Thread 2117630

>OXCE?
OpenXcom is a free open-source game engine for the original 1994 X-Com: UFO Defense (aka UFO: Enemy Unknown) and 1996 X-Com: Terror from the Deep games.
OXCE extends OXC modding capabilities and is home to megamods like X-Piratez, X-Com Files, 40k ROSIGMA and more.

>Game
https://www.gog.com/en/game/xcom_ufo_defense
https://openxcom.org/downloads-milestones/

>Mods
https://mod.io/g/openxcom
https://www.moddb.com/mods/x-piratez/downloads (XPZ)
https://mod.io/g/openxcom/m/the-x-com-files (XCF)

>Resources
https://openxcom.org/forum/
https://www.ufopaedia.org/
https://xpedia.netlify.app/ (XPZ)
https://xcf.trigramreactor.net/master (XCF)

Previous thread >>2095462

>>2117472
I just give them to bugeyes

>>2117472
I don't. It's simply an outfit with big pockets to stuff full of demon skulls.

>>2117472
You can use the gentle push ability to let a gal fire and reload a mortar in a single turn.
Obviously you could just have two gals with mortars for the same rate of fire, but it's helpful if one has much better skills for it.

>>2117632
people use bugeyes?

>>2117668
I tried the bugeye path when it released and one of the transformations gives a relatively hefty SENSE. Still not nearly worth the trouble. There's a mutually exclusive transformation that gives health regen but let's just say the usefulness is questionable at best on a bugeye.

>gobbos hard carrying first year with night missions + sup pistols
no complaints here

>>2117630 (OP)
OC? In MY OP? what fever dream is this

I must admit something
I was playing x piratez for years, regularly and there were some bad updates and some terrible updates but i was always looking forward and still played them, no matter the changes or nerfs
But the inclusion of AI generated garbage killed all my will to play it, its just gone, like few last updates I didn't even bothered to download it
I guess its over for me

>>2117668
Not really, no. That's why I gave them runt outfits.
I tried filling their inventory with stat regen items and leaving them in the craft to spam fear / mc every single turn.
It works, eventually, I gess, but wasn't as fun as anticipated.

>>2118253
What's the best version of piratez in your opinion? I've messed around with it a bit but I've never done a "serious" playthrough

>>2118301
The latest, always.
There isn't any clear AI slop cutoff point, the pedia images change all the time and the oldest AI pics are like 5 years old at this point. (Complaining about them became a fad much later.)

In an ideal world AI slop wouldn't exist at all, but it is what it is. All in all the quality of the pedia is getting better over time.

>>2118301
dunno, I liked the old ninja update in all its glory(it was fun to rush stuff to be ready for when they struck)
there was that mod that replaced some of the dio stolen art with other but it worked on earlier versions
I think last time I had fun was like N5 or something
>>2118305
>oldest AI pics are like 5 years old at this point
not wanna call you the liar but its hard to believe that its true
the blatant AI generated slop appeared like 2 years ago(like the nurses) at best
if dio stayed with more cartoon style then it would be much less of the problem that that abomination he used

>>2118311
I'm not sure about to exact timeframe, but it goes back to version L, at least. I think that was 2020ish?

The way I see it, N versions drew a lot of hate because others started genning whole sets of sloppa for Dio to use + new players bandwagoning on the hate.

>>2118253
I honestly don't know wtf the retard is thinking with some of the AI replacement. I am convinced he is partially blind.
>>2118305
It definitely became way more prominent so people notice more easily so they complain more. Last time I played was in the big ninja update and some of the new pictures are a slap to the eyes. Like just put an empty placeholder instead tier bad.

>>2118317
well, one or two well generated pics put in right place weren't too bad or visible, especially when whole visuals were weird mishmash of everything from the net
the mass generated crap that was easily spotted was and still is bad
before that I honestly thought that Dio have some decent taste at least even if he was a total perv, now that illusion is gone
anyway I gonna check some older versions and see if anything weird was going on(probably were, just it was really small amount and I didn't pay much attention to this)

How does it feel now that the chickens have come home to roost? It was always a fetish mod, not even disguised just straight up fetish fuel by some megacoomer. Completely expected that he would start using AI to cheaply generate more stuff for his fetish. He never had taste or good sense because otherwise he wouldn't have made the mod in the first place.

>>2118253
some of the art wasn't great but it was infinitely better than a hepaing pile of ai dung
>>2118319
>I honestly don't know wtf the retard
the ai art is specifically for piratez instead of being "stolen" from elsewhere
i always found it funny how that fitted with the piracy theme in a meta way

>>2118390
I guess that should be quite obvious but still...
DESU I never was fan of excessive porn in it but treated it more of a joke(not exactly tasteful but a joke). Its ironic that eventually mask fallen off. No more excuses.
Funny he started doubling on more fetish fuel when he started dropping more ai crap into mod.
Oh well.
>>2118513
>some of the art wasn't great
well yeah, sure but it didn't have much impact and desu it was easier to ignore or enjoy

>>2118513
The Fallout: New Vegas screenshots were a pretty bad fit, but I still liked them over the AI

so i did some quick check of assets and in N3 it looks like there was barely any AI crap used(I spot few pictures that may be it) but over all low quality of assets make it hard to spot if at all
N5 have still little of it but its visible
N8 is starting to get a plenty
and last version N13 is full of them and plenty of old assets get replaced
kind of sad desu
>>2118513
>i always found it funny how that fitted with the piracy theme in a meta way
in general it was mix of anime, hentai, western comics, fanart, art, heavy metal, weg, erotica, game and movie screenshots and probably even some porn - it was always fun to find some assets that you could recognize

I find it very funny that "muh ai" is growing to be an even better filter than "muh tits". Keep it up.

>>2118557
The biggest filter for me was actually the disgusting doctor x. I actually consider her a beginner's trap option, but unlike one and done bullshit missions she is an entire sprawling research tree cognitohazard. Funny how she is now literally everything people complain about combining ugly AI and pathetic coomer crap.

>>2118557
desu I don't care that it was made by ai, goblins living under dio bed, chink slaves, pajet dalits or dio draw it with his dick when on drugs
its just look like shit
x piratez never had great assets but now its full of toxic sludge

>>2118557
Honestly, I'm growing tired of the AI discussion. Yet here I am, partaking in it against my better judgment...

I posted asset comparisons for a couple of AI-heavy N releases because it was interesting, but these guys make bitching and moaning about AI their whole personality.

No point talking sense to the shitposters either. It takes 10x effort to counter bullshit than to spread it. They can't even identity the sloppa that's been around for ages, they post vague bullshit about which version had what and obviously can't quantify any of those vague claims. Some retards might even say the AI art is worse than the old art when it is actually new content or a clear improvement.
With about 2.5k pedia+medal+bg images, Piratez N13 has a low single digit percentage of AI slop. Truly the end of everything.

OXCE mods have real image quality problems too, and they have nothing to do with source images: Poorly done color depth reduction and paletting.
Bootypedia is full of color banding, bad dithering and worse artifacts that could have been avoided by putting more work into the conversions but nobody seems to care about that.

>>2118592
>has a low single digit percentage of AI slop
still to much

>>2118584
newfag here, please fill me in on the doc x bullshit

>>2118602
>fallout screenshots gud
>same but made by ai REEEEEE

>>2118606
more like
>f ss bad
>ai crap - even worse

>>2118609
Can't remember hearing you bitching about fallout gurdun thoughbeit.

>>2118602
It's just deviant art tier fetish shit writing that takes itself too seriously. You see one you've seen them all. You can just ignore it or quickly get rid of her, but a newfag wouldn't know it. I have no idea why >>2118606 is so fucking buttmad though lol

>>2118612
i though whole plot was cringe and almost never done it after first time
also it was easy to ignore
if dio really wanted to generate some shit he could choose less shitty style

>>2118615
Like how am I buttmad? I laugh at people getting buttmad because muh ai.

>>2118619
retard

>>2118618
Plenty of cringe in this mod, anon. Doesn't matter one bit.
>>2118621
Cry more.

>>2118615
>>2118606
no i mean about her being a >>2118584
>beginner's trap option

>>2118624
>beginner's trap option
That appears to be a common fetish among oldcom modders. You get used to it.

>>2118624
>beginner's trap option
You think you are getting something interesting by wasting time on research, but all you are getting is someone's magical realm shit.

Just got my hands on a derelict highway star.

Love the flavor of a fast as fuck ground motorbike, even if it is slower than almost any flying ship, and i'm set to build one as soon as i have an empty hangar available, but what can i expect, gameplay wise? Apparently you need it for some gnome missions, but i don't know what those are like.

>>2118732
There are no more gnome missions (yet). You can keep one for ground races I guess, since it's fast. That's it.

I am once again asking for little people route with more gnome/lokk content. Kobolds. Chthon. Yig.

>>2118754
Did dio even get a new pc yet? Any matrix/discordfag itt?

>>2118751
bummer, i should have realized when i couldn't find anything specific in the bootypedia

>>2118755
Maybe, maybe not.
Doesn't stop me from screaming into the void.

Just more/improved underground missions would be nice. Maybe we're heading in that direction. There's a new one in N13 which is nice. Good map too, no diagonal cave bullshit like ratmen cache nor metro weirdness.

One of the early unique underbase gnome missions also needs to get its trigger changed/fixed. The only way to get it is to keep an unrecruited gnome prisoner until it triggers with a very low monthly chance.

I feel like needlessly optimizing the early game, that is from day1 to back to school. It's that part of the game that I always just wing it and despite playing through this game like a dozen times I still have no idea how the early game exactly works.
All I know is that there's no reason to rush BTS, if you rush it you end up in a situation where it unlocks one maybe two things and you're stuck in dependency hell.

>>2118592
>Honestly, I'm growing tired of the AI discussion
>but these guys make bitching and moaning about AI their whole personality
Did the last thread even have people bitching? I guess one guy mentioned it in passing in a single short post? That's your tiresome discussion and people taking it too far? Thread lasted like 30 days too.
You guys should leave your discord drama to discord.

>>2118769
the bottleneck is brainer-days to actually progress your research, not necessarily any specific tech (aside from workshop, personal armor etc)
if you want to optimize your earlygame then start refining your expansion; how quickly you can get new bases online and how quickly you can get still & mess hall & sickbay in each of them.
that in turn mostly comes down to money; cold hard cash and raw investment capital. you won't have enough to buy 7 bases with facilities and garrison, and then you won't have enough to make libary in each base, and so on

>>2118778
>garrison
it's nice that bees spawn even when the hive isn't finished

i wonder what the absolute most barebones garrison is

>>2118783
>i wonder what the absolute most barebones garrison is
My barebones setup was 15 dogs 15 peasants, peasant equipment was runt/trench gun and 1 bandage if they could carry it. It successfully defended all early game threats like nurses rats or bandits, one glowing raid and these highwaymen on quads were the hardest ones but I still won.
That trench gun melee option really fucks, even the baseline peasant can do some damage.
Could you do with even less? Probably but it's nice knowing you can just throw bodies at a problem and all of these troops are 100% expendable.

>>2118791
>>2118783
are explosive dogs still viable?

>>2118783
I run 10 slave soldiers with tommy guns, that's usually enough until I can make armored cars and put one in every base

>>2118793
Probably? Dogs can now panic but otherwise the strategy should work as usual.

>>2118793
Absolutely, one anon just recently posted a victory screen where he used them all the way
>849 hands lost

>>2118801
>>2118793
>>2118783
>can't stop thinking of each unit as a unique individual, full of hopes and dreams, deserving of life
i'm a bad captain

>>2118793
your other units take a morale hit when the dog blows up, same as if a peasant or loknar died so spamming it can result in your units panicking. otherwise dogs are still a good way to deliver dynamite, landmines etc.

>>2118557
No fuck you
It's the WRONG filter because now it's filtering ME
I DEMAND a no AI mod

>>2118910
it would probably be easy to do, just download the last pre-ai version of the mod and compare the 'pedia images between that and current version. there's going to be new techs since it's been a while, but you could probably source artwork for that in later versions.

>>2118910
it's all files in Dioxine_XPiratez/user/mods/Piratez/Resources/Pedia. Change whatever you don't want to see

>>2118910
fine, i'll start dumping my Piratez inspired ai slop, you don't have to ask me twice

>>2117760
Health regen is the way to sustainably smoke and therefore use a lot of equipment that drains freshness.

>>2118910
>I DEMAND a no AI mod
okay but all of the fetish art will be drawn by me with crayon and it will feature either hyperpregnancy or futa or both

>>2119054
OK but what's the catch?

>>2119054
please elaborate, how hyperpregnant are you talking about here

>>2119065
>>2119056
hyperpregnant penile futa birth (500 manufacturing hours required)

>>2119045
That advantage is completely moot once you have magical cakes or waters of life.
Sense on the other hand is always amazing. Except at the demon tower.

Are there a guide for playing these mods? Most of the videos are ancient and only talk about basic controls, not tactics and strategies.
I was playing piratez on and off for month, but it's constantly feels like I'm doing something wrong. Research is slow, combat is dangerous, and I don't know what to focus on.
I can edit save files to not worry about cash, but I am pretty lost.

