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

[Jaedar]

I hope they let you go with thanks, as it's an enormous space.

You can take tanks! There are no restrictions for ninja HQ. No cover from the craft though, so you can't popamole.

You probably have to unlock another title to get more stuff. You can't never have enough scientists.

Sorta no, but also having your scientists sit around and twiddle their thumbs waiting for interrogation subjects to come in feels boring.

What about the loot though?

What about it? Low tier humanists don't have any particularly valuable weapons, and I think the assassination tokens or w/e they're called are sturdy enough to survive just about any explosion.

 

[std::namespace]

fuck loot, clean screens

 

[Damned Registrations]

Nothing personnel, kid.

Nuclear laser research yields some more interesting options.

Turns out that dependecy thing is a repeatable research object, it seems.

Hmm, not exactly useful for us, but a cute reference.

This popped up out of nowhere, I suspect due to the computer core we finished building. Will be nice to have, though it almost seems obsolete already. The heavy gauss would be an exception though, that thing is bonkers.

Our first witch quest! It's certainly the scariest sounding one though.

Not being able to send gals or tanks is a major problem. We could send peasants in power armour... but we've only got one suit for them.

But fuck it, lets ride! Apparently in shitty apcs. Fuck. This is not the mission start I was looking for. Our troops are mostly loknaar with synthmuscle suits wielding shredders. Should be able to take out cyberdisks easily enough, and generally be stealthy and useful. We've got 4 catgirls in grav boots as well.

Well, she's new. Also, fuck that gun.

Since she was flying right over all our troops and seems possibly fairly squishy, I opted to try take her out. Failure. Scratch one goblin. This is going to be one of THOSE missions isn't it?

We've also got a few troops over here. Lovely.

And these ones are lit up like a xmas tree.

Oh, and the scientist bitch? Blue shields, apparently. Fucking hell. I'd love to catch her to study them, but that's not even close to an option.

Well, I did (accidentally) bring along a gnome with a chem weapon, which will bypass the shields. Not that I expect great things here.

North side is a clusterfuck. Nobody else with a heavy plasma, but lots of pistols and such. Belle is here with the armour, but she's holding a minilauncher with emp rounds. She was supposed to help catch cyberdisks, not fight 5 dudes in a melee brawl.

Our only other option to take out this scientist is bumrushing her with a catgirl but... I don't like the odds of getting there without getting shot.

I do find one of their little research labs nearby. Luckily, the first floor at least is empty, so I can pull some catgirls into here.

I take a hail marry beyond LoS at the scientist and the shot lands, but does no damage, sadly. A shame, if it'd gotten through the 500% morale hit might have turned her into an asset.

Welp, fingers crossed this doesn't turn into another gun runners type mission.

Fuck, I'd gotten a bunch of people into this room to hopefully keep them alive, but everyone got shot through the windows anyways.

Scientist went apeshit here, but thankfully she was only firing at a summoned rat.

Shit. The catgirls are probably our best units here, honestly.

Well, I found a disc at least. It's too far away to make the shot though.

Pyrite is also too far. I gave her a snuffy, but her firing is only around 100 so she can't do the crazy 300% accuracy shit yet.

Time to take this cunt out. I can't be sure, but I think stabbing is wearing blue shields down very quickly. I'll make a note. We score the kill and manage to drop down to pseudo cover, where only some distant enemies can fire at us.

Belle is still unharmed, but surrounded and those plasma weapons will eat away her armour sooner or later.

God what a clusterfuck. I'm suspecting this is one of those 'don't go to missions with restricted armour' scenarios that scared std.

Thankfully, the inside of the lab is mostly empty, and this engineer can't touch us in melee. If all else fails, we can use it as a bunker and play popamole.

Belle is using the map edge and this building as cover, but really needs to find a better hiding spot, and preferably a nice gun.

...and here I tried to have Pyrite float up a level to scout the area, and the game crashed. Shit.

Alright then, lets try that again...

Weird that her pose is mid-step. Is the bug repeatable?

Uh.... apparently not. Did not see this coming. I suppose this is the 0,0,0 coordinate or somehting?

I don't get why this is happening. There's nothing here.

Well, she can move now. I can't reload to the previous position so I guess we play it out from here.

Sadly, the Snuffy isn't really the weapon I want for this situation; it's got a close range penalty like any other sniper rifle.

Well, Pyrite was never meant to be a sniper anyways.

