10% more impressive than taking out drunken bandits wielding rusty niners, apparently. I guess it was only like, 10 guys. In power armour. With guns heavier than a grown ass man. No big deal.

Triple brave raises! Nice. I'd feel comfortable bringing those 3 to some sort of prison break now, I think. They should all be at 80-90 I think, and have melee at or near 100.

Now for the loot! 2 more plasma spitter parts, so we can actually build one... a plasma "Eliminator". That sounds nice.

Three of the god forsaken 200 lbs infinite ammo laser cannons. Damn. Haven't gotten a weapon reward that good since the fatty, I suspect. Some other minor stuff too, you know, portable mortar, baby nukes,

Solmine and Nuclear explosive charges, ship engines to replace our downed fighter, slave AI, industrial scanners, 6 power armour wrecks, a guild rep... I think the only thing we really missed out on was the engineers (we got no time for them anyways) and the bodyguard (I doubt he knows much that an exoguard doesn't.) My biggest problem now is what to do with all this glorious loot! It won't fit in my hands!

Fuckers killed my favourite gun with that grenade! Luka will have to settle for the laser cannon, I suppose. Or I could give it to an ogre. Or a gal in a hover suit. Or all three.

 

[std::namespace]

Any desired stats?

50 vpwr

 

[Azira]

Gender is just a social consctruct nowadays, isn't it? Whatever gets me into action again.

 

[lightbane]

we'll be using at least one gnome a lot once the vehicle tech gets going,

Put me as a gnome besides the bug eye if no-one else is doing it, please!

Damn, this manly dude is NOT dressed for this weather. What a chad.

It's ma'am!

Though maybe morale changes only happen on actual deaths?

Morale improves for you when you stun enemies or kill them. The latter is the only one that affects enemies' morale, I think.

 

[std::namespace]

This lucky fucker

is you

She's wearing fucking platemail.

no she isnt, she is wearing a spear in her second hand...?

 

[Jaedar]

MPN Lascannons are fun. I like the sound they make when they fire.

Checked the ANAL page for eridians to see if their refusal to surrender was listed here.

The blank line for "morale" might be it?

Hmm, stone age equipment... I assume it restricts armours as well or that's not even a challenge.

It does. Tribal/furs or naked. I think the "slather yourself in soylent" camo armor is also fine.

Fuck me. It has shields, it's faster than us so we can't escape, and it's got powerful, accurate weapons. We're fucked.

It's not faster than you. The disengage button is right there.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Fashion show.

Hmm, not exactly what I was hoping for.

I guess we don't need to make the choice right away. I wonder what the benefit of saying no is, as opposed to simply putting it off? I'm almost more curious about that, honestly. Though it might be something lame like '+200 infamy for telling them to fuck off.' The difficult sounding challenge should have a decent reward, right?

Apparently fighting the other grounded ship didn't delete this one. Is it missions that do that? Only airbbrone ships? I know it's a thing.

Ah, the fabled resource wars we were warned of years ago. We're supposed to... land ships nearby a couple times? I'm tempted to try that and see if it works or just watch it to see if it escalates... but we could use some rep so I'll just blow it out of the sky instead.

Bonus QoL for using ship loadouts: it creates a list if you don't have enough to fill the ship. Handy for making a shopping list even if you have all this crap on another ship.

Ninjas going crazy now that my interceptor is downed. Well, I should have more than just the one anyways.

Huh. I was expecting a base defense turret. This is... an 'auxialliary'? Does it spawn on the roof or something? Because having a rocket turret stuck inside my hull does not sound terribly useful. I am a fan of that armour though.

Oh, right, the guns the contact sells. They're certainly decent as laser weapons go, especially ones we can simply purchase. But the price is indeed obscene and it feels more like a crutch for players that somehow skipped most of the weapons research.

Which, to be fair, might be a valid strategy; you can't buy better armour, so maybe focusing on armour and craft tech while ignoring personal weapons is the way to go? Speaking of which...