>>2119223
There's plenty of guides and info threads for X-Piratez on the forums, it also has a whole sub board for strategy/tactics threads.
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?board=18.0

But feeling lost and confused is the intended starting experience. After all, you're a bunch of horny mutant retards larping as pirates. The setting is completely foreign and alien, 600 years in the future after OG XCOM. Everything becomes more clear to you, the player, at the same rate as it does to your crew.
Cherish the novelty of it while you can. I don't want to spoil that.

As long as you can keep your monthly scores positive to avoid gameover from score, you're going the right way. Keep investing into brainers to speed up research. Most important research topics are !marked!. Slowly accumulate wealth, knowledge, experienced soldiers and better equipment. Experiment with different weapons to find the best ones, learn which missions you can handle and when to bravely run away. Above all: Read or die!

>>2118910
i will make one
maybe, eventually

>>2119223
There's this https://pastes.io/embed/xhimi5itpf
It's a few versions old, but most of the info should still be good.
Also, if you're cheating in money, you can just fill out your brainer slots immediately. Usually being able to afford more of them is the first hurdle in a new game.

>>2119270
The issue is you never actually move beyond being confused and lost if you don't read every random bit of text, and there's a lot of fucking text.

>>2119223
You eventually get a feel for the game, but the real issue is that most piratezautists completely gloss over general tactical information:
>managing spotter/sniper mechanics
>gaming (night) vision range
>where and how to move your units
>choosing acceptable cover
Most guides instead focus on trivia like "use the green dakka to kill red chunguses" or "get more brainers" which is like, yeah no shit.

>>2119634
>"get more brainers"
You'd be surprised how many shitters go an entire in game year on the starting 3 brainers and never buy more because the upkeep scares them.

>>2119270
>it has a whole sub board for strategy/tactics threads.
I skimmed through that forum and while there was some interesting bits of info, my most pressing issues remain.
Team compositions, formations, gear. Even something as basic as picking a gun for the gal - there are so many of them and they all look the same!

>>2119634
>gloss over general tactical information
Yeah, that's exactly what I'm struggling with. It's not that I can't brute force my way through some fights - but I want to know what I'm doing, to understand when and why and what. Then I can stop cheating all the time and play the game.

>>2119652
The best thing you can do is watch a gigaautist play through some of the early game. A lot of experts aren't good at vocalizing their thought processes, so you'll just have to monkey-see-monkey-do and mimic their behavior and choices, trying to absorb the "why" of it. Pay attention to where and how they position their troops, what they bring, how they arm them, etc.

>>2119634
After accidentally writing over 2 posts worth of shit on this topic, I'll just say this:

Battlescape is too complex for guides.
You either get a guide that's wrong, or a guide that's longer than a computer science research paper and will suck all the fun out of the game if you actually read and apply it. Yes I'm too autistic to write guides.

And as is with any turn-based game, most of it is knowledge rather than skill. Map knowledge, weapon knowledge, enemy stat knowledge--stuff that you're meant to learn and unlock as you play, not read in a guide. Basic mechanical knowledge to tie them together and the intelligence or experience to apply that knowledge to make good decisions--the only part somewhat applicable to guides and surely it's already been covered many times.
Beyond that some of the most important tactical information is knowing enemy starting points, TU/movement limits and reaction fire thresholds. None of that is trivial guide/wiki fodder and it is to some extent unknowable at the start of each mission. Most players only develop a gut feeling for that stuff through extensive gameplay experience. Very few actually play turn-based games with analytical mind and forethought. And modded oldcom battles are large & complex enough that you would need very high IQ to overcome the whole "enemy unknown" factor by mentally keeping track of potential enemy moves. But it is possible. Would be hella lot easier without randomized enemy stats.

Then there's the problem of who's your target audience. A guide for someone who has never played OG XCOM would have to focus on entirely different things than a guide aimed for veterans coming from another mod, or mapmakers who know how the AI system works.

>>2119710
good answer, i was thinking something similar as i was reading the thread before getting to your post.

The game is long and varied enough that what's correct on one case would be wrong or irrelevant on another.

I think some general useful advice can be helpful. Some of these are in the pedia, but Dio is a spiteful retard and locked it behind rng
>play like a coward and always hide behind cover and try not to get shot at all, only an idiot will give a fair fight
>do not stay directly behind a corner, but 1 tile behind for maximum safety you don't want to even give a shot to the enemy
>move out take a shot and move back into cover, do not take unnecessary risk unless you have experience to know better
>watch out for windows
>learn how to spin your units around to spot enemies, enemies can be hiding in your blind spot
>destroy walls and shit to create passages for yourself
>attacking from behind is usually the most efficient, for you and your enemies
>if you start in a wide open map you can use the point where the map ends(the black void where you can't select anything) as a form of cover to at least protect your ass and just move on from there

>>2119678
Giga autist here, sometimes especially in early game I'll find myself in a situation where I cycle through all of my units and just see no good moves available and have no idea what to do. That's when I start making dumb or risky decisions and through sheer experience and thousands of hours of playtime it usually works out.
I don't think you'll ever be confidently playing this game 100% optimally all the time it's just not possible, at least in ironman.

>>2120005
>obvious
>useful for newest of newfags
>obvious
>obvious
>obvious
>newfag tip
>obvious
>newfag tip
In all fairness, the mod assumes you’ve played the base game and it is not unreasonable to assume this. It’s not a beginner-friendly mod.

>>2120235
He's right, this is all obvious if you've played any military game that's not a GSG or 4X. Not even the genre, just any game under the operational level, could even be an FPS.

Recently I've seen a topic on the openxcom forum about a feature that I wished was in the game and it actually was implemented for a long time. Capped stat being marked as a different color, it's just that by default capped stat was set to same color as base one so it didn't work.
You can go to your openxcom folder and navigate to standard>xcom1>interfaces.rul move to line 1561 or search for type:solderinfo line and replace id:numbers color2: 208 to something else, I don't know exactly how these numbers and colors work but 218 appears to be blue and it looks distinct enough.

>>2119710
>>2120005
You don't always need to cowardmaxx unless you're really terribly outgunned. The heaviest armors are often too slow to serve as effective skirmishing gear and are best placed in visible but relatively safe locations to bait the enemy into exposing themselves. Getting shot at on purpose manipulates the enemies' movements, particularly snipers who are the biggest threats, but also just random mooks milling about next to windows and such.

>>2120399
>Getting shot at on purpose manipulates the enemies' movements, particularly snipers who are the biggest threats, but also just random mooks milling about next to windows and such.
Reminds me of how I used to toggle BrutalAI in XCF just to get the fucking mission over with. Thankfully, XPZ enemies seem much more proactive.

>>2120005
These are all great.

>>2120235
You make a good point, but there's nothing really wrong with newfag tips just to get someone into the right mindset.

>>2119710
Game knowledge is a big part of the xcom formula, but wargame fundamentals still apply, and a good strategic approach reduces the need for passing knowledge checks considerably. Xcom almost uses the knowledge acquisition as a form of meta-progression in that you can win without it, but it automatically adjusts game difficulty downward the longer you spend at the same tier of content.

>>2120235
We get a surprising number of people who only ever played "new" xcom (even chimera squad is 5 years old now) and never even played vanilla so I thought going over the basics would be good.
I forget the exact mechanics, but some of these you can't do at all or don't need to in nucom.

>>2120561
They should just play the vanilla game, which teaches them all that. It's what, maybe 20 hours vs the 9001 hours of XPiratez? You can't properly appreciate a mod without having played the base game in the first place. These tips aren't even specific to Xcom in the first place, you can learn all of these just by playing some CounterStrike or Fortnite. And if someone is new to gaming in general why would they be jumping headfirst into a mod of a 30 year old game?

>>2120569
Eh, I played xenonauts before this, and 90% of my knowledge is still applicable, just with less qol.
Still, I struggle to apply real-life military formations in these kind of games and no one makes video guides for that.

>>2120569
I kinda wish everything was as obvious and easy as you say it is. I wouldn't have needed to handhold my friends through some strategy games. All of them fps veterans too. I think the UI and perspective differences just fucks with people's brains.

>>2120619
XPiratez has no military formations beyond sniper-spotter and obvious things like putting your melee and expendable guys in front and the shooty guys at the back.

>>2120628
Arranging units in lines so they can concentrate reaction fire is pretty handy.

>>2120630
You stack flying dudes in a pyramid to optimize firing

>>2120630
A line, truly that most complicated of formations...

>>2120628
It would be cool to play game with something that works well in real life.
Too bad my units wander all over the place as soon as I start the mission...

>>2120633
Sure, but you're not going to have flying armors when making a baseball bat line to lure nurses into and reaction KO them.

>>2120634
A line is basically the original military formation. Them being useful in piratez is evidence that more complex formations can find use as well. A spear line is also a great way to safely get monster hunter commendations.

>>2120637
In vanilla xcom and the saner mods (i.e. not XPiratez) optimal/safe/comfortable play is close to real life tactics. You can have bounding overwatch and your soldiers move in groups. Of course nothing in real life comes close to the additional tactic of bouncing back and forth, but that's just the nature of TU-based games.

>>2120645
>optimal/safe/comfortable play is close to real life tactics
No way lmao

XCOM TB system with its next-turn explosives in particular can never feel anything like real-life violence of action that's necessary for relatively safe trench clearing or CQB.
And besides, CQB is way too safe compared to longer engagement ranges. Simply blowing up the entire building does not carry realistic risk reduction benefit. Instead, it exposes you to immediate reaction fire from the wounded occupants lol. Unless you literally nuke them. That probably the most unrealistic thing about XCOM combat - methodical CQB is actually safer than blowing everything up.
Also there is nothing like suppressive fire which some other TB games have at least tried to simulate.

Sane XCOM gameplay might have squad movement fundamentals similar to real-life squad tactics but any verisimilitude breaks down completely when an engagement begins.
But the truth is... even in Files, the optimal/safe/comfy play is a tactical clusterfuck formation of snipers camping inside a smoke cloud. If you need to reposition you move the cloud with you. Looney tunes ass realism.

>>2120728
>methodical CQB is actually safer than blowing everything up
A bold claim for sure. I'm not going to even bother countering your arguments, they're that dumb. You know it, and I'm sure you're just saying it to generate replies.

>>2120741
It is 100% true at the point where enemies can withstand explosives and destroying the terrain only exposes you to more enemy fire. Better to focus fire enemies with powerful single shot weapons, ideally one enemy at a a time.

One of root causes is of course ridiculously sturdy scifi armor while the buildings are flimsy earth constructions all the way to wooden barns.
But it is also a systemical issue, just like how suppressive fire is not a thing at all. Units can immediately react and accurately return fire after getting shot.
Surely you are not arguing this is close to real life.

>>2120728
>Unless you literally nuke them
In Piratez at least, playing red codex is very 'safe' in that regard
You also get a lot more destructive toys early on like the artillery piece and barrel bombs with the main concern being not destroying all the goods/potential hostages

What do you guys think of the chaos saint run? I've heard that if you play your cards right it could even be beneficial compared to a standard captain's personality.

>>2120929
It's hard to track whether its beneficial because you lose out on some good events and gain some good events and comparing every codex/personality combo with Saint is impossible.

IMO it's beneficial on its own because the recruits are good, more potential missions is good (they are for peasants/lokks/cats though), and the Saint armor is really good for something you can use in space or in shadowrealm. The downside aside from the opportunity cost is that ignoring the saint missions costs like 200 or 300 points apiece, one of them (the one with zombies) is very hard and generally shouldn't be attempted.

I'd also say that if you're dumbass you should definitely choose grey codex and be a chaos saint just because dumbass really nerfs your midgame research potential hard, but grey codex unlocks astrosensorium which does a lot to fix the research problem.

>>2120728
>even in Files, the optimal/safe/comfy play is a tactical clusterfuck formation of snipers camping inside a smoke cloud

you forgot the previous step
>clear walls/vegetation/ninjas with miniguns

>>2120645
Real life tactics work in piratez. The problem is the scope of the game is so fucking big, it has everything from cavemen jungle skirmishes to combined arms urban warfare. You would need an encyclopedic knowledge of warfare tactics to identify and apply whatever tactic is most analogous to a given situation, but it would probably be effective most of the time. Spear walls, pike and shot, and artillery spotting are all effective in certain situations at the very least. Knowledge about breaching tactics would probably be very useful because buildings are often the most dangerous part of a mission.

>>2121072
lol

>>2121072
I think most experienced players probably slice corners and windows habitually without even realizing it.

>>2120929
I always do chaos saint. No downside (if you know the missions). Protip: don't bother if you plan to go aurora route.

>>2121072
>let me tell you how this simplistic TB game where you play a squad-controlling god-entity constrained to a tiny map in a vacuum is all about real life military tactics
Even combined arms? LMAO

>>2121136
1) You're not slicing shit, the way you avoid getting shot in XCOM is governed by TU% and REA, real room clearing tactics are a nonfactor.
I guess you think checking all tiles = slicing the pie. Because actually slicing the pie would be a huge waste of TU and accomplish the exact opposite of what you want: potentially expose you to more reaction fire.