I feel like she deserves a nickname for this shit. 'Warper' or something. Belle was probably fucked if she didn't show up. Hopefully she makes it out alive, this corner has fuck all for cover.

Splatty is no Fatty but it gets the job done.

Seems we'll have the chance to consolidate all these forces into our makeshift bunker. This mission might not be a total catastrophe after all.

Unless the 50 bravery on the goblins I brought because they had finished basic training makes them go berserk or get mind raped. It's fine! Probably.

 

[Jaedar]

Hmm, not exactly useful for us, but a cute reference.

What is it a reference to?

God what a clusterfuck. I'm suspecting this is one of those 'don't go to missions with restricted armour' scenarios that scared std.

Welcome to lategame xpiratez I guess. This mission isn't even that bad as far as restrictions go, you get to bring any armor you like, just not tanks or non-catgirl good troop types. Getting to bring catgirls is almost cheating tbh.

Finding a scientist early on is probably a really good roll though, they're by far the hardest enemy to break morale of on this mission.

 

[Damned Registrations]

What is it a reference to?

Fate/Stay Night. The red mage is from there. The dagger is given to her as a sort of cruel joke by the villain when she was a child (it belonged to her father, whom he killed, unbeknownst to her) and it ends up being what kills him in the end, in the hands of someone else entirely.

Finding a scientist early on is probably a really good roll though, they're by far the hardest enemy to break morale of on this mission.

Yeah I was thinking that myself when I saw her. Despite the mission advice, no way they were going to surrender until that bitch was dead.

Welcome to lategame xpiratez I guess. This mission isn't even that bad as far as restrictions go, you get to bring any armor you like, just not tanks or non-catgirl good troop types. Getting to bring catgirls is almost cheating tbh.

Yeah, it was just honestly a bad matchup for our roster. I've been investing resources in vehicles for the peasants and gnomes, not power armour. I should have brought the loader suit for the gnome actually, and made another. 3 gnomes in loader suits would have been helpful, even if they would still get fucking one shot by the damned cyberdisks.

 

[Jaedar]

Yeah I was thinking that myself when I saw her. Despite the mission advice, no way they were going to surrender until that bitch was dead.

They can actually surrender, I had it happen on a campus carnage mission. But it took a lot of doing. Something like 50 kills in 10 turns, and I think the scientist was also wounded a bit.

even if they would still get fucking one shot by the damned cyberdisks.

Cyberdisks tend to be fairly passive, so if you have some spotting you can usually snipe them from outside LoS.

 

[std::namespace]

restricted armour' scenarios that scared std.

im just literally an order of magnitude more careful than you - i would just not play something like mansion at all because something might kill a veteran gal

this xenforo quoting is gReAtE!1

 

[Damned Registrations]

The thrilling conclusion!

A few turns go by, and surprisingly no enemies encounter us, despite the high density.

Eventually Belle spots a cyberdisk though! Sadly, I didn't have the emp launcher on hand to try a potshot at it.

Pyrite tries to snipe it, but her aim with a snapshot is trash, and I'm not willing to let her get reaction fired by doing a proper snipe.

We find a little cat hanging out in the warehouse up here. Strange. Surprised it lasted this long.

Enemies seem to be avoiding our bunker, so I decide to spread out some after scouting this spot with a rat. Should be a decent position to set up a crossfire and pick off randos walking around.

Now to wait for that researcher to open the door and get sliced to bits...

Fuck. Wrong door! Well, this is why I had the rat there as bait.

Apparently I should have used a tank as bait instead, because this cunt had enough time to walk in, kill the rat, and then kill our catgirl as well by sniping through the boxes. Cool. Great. Awesome.

At least our OTHER catgirl is able to put the explorer down with the splatty.

We manage to kill this researcher too, but without enough TUs left to reach cover again, because we whiffed like 3 swings at 96%.

Lots of excitement over here too, students and shit just swarming this one room for some reason.

Thankfully, nobody showed up to finish Uni off, so she gets to live. Aerial view of the area shows it's a rat's nest of tightly packed buildings. Basically total hell, considering the enemy has cyberdisks so we can't actually use those corridors as cover.

They've got a big facility over here too. I hope we don't need to bust in there and fighter cyberdisks indoors.

Few more turns slip by without consequence...

Uni is now in the next warehouse over, and I spot this fucker sneaking up on us as I try to send a goblin over to support.

Well, this is what Shredders were made for.