Damn, I wish we'd gotte this earlier. I kept putting it off because we already had the predator, and between the upgrades being so incremental and the description being 'long range' I kind of assumed it'd be something lame with a giant fuel tank or something. Instead we get this ~2k jump in speed. Only missile slots means it'll be expensive to field but... that's hardly a problem right now. Queue it up!

Hmm, he's an arms dealer? Or is pretending to be, at any rate.

I do love a good mystery. Turns out we need 500 of his tokens, which can be acquired by trading in 500 of the 3 basic types. Easily doable. I want Saya though... stop burning my MA tokens!

Zombie research is such a deep rabbit hole. So many different zombies, intermediate techs, the corpses also need researching... ugh. I guess I should work on it though, a better hermit outfit or pet megazombie would be great stuff.

Hmm, it's a level B bounty hunt... from pirate straits? That's not one of our clients. Well, I'm always up for collecting some deep one corpses.

Starting position is a lot more open than I'd like. And I thought we'd have our ship for cover. Fuck.

Luckily, there's actually not too many entry points to here, so tucking the catgirls in this corner should be safe enough.

There are a LOT of humans dying on this first turn. I saw a sonic gun hit something too.

Map is, predictably, a narrow one. It's also like, 5 layers deep though, which is a pain.

Luckily it seems to be bottlenecked near us, so we can just bide time and kill them as they come if we don't care about saving the crew, which we do not.

The map is remarkably detailed. Kudos to whoever worked on this one!

Luka picked up one of their axes along the way in case we find a lobster... like this one here. Cutting damage is one of the few types they don't resist.

This place feels way too dicey. We could be attacked from either side or the elevator.

Seems the lobstermen took to hiding down in the lower levels. Sneaky cunts.

God this place is a maze. I should have brought the rats.

I did bring Lightbane, but he's a bit squishy to be down here alone so I pulled a gal over to cover him... and walked right into this fucker. No idea how lightbane didn't spot this one. Sadly, we're out of TUs, and the fucking deep one happened to have a stabbing weapon which bypasses the purple shields of the mesh armour she was wearing. RIP.

That was a bit easier than I expected honestly. I thought we'd see more sonic weapons or a new enemy type.

The loot is quite decent. Tons of ammo for our kraken, so much in fact we lack the room for all of it.

Other nice stuff too; 20 slave AI is great, we need them to make missiles or hyperwave decoders. Arcane strongbox, bunch of chips... not too shabby!

Getting real frustrating constantly losing the gals right as they're starting to get good.

Well, I researched this on the assumption it would unlock a ship that could use them. Apparently that was a mistake.

Hmm, not what I was hoping for either. Seems like it's the improved version of the sniper armour. Vastly improved, to be fair; those vision stats are spectacular. Defense is still lacking though, and sniping people from 30 tiles away won't stop them from lobbing a rocket at us or throwing a grenade the next turn. Maybe if I had the shadowbat or another ship with a great roof to snipe from we'd use this.

Whoo! This is all I'd hoped for and more. One hell of a pricetag though. Still, I've got the higher types of chips saved up already, and the lower types we can mint. Might take the rest of the month to get that raw cash together though. And I wanted to spend that cash on Saya, damnit! Glamour might be an issue, I'll need to check. We just spent a fuckton on the bounty badge iirc.

Well, here it is.

Unfortunately, most of the gals are wounded from that fucking battle in the tundra. I'm not sure what the correct number to bring is, but I'm fairly certain it's not '2'. On the flip side, the mission doesn't mention a time limit or anything, so presumably we can just wait until we're ready to go. It might even be repeatable given the description being simply of 'a prison' and us needing to gather intel here.

Well, it's a nice upgrade in armour values and resistances. Probably worth using over the legion armour. Can't wait until we unlock the red armour!

This was long overdue, honestly. I put it off because it was expensive at the time, but it really isn't any more.

Jackpot! That's gotta lead to better craft right?

Ripped off a data disk. Seems important.

Well, that's not what I expected. Liquid cool seems syn related though? I like this branch.