2) Even IRL, CQC is a meme. It's for low-intensity collateral-averse policing operations. In a real war you just frag every enclosed space without needlessly risking your ass if you can't call fire support on it. Wrong ROE, wrong doctrine.
>B-but anon whatabout terror mis-
I DONT CARE JUST MINIGUN THE WALLS

>>2121210
this anon is right. if you're slicing the pie to do urban CQB you're piratin' wrong. put an RPG through the window and remove the structure.

>>2121210
>nooooo you need an arbitrary number of models on the map for tactics to be real
Go back to total war, retard.

>>2121212
So do you just face check every door and window in 2601 or what?

>>2121210
>It's for low-intensity collateral-averse policing operations
Almost every piratez mission is inherently collateral-averse because you typically profit more the less people die and the more loot is preserved. Bombs are expensive. Also, what's your problem with turn-based strategy games?

>the way you avoid getting shot in XCOM is governed by TU% and REA
Or cover, or smoke, or camo, or motion sensors, or good positioning, or defenses, or reaction fire, or...

>>2121270
That was said in the context of CQB room clearing and as opposed to slicing the pie.

Because actually wasting TU on slicing movements makes you more likely to get hit during your clearing shenanigans.

>>2121233
>what's your problem with turn-based strategy games?
None, isometric and turn-based is my absolute favorite.

I was just laughing at the fool who thinks battlescape in xpz is super complex and full of real life tactics. I wasn't going to give him more acknowledgement than a lol until someone else replied to him.

I wasn't insulting or belittling XCOM by stating facts.
>constrained to a tiny map in a vacuum
Just means even mentioning shit like combined arms is laughable. Or maybe he thinks flying armors are air force, totes real life tactics btw. But it's got mortars and you can like spot targets for them that's like a real tactic. That's not combined arms. And yes, indirect fire needs to be aimed... hardly a tactic. And you relay the coordinates to the fireteam via telepathy, as in real tactics. And the map is way too small, there are no actual *spotting* gameplay mechanic, you can use real sniper-spotter pair tactics.
>squad-controlling god-entity
Just means there are absolutely zero operational-tactical level communication concerns, and real life small unit tactics are built around the limits of communication. You can do so much more with what you have in a game like this.
>simplistic system
Just means real tactics often can't apply in the first place. Game lacks basic infantry combat elements like fragmentation weapons or suppressive fire. When's the last time you thought about something like enfilade/defilade? You don't because the AI doesn't move in formations, it just randomly meanders between nodes. When spacing your units, only AI grenade triggering distance matters.
Terrain and terrain damage are simplistic. This is big wrt cover and concealment + there is no realistic difference between combat in built-up area or natural terrain, so the whole point about the scope is moot. Yeah it's got a huge amount of weapons from different time periods, and they're all largely viable because it's a game balanced to be fun, not because rEaL lIfE tAcTiCs. 2000.

>>2121284
>I was just laughing at the fool who thinks battlescape in xpz is super complex and full of real life tactics. I wasn't going to give him more acknowledgement than a lol until someone else replied to him.
That's pretty immature.
>constrained to a tiny map in a vacuum
>squad-controlling god-entity
>simplistic system
All three of these also apply to chess. Are you going to claim chess is a game that doesn't involve real tactics?

>>2121323
Yeah. It serves its purpose well enough.
And yeah, it's fair to say that chess does not use real life military tactics. Chess tactics are completely different. Its highly abstract rules have next to nothing to do with real world warfare.

>>2121350
In that case I don't think you have a very developed understanding of tactics. The tools in warfare change all the time but the abstract principles stay exactly the same. Not being able to perceive that due to a lack of oscar mikes screaming tango down is a skill issue and probably an age issue.

>>2121072
>You would need an encyclopedic knowledge of warfare tactics to identify and apply whatever tactic is most analogous to a given situation
This is so funny. It reads like something Todd Howard would say lol. Honestly a very good joke post.

>>2121554
I know you just got shit on, but please try to keep the samefagging to a minimum.

>>2121554
Did you know you can climb that skyranger exit ramp?

Nobody will notice how retarded I am as long as I maintain an attitude of arrogant derisiveness.

>>2121583
Damn you were serious AND a paranoid retard too lol. Making me actually read through the autism.
I really thought you were just shitposting and not actually retarded. You didn't even mention a single concrete idea instead you just vaguepost. You even moved the goalpoast from real life military tactics to just boardgame chess tactics which aren't the same at all.
Either you are a godtier troll or the biggest retard in a while lol

>>2121585
i will not hit the escape key
i will not run, i will not flee
i will not abort nor run from danger
not to keep my vets
not to save the ranger

no soldier was meant to ever grow old
and a good captain knows 'fortune favors the bold'

>>2120728
>smoke
If real life involved teleporting randomly into the middle of a wide open space you can bet heavy use of smoke would happen too. Popping smoke to cover an advance across open space is a real thing.

>>2121925
It's not the use of smoke, it's the resulting goofy gameplay.

Reality
>wild enemy vehicle appears
>dismounts pop smoke
>contact, 12 o clock, behind smoke, open fire

XCOM
>wild enemy vehicle appears
>dismounts pop smoke
>nothing out of the ordin- *dies*

And you can even move your inconspicuous cloud of death around without anybody ever batting an eye, as seen in Real Life Tactics!

>>2121944
If we want to try and compare X-Com to real life then X-Com rounds must be very, very quick since you can only make around 3 snap shots/2 auto shots/1 aimed shot generally. Probably around 6s each like D&D, which means that the average map is cleared in under a minute or so. A certain amount of time for the enemy (which isn't necessarily military-trained) to be confused and not react well is understandable. If X-Com is deploying new smoke grenades each round and advancing through them then that's a 6s gap between deployments.

The only unusual thing is that X-Com craft land with no warning to the enemies to prepare, but if we assume that X-Com craft can't be detected except visually and is very, very fast to touch down, it can make sense. Enemies do start with full TUs and facing the craft though.

>>2121690
Seething at people smarter than you on the internet is not a personality, bro.

>>2121944
>contact, 12 o clock, behind smoke, open fire
Stupid opponents exist in real life even if they're less common. A stupid opponent doesn't magically mean the tactical concept of a portable FOV obstruction vanishes from existence.
>contact, 12 o clock, behind smoke, open fire
Nice larp you stupid zoomer.

>>2121944
Oscar Mike, spotted reddit spacing on your 6. Stay frosty, Tango.

That exchange was probably the most pathetic thing I've ever witnessed in any oxce thread.

The two tactical decisions I make in XPiratez is
1. Should I just launch ze nukes
2. Should I turtle and plink dudes like I'm playing a cover shooter

>>2121971
shh, i'm enjoying the dumbasses larping as Gorman

>>2121971
I too love being a narcissist who eagerly insists that every argument is beneath him while simultaneously being afraid to express an opinion on anything.

>>2121975
For me, it’s
>do I Unga
>or do I Bunga
If shit hits the fan or it’s something important:
>unga bunga

>>2121971
no kidding, it's like watching the navy seal copypasta play out in real time

why call this openxcom when everyone here seems to only play xpirates?

>>2122187
X-Filez gets posted a lot when there’s an update.

>>2122187
Piratez are just that much better.

>>2121272
In Xcom you generally shouldn't be full clearing rooms in the first place. IRL room clearing assumes that threats are actively hiding themselves and their tracks, and enemies in Xcom simply do not. They randomly path around leaving a bunch of open doors in their wake or make a beeline for the closest point of attack against a spotted enemy. Since enemies don't hide from you, whatever information you get strafing a doorway or a window (including from a distance) is already the statistically practical limit, because some faggot waiting in the corner or the closed closet is the outlier rather than the expectation. Surviving outlier situations is why you have your units wear armor. Also, on mission types where there's a basic assumption that you're going to have to spend some time in the interior of a large or complex building looking for threats (hooker house, church of sirius) then you bring a dog or an aye phone specifically so you don't have to deal with a bunch of shitty rooms.

>>2121944
Nobody tell this guy about spotter/sniper.

>>2122163
It's the zoomer way of life: Head empty, ego full.

>opening posts
>peeps immediately dissing bugeyes
I wasn't a believer either, but then I tried the bugeye path.
The greatest advantage of the bugeye path is instantly getting access to the bugeyes themselves.
>innate MC and panic, no need for external equipments
>failed MCs and panics still trains voodoo skill
>keep spamming MCs and panics to train inside the craft while the gals clean house
>a few months later
>???

You now have an army of dedicated psychics on Y1 while people are still struggling to build their first few on Y3. If you have abused mind control before, you'll know how cheesy it is.

>but I can't land MCs without rods, it's too weak!
Tag first with panics. Voodoo defense scales with morale (but you don't know that, huh?).

>>2122207
I don’t like bugeye path but if I get a disciple of twilight my game immediately gets five times more fun. I would like a start where that’s a given, maybe give it to the confederacy as a sort of “injun medicine man joins up” type of starting bonus.

>>2122207
I'm doing grey ayy lmao path right now and early game was bugeye in turret spot in jellyfish shooting stuff with his superior vpower or panicking and mc'ing when there was nothing good to shoot. Was smooth.

What are the most useful endings for Dr. X? Black tower and vampire?

>>2122207
It's a lot like cat path where even if the top end power isn't much, it lets you accelerate into certain types of tech pretty fast.

>>2121944
So you want the AI to blindly fire through a wall of smoke and hit nothing?

>>2122212
brb looking for art for submod

so, voodoo initiation means just wait until the event triggers, right? i've done seeking out the desert witch ages ago and it still refuses to show up

>>2122217
Experiment-X because that's the only way to get hivemind ending

>>2122194
>Nobody tell this guy about spotter/sniper.
It doesn't matter because your cloud of sniper agents pops spotters in a single shot.
The point stands firm. The AI can't recognize obvious enemy action and react at it. It has to see a hostile unit. Only ThV enemies defeat smoke cheese. And the turn 10 AI mode change only makes it more effective.
Similarly, at night time you cheese with thrown flares and enjoy shooting fish in barrel. AI doesn't react.

Somewhat ironically, Piratez is a lot better at balancing ThV/NV values and using spotters to create fun varied gameplay than Files is. Files down-to-earth nature kinda enables more unrealistic cheesing.

>>2122416
>your cloud of sniper agents pops spotters in a single shot
That's not how it usually goes for me.

>>2122420
I can only remember a single time where that happened to me in Files earlygame.
Sneaky ninjas are honestly a bigger threat, you have to keep one guy/dog patrolling the perimeter or try to catch them with minigun sweeping

>>2122234
No, I was just illustrating how it's not realistic.
I'm fine with the current simple AI and combat system that doesn't have much to do with real life tactics. Overhauling the game to be more realistic would be a fool's errand and only make it less fun.
I've not played wih Brutal OXCE but I believe these kind of changes would be even beyond its scope. Its goal isn't realism either, it's just CBT difficulty.

But for the sake of the argument, would that make it more realistic? Yes.
Suppressive fire would push the player to relocate to a less advantageous position. To seek cover instead of concealment. To a certain extent enemy fire could be drawn with smoke and that could be exploited.
In a wider sense, the AI should detect obvious enemy action and react to it instead of remaining clueless. It should be capable of targeting potential enemy positions instead of only seen units, prefering AOE and then burst weapons. At night shouldn't walk around areas illuminated by enemy action. And so on.

Recommend me a mod that has real weapons throughout the whole game. I remember XCF having real weapons at the start, but they get replaced by the default xcom starting weapons early to mid game. Pic related

>>2122431
Have you tried CTO yet?
https://mod.io/g/openxcom/m/counter-terrorist-operations#description

It's also got a weapon autism version with even more real guns.

>>2122437
Oh yeah, looks like my type of mod. Thanks.

>>2122427
Do you think players just pop smoke as anything other than a temporary measure to get into real concealment and out of the landing zone? Unless the entire map is completely open you're not going to keep doing it. And even if it was completely open continuously popping smoke would be entirely logical. But players don't do that because it would make every mission ten times longer and you'll run out of smoke unless it was a small map. But you know, a small map is inherently unrealistic, it's reasonable to expect tactics to be modified as a result.

>>2122416
>>2122427
Smoke tactics don't prescribe a specific response to the use of smoke, they prescribe that using smoke obstructs the opponent's vision and forces them to fight with obstructed vision, which is exactly what happens in game. Most of your complaints are that the real tactic of vision manipulation is too effective, not that it doesn't exist. Piratez is under no obligation to meet a simulation requirement for whatever combat state it is that you are conjuring out of thin air for tactics to be present in the game. You just don't understand what actually constitutes a tactic and are making a series of pointless and vague generalizations to compensate.

I just never use smoke. Not in vanilla, not in TFTD not in X-piratez and not in XCF and it's fine. I don't know who started the whole smoking the whole map is mandatory tactics but it's not, even on superhuman. It may be optimal but I don't care.

>>2122217
I'm on the new Zander route right now. Not the most useful but I'm really digging it lore-wise.

>>2118962
>>2118988
>>2119054
Curious, do you guys ever make your own Pedia entries? Like insert your favorite waifu and try to make it fit into X-Com lore, like those dossiers in Files. Also, I'm surprised Piratez doesn't have dossiers full of women with their images ripped from anime and hentai.