Motherfucker!

Good thing goblins are small targets, I guess.

I left a rat in this section to spot enemies sneaking up this way, but I suppose cyberdisks are immune to such things.

I wouldn't normally risk a shot at one of these things, but it just fired so we should be able to get a freebie off...

Well we did, but it didn't kill. Wish I knew what HP they have. We'll throw a rat out as bait in hopes it sticks around so we can finish it off.

This position is scary as fuck, but there's not really anywhere we can escape to. It's all blind corners and lightsources.

Uni gets the drop on another security thug.

I decided to move Pyrite further up to get better chances to spot/snipe discs. Very woried we'll just walk into some bullshit though.

Thankfully, this weird building was empty, giving us a safer position to use.

Oh great, I love when extra tanks show up so I can no longer tell which one is wounded and might give me a good chance to finish it off. Well, we've got a couple grenades at least, so lets try one of those?

We landed it directly under the fucker, but it didn't take it down, sadly.

However, they stuck around for grenades #2, which did the trick. Scratch one disc!

Our guard rat has been doing good work, no more surprise lasers to the back.

Ling-ling has racked up a bit of a bodycount here. I decide to grab some weaponry off them since she's lacking a melee weapon. The assault laser will do in a pinch, it's not perfect in melee but it's not hopeless either.

Finally we spot the other cyberdisk. Our accuracy is kinda shit, but we're close, can fire 12 (9?) lasers at once, and I think it's worth the risk.

It was n0ot worth the risk. In retrospect, it was retarded of me to not drop the sword first. Consequences of playing while exhausted.

Miraculously, we didn't die to the 150 power plasma cannon. I'll take it!

We actually manage to land a snipe from the far side of the map, but it still doesn't go down. Guess the enemy is sharing my RNG luck right now.

There's this obnoxious cunt in the middile of the map, but I'm reluctant to try shooting him since he might survive and return fire. It's not worth rushing to control either, since enemies can fire into it from the air.

Thanks to our new chest wound, our energy recovery is now kinda shit.

Bit more time goes by and I send someone over to patch the wound.

Enemies berserking now, that's a good sign at least.

I tried using a plasma pistol for a bit instead of the laser smg, but it's pretty shit. Maybe my rolls are just bad, but the low end plasma stuff seems to mostly hit armour, rather than hp.

Have to dance around a bit in the dark with this fucker. We manage to take him out though.

Damn, these rats are so fucking useful. I need to make more ratmeisters. They require no actual skills, so I should really just make a bunch and use them even in missions they might die.

At this point in the mission freshness is hitting 0 on the catgirls and the goblin's morale is only being held up by constant kills. If we lose a unit it could easily cause a death spiral of insanity.

Just as I'm about to considering more aggressively searching before that happens, the disc finally shows up again!

Two discs, in fact. Fuck. Was kinda hoping we only needed to kill one more.

It seemed like the one was going to steadily approach our bunker, but we lost track of both. Fuck.

Weirdly, they havne't showed up in this half of the map this entire time. Aggravating, since I brought the emp launcher specifically to deal with them.

I decide to move pyrite into this little nook. I'm not too worried about getting ambushed from the southwest any more, nobody has been through there in ages.

Figured there'd be one of these here as well. Sadly, no chance to capture, we have to put her down.

Well shit, that's just about perfect. Except even if I kill one, the other will probably turn and kill us back.

Maps like this are the most draining. Turn after turn, painstaking checking half a dozen different spots to make sure nothing has snuck up on me, counting TUs and morale and shit. One thing I especially hate is that if an enemy starts the turn in your line of sight... you don't get a warning icon unless you tab to that unit. So you can have someone specifically set to watch a sleeping enemy, forget to check their position because nothing has happened there for 12 turns and you just spent 5 minutes working on a fight elsewhere that turn... then hit end turn and get shot point blank 6 times.

At last, we've got our chance. This is basically foolproof.

Sure enough, we got the kill!

This cat is somehow still alive. What a fucking boss.

One of my scouting rats 'finds' an enemy cyberdisk while hunting down some panicking students.

Good thing they show up on motion trackers.

It takes another turn to get it into a vulnerable position, but this should work...

Shot successfully baited!

I guess that missed? Lucky rat!

Since it's out of reaction shots for the turn, it's time to unload. We'll attack until it's dead, even if it means leaving people hanging outside the bunker.

Phew. Was scared that was going to be a wipe.