Another old tech. I forgot this thing is a weapon. Not that we can build it anyways. Or have a decent shadowtech ship to mount it on. Is the idea supposed to be that I just stick with the original shadowtech ships and improve their stats modually with the improved versions of these to make them competitive? Because that's dumb. The orbs are way too rare and the ships way too slow.

Space lab? This could be awesome.

Blew up a megapol cruiser first. Sadly, I discovered that unless you take the enforcers alive, and then enslave them (robbery won't even work!) you can't get their synthmuscle. Kind of a pain, but taking them alive with psi attacks is fairly doable. Maybe it'd be easier to go after mercs, who have the same tech. They're weak to bio weapons, and I do have a ton of those plague bugs... but they also have gauss tanks.

Nekomimi rocking some serious firepower.

Hmm, decently armored firing suit? I might use one or two of these for fire support.

Yeah, this has Syn usage written all over it. I think it takes 2 slots though, which sucks. I'll have to settle for some cigars. Also, I didn't know they provide passive heat protection. Totally worth equipping with plate!

Another nice reveal from a data disk! Syn tech branch now? Pretty please?

Nope. But we get another cool mission instead! Caves full of zombies, including zombie troopers? Sounds cool. Rats will be perfect for scouting here, and I can bring the catgirls to feed freshness so we can summon an army of them. Would like to have the anti-zombie weapons researched too though... But honestly, zombie troopers aren't that big a threat. And I want to see where this black mask path leads.

It's not faster than you. The disengage button is right there.

You had me believing that for a whole day! But you're wrong. When you're faster you get all the buttons. The one you're thinking of is the same icon for withdrawal, but it's merely 'evasive action' which gives a dodge bonus while you wait to die.

I keep meaning to give her combat xp but I forget to give her armour.

Was a weird ship here, only had zombies, the plain ones. But it was carrying 6 plasma guns? Rare encounter to give you early plasma guns maybe?

Another flying armour variant, boosting vision and mobility instead of armour. Probably not worth using; cybermages do the aerial scouting thing better.

This too. Weird that it wasn't an option for gals to wear before IIRC. Anyways, it seems about on par with the heavy.

But instead of a masked variant, there's a damage variant. Nice if you're willing to throw gals (or peasants) away in a fight and patch the armour.

Ooh, now that sounds decent. 'Suit' implies power armour as well I think, it's listed next to the 'loader suit.'

Annoyingly, none of this shit is usable for Syns still. Seems they only wear skintight outfits. Guess I should research lingerie.

Did... did that just happen?

Yep. Guild hostess just tanked a shot from that. Well, we know it doesn't have a minimum damage at least.

Didn't expect to see these guys on a normal ass freighter, the last one was basically undefended. he barbequeued Lenneth a bit but she'll be fine.

I've been glossing over it, but lightbane has been on most of the missions we can bring the catgirls to, and has been training his other skills (especially throwing) up a bit. He's getting decent!

Seems like nearly their entire crew ran into this corner for some reason.

Having a gal sprint through, kill 3 people and then hide in the shadows on her turn is so cartoonishly excessive. I love it.

Woo! They're hauling the good stuff!

Lots of good stuff in fact, they even had hypno panels. We caught another guild rep too.

 

[lightbane]

Map is, predictably, a narrow one. It's also like, 5 layers deep though, which is a pain.

It's the annoying cruiser from TFTD, also in XFIles. I hate that mission as it takes too long and is designed to troll you.

 

[turkishronin]

Goblin goblin or gnome?

Loknaar

 

[Jaedar]

There's a new patch version out, one of the changes might be relevant to this campaign:

- Fix: Kraken, Swordfish and Crab can now carry auxiliaries as intended

Map is, predictably, a narrow one. It's also like, 5 layers deep though, which is a pain.

It's the annoying cruiser from TFTD, also in XFIles. I hate that mission as it takes too long and is designed to troll you.

It's not even the worst mission to use that map! Still only did it once.