>>2123256
Nah, I checked how to do it just for curiosity but I really don't care about the pics on the pedia, it's not like I check on things there a lot.
I did consider replacing the tits out in the HIDDEN MOVEMENT screens though

>>2123316
>I really don't care about the pics on the pedia
All this screaming about AI and finally someone said the truth.
All it took was being asked to do something about it.

>>2119634
My big problem with cover is how inconsistent it is. Like, I'll be behind a wall and somebody I can't see can still get shots off on me from somewhere on the other side of it. It makes windows deathtraps.

>>2123405
For XPZ keep in mind that ubers are like 8 foot tall amazons. They are bigger targets than smaller units and have troubles with their view being obstructed by things like ceilings, and a window will hide very little of their body. On the other hand a lokk or a gnome in non-large armor can crouch behind most windows and be unseen from enemies who are on the same Z-level.

>>2123335
My problem with it is that most of it is trash and objectively worse than what was there before.

>>2123748
my problem with it is that i hate disgusting clankers and i wish them all a horrible day

Are reinforcements a limited number of waves or can they just keep coming endlessly?

>>2124134
They are never unlimited. They come from invisible, indestructible grenades primed to go off on specific turns that spawn a unit.

>>2124169
I always wondered what happened if there was a unit on those things but have never bothered to actually find out.

>>2124239
I assume if you use the ratmeister outfit that can summon rats and target it on an occupied square that the mechanics are the same, which is that the unit gets spawned on a nearby occupied square.

>>2124397
This is how you get Jeff Goldblum rats.

When you transform into a chort or a shade, does the transformed hand get forced down to the new stat caps or does she overcap them like a freak?

>>2124428
Overcap, but keep in mind it clears a lot of stat bonuses so only look at base stats since that's what matters.

Depending on what you want doing it to a non-hand could be optimal.

>feb '01 military police base defense
>mar 01 cunts on quadbikes base defense
promising start

>>2122493
honestly I don't think that even works anymore and it's been becoming increasingly difficult to disembark from the Osprey without eating shit

>>2123335
eh, I already replaced some shit, even before dio go ai crazy
its just when dio go on ai spreading spree i just kind of lost will to play at all
when(if ) i recover some will to play I will replace more of it

>>2124667
how did you piss them off so quickly

>>2124932
Same. Next update I’ll probably spend more time on my replacement project and personal mod.

>>2125319
Now might be the best time to undertake any modding projects, since development is temporarily frozen.

Do we have any news of Dio's PC situation yet?

>>2124673
I assume you're playing Xcom Files? It's just badly designed since every enemy has scout meaning seeing or shooting a single person has the whole map nuking you on turn 1.

>>2125323
I’m not a discord user. I assume he’s fine unless he got hauled off for some reason.

>>2125342
>>2125323
I misinterpreted that. If there is, I’m not aware.

>>2120300
I didn't even know I wanted this. Neat.

>>2125324
I wish there was a way to turn the shitty spotter/sniper system off, I really like xcf otherwise.

I dont understand how anyone thought a system like that that completely invalidates camouflage and smoke mechanics was a good idea.

>>2125528
It doesn't invalidate them. SENSE invalidates camo, ThV invalidates smoke.

IMO the only gameplay flaw the spotter system has is not communicating to the player which units are spotted. When you have that knowledge, you can counterplay it and the experience is more fun and engaging. Experienced players can already do this without any indicators, but I see no harm in making the mechanic more transparent and easier to understand.

>>2125528
>I wish there was a way to turn the shitty spotter/sniper system off
You can change how the on-hit spotting works
https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Ruleset_Reference_Nightly_(OpenXcom)
extendedSpotOnHitForSniping

>>2125538
It does basically invalidate them because enemies with 1/2 as much accuracy still murder your whole team if they are using explosives.

>>2125463
I didn’t even know you had to manually edit it. It’s always been like that in my games, I dunno if it’s a setting in options or what but I thought that was just how it is now.

>>2125563
Spread out/send decoys. This is the way.

Am I missing something or is orb gear kind of bad?

>>2125605
Doesn't matter for XCF. You still have to shoot with the rest of your squad, which means sniper will reveal them. And even if it doesn't the enemy will have like 20 enemies per map with either grenades or grenade launchers who will target your front liner with a 10% accuracy attack and then miss and hit your entire team.

>>2125623
No lol. Some of it is really awful but most is pretty good to gamebreaking

Doomed Vest: Absolutely OP end game protection, almost lets you tank plasma reliably even after your shields are gone. Arguably makes Red codex the strongest late game path along with the unique red armor, you can just wade through levels and not care about taking hits.

Heartgrip Staff: Literally just psi-rape anything through walls with massive Bio damage that also ignores all armor (sadly not shields)

Staff of Explosions: Requires 144 freshness per use, which is hard to get with gals. But with my best gal it does 587-1762 damage, so... that's pretty neat. Kind of a gimmick but if you're willing to smoke a lot between uses its one of those silly weapons that can just take out half a ship that you don't feel like fighting through.

Hellgun: outdamages heavy plasma with good voodoo stats, can be shot 18x in a single turn. If you wanted the best "standard" universal pew pew loadout then you'd put this on everyone.

Rest of the guns are pretty good. Keep in mind that all ammoless weapons can be used with a leech item in the offhand (or with one of the armors that has inherent leech) to regen HP/energy, and morale naturally recovers if you're killing lots of things. So a lot of the costs can be managed and you can even heal hundreds of HP if you get a good turn with one of these weapons. I haven't really used the melee weapons because melee is just risky, but I haven't actually reached the end game with red codex so with red armor + doomed vest you probably just run around as an invincible asshole one shotting everything.

>>2125555
I wish I knew this before manually setting every enemy to spotter: 0 in the unit config file. That link is a good resource. Thank you anon.

>>2125655
Grey needs some sort of unit/slave/whatever that can pump up freshness real quick.

>>2125670
Universal refresher can do that reasonably quickly.

>>2125674
Yeah, but something earlier. Like pleasure slaves or someshit, all they do is refresh. Would give squires a purpose.

>>2125317
i'm guessing theban start, i also got some crazy early base assaults

>>2125700
Generally speaking you don't need it earlier. There's not much freshness draining equipment, not many instances of long multi-part missions, and sporadic smoking covers the rest and fits in a 1x1 slot

>>2125317
hell if i know, i started in scotland, i don't remember fighting anyone bar academy
Dioooooo

>>2125655
Staff of explosion needs a Megumin armor that sets max freshness to 144.

>>2125623
Meridian with mind ammo is neat

>>2125923
Explosion needs to be bigger too

>>2125923
Chort transformation kind of does that, and grants regen so you can just smoke cigars between shots with impunity.

>>2125670
Freshness is an anti-turtling mechanic, you barely need to manage freshness if you aren't turtling.
You are supposed to be playing angry violent amazonian mutants larping as pirates, stop playing like a coward

>>2125670
Eat apples

>>2126092
I hate waiting to use magic powers though

>>2126092
if game not turtle then why turtle shaped

>>2126496
Because it’s turtles all the way down.

>>2125923
Vampiress X has 222 freshness and can make very, very big explosions (900 damage to be precise) but she has half accuracy and very annoying micro (only one free hand and no inventory so she has to drop her staff and pick up cigars from the ground to smoke them). But, since she's an auxiliary, she regains her freshness for free in every fight.

In theory you might be able to create a shade that's even stronger than Vampiress X (due to being able to stack condemnations), has access to two hands, and with Vampy armor leeches HP, TUs, Energy, Morale, and Stun recovery with every shot of the staff, meaning a repetitive caster who uses cigars as ammo.

>>2126749
I don't think 100 power and 144 freshness is possible without a strong voodoo boosting armor. A very, very good damsel shade might be able to grind to 70-80 power, but you can also just have a living caster with an actual voodoo armor dual wield the staff with a leech weapon.

>>2126783
Don't peasants by default have a very high freshness cap

>act as the aggressor
>get immediately raped by everyone else after the initial engagement goes sour
How 2 prevent this?

imagine nerfing the little bird of all things
>you vill use ze necroplanes and airballs until 2602 and you vill like it
an elaborate troll disguised as a colossal waste of time

>>2126873
They do but their max power of 70 means that you probably won't be getting to 100 power on them without ravenclaw robe, which is gal route exclusive and blocks one hand. If you're going to go so far to spam explosion then why not just research Destructor to spam Ball of Annihilation? It's basically plasma Explosion.

>>2127063
>empty the entire minigun at a flesh hunt
>miss miss miss no damage miss miss miss no damage no damage
>lol no ammo eat shit

WHAT WAS THE POINT

>>2127063
Just use Angry Bird or Gunwagon, what's the issue? It's not like progression is actually slowed, its simply that the freebie heli you get isn't as good as the interceptors that cost a paltry $50k or w/e.

>>2127170
Roving Bands have 20 avoid and I'm pretty sure accuracy is additive so low accuracy guns are a bad choice unless you have very good pilots. Plus why are you shooting at a flesh hunt instead of following it in your gunwagon until it lands?

>>2126882
Aggression is all about how hard you can specialize in protection, because the more you push the more you're going to take random shots/grenades from blind spots. Aggression is also generally pretty bad because there's no way to protect against grenades/rockets without being over-teched for the encounter. Hence, the closest thing to actual aggression in xcom is blowing up the whole map (which wastes all your loot) or making really efficient skirmishers.

>>2127205
I think basically anything takes hundreds of ammo to shoot down with your starting little bird. Poor soldier accuracy probably contributes but I've never been able to shoot down more than 2 things on the current patch until its time to sell it and buy a gunwagon with nitro and piratin' cannons.

>>2127257
You can get some use out of bird if you get lucky and loot hmg + ammo from whatever you manage to shoot down with that shitty minigun.

>>2127257
If you sell it right away you can use the minigun together with your cannon on a gunwagon. If you're lucky you can get a wasteland trouble mission that always gives you a rotogun plus some ammo, sometimes even two of them. Bandit cars have negative evade so you're pretty likely to be able to shoot a couple down with just the minigun and get some other weapons from them. I think the only early armored craft is the sandcrawler and those aren't that common or valuable in the first place.

Alternatively you can go cats4life and buy a firefox in like may or june, which comes with a free gun comparable to a gauss cannon.

>>2127263
Then you get unlucky on the next craft and run out of ammo for your HMG.

Now that I think about it, the best strat is probably just to repair the little bird and immediately sell it. A fully loaded minigun is easily your strongest mid to long range weapon for a few months. Use it on things like security armor or better enemies that can annoyingly tank way too many shots from early game rifles. Use have to hope you keep rolling well on the partial ammo box recovery check.

>>2127287
The trick to not running out of HMG/minigun ammo is to realize that anything other than wartrucks, couriers, and hoverpods is a waste of HMG/minigun ammo. Cars are for rotoguns/magma cannons and sandcrawlers should just be ignored until you have an actual craft weapon.

>>2127369
You can take out almost everything with just a rotogun and the cannon, but you need about 10% pilot accuracy and to have the airbus tank so there's enough time for the cannon to get through all its shots.

I play on JS and edit my original starting hands to have insanely godlike health so I can roleplay the original band being cartoon heroes going on wacky misadventures and all the rest of the crew are like guest stars and I will not stop.

>>2127418
What do you do when they get put in sickbay for 500 days?

>>2127433
Then they’re in sickbay for 500 days. In hindsight, I should have edited the condemnation to give more armor.

>>2127418
>>2127440
I’ve wanted to try a red/gold run with OP original hands, but never got around to it. Just for caveman unga bunga power fantasy fun.

>>2127396
>intercepting with airbus escort
...huh. creative, anon
>>2127257
>get little bird
>1-2 intercepts before running out of ammo
>get gunwagon + cannon
>can't hit broad side of a barn
>half my runts making cannonballs or wait 3 months for Defend the Fort to get more ammo because fuck you
>get LMG/HMG
>1-2 intercepts before running out of ammo
AIIEEEEE

>>2127518
Reminder that if you don't manage to drop a sandcrawler before they stop spawning (and get a live ghoul) you will not unlock organ traffickers unless you get lucky with pogrom mission spawn or super lucky with rare interrogation.

Is there an extended music mod for x-piratez? The tracks are getting dull.

>>2127518
You should be able to make a 2nd cannon and buy infinite cannonballs. That should be enough to shoot down most things that aren't sandcrawlers

>>2127554
There's like 3 music mods and I've also seen a mod that changes gun sounds.

>>2127563
Spoonfeed? They aren't on the site and I'm not a discord user. Jewgle isn't helping much.

>>2127566
Take your pick
https://mod.io/g/openxcom?_q=music
https://www.moddb.com/mods/x-piratez/downloads/vdbombers-music-pack-for-xpiratez
https://mod.io/g/openxcom/m/x-piratez-high-quality-sounds-unofficial

>>2127572
My smooth brain didn't even think to check those two sites. Thank you. Been playing too much X-Files maybe.

>>2127518
The main upside of the minigun is it has very fast rate of fire, so you can leave it turned off until you've used all but a couple cannon shots and then quickly finish off the enemy with minigun shots before you take much more damage. Bandits have negative evasion so if you have a +10% pirate cannon it will usually only take 20 or so minigun shots to get a kill. At that rate of expenditure even bandit cars are a pretty viable way to find craft weapons and ammo.

