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[Mathel]

The Mudranger can be used if an early UFO lands within it's range. It can happen. And if you capture an early UFO, you will have an advantage against later threats.

[Robsoie]

Unless the ufo near enough to the base for the mudranger (it's range is really small) is a scripted event, the odds for that happening must still be small considering the world size.
So until you have tons of money and can spare for another hangar, it's better to get a 2nd car as with 2 cars you can cover more missions before they disappear (and it's very costly for the score to have a mission disappear in X-Com Files, a lot more than the pitifull small score reward for a completed mission)

[Mathel]

I think it is guaranteed that you get a few UFOs in your region in the beginning. Not nescessarily in Mudranger range, but it has higher chance of happening than if the UFO chose from all of the Earth.

[Salmeuk]

I really like the parts of x-piratez where you've scrounged up something waaay above your tech level and can tackle something more challenging than normally possible.

any tips on avoiding grind once you get some basic things running, like brewing the apples into wine, running certain missions successfully, etc ? I recall my farthest game made it about 6 months but I just sort of gave up because I found myself doing the same mission type over and over, without much interest or challenge for me, but they representing what I saw as unavoidable rewards for progression. I think I'm just really bad at deciding what is worthwhile or not. .

[Robsoie]

You can give a look into the XPiratez succession game
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=174268.0
That should give you a lot of hints on the early game progression to avoid spending 6 months grinding on the same missions.

Noticed for openxcom the mod "From the Ashes"
https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,10496.0.html

While it's  only an initial release, from reading the description it's a mod you'll need to keep an eye on.
Because it is very likely going to become a big player in the xcom mods world : the developer works on his own fork of the openxcom engine, coding to add more features and mechanics to support his mod systems .

[E. Albright]

Re: unwanted early progression in XPiratez, one positive thing that arose from a few of the last releases is making more progression tied to researching tech rather than time passing. The flip side is that the most recent releases flipped that back on its head by introducing the very-aggressive rival faction in the form of stepped-up Sky Ninja presence. Still, if you can keep the SN under control, there's a lot of progression you can do w/o escalating the general difficulty curve. The trick is avoiding a handful of techs that drag you forward - generally "Advances Progression" techs that don't imply they unlock single mission types. It's possible I could put together a clear list, but it'd not be a trivial task given what a mess the XP tech tree is. You sorta get a feel for what's "safe" and what will ramp things up after a few playthroughs (even incomplete ones), but it's hard to characterize them generally. Avoiding Mutant Alliance ones for as long as possible will slow progression a lot. You can do a lot w/o joining the Alliance, and the last few playthroughs where I delayed that saw a much more forgiving difficulty curve for my gals.

[Robsoie]

X-Com Files

Spoiler: words of wisdom (click to show/hide)

[Robsoie]

Got my best monthly score so far in XCom-Files , managed some undercover mission in arctic environment that was hell (because i had forgot to add a new agent in the car, so i was with a lonely guy after his partner got hurt and stuck at the base recovering)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's also very helped by the fact i finally could build an intelligence center in the base, it adds 5 scientist (as unlike normal xcom you are basically stuck with only a lab (and so 5 scientist max) in a base in the early game.
And as researches add some positive score it sure helped with all the (mostly negative score) random events popping up around.

Mentionning positive random events, was happy to see one

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Then i saw what was after the positive score 

[Aoi]

Yegads, how early did that event happen? An unexpected 500k hit would be enough to put me underwater in XCF... though I usually don't manage to last past the first year anyways.

[Dostoevsky]

any tips on avoiding grind once you get some basic things running, like brewing the apples into wine, running certain missions successfully, etc ? I recall my farthest game made it about 6 months but I just sort of gave up because I found myself doing the same mission type over and over, without much interest or challenge for me, but they representing what I saw as unavoidable rewards for progression. I think I'm just really bad at deciding what is worthwhile or not. .

Depending on how recent your last attempt was, the dev has added a bunch of additional earlier missions in the last few releases. (They've also extended the length of the 'early game' tech levels.)

Given the sheer breadth of potential mission types, UFOs, random events, etc., difficulty of an individual campaign can vary pretty wildly, but repeated missions is going to be hard to avoid. Once you get a good air game going you can afford to skip many or even most missions you're not keen on as long as you're blasting enough of the right air traffic, but playing optimally is still going to require a lot of repeated missions.

The dev has stated opposition to any sort of auto-doing or otherwise automating missions.

[AzyWng]

All I can really recommend is taking frequent breaks. Advice I should probably follow myself, even if XPiratez can have that "Just one more month" effect on me.

[E. Albright]

I tend to skip a couple versions b/tw playthroughs. This tends to result in incomplete playthroughs that never get to lategame, but it makes the game a lot more playable - and while this is probably changing a bit with increased efforts to make more significanttly branching tech trees, it's historically given a little bit more room for varied playstyles as playstyles tend to converge towards optimums as you get more techs and resources.

[Dostoevsky]

The dev has been adding more unique options (gear, tech, interactions) for the different paths, some of which does change optimal approaches, but there are still definite convergence points throughout the tech tree. That said, you get enough curveballs / early access / other RNG early on to spice things up between runs, and late game is so darn late that by the time you can actually have all the best toys you've probably been playing that campaign far too long and could've finished it a while ago.

[E. Albright]

Aye, the RNG is still the biggest source of variation b/tw various early runs...

[Sime]

I don't like the X-piratez tech-tree as it feels  bloated and doesn't seem to interface well with mission discoveries.   For example, if I find an old Carbine in a very early game mission I shouldn't then have to  research a sequence of several unrelated things in order to be able to access carbine ammo in the trading market.

 I think the mod would be better if they  entirely scrapped the tech-tree and made all progress driven by mission discoveries, salvaging, lucky events and trading.   Perhaps the same is true of tech-trees in other games.