Some well deserved xp.

Not nearly as much loot as I'd hoped for, but we did get this 'beauty formula.' I method to create perfect gals perhaps? Dare I hope?

Hilariously, we got the cavalier award for saving the cat.

Cost us two of our own cats however, and a pair of goblins. None were truly high level, but they're much more of a pain in the ass to train up than tanky gals, so it still sucks. I suppose we can at least recruit those catgirl warriors now, that'll help a ton...

Just one quick research finished right after the mission, but it's a neat one; improved full sized mortar. Better for firing into dark corners, and doesn't have the old mortar's problem of needing to reload each turn. Well, unless we use the ridiculous auto fire option, which does sound fun. Might have to give some of these to some ogres instead of sniper rifles. Would be nice having tanky units that can take a random shot using these instead of some squishy catgirl or peasant, or a gal that's better off abusing her TU pool.

 

[Jaedar]

Consequences of playing while exhausted.

Lack of focus is more lethal than any plasma weapon.

I completely forgot the beauty formula was a thing. The mission might actually be worth doing if it gives something good.

 

[Average Manatee]

Well, unless we use the ridiculous auto fire option, which does sound fun.

Remember about the mechanic where you can select a start point and an endpoint and autofire between them. I'd like to see the devastation this could cause.

 

[lightbane]

Yeah, don't play if you're tired. It's no excuse to fuck up a LP, darn it!

 

[std::namespace]

This cat is somehow still alive.

-10 camo on them, things are pretty stealthy

could you take a f10 3d screenshot of a rat? how wide are they

 

[Damned Registrations]

Hmm, I don't have enough for an update yet but... I'm going to post this one thing ahead of time:

Obviously it's a naked babe.

Honestly kinda surprised that didn't get censored. Anyways, by some miracle, our brainers didn't use the shit on themselves during research. So we can turn someone into a designer beauty. It's obviously a huge buff, better than any other training so far (aside from maybe weirdgal allowing for bio suit usage) but at the same time, we're far enough along I don't feel the need to make a strategic decision on this. So I'm leaving it up to you guys: who gets the formula? Ubers aren't eligible, sadly. Some characters aren't quite eligible due to lacking a few points of vpwr or HP, but I could train them up fairly easily. Prime candidates:

Orcinator (our only named goblin, would benefit a lot from the hp and str and armour)
Aziri (our only named gnome; we could zombify her as well for massive HP to make an ideal pilot, or make her into a magicienne to counter to vskl losses and make a mage...
Bellem Belle and Sister Francesca (Both already highly experienced peasants, Belle has naturally high voodoo power)
Echidna IV and Pyrite Pachyderm (Catgirls obviously benefit a lot from the durability, though Echidna is already slated as a healer she could be made into a witch perhaps?)

Edit: We could also give it to Fuzzy Milk, and either use her as the ultimate pilot or start bringing her into combat; stacking designer beauty on ace pilot would make for some silly numbers...

Maybe some more I've forgotten about. If any of them are lacking a stasis pod I'll assign one as well along with the formula (we'll have to build one... they're a bit expensive but not crazily so)

 

[lightbane]

Orcinator for the win!

 

[Azira]

Give it to either a cat or the goblin is my take on it.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Segue is a dumb looking word.

Not sure when this got picked up, but it seems we have another voodoo tool in our hands. Charm damage is both more and less useful than the standard terror attacks, being particularly useful against certain targets. The funny part is, although this is obviously meant to be used by something like a damsel or gnome with the right training... I might just stick this on Modron. His low skill is irrelevant compared to his ability to get right up close to a target, and he's got room to carry it around. Gandalf would be another decent candidate, to be fair, but then I'd have to put the lightning book elsewhere...

Our catgirl has finally earned her Swiftpaws training. Will update to new version after she gets back, which, sadly, is going to be 3 fucking weeks. Urgh. I can't even speed that up with medical facilities since it's a transfer.

Found a church terror ship and intercepted it. These guys are pretty trivial at this point, only the chryssalids are any threat and only if I'm dumb and don't cover their approach angles. In retrospect, I should have taken the Leviathan to finish this faster.

At any rate, this nicely solved or force circuitry woes. We can make cool shit again!

Last of the witches, and the last of the socializing tech, at least for now.

Report from the smuggler captain we bought. Not exactly what I'd hoped to see, and didn't lead to anything. Bah.