Though I do think I'd rather just hope for a magma cannon, rotogun, or pogrom LMG to appear than spend all that research on the bird. Getting some extra early HMGs and couriers is nice, but not THAT nice.

>>2127559
The cannon sucks ass so even with 2 of them you're not going to shoot much down, but buying cannonballs is already in the game. Besides you don't get a craft with 2 hand weapons until angry bird IIRC.

>>2127586
It's also above the curve in accuracy so it's very good at shooting down hoverpods compared to most of the early craft weapons.

Testing out the music mods and of course the game would give me S tier names

>the power armor from rogue fields is not actually tied to starting there
>you can just start somewhere else, dodge the 500k govt fine, and establish a hideout there in january to get the power armor for free
>the blackmarch gnomes are the same way, if you start a hideout there in february then you still get a free gnome in march and april

>>2127559
wait you can buy cannonballs now
motherfucker
this changes everything
t. illiterate retard

>>2127633
Building a base in january sounds like a pretty high crackdown risk because you probably won't even have time to get a garrison. It also means possibly no extra brainers that month.

>>2127650
Can you get automatic crackdowns while at rank 1 before choosing a path? You shouldn't get anything as retaliation for shootdowns/missions outside your home continent.

Feb is generally slightly suboptimal to hire brainers for since its 28 days, I normally throw money at 3x plantations and then hire a fat stack in April instead. The power armor is strong enough that getting it anywhere in the first few months would be pretty imbalancing.

>>2127633
I thought the gnomes from blackmarch were just a set % like 20% chance of getting one per month.

In any case blackmarch is more for the great position in the most trafficked area + the BLACKMARCH contact which opens a lot of important early game stuff to catapult you ahead. The gnomes are pretty useless until you get advanced armor or tanks.

How many years is a “normal” successful run on JS?

>>2127673
There's a script called "instant bandit crackdowns" that has a 23% chance to fire every month starting with feb, so making a hideout in january is a basically rolling against a 1 in 8 that the base in question gets crackdowned the very next month. It's not likely, but it's likely enough to feel cheesy to bet on your run not being instantly ruined. Plus, 700k to settle rogue fields is a pretty massive economic setback. Usually you can buy 2 brainers immediately at the start of the game by selling the security corridors and the loot from the first academy search, 700k on JS for example would probably be close to everything you get for the whole month.

>always considered shambler hunt to be an easy mission
>go to higher difficulty
>can never ever down the shamblers before they beeline across the map to you and hospitalize one of my gals for a month with a single punch
Should I be using spears for the TU disruption on reaction or something?

>>2127759
How about molotovs?

Since I couldn't decide what the fuck do I want from a piratez run I just decided to revisit vanilla. Sectoids on superhuman decided to attack my base in first month and I grabbed a sectoid leader alive, this is going to be a good run I can tell already.

Real question for Piratez:
Should I three hangar on first base or three hangar on second or third base and just use first base for making Chateau and doing research after I can offload a lot of the sortie responsibilities to another base?

>>2127886
I usually go to three hangars early on and then downsize to two or even one when other bases are built up.

>>2127891
So basically it depends a lot probably on
1. The difficulty I'm playing on (not Jack Sparrow because I'm bad at the game and do not enjoy having my balls beaten with a bat.).
2. If my run has been blessed with good luck (or me being a psychic God).

However, the strategy you mentioned seems sound for most cases. I think I will employ it. I appreciate your time and insight.

>>2127886
I prefer prisons in first base instead of third hangar because there will be a lot of captives coming in. Early airgame is dogshit anyway. Now if there would be 1x1 hangar for cars and shit stat would be a different thing.

>>2127901
>stat
*that

>>2127901
That is the dream. I've been caught up in real life for a while: didn't they figure out a fix for the hard coding of hangars?
Or was that just in OXCE?

I keep getting the 'unspecified' error for extracting the latest release of xpiratez.

>>2127930
Disregard. 7zip was able to do it. Windows innate unzipper is just a piece of shit I guess.

>>2127933
>Windows innate unzipper is just a piece of shit
Yeah, never use that if you can help it.

>>2127934
It's worked before. Ah well.

How does defense value for base defense structures work? Is it literally just 1:1 with damageCapacity on the enemy ufo?

>>2127963
Its random 50-150% damage I think

>>2127886
I fairly regularly go to one hanger in the first base, once I've a decent amount of research and manufacturing facilities. You very nearly have to focus it on research, given the presence of the old earth lab, so pivoting to that once you have other bases up makes sense. Leaving it at two's perfectly fine while you're developing up other bases, but I can't see a circumstance I'd want a third hanger there.

I just noticed that applying training doesn't kick you out of voodoo training anymore. When did that happen?

>>2127991
Hopefully it's a bug Dio won't catch.

>>2127991
>>2127996
Is it even a bug? VooDoo training is just staring at goats and subjecting yourself to hypno-panels. You don't need to be healthy for that.

>>2128019
Maybe it was a bug how it worked before. I mean it doesn't make sense that getting shot and being put in a sickbay for a month didn't get you out of voodoo training but doing basic gun training did. I always hated it.

>>2127996
If its a bug with anything then its a bug with OXCE, not Dio's work. I think normal training working with psi training is intended though.

>>2127989
>>2127886
Third hanger early is a good idea. You really want:

- interceptor
- global transport, fast enough to hit multiple missions
- big transport
- transport for sea missions (and much later space missions)

Early game you can't get big + global transport + sea transport so a third hangar lets you do more or more difficult missions. Later one with shadowcraft or other more advanced craft you can settle down on one transport, all of your interceptors can go to a dedicated interceptor base since they'll have global coverage, and you can rotate specialist craft in for stuff like undercover missions, solo missions or space missions if needed (you need a spare hangar on another base to hold your normal transport in the meantime).

Building hangars is not a bad idea even if you later take them down. $200k for 10 workshop is $20k per runt. Extractors are 21.25k per runt, workshops 26.6k. So it's literally the cheapest way to expand your manufacturing in the early game, just space inefficient.

Also keep in mind you can build hangars over plantations for a $100k refund and to make them build very quickly.

>>2127673
Blackmarch gives you a guaranteed gnome in march and april and then it drops to 7% may and onward. But I do agree the gnomes aren't very useful, especially that early in the game. Plus you can always just make a base in time for the april gnome if you just want a guaranteed one for research/gnome tech.

>>2127586
The bird is a pretty small research detour. All the requisite tech except big bird are must-haves anyway, so we're talking a 1 week brainer commitment and a 1 week runt commitment in a phase of the game where runts have nothing to do anyway, to secure some extremely easy and lucrative missions. If you skip it and don't roll any craft weapon opportunities in the first couple months then you're just fucked and it's a massive setback.

>>2128274
Piratin' cannon is guaranteed

I forgot how short the vanilla game is, one day and it's over, the megamods sure have spoiled me. I wonder how could I have played vanilla for weeks at a time when I was younger.
Here are some stats if you care.

>>2128288
>alien invasion is repelled in 9 months
lol

>>2128216
Gnomes can drop sci books as one of the researchs right and they're in to being tortured by brainers so they don't leave after being researched, right?

>>2128356
Yes and yes. But the gnome you get as a research subject and the gnome you get as a soldier are different, and the Blackmarch one is the latter.

>>2128359
Blackmarch gives you prisoner gnomes, which are researchable. I'm pretty sure event recruits are always given in prison form.

Also even if you don't want them, gnomes can be turned into brainers, so starting a 2nd base in blackmarch is pretty much always a good call.

>>2128376
I make them be pistoleros.

>>2128216
>But I do agree the gnomes aren't very useful, especially that early in the game
gnomes with camo paint are actually invisible at night to humans, I've had highwaymen walk up right next to them and not see

>>2128426
Loks are too, except with 18 NV instead of 12 and you can hire a hundred of them if you like.

>>2128426
Night camo 7 is technically visible within 2m, but that's so close to the enemy that unless they're using a melee weapon they'll probably just step away to disengage and then immediately forget you were there.

>>2128436
>>2128426
dunno why so much advice shits on night missions when a few painted gobbos with pistols can clean year one easy

>>2128438
>step away to disengage and then immediately forget you were there
jej so that explains it

>>2128448
Night camo can go south very fast if you press end turn on a map with offscreen zombies. Or just spend too many TUs in the open on a map with offscreen zombies.

>>2128288
Congratulations!

>>2128438
>bandit innawoods
>hear an aircar land nearby
>grab your rusty niner and go investigate
>it's dark, can't see shit
>suddenly bump into a naked child painted with camouflage patterns
>scramble back to get a clear shot
>she's gone
>just a dark forest
>was she ever there?

>>2128453
>zombies
once i know it's zombies, i'm evacd

>>2128476
>>2128426
>map is full of spotters and snipers
what a load of fuck

>>2128502
Just whip out your shotties

Is the Lunge attack that some 2-handers get usable for reactions?

>>2128663
No that counts as aimed shot.

>>2128376
The downside of blackmarch is you're not putting your base in Romanica for the free ol coins/zombie missions.

>>2128584
The y1 spotters/snipers are humanists/govt/spartans and I'd never send the stealth squad against them. Drifters are the only real danger and you can just prio them first (they also have dogshit aim and are very unlikely to hit small targets)

>>2128732
Narlocks as well. However, humanists aren't that bad because all the early humanists are 9NV and have bad armor, so assassination tactics work well on them.

Every ratman is also a spotter and the brigands are snipers. Plus they all have high NV.

>>2128453
>zombies
If your molotovs reveal any chrysallids, you should hit the evac button.

>>2128453
Any map with dogs or academy drones becomes an immediate evac if it's replaced by zombies as they are either replaced by funky zombies or chryssalids
Not worth it! Just fuckin bail

>>2127906
Only in BOXCE.
OXCE lets you define 1x1 hangars and multi-craft hangars, but it won't support different hangar types, so mainline oxce megamods haven't adopted better hangar content yet.

To be honest, if this goes on it's just a matter of time before BOXCE becomes the new main engine just like OXCE overtook OXC. You can already turn all the Brutal AI features off in it.

>>2128794
I usually have a pair of gals with the barbaric axe or pike and it works just fine against stopping zombies/lids

>>2128817
Also a lot of the brutal toggles are nice combinations of difficulty sliders depending on the mod, and I do like that it makes the AI stop being closet camping faggots.

>>2128794
>>2128835
What's dangerous about night zombies isn't actually zombies/lids, it's the singers and strixes that will shoot you with AOEs on the first turn you end outside the ship because you didn't scout the first zombie in time. Camo units usually have no gas/fire protection.

>>2128851
Even if they did, being set on fire can still make you panic.

>>2128817
What's BOXCE?

>>2128917
I'm gonna assume it's the OXCE packaged with Brutal AI, or Brutal OXCE.

>>2128917
CE edition of a BOX.
Brutal-OXCE.

>>2128918
>>2128919
It's a separate mod then? I dropped off from staying up to do date a long time, sometime when they altered the engine in such a way that old mods no longer work without repackaging them.

>>2128920
Brutal OXCE is its own mod (both an add on for OXCE and its own standalone)
Short version: AI becomes more aggressive and you can put in settings like 'will fire at positions it saw you', 'will move to pursue you', etc.

>>2117630 (OP)
that pic is cute, who made it?

>>2128964
I'll have to try it out

Where do i report crashes on the forums?

>>2129014
Most mods have a bug report thread go post there.

>>2128918
>>2128836
I used to flip on BAI in XCF just to get the fucking mission over with. Getting rushed by 20+ glowniggers at once is fun too sometimes.

>>2128759
i just shot them with bows

>flesh hunt
>fuckhuge map
>the house with the castaways is on the opposite side
>they all get murdered by boathooks in 2 turns

>>2129370
If you can do it at night there's a much better chance of them living for a few turns.

>>2128375
Huh. So rush an outpost in blackmarch.

>>2129475
Yeah, it's also nice that you can wait all the way until march for the base and still get at least 1. The opportunity cost of establishing a hideout in feb isn't insignificant, since you're probably not going to have money or research for plantations and a garrison yet.

When making new bases on JS, will they also get targeted by missile strikes?

>>2129677
Yes

>>2129677
Yes, strikes will be targetted and assigned at the beginning of the month.

There's no reason to assemble the bird when you can just make a second cannon in the same amount of time or less while researching only essential tech. You were already getting survival for monster hunting, violence for bounty hunting, and weirdness to assemble the bird anyway. Smithing+ballistics combined are less research than the Assembling The Bird, which still needs Big Bird. The cannon also doesn't run out of ammo and doesn't need as many runt hours to manufacture.

It's been a bit since I've played and I can't find the option to toggle scroll wheel buying/selling in increments of ten. Just research and manufacturing. Where is it located?

>>2129822
Advanced -> OXC (not OXCE, just OXC), -> Change Values with Mouse Wheel

I always forget and spend 30 minutes looking through OXCE whenever I install on new hardware but OXC is where it is

>>2129824
Thanks

>>2127633
>>2129535
>rush a base
>it's april
>no gnomes
I guess this is only a low difficulty thing?

>>2130008
Difficulty doesn't matter. The event will 100% trigger sometime during month 2 and 3 if you had a base there when the month started. (Note that the month ordinal starts from 0)

But maybe your base isn't actually in Blackmarch? The actual shapes of the countries and regions on the map are very simple, they don't perfectly follow the visible country borders.

