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[AzyWng]

I'm sort of afraid to ask this, but if it's been so long since you were on the Discord, how do we know your information is up-to-date?

Also, why do you describe yourself as being "tragically online"?

[Rolan7]

-Google sheet is defunct-

[E. Albright]

Anyone have strong opinions on whether the latest XPirates adds enough to justify ditching a moderately advanced save from the prior March version? I was traveling with my laptop last week and started a new game on it as a result, and it felt like there were more changes than the changelog clearly outlined - I just didn't get so deep into it as to be able to tell if they'd change enough things to make me have proper FOMO...

[Rolan7]

I lean towards restarting mostly because the early-midgame is more interesting, and tends to get a lot of "rebalancing" that keeps it fresh.  Once you're running around in Guardian armor with X-plasma, and literally printing money...

The big changes I noticed were, of course:
Faction bases being custom to each faction, which sounds cool
All gambling using Jack tokens??  Which probably changes gambling from being the optimal way of monetizing chips, into an interesting opportunity to get cool stuff if you're lucky.  As it probably was intended to be from the start.

[Rince Wind]

Cashing in the iron, zortrium and so on ... things ... doesn't cost tokens anymore though. So you basically pay them up front to spin now, not on your way out.

[Rolan7]

v.M1 29-Aug-2021 Violent Laser Battle Against Demonic Ninjas From Another Dimension!
- Good news: this update has so much content it can easily count as double.
- Bad news: due to significantly changed early and mid game campaign dynamics, starting a new game is reccomended.
- Good news again: this won't be happening again anytime soon.
- New Missions/Enemy Missions: At least 12 Ninja-related, including 3 types of Ninja bases; +Void missions (x2); + Primal Hunts (x5)
- New Enemy Craft: Ninja Jetfighter (model by Bulletdesigner), Ninja Transport, Ninja Mobile Fortress, Ninja APC, Ninja Crawler, Ninja Interceptor, Ninja Landcruiser & more
- New Enemy Units: Assassin (thx to Tylor for the fetish suit), Skyforge Engineer, Skyforge Labourer (x2), Ninja Medic, Succubus (credit for various parts & pieces goes to Bulletdesigner, Robin, Bloax & Mannhandle), Mega Bullfrog (rip by Alinare, design by Solarius), Manhack (on the basis of Osobist's submod)
- New Civilian faction: Govt; includes new unit, Govt Armored Car.
- New Craft: Faust, Anachronox, Dutchman, Hunt Party
- New Armors: Moongoose (Gnm) (3 versions) (Gfx by Brain); Nightsprite (for Shadowrealms); Cybermage (Bug) gets sea and 0-g versions
- New Weapons: Ninja Weapons (x6), Shadowrealms Weapons (x5), Ol' Tankbuster, ABC Gun, Pointy Sticks, Chitin Sword
- New Items: Frog Concotion
- New Feature: Several Establishments no longer get destroyed in a single hit, turn into damaged versions instead
- New Trainings: Magicienne (Damsels & Gnomes), Cenobite (Repentias & Damsels), Huntress (Peasants & Lokk'Naars)
- New Maps (minor): Island Resort (x1)(thx to Solar for RMP), Jungle (x1)
- A new way to get to Cydonia
- Somewhat workable no-Codex-challenge (or a way to continue playing for those who lost Drill/Hull)
- Difficulty coefficients changed (removed armor&aim buff on JS, more stats and sell prices impact to compensate)
- All Lasers do some armor pre-damage now
- Little Bird updated (now it's a mini quest, craft buffed, added 14mm Chaingun)
- Casino updates (lvl 1-5 coupons require no tech to claim, some prizes moved from 6 to 5)
- Study Room changed to Analytics Room, double effectivity, max 1. per hideout. Libraries limited to 3/hideout.
- Redesigned the default Hideout layout
- Updates to Portal mission rules
- Slight expansions of Doctor X, Red-Eyes and Red Mage stories
- Gfx: Vapor Trails (thx to Greenscarf and Bulletdesigner whose mods were reverse-engineered to find out how)
- Gfx updates & additions by Brain (including paperdolls and weapon sprites for heavy turrets, new battlesprites for Mechs)
- Expanded LOFTEMPS by Finnik and Solar
- Offline xpedia updated/fixed for Korean version (by Kato)
- Tweaks, improvements & additions
- Terrain fixes and other fixes

Another excuse to restart!