I'd been planning to just get a ton of jack tokens via ninja badges, but the fuckers haven't shown up this month at all! Dumped 2.5 million on him to get 250 tokens.

Huh, I guess we did do all of them after all, didn't we? This is a nice surprise.

Neat, but again, no tangible benefit from this. I looked for new training options too, nothing.

Oh? These might be nice though. Although I'm not getting my hopes up, since it seems like a questline meant to be done earlier.

Speaking of quests... we got another witch quest! However... no ubers, no vehicles or even power armour, underground, no escape again... fuck this man. I'm not running through this meatgrinder, especially when we don't have the advice for this one. I need a squad of like a dozen elite catgirls apparently, and stasis pods to bring them back when they inevitably get mulched by a shotgun from 30 tiles away.

Also, that Sicarius armour I thought would be perfect for exactly this type of mission... counts as power armour. Lame. Guess I can skip making a bunch of those then, may as well make the medisuits instead. Who knows, maybe the mission is actually a bunch of melee zombies and I can bring nuns and wipe them out... but I doubt it.

Nuclear powered craft lasers! Kinda underwhelming, actually. For reference, the basilisk cannon hits for 120, at 40% accuracy with 18 sec reload and 30 rounds. This is probably comparable against a low armoured target if we have low accuracy, but with elite pilots, low accuracy weapons are just way better. It unlocked a broadside version as well, you know, for all the 0 ships we have that can equip them.

Finally got this done. It unlocked a new ammo type, which might make them actually quite useful, but for now, I'm not going to bother when we've got things like the HVAP ammo guns.

Speaking of guns... this is why I bought the jack tokens. Finally got our white dragon contact.

Seems like a nice option for gnomes with that bravery modifier and light weight.

This thing is why I was so eager to dump tokens into gambling early on in the run. I had this thing at like, the third or fourth rank on one of my runs before? You can get it before the casino. It damages armour, and a full auto volley puts out ~1250 damage. Not in one spot mind you... but you wouldn't really want it all in one spot anyways with that much overkill. Should be a great option for fucking up a gauss tank's shields, given it'll eat a lot of the blast, and even full auto only costs 44% TUs, so we can do it without risking immediate counterfire. Alternately, I could give one of these to like 7 people and put them on the roof of the leviathan on a pogrom and laugh maniacally as their reaction fire covers the map in lead. Note to self: hire an ogre and buy one of these guns each month at various bases from now on. No skill required to make this thing clear a hallway.

Another small rifle. Not sure exactly what the use case is for this vs the Justiciar, perhaps this is better at long range? It scales off reactions rather than bravery, so it'd certainly be good in the hands of catgirls or Syns... but they can use melee. Might be good for goblins too I suppose. 3x shots from aimed is interesting, if nothing else.

More stat scaling bullets, this time with an emphasis on accuracy and range.

And this one leans into power instead. With ~150 firing it's got a respectable 75 piercing damage with some nice armour pen, and that full auto is neat, but again, this lacks the raw power of a custom snipey gun or even commando rifle, I think.

This is another neat one, a grenade launcher that needs kneeling feels more like a mortar to be honest. Some decent firepower here and we can research better ammo. Might be useful.

Haven't seen mad scribblings in a while. Sadly, it only gave us a vibro sword. Stupid brainer, we can make those already!

Next tier for white dragon. Damn, game is really hungry for those bounty tokens. I wouldn't mind, but we keep getting shitty missions instead of bounties. Maybe I should do that mutant self defense thing after all just to clear up the mission list. Fuck, I bet a bunch of tech is gated behind it too, some crap about how arming the rebels let them build us giant warships or something...

While filling my production queues, I noticed I need energy capacitors for making a tesla cannon for our ships. Well, we can't buy those. We can only pull them out of decently powerful gauss weapons. Shit. One more reason we won't be using gauss weapons much in the near future. Also kicking myself now, I've been selling some of them I'm sure because I thought they only carried junk we could buy.

And speaking of buying shit... we seem to have a new option on the black market. Honestly, it doesn't even seem that ridiculous- I'll need to make a few really dedicated workshops with factories and such cranking out currency, but this is probably doable in a year or so even with our current tech if we really dedicated to it. I'm assuming it's actually related to a rank requirement though, so I think I'll keep making weapons and armour until then, or we catch up to our own tech level. Lots of production still being used up right now by making things like bio suits and that gnome chasis and such.