>>2130021
>maybe your base isn't actually in Blackmarch?
picrelated

>>2130022
GAY

>>2130023
>>2130022
Goddamnit.

>>2130027
Oof, tough luck.
If I were you I'd just load a save from previous month and move the the base.

>>2129818
so how bad little bird get nerfed?
that its not worth to invest into it?

>>2130022
>second biggest Blackmarch city not actually in Blackmarch
fffffuuuuu

>>2130072
>so how bad little bird get nerfed?
weapon replaced with a fixed minigun that can't hit or damage shit, plus you won't see ammo refills til midgame

i would just gun for a necroplane or aircar

>>2130072
The main problem is the minigun doesn't really enable you to shoot down anything new, it just allows you to shoot down existing targets easier, and runs out of ammo pretty quickly at that.

>>2130197
The downside of aircar is it activates the craft weapons milestone, which reduces bandit spawns. You actually do get rewarded for sticking to low tech craft.

>>2130197
>weapon replaced with a fixed minigun

>>2130207
hate milestones

hate em

>>2130211
Except its not fixed and you get it if you sell little bird. Which you should.

>>2130277
can you put 14mm on it?

>>2130300
Yes but if you have a 14mm you have no need for the bird in the first place, because almost every craft can mount a 14mm.

>>2130218
There's a lot of workarounds. For example, hanna and car thieves trigger it but piranhas and highway house do not.

>>2130031
This is what happens when you scroll out to check radar coverage. I'll probably just restart, but I was doing pretty well.

>>2130334
Whew. I had a save in the middle of February I can use. Pretty far back, but whatever.

And that's TFTD done, with stats!
People calling TFTD "just a reskin" are doing this game a huge disgrace, so many things are improved from vanilla it's a better game in almost every way. Yeah T'leth and cruise ships still suck but everything else is much better.

>>2130462
Grats anon.

>so many things are improved from vanilla
How so? I've never played it, just heard it's MUCH MUCH harder. (And just a reskin.)

>>2130469
There's a lot of small things like more weapons being useful, research tree being more complex although that came with a bug in the original version with the tasoth commander bricking your savefile but that's all fixed if you play openxcom.
The game is harder yes but it's also more fair due to better game design. In vanilla you had heavy plasma which has potential to one shot literally everything short of sectopod, player units can never reliably survive a heavy plasma hit, ever.
Introducing Ion armor, the thing that sets apart these two games the most. In vanilla ufo defense power suit would have 100 front armor and like 90 sides 80 rear, it doesn't matter though because you will die to 1 hit from heavy plasma regardless where it hits.
In TFTD Ion armor has 132 front armor 70 sides and 100 rear, there's an enormous difference between getting hit in the front and sides. 132 also means that getting hit in the front plate means that your soldier will survive a hit from a sonic cannon most of the time. So your soldier survival is much more based upon good positioning rather than pure luck.
If you just look at my stats between two games, I lost fewer soldiers in TFTD despite it being a harder game because the skill ceiling is just much higher.

Give me some sick loadouts to draw

>>2130564
Any spin on guerilla cat with big gun+suppressed pistol

>>2130575
I'll go for this then

>>2130564
same anon that drew some cool stuff a while ago?

>>2130579
Yeah! Do you have the original ref for that?

>>2130580
I think it's this one

>>2130581
Cool!!

>>2130491
Another difference is that UFO rolls damage at a 0-200% range, but TFTD has it at 50-150%. Meaning that the lowest roll can still do some damage and the highest roll won't instakill if you have armor.

>>2130619
Also sonic weapons can't autofire, sonic cannon can only reasonably shoot once per turn vs. 6 times of heavy plasma.

In general everything is a good amount more survivable, tanks especially actually perform well rather than going down to a single sectoid.

Once you understand the surface weapon restrictions and how to deal with lobstermen it's actually pretty chill. Fuck multi-stage missions though, better off just abandoning those cruise ships.

I don't understand how people can play superhuman. Not because the game is too hard without savescumming, but because not being able to undo misclicks is too frustrating.

How do bases work? Are they weaker if you attack them right after they get made?

>>2130686
Be a bit more specific because depending on a mod or a base type the answer differs.
But as short as possible in vanilla game no they never get weaker or stronger, in mods such as piratez some bases can upgrade for example ninja airfield is significantly easier to attack than ninja fortress.

Currently, what is the best version to download for the original X-com? I don't want to play it, i just need to download it for the files for Xpiratez

>>2131251
You just need 2 folders of data files, they should all be the same across all properly updated versions.

Do you guys think OpenApoc will ever be feature complete?

>>2131251
There's only one version of the files you need. Or two I guess, either UFO Defence or Terror From the Deep will work.
You can get either from Steam for a few bucks. If you don't want to pay a few bucks, well, it released in 1991 and never had any copy protection. If you can't find it that's on you.

>>2131282
Seems to still be alive, last I checked they were looking pretty good.

I think the better question is whether OpenApoc will get the level of mod support that OpenXcom has. Apoc had a lot of unrealized potential that could be fleshed out with mod support.

How bad of an idea is it to sell the still day 1 for 2 more brainers?

>>2131507
X-Grog is the best healing item you have access to for quite a long time, and is also a pretty solid early money maker. I'd be leery of ditching the still.

>>2131507
Without still you're not building a mess hall so real bad. Selling off security corridors is a bad move too because you can build over it save both time and money.

>>2131507
Still is important. Sell 1 security corridor and the vault.

>>2131518
But selling the vault means one extractor won't let you use the drill.

>>2131519
Still has the same problem, and selling it cuts off half of the early game's research targets.

>>2131519
There's no point in rushing drill, the rewards are pretty irrelevant. In any case you can build an extra hangar.

can someone explain what armor pre-damage mult and armor damage multiplier means exactly?

>>2131528
Red is a pretty big power spike, but other than that I agree.

How do I get old earth books?

>>2131584
Wouldn't call 30 armor a big power spike, you can get scale by then easily.

Also months 3-8 or so are dominated by nigh-invisible gobbos 18 NV anyway.

>>2131564
Pre-damage shreds armor based on your attack damage, before armor reduction. Post-damage mult is the same, but after armor reduction.

>>2131615
The most direct ways are researching underground missions and either finding them in those or from the UAC spacesuits event that is unlocked by underground missions.

>>2131519
don't you need 3 extractors for that?

>January, year 2
>just did my first space mission
>got a damaged syn
>can't research it because I have no surgery
>need back to school for surgery
>need sci books for back to school
>need to join mutant alliance to get sci books
>need assassination trophy to join mutant alliance
How am I still missing this? I thought it was guaranteed from common bounty hunts.

>>2131723
You only get assassination trophies from some bounty hunt missions, don't ask me which ones. Vidrel is the earliest, IIRC.

>>2131725
It's tier d mission with traitor bugeye and smoothie. You have to kill at least one to get that trophy.

>>2131723
>How am I still missing this?
I've made a mistake once by using a 25mm car against the rebel bugeyes and rebel smoothies, their corpse turns into assassination trophy if you evaporate it with a gun too big you won't get it.

>>2131727
>kill [a traitor smoothie or bugeye]
They're carrying the assassination trophy. Capturing one alive and researching the trophy is enough. You can then have them executed in the manufacturing screen for MA tokens or interrogated for no MA tokens but valuable info.

>>2131449
Sadly I don't think Apocalypse will ever be popular enough to get the full autism modders to hop on and create something big

>>2131796
X-piratez borrows a ton of crap from apocalypse, you think dio will move to openapoc to make his grand dreams even grander?

Wow what the hell is with lokknarr starting stats now, 120 reactions on a basic rookie? I knew they needed a buff but god damn.

>>2131782
Capturing one alive gives you no trophies and you can't get it from captured ones. You have to kill one.

>>2131782
I'm not this is still true? Started off my first N13 run last week, and I've only found one Assassination Trophy. I've executed a fair few traitors through manufacturing, but I think they only now drop the trophy if you kill them in mission? I assume to prevent people double dipping on the mutant alliance rep. Unless I'm talking shite and getting mixed up with Execution trophies, anyway.

>>2131727
>>2131776
I don't think I've seen the traitor mutant mission this game. Just gotta hope I guess.
>>2131725
There was a single escape tower really early on, but I missed it because all my gals were injured.

>>2131814
I know the mage in the escape tower just carries the trophy in his inventory, but maybe the traitor mutants don't.

>>2131814
Traitors are a special case where the trophy is the item their corpse turns into. Other bounty hunts (humanists, narlocks/ninja gals, sharp guy) put it in their inventory so you can just live capture them.

Does anyone like fuso knives? I feel like they're in this awkward spot where they're not for beginners but neither are the throwing stars and once skilled the shuriken variety is just superior.
Unless I'm missing something.

>>2131859
1.15 vs armor as opposed to 1.5 is a pretty big difference.

>>2131803
Just a single city would definitely be too limiting for XPZ, we'd need some kind of combined cityscape and geoscape. Or at least multiple cities.

A single city would work very well for an XCF style mod though.

Is Aurora the only heroine that isn't a complete giga-slut?

Felt a sudden chill middle clicking this tough girl

>>2132007
She's still unfinished, give her time.

>>2131282
No. OpenApoc is being choked to death by people who are more interested in humping it with mods than people who are interested in replicating the original AI, accurate cityscape alien activities, or even the original game's diplomatic bonuses like having your human soldier recruitment pool be based on Gravball League diplomacy, Biochemists from Nutrivend, etc. The extreme majority of people injecting it with mods think that diplomacy ends at whether or not you can order a company's products.

Widespread ignorance on Apocalypse mechanics will forever hobble the development of OpenApoc. It will be a long time before it's feature complete, and an even more significant amount time before it actually, really is feature complete.

>>2130462
I'm currently giving this game another shot after not knowing about the Deep One research bug. The game is not bad but some things bother me about it. I'm not a fan of how long it takes to get the Manta. It's pretty easy to screw yourself if you didn't research this tech early on and a lot of players are likely to focus more on standard weapons than sub armaments.
Gauss weapons are pretty lame and easily become outdated once Lobstermen appear. I get why the devs did this, in UFO, laser weapons are still viable even towards late game. I wish the Gauss Cannon wasn't so disappointing, the range and accuracy could have been buffed a bit. And of course you had to manufacture ammo unlike laser weapons.
I agree with you on the multi-stage missions, that is pure shit. I barely even want to raid alien bases with how tedious it is. I don't get why the devs made the maps bigger overall, it doesn't do the game any favors.

>>2132081
Apocalypse is 100% completely playable right now in 2025, the only good reason to make an opensource engine is for mods that can improve a lot of the unfinished or badly designed systems.

Why does cooperating with Aurora force you to hide the fountain? How do the two subplots relate? Also why would the captain ever hide the fountain in the first place? You have no stated use for it, and literally just fuck over Red Mage for no reason. Also, does Experiment X have no benefit whatsoever other than being a requirement for the Aurora ending?

>>2132335
You're a pirate and naturally untrustworthy

>>2132007
I think she has some route where she goes with X for shadowrealm research (getting gangbanged)
>>2132335
>Also why would the captain ever hide the fountain in the first place? You have no stated use for it, and literally just fuck over Red Mage for no reason
I think it is there just for pervert coomer reasons. You actually have 2 betrayals for red mage. Dio masturbated a lot to imprisoning Rin Tohsaka fanfiction and wrote his own Rin Tohsaka betrayal fanfiction that made it into this mod too.

>>2132363
I don't take issue with the backstabbing, I take issue with the lack of motive. Hiding a fountain you have no use for from a girl who hands out sweet ass treasure chests because you're afraid of her "getting too powerful" just doesn't seem very piratey. Maybe sore-ass, but sore-ass seems more no fun allowed than paranoid schizophrenic.

>>2127524
Can I just not do organ traffickers? I fucking hate that mission.

>>2125324
yes, so what do I even do to get out and fight cult HQs?

>>2132335
Cooperate hides the fountain because nine circles is OP and hiding the fountain is the only way you get it if you cooperate. I don't know how the captain already knows this though.

>>2132443
The best first HQ to do is the Asian one, go in with shields and magnums (and a lot of ammo and healing) and you'll be able to push through. Once you've done that you'll unlock much stronger equipment from promotion 3 including heavy armor that is nigh invulnerable to the US and Russian cults and get mortars that will trivialize the African one.

>>2132462
oh okay shields and magnums
i was really having trouble with just dying from disembarking from the craft even with smokes because fuck those ninjas and shit

>>2132427
Kidnap one ghoul scientist and never look back.

>Highwaymen have a mass-research topic now
Dio pls
this is getting silly
just brink back Broken Academy Engineer etc
inb4 ACADEMY NURSING mass-research/interrogation topic with Sickbays locked behind it

>>2132736
On the bright side, at least captured highwaymen have a use now. You couldn't even enslave them before.

Speaking of countries whose starting bonuses you can get by rushing a base there, putting a base in Thebes by the end of Feb lets you trigger the Red Lilly Game without actually starting there. Just in case you wanted to crackdownmax while also having a different starting country.