I wonder what the benefit of saying no is, as opposed to simply putting it off? I'm almost more curious about that, honestly. Though it might be something lame like '+200 infamy for telling them to fuck off.' The difficult sounding challenge should have a decent reward, right?

The reward is that you get to buy their shitty laser weapons, the punishment is that they send you on suicide missions. best deal!
Delaying it means delaying buying their shit.

Huh. I was expecting a base defense turret. This is... an 'auxialliary'? Does it spawn on the roof or something? Because having a rocket turret stuck inside my hull does not sound terribly useful. I am a fan of that armour though.

On some ships having an armored turret spawn at the doorway wouldn't be the worst thing.

Another old tech. I forgot this thing is a weapon. Not that we can build it anyways. Or have a decent shadowtech ship to mount it on. Is the idea supposed to be that I just stick with the original shadowtech ships and improve their stats modually with the improved versions of these to make them competitive? Because that's dumb. The orbs are way too rare and the ships way too slow.

Good question. Most of the ships also only take a single STC, so you can't even stack the different orb techs. Feels like there's an endgame STC ship that is missing. Just give me an unshielded hull with at least 4000 speed (altho 5000+ is preferable) and 4 STC slots.

Nope. But we get another cool mission instead! Caves full of zombies, including zombie troopers? Sounds cool. Rats will be perfect for scouting here, and I can bring the catgirls to feed freshness so we can summon an army of them. Would like to have the anti-zombie weapons researched too though... But honestly, zombie troopers aren't that big a threat. And I want to see where this black mask path leads.

I am jelly. The rng refused to give me this for like a full year. I emptied p much the entire tech tree...

You had me believing that for a whole day! But you're wrong. When you're faster you get all the buttons. The one you're thinking of is the same icon for withdrawal, but it's merely 'evasive action' which gives a dodge bonus while you wait to die.

In my experience, if the ship is aggressive, you get the top two buttons on the right if you are slower, you also get disengage if you are faster but still not the left buttons. If the ship isn't aggressive you get all buttons.

I am pretty certain that if you press disengage button you will disengage and escape.

Happy new year.

 

[turkishronin]

Wait I thought Star Gods declared nukes haraam or something, how did that Trader guy carry a baby nuke?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Any volunteers?

Happy new year.

I was about to say it was barely new year's eve yet, but I suppose that depends on time zones. Happy new year everyone!

On some ships having an armored turret spawn at the doorway wouldn't be the worst thing.

I'd agree if it weren't a rocket turret. Last thing I need is a turret firing a rocket into the inside of my ship. I don't trust the geometry in this game at all when it comes to things on the edge of a wall.

Shit, both the prison break and the space mission are gone already. I'm more bummed about the space one honestly; space missions in general are rare, and that seemed like a rare variant on top of that. I kind of assumed it'd stick around for at least a day or so. The sea ones stay for like 3.

Just realized this thing also costs glamour. Fuck that. That's earmarked for the casino. Actually, I really need to step up my slavery and pitfighting game to get glamour for that. Next monster hunt we're taking everything alive. Same for zombies.

It takes a zombie to kill a zombie... or something.

Starting position is this one, which is fantastic.

Seems to be the same layout as the UAC vault we scuffed? Except for some reason normal people can fit in this one and there are more gaps in the terrain. I wonder if that's designed or simply random?

Quite a bit of exploring with the rats and no enemies so far. Seems there's no horde underneath us.

You know this crowbar scales off bravery as well as strength? So with the masterblaster outfit on, we can do this:

In a single turn. God damn. Few more ogres and I could just do trench warfare on maps instead of worrying about ship layouts.

Oof. First enemy found us. Zombie troopers give zero fucks about that whole 'can't be sensed' thing. Ate a UAC shotgun to the face. Still kicking though! Also, that pain immunity is for real. Not even one point of morale loss.

More zombies this way. Lightbane is scouting around too. Also, while I thought it was just rats that only sense in their field of view, it seems to work that way for normal Sense as well. No idea what the difference is. Robots immune to rat sense maybe?