 

[Jaedar]

Give the serum to a cat with mediocre voodoo power.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Of mice and gals.

First person 3D screenshots!

Ogre looking at a rat.

Rat looking back at the ogre.

Gal in Biosuit looking at Rameister.

Ratmeister looking back.

Gal in dragonfly suit looking at Medispider suit.

Looking back at dragonfly suit.

Someone else looking at the dragonfly suit from 90 degree to the right.

Looking at gal in dragonfly suit while she's ducking, with Bugeye standing behind her.

Lastly, looking out the hangar door at the Pogrom mission I'm reluctantly doing to farm some xp. The red blip is a smoothie bystander and the purple blob is the armored car about ~20 tiles away.

Kneeling bumped accuracy to 70%, and we landed every single shot till it died and then fired the remaining shots through the same spot. Accuracy in this game is weird.

Also using this mission to test out some stuff, like our new charm weapons. The wand is just straightforward stun damage via charm at a 30TU cost. The staff, however, is a lot more powerful, at least in Gandalf's hands. The seduce command at point blank has 106% accuracy minimum... so AFAIK it cannot fail, even against really strong voodoo defenses. It deals way, way more stun damage than the wand, like twice as much. And it only costs 24 TUs to fire that way.

Results on a hound, which has 50% charm resistance. Not too shabby! It can also mind control for 36 TUs, which is a lot cheaper than the Bugeye version, and it's more accurate as well! A fair tradeoff for needing direct LoS and having harsher range penalties. The staff also makes a pretty good stun baton in melee. All around, perfect for catching VIPs alive. I want more of these things, they're even better than the cobra staff.

Maria over here having a 1v1 with the armored car. It fired 3 separate volleys, landed every single bullet, and didn't even remove a point of armour. She clawed in down on her turn. Also, her claws didn't make it explode, but the Fatty made the other one explode, but I've seen laser weapons not cause stuff to explode before... that mechanic is annoyingly random.

More target practice in a different mission. I really ought to make some gas shells to rack up poisoner titles. Not to mention I could fire them right on top of most of my troops at this point.

Wow, bursts of 5 lasers at a time, it's better than I thought. Individual hit damage is quite low, but still. Sadly, didn't unlock anything new.

This was also finished. The fire rate is hilariously high, but I can't see myself using this thing unless you can fire it from your backpack or something.

Advice for the quest we just missed out on. Zombies and bats certainly sound a lot easier than what I'd feared, but 'fire and acid' sounds pretty brutal. Would it be from weapons or a terrain effect? Either way that shit is hard to resist with light armour on small units. Ratmeisters and catgirls seem like the way to go here. Give them TU reducing weapons to hold zombies at bay in choke points, scout with rats.... might work out. Note to self: make some chryssalid grenades to wipe out the vampie lord too. They shouldn't hurt catgirls, that seems like a good way to go.

Finally backtracked to research this, since it seemed skipping ahead didn't do anything for me. A shame.

Yep, that seems pretty fucking important. Mind you, part of why I was comfortable putting it off was I was expecting space freighter missions and kidnapping aurora and shit, not fucking ratmen villages. Whatever. It's on the queue now!

Finished research on a more accurate rocket launcher as well, which unlocked this stuff. Finally those fancy super magnum smart bullets I wanted to use like, 30 weapons ago. Ah well. Hopefully this line keeps going and unlocks cool stuff.

 

[Jaedar]

Yeah, lack of space freighters and campus/cruise (did you actually unlock both of those? can't remember) is a bit sad.

Tannhauser gates though. Much excite.

 

[std::namespace]

Ogre looking at a rat.

tall ass fucking rat kek

 

[Damned Registrations]

I'm here to touch ass and chew bubblegum, and the entire planet is out of bubblegum.

Hopefully this unlocks shadowrealm missions for us? I'd hoped they already were, but this one didn't have a ! before it so maybe we're still fucked...
Seems our Drakkar ship will be perfect for them at any rate, 12 crew is close to the cap. I'm curious what we can bring/use there. Maybe Shades will be useful again?

Well, it's not a mission but it's something to research at least.

Ah, rapid landscaping at a distance. Truly the most satisfying of professions.

This was sadly as disappointing as I'd feared. It has some armour pen but nothing worth using over a shredder underwater, or lasers in space.

Also too weak to use. To be fair, we could have got these ages ago if I'd focused on the smart weapons; I just didn't really expecting smart shotguns and grenade launchers to be the precursor to smart pistols.