>>2132443
you're not dealing with freshness damage, so you can take your time with all the HQs and pop pills whenever an agent gets cranky

>red dawn
blow up the cars ASAP with whatever you have, camp outside the building/bunkers with a line of autosnipers/rifles so that anything coming outside gets lit up

>cult of dagon
use miniguns to clear away all the foliage/cultists, hide your squads under trees to protect them from lightning dudes, arm everyone else with autosnipers/rifles

>black lotus
probably the hardest one, use dogs to repeatedly scan for ninjas that try to approach your main groups, periodically spray minigun fire down long hallways and you'll probably drop a few

>exalt hq
get everyone to the roof and camp out near the glass ceiling

>>2133019
Black Lotus is really easy if you just accept that you're gonna lose a person 25% of the time a ninja throws knives at them, and there are 3 or 4 of those guys in there. Magnums with shields as your frontliners laugh at everything else there except the boss enemy, and you can just camp inside the elevators you start in to murder most of the base. You can have motion scanners, no need for dogs.

Red Dawn is the hardest to fully clear because enemies popping up from cover and nailing you with explosives is common. BUT you only need a single red dawn memory card that the coordinators (IIRC) carry, so you can kill one and extract. In theory it can be the easiest if you do this.

Cult of Dagon is best kept just because its the easiest to trivialize with mortars and you can farm it that way in fact. Everything tough starts in one structure that is imminently nukable from turn 2.

Never camped exalt but its pretty easy to do the same way as black lotus. It's just a much more complex/harder layout than easy hallways to shoot down, but on the bright side no ninjas.

Oops
>2 lunatics hospitalized for 50 days in early january
Worth it

>>2133084
>>2133085
>dominions crossposter

>>2133019
>>2133077
>probably the hardest one, use dogs to repeatedly scan for ninjas that try to approach your main groups, periodically spray minigun fire down long hallways and you'll probably drop a few
>Black Lotus is really easy if you just accept that you're gonna lose a person 25% of the time a ninja throws knives at them
Commanders, none of these things have to be bothered with when you can literally fill the corridors with proximity grenades. Every Blotus enemy except the Avatar dies to a single proxy grenade.
Chill in the two elevators, fill all approaches with proximity bombs and literally wait.
When what's left of the enemy is panicking, move out to kill the Avatar and pray for a surrender victory.
Do this correctly and you might lose a couple of soldiers in the final cleanup phase to random ninjas, but dogs and motion sensors can help prevent that.
ATTACHED: Diagram showing how to do this, decipherable hopefully even to retards

>>2133096
I'm all in favor of end turn spamming but if you want for them to move right next to the elevator you're gonna end up at like turn 100 and half the ninjas will still be alive stuck somewhere.

>>2133100
I didn't say you should ONLY end turn spam. You peek the doors every turn and snipe away at enemies. The proximity bombs simply ensure no ninja will ever suprise you, which should reduce your casulties to 0, because the rest of the Black Lotus roster is complete dogshit compared to the other cults lineups.

Man rubber slugs suck so much dick, but what I hate most of all is that they're just barely good enough to justify using early on.

>>2133240
Part of the point of rubber slugs is that you can have 10 people reaction firing with them and enemies take so many shots to take down that you end up with max skill XP gains shooting 5 civvies.

>>2133240
The ones for domestic shotgun suck but those for assault shotgun are amazing.

Give me more loadouts to comm pls

Even if you shoot down those early highway convoys, is there any hope of actually clearing them? They're usually full of spotter/snipers with monstrously good firepower.

>>2133522
Big ole it depends, a good map during night and a bit of luck would certainly be possible.

>>2133522
Generally not without casualties, but it's possible. The trick is generally to stay the fuck in cover. Day or night doesn't matter so much as 'Not being shootable'. Managed to take out a Spartan one in May, in my current game. Shot it down with a gunwagon and came back with bikes. A couple dogs and peasants died and three of my starting ubers were in hospital for a month, but I did clear it.

>>2133523
In my case it's JS raiders in february, I honestly can't think of a map configuration where sending lunatics would be advisable. There might be a smash and grab target I guess, but that would involve stepping out from the airbus.

>>2133522
If you get a good map with cover or have a good ship that is cover then yes. If you're landing with a 6 gal airbus into flatland then no.

>fuck it, I have camo paint and 5 CAWS, let's check it out
>cold map
Welp, that was a waste of 40 HMG shots. I really hate not being able to check the climate of crashed UFOs.

>>2133533
>raiders in february
Two ways to approach it
Yolo because if you're going to restart you only lose a month of progress. You are playing ironman right?
Just give up because that sounds like a horrible idea, what do you even gain? That shitty ass wyvern plasma gun? Totally not worth it.

>>2133599
If it lands in tundra/mountain it is often cold. On arctic it's always cold. Same with hot and jungle/desert. Dress accordingly.

>>2133603
Yeah I'm broke as hell so scrapping the run if things went really south was not out of the question. You get a bunch of supply crates which, if you're lucky, can have gold and silver bars, some useful gun upgrades in the earlygame, and a lot of infamy. Beating a convoy is kind of like doing a pogrom that is income/infamy positive instead of negative.

>>2133605
I'm in east asia which seems like it's full of green territories that are randomly cold like 25% of the time.

where can i find first person perspectives after pressing f12? i dont remeber which folder

>>2133698
Should be same folder as screenshots so user/piratez <- or mod you're playing

>>2133605
Do seasons count for temperature?

>>2133599
too bad you cant redress

I don't remember where I read this, but shotgun spread is based on the max range of the shot type, right? So aimed shots de facto spread less than snap shots?

>>2134102
Your shooting accuracy determines the accuracy of the center of the blast. The distribution and dispersion of the shots around your aim point depends on the shotgun choke % (higher is better) and ammo spread % (lower is better).

>>2134062
There are no seasons. Weather is map based.

>>2134062
Climate on shootdowns depends on an RNG roll based on the map texture. Season and latitude don't matter. For spawned missions it will always tell you conditions.

Is there any downside to loading up my gals' backpacks with skulls? It's basically free energy regen as long as I keep killing fast

>enter ratman village
>get dropped in the middle
>open doors
>shoot one dog
>leave
Fuck ratmen

>>2134320
Based and ATF pilled

>>2134312
Nope. I think they modify your stats twice as fast as they imply though (acting both at the beginning of your turn and the enemy turn), so keep that in mind.

If you keep them on your belt you can quickly drop them if the mission goes past a few turns and you're stuck looking for the last dog on the map. Or just exploit it for free bravery training.

>>2130575
Here you go anon!!

I hate kidney beans so much it's unreal.

>>2134433
Amazing

>>2134433
I love it when a build is both aesthetic and effective.

Heh it seems going Aurora gives you tome of life now. Shame it didn't when I tried it.

Does open xcom fixes the fucked up tech tree in terror from the deep? I remember researching techs in the wrong order can softlock you from certain research.

>>2134572
Yes it's fixed. If you plan to play TFTD in vanilla form make sure to use openxcom and not openxcom extended.

>>2133510
Pillow Knight with a Shotgun shield and a fucking wand

I really wish you can store armor in your craft to swap it during deployment. Having a 'standard' kit, but also packing anti-weather/niche enemy gear without needing to change it at base and deal with the loadoutsplosion would be nice. It takes 5 hours to get to the mission site, you have more than enough time to change your pants.

>>2133510
It's weird how few throwing-suitable gal armors have decent NV.

I'm really fucking tired of always being outspotted and mass fired through smoke and out of LOS in XCF.

>>2134674
you can use some of change based on landing zone armors(like tribal) or/and add some of wearables like shawl etc
but yeah, its annoying

>>2134674
Camo armor vs. real armor depending on whether you get there during night or day would be nice too.

Man melee feels terrible in JS. Everything just shoots you in the face without regard for the CQC penalty, has insane dodge, and civvies can just casually punch gals unconscious with their insane STR/TUs.

>>2133510
I imagine the daggers would look like a short sword on the lokks, same as in LotR.

>>2117630 (OP)
is there anything similar to piratez out there? the other xcom games modding scenes are really lackluster

>>2135027
Like weird mega mods? Mount and Blade has a few iirc
Or if you want the Heavy Metal-esque space setting, games like Quasimorph, Brigador, and Shadow Empire feel a little like that

>>2135079
do those have the sexy elements as well? I like the blend of softcore porn and hardcore (strategy) mechanics

>>2135079
Err not really no, although there is plenty of mention of prostitution and such

>>2134954
>play meme difficulty
>get memed

>>2135105
JS battlescape honestly isn't even that much harder as long as you shoot and bomb everything, which was arguably the optimal way to play battlescape in the first place.

What is the criteria for a bandit invasion to storm your fort? I just had one and nothing happened other than some cars spawning.

>>2135084
Piratez' aesthetic is pretty much one of a kind. Even anime styled games with an emphasis on girls are usually going to be using some kind of moe aesthetic, which is very different.

>>2135311
Almost everything declined since the 80s. I think of the comic books of the 80s compared to the comic books of the 2020s and my heart weeps.

>>2135358
Anime became cheaper and simultaneously more successful, most western media became more expensive and simultaneously less successful. The current state of anime is mainly because the industry shits out so much money that they cannot be bothered to maintain a similarly high standard. This is why vtubing exploded as well, as it enabled extremely cheap, mass produced content using anime aesthetics and ideals. One girl with an avatar can create hundreds of hours of content in the time it takes a studio to produce 30 minutes worth of anime. So many people don't mind the lower standard because there simply isn't enough supply, and all the would-be competition is just slop anyway.

>>2135369
But what standard do western comics and cartoons have? I agree that it became more expensive and less successful, but quality also dropped.

>airbus got blown up in march
Thankfully it was a peasant and 5 dogs going to a Sins of the Father mission, but how do I recover from this? My only scientific experiments mission was zombies, so I have no access to car thieves. I haven't started any hangars so 2 gunwagons is my absolute maximum for basically an entire month.

>>2135396
Bikes?

>>2135407
Yeah bikes are probably the best I can do for a while. I just hope the travel time doesn't cause me to lose a ton of missions.

>>2135396
>>2135411
Do you not have Big Bird or something yet? Add on fuel tanks and it can reach fairly far. Definitely don't rely just on bikes, you want both and enough equipment to run two teams at once

>Rosigma
>Imperial Guard
>June
>Base Defense
>Chaos Terminators
I don't even have mid-tier requisitions yet. Why do i even bother playing this mod...

>>2135504
The true Rosigma experience. I want to say it gets better, but it doesn't.
Still, base defenses are by far the worst thing the mod has to offer. Each and every building, including the unbuilt squares, has several levels, tunnels and most likely a sewer system like the one in Piratez. Avoid them like the plague!

>>2135637
>Avoid them like the plague!
That's the thing. My 6 missile batteries failed, and i was in the process of rushing to get Cloaking Shroud, and i still got smitten with one of the worst possible enemy lists to have inside your base.

Do surrendering enemies give glamour or something? Or does the fort defense mission just have a shitload of glamour spawns?

>>2128288
Vanilla is a race t psi and then you win.

My first win had no psis at all. I only realized how important psi res was after my full team was had 90% casualties on cydonia base turn 1.

>>2128817
>To be honest, if this goes on it's just a matter of time before BOXCE becomes the new main engine just like OXCE overtook OXC.
God fucking hear you. I dream of being free of the trio of retards in OXCE.

Oh right there's the duo of retards in OXC that the real important engine chances depend on

>>2128920
Brutal OXCE was an AI improvement mod to make the game "hardcore" by making it uncheesable (and making some things like ship combat enjoyable).

The dev turned out to be a workaholic and has been milking every single drop out of the limited OXC features. Has had OXCE beaten at it's own game for some time already.

It wasn't discussed much because every main OXCE mod that is ported is completely unbalance beyond all possible fun, so there was very little modding for the engine side, not to mention the OXCE clique does not tolerate competition at all. Still some masochists liked it, and it's been slowly getting traction.

>>2136161
>I dream of being free of the trio of retards in OXCE.
Dio, Solar and Meridian?
>there's the duo of retards in OXC
Who? Why do important engine stuff hinge on them?

>>2130462
>>2130491
It's a reskin. It rebalances things a bit and shuffles tactical layers, but it literally doesn't change or add a single thing. All unit slots are the same, just (literally) reskinned and re-stated.

So you get sniper-like weapons but don't actually get the 3 shot plasma.

Nobody playing blind liked the lobsters being literally unkillable. Or the mission limit on the temples. Or the massive empty spaces on bases that are 100% guaranteed to have the brains.

It's a very "what could have been game". If they actually bothered to make the game bigger (likely didn't due to space reasons) and didn't remove the tactical layers of original XCOM, but added both, it would have been great.

>>2136165
>uncheesable AI
This is basically impossible. The endgame of SP strategy games is knowing the AI's routine and exploiting it.

>>2124673
>osprey
drop that shit immediately.
Get the smaller one with the side doors. Can't remember the name.
Also don't try to do honourable gameplay. XCF is simply not balanced. Load every save.

>>2125528
That's a problem? Never bothered me.

>>2136169
This is a *tactics* game. Enemies have routines, they immediately go to hell they go in contact with your mooks.