Rats once again proving to be the mightiest troop type by foiling multiple zombies in a single turn. Rat path when?

Lascannon obviously not good for a mission like this, so we brought out the tesla coil instead. Joke weapon, massive damage, bonus vs zombies, pinpoint accurate and small TU cost. I ought to make a dozen of these. Fuck, I should use them for hideout defenders too. Way better than shotguns at covering doorways and stairwells.

Speaking of electric attacks though, one just hit my rat. What the fuck? I didn't even see anything do it.

Well. That's a tad suspicious.

There's our electric attack.

Hot damn she's a boss alright.

Rat even holds her off for most of another turn

Gave her an experimental stab with the forceblade. I'd like to take her alive if possible. One more swing then punches? Or maybe the tesla?

Followup swings were just grazing, this took like, 9 more swipes. One more maybe, and then try for the stun?

...and she's dead. Fuck. I really wanted this one alive. OTOH, I really didn't want her to murder the shit out of Luka, who is weak to electric damage and I've got no idea how strong that gun arm was. In retrospect, I should have just gotten into melee with punches. Her melee stat is kinda crap, her hit rate would have been balls. Though there were other zombies to worry about too... ugh. What's done is done.

Yeah, getting shot by a gauss pistol 4 times or whatever while busy with the boss would have really sucked. I should have sent more rats!

Oh look, she's got the same book as we do!

Is this just going to be the fucking UAC vault under here? They do use the same weaponry...

Figured one of these might show up. Gotta be a bit more careful then. Those laser shotguns are no joke. Or were they plasma? Whatever.

Shields for the win!

Seems to be a bug here. When I try pathing to the bottom, it implies I can go through here but won't actually move me in this direction. Not even onto the obviously blank space below me. I assume this is related to the bug that makes the game crash.

Not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't this. I don't hate it though. Very... late 80's.

Map is taking quite a while, but I brought both herbalists. They're having a little druggie circle back here keeping freshness topped up. I think it's a net gain of 5 freshness every time they use their power efficiently, but they need to spend some TUs of stun removal as well. OTOH they don't lose freshness themselves over time, so these two could probably sustain quite a bit of freshness loss over time.

Area above the spooky blue hideout is like the bit above our base. Am I about to get swarmed? I have Lightbane nearby to spot for me... but his range is kinda shit for that.

I don't know why I'm even worried. We only take 25% daze damage, to shields or armour. We'll be fine. Unless we eat a gauss pistol. Even that shouldn't have the potential for a kill though; our stun is filled with smokes so we'll just take a nap.

Lightbane's actually the one in danger, apparently. Good thing I left the tesla coil behind for him.

Seems like some sort of zombie storage space? At least these are dead ends, so I can keep my back to a wall.

Another sentinel in the way. Is that a control room behind him?

Nothing really here, just an arcane box. These walls are weird though. Hidden passage behind them? I'll have to bring Modron over. Forceblade is shit for carving out walls apparently.

Found another entrance to the lair. Seems like it's designed so it can be placed randomly and still be accessible? Neat. But then I move Lightbane forward to scout the main room a bit and found this dude by the door.

Fuck me that's the plasma rifle! EVERYONE BACK.

Below the lair is a bit more fancy. There's a dead DILDO over there too. Heard her crying when the level started, but wasn't about to go sprinting around to find her.

Bughunt mode engages, seems we've got another one trapped somewhere? Or there's some secret room?

Dang, was hoping it was another technomancer in a panic room or something.

Still dunno how to get there. The secret passage wasn't. We can just bust through the walls and rock though. Koolaid man to the rescue!

Lightbane goes berserk while waiting for us to finish. He also friend one of those consoles. Watch the merchandise!

Apparently it was a secret room, and I was supposed to break one of the walls by the elevator to access a hidden hallway? Weird.

Huh, could have sworn there were at least two pod looking things down there...

Nice workout for lightbane.