It finally fucking showed up! Also, what the fuck is this mission? Single person, no retreat? But no equipment restrictions.... this should be fun.

Guess this is what Rail Pods are for. Only takes 6 hours to purchase, and at this point in the game the cost is trivial.

Noticed thing thing is Shadowrealm category while comparing it to cobra staff. Nice! We'll have a way to take captives when we go there.

I want to take lots of prisoners, so I settled on this loadout. Whip in case they're charm immune, axe and sunblades if all else fails, sake to recover if we get stun buildup from the charm, booze if we get wounded. I guess booze is also a less lethal weapon with a third type. Skull provides a bit more charm resistance.

Well, that's not an exciting start to the mission.

Oh jesus fuck this took forever there must be dozens of them.

Fucking hell. Dozens of enemies on a massive convoluted ship and I only have one body to search it with. This is gonna suuuuck.

Well, first thing's first, I have no idea what we're up against and don't want to get hit by 20 people out in the open at once. We'll hide indoors for a bit.

First enemy contact. He's... not even a potential threat. Bad Touch checks against 150% armour values, it'll never do anything to us.

The actual counsellors, however, have seduction. I have no idea how strong it is, but it bypasses armour, so it could potentially be a problem.

After hiding from the counselor for a bit and failing to lure her into a dark room for a good mugging, I decide to head belowdecks. Maybe most of the enemies are down there.

Fuck I hate this place.

Lot of turns go by with basically no action. At this point I'm worried we'll fail from lack of freshness despite bringing 120 freshness worth of cigars.

The problem is there's no line of sight down here, so I don't even know if I'm moving in the right direction.

Finally we bump into a counsellor. At least we've got one important captive now.

Eventually the thralls start swarming us. Like I said, they're completely harmless. I cause some overstun on a few, mostly out of curiosity if there's a title for killing people with mind damge. I'd assume so, but havne't seen it yet.

Accidentally overstunned this one, we feed her some booze to stabilize her.

Shit is really dragging on like I'd feared. At least the turns pass quick on my end with only 1 unit to manage.

Still plenty out there, and they're plenty mobile as well.

Hanging around near elevators seems like a good plan, they serve as chokepoints to random movement and you can see a fair bit from these rooms at least, and quickly check other floor's corridors.

Took about this long before enemy morale started failing. Though who knows, maybe that's thralls waking up with 0 freshness and fucked morale from being neural whipped.

Finally find some more counsellors. Also, we've 'charmed' quite a few thralls at this point. Perhaps I should have brought Slut on this mission instead?

I'm legit worried about the freshness loss now. The stun isn't an issue, but even with 120 bravery our morale is getting pretty shit, and if we break, it's over for us, as dumb as that seems when we literally can't be hurt here.

Well, I know one good cure for low morale. Time to bring out the axe!

That does the trick, but it's not long lasting, sadly. Morale penalties for low freshness are just too high.

I try busting some holes in the floor to increase movement between sections but no dice, floor is too tough.

At this point I'm desperate enough to start killing off counselors to trigger a rout on the enemy side.

Had to kill a few counsellors, but it worked in the end. 23 enemies in total, apparently. Felt like more than that.

Of that, we managed to capture 3 counsellors and a bunch of thralls. Hopefully that's all we'll need for intel.

Quite the title collection here. If we didn't want the captives this'd be a decent map to abuse for title training. Bring your weapon of choice and just murder everyone. If this shows up again I might do that, as well as bring a flight suit instead and just bomb the shit out of the ship.

Found a new title as well! Health regen ever 3rd level is crazy strong! Or it would be if we didn't have bio suits, Syns and designer beauties. That freshness drain kinda makes it not worth the trouble imo. I suppose it'd be less of an issue on a damsel or something, and you can always counter the freshness loss with some smokes, but at that point you're giving up most of your health regen and wasting some turns using them.

Was wondering if this would be more options for sale or lead to missions.

Well, 2 of those are new to us. Interesting, I didn't realize cardinals were so highly ranked; I'd assumed guild reps were on par with them. Seems we've got a good incentive to go after some guild and academy bases. Though I don't think academy HAS a base right now... We're certainly not buying these. I didn't even check the price after seeing how expensive the other merc ones were.

Apparently this just lets us make normal gauss ammo. Bah.