Thing is, the "goes to hell" part was very poorly programmed in vanilla. It was never thought to be balanced - ie the fucking tracer nukes.

>>2136166
>Dio, Solar and Meridian?
yes. Solar has gone his way to bully people trying to make engine forks. that rando who wanted to make the game accept multiple factions in a map iirc
>Who? Why do important engine stuff hinge on them?
completely forgot the name. They aren't *assholes*, but they choose the most retarded way possible to make OXC (ie: "let's build the entire mod on top of the original 90s data tables!") and now when people want to get truly creative with the engine they find they can't do jack shit and two guys that know the engine inside out simply refuse to make any changes that "go away from the vanilla experience", despite all the OXC custom options and extra buttons being fuckall related to vanilla.
They just won't admit they dug themselves into a ditch and can't get out. Or are just old and unwilling to keep working on it.

So, out of Rosigma, X-Files and piratez, which one would you guys recommend for a newfag? I have them all three installed and need something to pass time at work with. Have enough experience with the later xcom titles and xenonauts but never played this, I'm also not playing vanilla first, rather learn on the fly.

>>2136320
All three are too radical a departure from regular X-Com, and each other, to recommend for a newfag.
If you want to play a mod, try Final Modpack, it's vanilla+. If that's still too vanilla, then X-Files I guess.

>>2136320
Literally everyone ITT will recommend beating vanilla first. It doesn't even take long, and plus, vanilla is maybe 10% the length of the megamods. You can even mod it to add shit like shotguns, sniper rifles, extra maps, and base facilities. That said, Piratez is the most flexible if you expect yourself to fuck up a lot (proptip: play on difficulty 2), but it's literally a sequel to the vanilla game, so you'll miss out on a ton of references and jokes.

>>2136334
X-Files made me want to kill myself and everyone else by the time I finally beat it. The early game is fun in a cock-and-ball-torture sort of way, but holy shit does it become a slog during the late-mid/endgame.

>>2136172
Aren't games with both a strategic map and a tactical map traditionally considered strategy? Plus most tactics games don't use fog of war on the battle map.

>>2136359
Actually nevermind, it was a moot question. Genre definitions are stupid and arbitrary, as usual.

>>2136320
Play vanilla first. But of those three, Piratez is probably the one which fucks you least. Just be aware: You are not obligated to take every fight. Trying to take every fight will get your people killed.

>>2136334
I like the early xcom vibe of it but I keep hearing it gets pretty tedious after a certain amount of time

All three have aspects to them that make them more appealing to play than the vanilla game, I like the titillating aspect of piratez, I like 40k, and the pre xcom killing wendigos shit is funny.

>>2136340
>>2136389
I have tried all three up to about the first couple of fights, all of them on the second difficulty and piratez is the one that fucked me up the most cuz they all went insane i guess because i was turtling? but since the last anon said I shouldn't take every fight then that would probably explain it.

I found a guide for it but dont know how accurate it is, any tips you guys have for piratez then? I have them all naked running around and meleeing stuff and they do ok other than going insane, not the biggest fan of that mechanic.

>>2136414
nigga, vanilla can be easily beaten by the noob in a week or half
beating any of these super mods take months if you do not know what are you doing

>>2136414
>any tips you guys have for piratez then?
yeah, beat vanilla first

You don't want tips or guides for piratez, if your first time experience isn't being lost, confused, amused, aroused, panicked and everything in between you're kind of doing it wrong.
Just enjoy not having any idea what to do, that's the best part and you can only have first time experience once.

>>2136488
I'll listen to this anon instead and just bumble my way through big booty bitches mod

>>2136159
I've never won a game with psi. You get the Avenger long before you can actually use psi practically, so it's more like a crutch for players who can't figure out the tech tree or are failing the game. After all, basic gameplay should weed out the psi-weak through sheer natural selection, or alternatively some basic intelligence creates a psi lightning rod.

>>2136557
Thing is it's easier to discover mind control prevention measures and unit loss-less gameplay (specially after you realize there's no counter for crossing a door and unwittingly abuse the fact all enemies suicide rush against your reaction wall after turn 20) than play the game uncheesed and fire the mind control victims

So I was absolutely untouched until i touched down on cydonia

>>2136570
Sounds like bullshit, in the first place if you're vulnerable to psi there's no way to capture the required sectoid/ethereal commander without monstrous casualties from psionics attacks. And doing the reaction wall after 20 turns is just going to make things worse. What mind control prevention measures are you even talking about? Short of just hiding in your craft for 20 turns straight.

>>2136557
If you capture a sectoid leader early from a base invasion or terror mission (potentially month 1), you can have psi very early. It's also very easy to train psi up if you just spam it over and over on easy missions. You can go from no psi skill to maxed psi gods in like a month once you have psi amps.

>>2136576
Aliens in OG XCOM always went after your weakest soldier, so just figure out who that is and keep them weaponless and its easy. I think either OXC or OXCE makes it a bit more random but you can still use similar methods.

>>2136576
>if you're vulnerable to psi there's no way to capture the required sectoid/ethereal commander without monstrous casualties from psionics attacks.
make a wild guess.

>>2136637
>>2136576
He's claiming he was playing blind and untouched by psi until Cydonia, so none of those options apply here.

I've never used voodoo in Piratez. I literally don't know how.

>>2136719
desu basically everything relating to psi in every X-Com mod gets overly "balanced" to the point where it only begins to be effective with near-max stats. Modders really, REALLY hate to let take advantage of psi.

>>2136649
oh no, i fought an ethereal mission but got properly ass fucked. figuring out what to not do came fast.
I fought cydonia undercooked because honestly I was feeling a bit of tedium by this point and preparing a psi team was just a chore. Biggest annoyance is battleships never letting you be ele-neutral so you cant take it easy and fuck around a bit.

I had the same problem with TFTD and i realized the lobsters were even 10 times more bullshit. this time I rushed psy and by like, month 4 could already win all missions. Only kept playing to 100% the lore.

>>2136784
>I fought cydonia undercooked because honestly I was feeling a bit of tedium by this point and preparing a psi team was just a chore.
I was betting on well, just nuking the map with as many launchers as I could have. Level 2 proved me wrong.

>>2136719
Unless you're playing gray then the majority of voodoo stuff is just a bunch of weapons that scale using your voodoo stats, which you can reveal/train by researching some basic voodoo techs.

Shooting more or shooting accurately to train ACC ?

>>2136793
Hit and damage enemies to get ACC. You don't get ACC from misses.

>>2136796
Need to inflict damage? 0 hits don't count?

>>2136801
I think they don't.

>>2136801
ctrl-E or some shit

>>2134433
Follow up

>>2136801
I'm pretty sure they do count. You just need to hit.
Also, some fast-firing automatic weapons (mostly the ones in the heavy category) only give XP 50% of the time. You can check "Experience mode" in the Anal screen to be sure.

>>2136818
These are amazing
>>2136590
This is good too

>>2136857
I remeber an anon saying that for shotties, only one of the pellets count for ACC training. Is it true?

>>2136860
Not sure about that one. They have the default XP mode, but it might be hardcoded for shotguns.

>>2136818
>stoner catgirls
giga based

>>2136320
lol, did you get tired of people telling you to play vanilla every time you ask your retarded question?

>>2136320
Play vanilla first, fag.
It's not even about learning.

>>2136793
Mostly just more, the way stat gain works in xcom is that it's in XP brackets, just refer to the table. TL:DR XP gain caps at 11 hits maximum.
Primary stats are bravery, reactions, firing, throwing, melee accuracy and psi skill.
Secondary stats are TU, health, stamina and strength.
Primary stats only increase if you use weapon of the skill that trains it, which is mostly self explainatory guns increase shooting, throwables and bows throwing, etc. BUT there are exceptions, just off the top of my head in Piratez ninja sickle will always train throwing even if melee is used and cobra staff will train psi skill even with melee attacks. Always check for the experience mode if in doubt.
>>2136801
As long you hit. Reactions are an exception to this role, you only have to react hitting is not needed.
>>2136860
>only one of the pellets count for ACC training. Is it true?
Yes.

What codex for best synergy with male touch and lazyass captain? I'm thinking Green for the lewd RP but I don't know if it has any SS specific stuff.

>>2137205
Gray or red have SS-specific stuff but you can't go wrong with any codex choice really. Red is probably the most synergistic and no codex has the 7 heroes (to reward you for playing male codexless)

>>2137206
My last run was Gray (many versions ago) and picking Red would make me Chaos Saint and honestly the missions are cancer. I haven't actually tried codexless so I might go for it.

>>2137095
Comprehensive reply to all my posts, well done anon.

>>2137209
Aye, good luck if you go codexless. Getting the offerings from purple bloom is much easier than it was in previous versions but shadowtech is still from gambling on gnome interrogations so you may not get demon god shrines or dark star related stuff for a while

>>2137095
>Always check for the experience mode if in doubt.
Huh, I went through a bunch odds and ends and I realized a rope of all things grants bravery exp. This might actually change my training regime.

>>2137486
Don't. Rope is a bad weapon. You will get gals killed attempting to gain XP with it. Just have a designated panicker or two once you get a large enough ship, whose job is to follow your fighters around with a shepards staff, a surgery kit, and a backpack full of skulls.

>>2137502
>>2137486
I just patch everything(especially enemies)

>>2137502
>You will get gals killed attempting to gain XP with it.
Plan was to strangle only shitter stragglers here and there, with backup of course. Carrying rope in pocket doesn't take much space.

>>2137605
You can wait a little until you get decent armor like chainmail/tac armor and use it on shit tier enemies like bandits and shit. I wouldn't bother but if that's what you want...

>>2137502
Yeah, rope is awful even if you can get it off because its gonna one-shot most things and only count for 1 XP.

Panicking in easy missions is the best solution, I recommend putting like 5-6 demon skulls in until you get below 50 morale and then dropping them to keep right around there. You'll have a very low chance to panic and a high chance to gain bravery XP per turn. It's also training all your secondary stats so your newbies will be strong and fast soon.

>>2137547
Do this when its safe

>>2137502
Get decent armor and repeatedly attempt choking a ghoul with a shitty weapon using it.

>>2137683
Early game stormrats and various sectoid enemies work as well, relatively harmless and high choke resistance.

>>2136590
>>2134433
>>2136818
cute kots

Menial task of repeating trivial actions for training is such a lame mechanic, so I just adjusted all the training caps to 500. Sadly it still doesn't seem to make dojos train bravery or reactions. My workaround was to adjust the dogfight exp gain to 100% chance and put people on interceptor duty for a while.

>>2138191
I'm also thinking about adding up every commendation that just gives plain stat bonuses and simply add the amount to statcaps and remove said commendations completely. I don't particularly enjoy the korea-mmorpg tier grinding they involve.

>>2138191
>>2138213
You could just play the game normally

>>2138253
How neurotypical of you.

>>2138213
Just disable soldier diaries

>>2138191
Yeah, that's what I do too, for Xpiratez and XcomFiles, where there's way too much stat inflation going on. A shame I can't figure what makes training work so that I can unlock all stats. It would had been nice if they boosted base statistics and treated commendations as a nice bonus instead of a tedious form of compulsory stat gain.

>>2138288
All condemnations are optional, you really don't need anything beyond base stats.

>>2138285
That would be a severe nerf, point is to keep the stat bonuses but remove the grind.

>>2138291
Strength condemnations are basically mandatory for lokks and gnomes.

>>2138291
You can definitely feel the difference after commendations were introduced if you choose not to grind commendations. Not immediately since commendations were indeed treated as a nice bonus when they were first introduced. But as time passed, commendations allowed you to massively exceed the stat limits and they're balanced around that. There's also a lot of exponential stat scaling where even the smallest gain means a huge improvement.

I honestly wish there was just a mod or option to disable stat gains from condemnations, that was a huge mistake.

>>2138298
>There's also a lot of exponential stat scaling where even the smallest gain means a huge improvement.
I'm pretty sure the only exponential scalers are on accuracy, so largely irrelevant past a certain point. On sniper rifles, mostly. Definitely haven't seen a damage that does that. Possible I've missed something though. Whereabouts are you seeing an exponential scale that you're claiming there's a lot?

Where do I get this "generic technocracy datapad"? Does is also spawns randomly on hk crashsites or is there some other way? Been ages since I last went for winter palace and it seems things changed.

>>2138312
Oh yeah, you're right. I don't know why I felt that way then. Maybe I just don't go all-in on commendation stacking enough to ever reach the point of diminishing accuracy gains.

>>2138312
Some throwing weapons got it. Also not really exponential but voodoo stuff often scales with voodoo mastery which is power*skill, scales better than simple linear with stat.

>>2138291
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=5427.0
> X-Com Files Changelog 1.0
> New features: commendations (with bonuses), enhancement treatments;
> basic agent stats lowered.

I can't find any mention of commendations on the OXCE X-Piratez changelog so I can't tell if the same thing happened there.

>>2138191
Mission EXP gain is probably the main thing due for an actual rework, but I don't think OXCE modders are trying to replace base game systems.

>>2138375
XCF has really, really strong commendations compared to XPZ. Lategame most gals will be sitting at around +5 to +10 to most stats unless you specifically farm super soldiers, and there's heavily diminishing returns. In XCF though its normal to have like +30s