Though with each update, I think he's nerfing my strategy of not harassing civs early-game.

I don't really get it.  Yeah it's lucrative, but what weapons am I supposed to use?  Spike balls?  The emplacement-guns from that one mission?  It eats my precious gals up, not to mention my men!

[Iduno]

Though with each update, I think he's nerfing my strategy of not harassing civs early-game.

I don't really get it.  Yeah it's lucrative, but what weapons am I supposed to use?  Spike balls?  The emplacement-guns from that one mission?  It eats my precious gals up, not to mention my men!

Yeah, the dev loves nerfing player strategies, which makes it sometimes feel more like you're fighting the game and dev than the enemies. This update actually includes some buffs, so that's good.

With civilians, using the small light weapons like handles is fine. Trains characters on reaction and strength (I think), and trains you to keep in cover while approaching. And taking several hits to take someone down doesn't matter when it's like 3 TU per hit.

Edit: Big addition though. Time for another community game?

[Rolan7]

Fighting civs once they're landed is easy, I'm just not clear what craft weapons I'm supposed to use.  Getting the actual craft autocannons from that one mission involves defeating an emplaced gun made of bullshittium, and spike balls just feel like a joke.  The Craft Charger Laser is great, but surely you're supposed to be taking civilians down long before you use the tiny drill.

[E. Albright]

I never really had trouble taking out the bandit cannons - they're 2x2 so they don't like explosives, and if they're near cover so you can sneak up on them - well, NOTHING likes Anchors.

It also sounds like the Lil Bird is gonna come with a built-in (or at least provided) craft weapon of its own....

[Rince Wind]

I prefer to use the ammoless weapons if I can get them. Charger laser or reticulan plasma chargers. 25mm guns work fine was well, and I think you don't blow them up with gauss cannons either, depending on your luck you might be drowning in gauss ammo.

Once downed I like to use the civvies as sparring partners for my lokknar, if I am at that point. Police shotguns with rubber ammo and just let them reaction fire most of the time. Once they are strong enough they get a pistol as well to shoot those bandit boys that I don't even want as prisoners by that time.

The gun emplacement used to be very vulnerable to poison gas. I think they were buffed against it somewhat, but 2 or 3 poison gas grenades still worked last time I tried. The stormrats usually were a bigger problem.

[Aoi]

Uh... has there always been a creepy voodoo villager?

[E. Albright]

Yeah, for as long as I can remember. She doesn't show up much, so either the pics are weighted and that one's rare, or there's A LOT of really generic ones.

[E. Albright]

Oh, wow. At the risk of sounding very unobservant, I just discovered that I can resize the battlescape (and geoscape, but who cares about that?), and while it's nice to not have my 1920x1080 monitor displaying zoomed-in/stretched-out 320x200 graphics, it really takes some getting used to.

[Iduno]

The stormrats usually were a bigger problem.

Oh yeah, those jerks.

Oh, wow. At the risk of sounding very unobservant, I just discovered that I can resize the battlescape (and geoscape, but who cares about that?), and while it's nice to not have my 1920x1080 monitor displaying zoomed-in/stretched-out 320x200 graphics, it really takes some getting used to.

How's that?

[E. Albright]

If you mean "how do you do it", Options->Video->Battlescape Scale and change it from the default 320x200 to either 480, 640, or one of the multipliers below 6x (I'm running on the 3x setting, which seems to be a good, large field of view but I can still read the buttons and such at the bottom). The difference is VERY dramatic.

If you mean "how's it going", I felt like it'd give me a headache at first, but when I tried switching it back to 320 to compare after doing a City Invasion mission, it looked so terrible that THAT felt like it would give me a headache. So I think I'm getting used to it pretty well, and should be spoiled to the point where my small-screen laptop will make me cry next time I play on it.