Interesting! I was expecting a health potion, not mind grenades. They've got a blast radius of 5. Should be quite useful both in shadowrealms and outside, though they're expensive to make. Still, the idea of chucking one of these at a squad of exo guards and killing them all at once makes me smile...

Not even that hard to make. Demon essence is a pain to get, but I assume shadowrealms will provide lots.

While transfering it over, I realize I should consolidate my other shadowrealms stuff. I knew about the sprayguns, but I wasn't expecting some of these. Those hand grenades might be really useful, as well as the pillow books. Heartgrip staff is sadly still unidentified and therefore unusable.

Thralls revealed nothing, so hopefully the 3 counsellors are more forthcoming.

First one is a bit of a dud. The info is interesting, but didn't lead to any direct unlocks.

This last bit is just bootypedia entries on the people we can bring to shadowrealms.

Shadow realms versions of outfits/races.

Interesting that we get a TU and health boost, but we lose half our innate gal armour in exchange. Also we emit light apparently and have fuckall nightvision? I guess it's like being underwater?

Voodoo power is apparently what determines how quickly freshness falls in shadowrealms. Good to know. We'd need 150 to be stable at full morale so... yeah. Assuming we had ~50 that puts us at losing ~2 freshness per turn, or 1 if we're at 66 morale, which I'd consider dangerous.

Aha! This explains why this shit is so hard to find. Naked slave soldiers get a 40 point strength buff, but they can also wear this. We don't have a suit yet, but we only need 1 more fragment to assemble one. Jaedar would be a perfect candidate with his high voodoo power. The armour also doesn't have it's previous crippling vulnerabilities like it does in the real world.

Everyone seems to have 10 armour while naked in the shadowrealms. Bugeyes get a massive time unit boost, as well as some other perks. Weakness to mind seems rough though. Sense 2 might be useful depending on the layout, if it's tunnels or buildings it'd be very nice to see through walls and floors. Note to self: Check if they get different psi powers there.

Another interesting case. A major health bonus, and enough voodoo skill to make them have really high mastery with their innate high power. Echidna would be an asset here for sure. Spot ability is probably helpful too, though I'm a bit worried about that cold weakness. Hopefully it warns us of shaowrealm weather? Or there won't be any?

Peasants get insane bonuses, making them likely outshine ubers. Will definitely be a chance for our peasants and damsels to shine.

Loknknaar get some nice bonuses too, but not really enough to make up for their poor innate stats. However...

Damn, now I really regret having lost 2 of these outfits. Or was it 3? Gah. Anyways, given that purple shields are made to shut down mind attacks and are weak to electricity and stabbing, this is probably an insanely durable unit in shadowrealms. The shield deals electric too, so it'll be amazing if enemies also have purple shields. Time to get Orcinator training up melee stats as well. Also, aside from the misfortune armour we don't actually have yet, this is the only form that has inventory space! Will be important for bringing extra grenades and pillow books or whatever.

Unsurprisingly, gnomes are amazing in the shadow realms. Aziri is going to come along for sure, and probably our other gnomes as well. I skipped over ogres, but they're pretty dull; they get almost no stat modifiers, though they do get 14 armour instead of 10, and their innate stats would be decent there. Also, actual decent nightvision! Though our lightsources are so strong it's still not going to be relevant unless I gave a gnome the nightshade augments and shit to bump that up to like 24 or something.

Lastly, Shades! Infinite freshness alone would be a huge boon here, and their lack of armour and equipment won't be a problem. They also get to use Void Palm as their melee attack apparently. Will definitely bring back a lot of dead troops as shades for our first forays into the shadowrealms, since they'll have decent stats but still be relatively expendable.

 

[Jaedar]

It finally fucking showed up! Also, what the fuck is this mission? Single person, no retreat? But no equipment restrictions.... this should be fun.

Worst mission in the game imo. Trivial enemies (it's really easy to pick armor that makes you entirely immune to their attacks), but the shit layout and relatively high morale makes it take FOREVER.

 

[lightbane]

Goddamn, they made the cruise ship mission even worse than XCF and TFTD together!

 

[Luka-boy]

Yeah, that's the mission I loved using the Drop Pod for the most. But unlike the rest of you gents I actually liked the mission. Found it a nice change of pace.

Also I wasn't expecting that form for the catgirls in the Shadowrealms but I'm not entirely surprised either

 

[std::namespace]

looks like catching provosts and a guildmasters is gonna be a pain