Luckily, it seems even the corpse of the technomancer is a valuable object. Hopefully the mission is repeatable, or we can get whatever she would have revealed another way. Lots of other cool shit here too, alpha protocols, database, necronomicon... damn that's worth nearly a million. Note to self: check if that's info or an equipable weapon.

Damn, it's going to take a while to research the body too. Bet it unlocks something cool.

Hmm, probably not worth the effort. Then again, who knows. Maybe we can make a strip club if we get enough of them together.

Aww fuck. Spa is a service type. Which means I need to build a luxury spa in case it's gating some research. At least we've got the economy rolling now.

I think we've got like 4 of these now? Really hope it's building up to some cat warrior training program.

Hangar focused base is coming along. Planning to have 4 hangars here, 2 for interceptors and 2 for different dropships. Scatter some other interceptors around the world... should be able to stop all this base building nonsense soon. Maybe I'll put the spa here. I could have high refresh rate here, and ship people with major wounds elsewhere.

Fuckers have started using Ballistae! I forgot these work underwater. They're pretty crap, requiring kneeling and like all your TUs and shit to fire. But the damage potential is pretty high.

I'm very tempted every time this shows up. But we're never in a good state to tackle it. I need more rags though!

He who controls the pantsu, controls the universe!

Hmm, is this a new, even more profitable process?

I'll save you the math this time; it's not. Which is a bit disappointing. Would have been neat to set up the chemical > durathread > lingerie supply chain. But the durathread is produced so much more quickly it doesn't make sense to spend the labour here. Well, at least it solved our personal lingerie shortage.

Glabmour production is ticking along, but we're going to need more captives for it soon.

Another successful month, and that income keeps climbing.

Got this out of zombiefication. Seems like a pretty good deal overall. More HP means harder to kill, REA loss sucks but morale recovery is nice, as will be extra night vision. And... immortality? I like being immortal!

Ooh it's it's own tech. And it's already researchable. That's mighty tempting. Anyone want to volunteer as a test subject? I vote Masochist Slut, since she keeps dying so quickly anyways. Though with 50+ voodoo power she'd be better off as a weirdgal, maybe?

Now we're getting somewhere. Comparable defenses to plate armour, losing some laser and plasma in exchange for piercing and choking and electric and... it's got really nice, balanced resists. Good nightvision too. Shit evade and energy recovery though.

Oh fuck yes. I've been wishing I could bring ogres on space or sea missions for so long. This'll be our ticket for that, and probably a kickass suit of armour besides!

Hmm, if I do the 40mm, will I be able to unlock mortar and then bombard versions of this? Would be very nice if I could knock out half a map at once, including the bystanders that will otherwise suicide themselves on the nearest enemy.

Wait, Sentry class? Isn't that like..

A complete fucking pushover. Why yes, yes it is. We've got a date, boys.

Fuck, it got away while I was rearming the missiles.

We picked it up again though. Now we just wait for it to reach land...

Bingo.

Totally unrelated note, but I bought 10 freaks, and they haven't arrived. I did this like, over a week ago. What gives? Is it bugged? I have neither freak prisoners nor named freak swabbies at the base. I've got 1 freak recruited, who showed up randomly from an event. She's got decent enough stats but... only 10 bravery. So I'd like a bit more selection. I'm going to be pissed if I need to spend another 2 million to get the batch I wanted.

Anyways, if we're fighting the star gods again (and obviously, we are) I want to do it from the kraken, not the deliverator. We need that sniping platform and chokepoint entrance. So I'm shipping the interceptor to the peak, so I can ship the kraken back to Codexia.

Huh. Revenge for shooting down their craft? It didn't actually spawn a pogrom though.

Nice, we're positioned with our sniping deck facing most of the map.

Pass the turn to avoid eating plasma fire on the first round...

Why hello there beautiful. Nice to see you again. Wait, what were these fuckers weak to again? Fuck, I should have taken notes... I'll have to check the archive. It was either laser or piercing, pretty sure. Or electric. Something was bypassing their armour, and it wasn't plasma.