Is it just me or is the difficulty curve of Piratez real weird?
Early game, your technology is trash, and most of the research won't pay off for a year or more. But the enemies are worse than you are if you're careful.
Late game, you've got powerful enemies, but you're walking around with a small army in power armor and super weapons.
Mid-game you've got low-end star gods with waspites and cyclopses (maybe mercenaries, maybe a base or two that need to get taken out), almost enough gals who are trained to or near maximum, and weapons that sometimes can harm enemies very slightly. There is just a point where enemy armor and resists are too high for anything you might have. It just feels like a slog. Mid-game is also when you need to join the mutant alliance so you can get through that technology hurdle and be able to handle the mutant pogroms you suddenly *have* to do to keep your score from bottoming out. The bases sitting around and the disruptive transmissions aren't helping at this point.
I don't really see a problem. Pogroms really aren't that bad even if you join early, and the point loss if you meet early star gods or mercs isn't that painful unless you had a really bad month. Disruptive transmissions stop being a threat once you have any ship that can go into space, I think a hunter killer can, as can greys menace ship. And again, the pointloss doesn't seem to be much, a ressource extraction or two seem way worse.
I know of exactly one mission you have to fight, as it won't come up again, all the others you can ignore if you want, unless they attack your base.
I fought one merc pogrom where I captured at least one of every kind that I needed (seductress ftw!) and have mostly ignored them since. I'll probably attack their base soonish as it seems there is now a commander I need.
I'd say difficulty curve is better than vanilla, where the beginning is the hardest, because even a sectoid with a pistol kills you in 1 shot more often than not. But at the end it is basically a cakewalk, you fly around in armor that usually lets you survive at least one hit from a cannon, and are better armored than any enemy save sectopods (maybe?), while you are shooting that same cannon. When you factor in psi that lets you control 3 enemies per turn with one dude fairly reliably and the launcher that gives you heavy artillery with incredible accuracy you are unstoppable.
In pirates the end game is more difficult. It is harder to produce everything, nothing is equally good against every enemy (I love my XG Assaults, but they aren't very good when mercs turn up for example) and sectopods with shields are scary no matter your armor and weapons. Heavy armor slows you down, doesn't help against voodoo and you still can't hover above chryssalids in them.
I kinda think Dioxine has a very specific tech tree traversal in mind where difficulty scales smoothly, and none of us here are doing it.
I doubt that, he wants to give you options, and the occasional out of depth encounter is supposed to keep you on your toes and remind you that running is always an option. You even get a weapon right at the that lets you kill the occasional marsec dude from midrange: the gothic raygun is MADE for these times.
Some of the more primitive weapons, especially throwing ones like javelins and axes are really scary in the right hands and you have them from basically the start. The humble axe itself is still a good choice in the lategame. Sure, you have more fancy stuff like vibro axes, but the regular one kills stuff dead nonetheless.
I read some of the succession game on their forum to get ideas of what to do...they were fighting Marsec (and collecting power armor parts) before they had dojo technology. I guess if you can win at them, early pogroms are great for score and loot (including hostages). Maybe knowing which techs progress enemy power would help. I'm wondering if breaking hostages is related to the Star Gods showing up.
No, star gods are timed just as mercs are. The rest is just RNG. If you don't do much more than survive and don't get more brainers they will still show up, but now you will die and can't really do anything if they ever come to your base.
Marsec dudes are slow and die to axes pretty well. The scary thing about them is the better weapons they mostly carry. Bad on an open field, but not to hard too deal with when you can approach under cover.
Early voodoo can help as well, though I admit I never used wenches or theban outfits. But the midgame seductress is just really strong against a lot of armored enemies.
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