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[sambojin]

Well, I've started my new run. It does seem a little trickier at the beginning (no smoke grenades, no really early access to good weapons), but shotties, handles and cattleprods have seen me through thus far.

Lost a gal, so grabbed a few peasants to replace her with. God they're terrible. But I've got 5 brainers, about to get a 6th, just unlocked Hand recruitment (I've got two newbies on the way, but will grab some more soon) and can now manufacture X-grog. Just about to do smugglers, car thieves and merchants (I think?) contacts, so it'll be pretty standard fare from here on out.

Feeling pretty good about the run. Just dying to try out my bikini flamer gals and check for bugs. Got tomorrow off, so should be at that point by then.

[E. Albright]

I'm not a huge fan of handles. I used to be, but once I realized I could one-hand bats they pretty much lost all their appeal (except infiltration, ofc) since the damage/armor resistance difference at the levels where I'd be using either of those weapons is very noticeable - and it doesn't really seem like the lower attack cost balances it out. I supposed the biggest difference is that bats ARE more lethal, but it's still usually not an issue. YMMV, though, I suppose...

[One last point about the "KO everyone vs. shoot people" design issue: pretty much all low-level melee weapons are made worthless by KO design preferences. While high-end melee might let you kill off certain really dangerous enemies more easily than ranged gear, the low-end melee forces you to trade off the safety of stand-off fire for little or no increase in lethality while forgoing the benefits of closing to fight w/non-lethal melee weapons.]

[Rince Wind]

Low end melee like sabers and axes are a lot more deadly than early firearms. Yor can kill armored enemies easily with them while the firearms struggle.
Try killing a Bodyguard with early firearms. It dies pretty easily to an axe. Lobstermen as well.

[E. Albright]

True, but those two examples aren't going to be seen early unless you get really unlucky and have an out-of-depth encounter, or unless you've really neglected your research - and even so, I'd rather take a spiked mace or great club to them than use early melee options... although I suppose against an early lobsterman you'd be best off using a rope or maybe even a fancy shawl...

[sambojin]

Accuracy and TU cost is a big difference as well. While it might cost you an extra 30TU to cover the 10-odd extra squares between shooting and stabbing range, once you have you'll often have the equivalent of +10-20% to-hit with 9-15TU attacks, and you kind-of keep this bonus if they don't go down that turn as well.

Melee just runs off stats so well, and is so damaging, that the "run-in" danger is a reasonable trade-off early on. Plus, your gals stat-up super well too, so a lot of these things are semi uncapped compared to how dismal the early firearms are. You're looking at 45-80+ damage swings (bye-bye armour) at low TU cost and high accuracy, not 16-45 damage attacks at 20-40%TUs (15-30'ish TUs early on) and very poor accuracy with the early available firearms.

Basically, there's a melee weapon for every gal, tailor made just for her. It's nearly impossible that there's not something that's good with any array of stats. Lethal or non-lethal. At worst, your strength will constantly be going up, and so will your melee stat, so even if she's really useless to begin with, she won't stay that way.

Nearly all guns rely on the firing stat in some form, and very few get damage bonuses from stats. They just do what they say they do. Whereas something simple like a Handle is really doing 46 stun damage average per swing on a 40Str/80Bravery gal, while an Ax might be doing 80+ cutting damage. It's a big difference, early and mid game. Shotguns and cannons are nice, but there's stuff they simply can't scratch. But every time you do get surprised, melee is *always* an option, even with early game gear.

Bad firing stat? You're going to be bad at shooting for a while. Bad melee stat? Not necessarily a problem, we've got just the weapon for you..... As long as you've got one good stat (that isn't firing), you're set.

(I like handles better than bats mostly because I was blessed with high bravery gals. And bravery is kinda easy to train early on. Strength might auto-train, but bravery brings lumps of damage and kind-of auto-trains on gals with low stats in that area as well.  When I want to stun someone, I really want to stun someone. If I wanted them dead, I'd make them really dead)

[E. Albright]

True enough, though it is worth remembering that a lot of early melee weapons have severe armor penalties. Handles are something like 120% armor, forex. Without exhaustively reviewing things, ISTR that early Cutting, Daze, and Concussive weapons are going to suffer from this (though Stabbing won't).

[sambojin]

On the flip side, stuff like Rapiers (85%), Axs, Pitchforks, Hammers (80%), Ropes (33%), Boathooks and Chainsaws are either normal or better at penetrating armour. Stuff like cattleprods hit an uncommon resist as well. There's just *SO* many options with melee, that it's really hard to pick what's best. But there's always an option there.

Plus, do you now what gets through armour? Massive damage. Do you know what does massive damage? Melee

There's also A LOT of early melee outfits, so it's hard for a gal to actually be bad at melee. There's +reaction/ +stamina/ +stamina regen for running in, there's +melee for hitting, there's +bravery for being brave. I honestly don't even know if they give damage/hit bonuses (question: do they?), but there's no such thing as a gal that's bad at melee. But there are bad firearms and gals that can't shoot to save themselves (although you do get some early/mid game utility from stuff like pyro cannonballs for anti-morale/+smoke, fire arrows for light sources (16 damagey flares in a weapon slot essentially) and shotguns for anti-shield/+super accuracy).

That's why I like restarting an X-piratez run with bigger new versions (or every few versions). A few changes to the techtree, a few item restats, losing access to a few items, a different starting condition, and you're all of a sudden relearning everything you thought you knew on how to pirate. It's a very different feeling game from a year or two ago, but also far better for it. The start makes everything feel important now, not just Xcom'y "load 'em up and shoot/stun everything down" like it used to. Finding silly niches for gear is fun too

(daemon skulls look fun as heck to stack. Run forever. Forever!)

[Iduno]

Reaper Cav is easy to capture: just use a molotov or an incendiary grenade. They'll panic.

My go-to reaper load-out is a molotov in one hand, and a molotov in the other. Maybe bandages. Also, if you can spare the space, save some reapers for mid-late game. They're needed for building vassal farms.

[One last point about the "KO everyone vs. shoot people" design issue: pretty much all low-level melee weapons are made worthless by KO design preferences. While high-end melee might let you kill off certain really dangerous enemies more easily than ranged gear, the low-end melee forces you to trade off the safety of stand-off fire for little or no increase in lethality while forgoing the benefits of closing to fight w/non-lethal melee weapons.]

Pretty much, except there are hundreds of nurses early on, and half of them are carrying stun batons. It feels like stun batons are a mid-game weapon, and there should be a worse early version.

(daemon skulls look fun as heck to stack. Run forever. Forever!)

Because morale affects freshness, and freshness affects morale, people found out that skulls (or anything that lowers your morale) prevents freshness loss entirely after 1-2 rounds.

Edit: this is probably extra fun with the "bravery >100 means you no longer panic" rule. Low morale still makes you less resistant to mind control, but you should know what you're getting into before you're facing psychics.

[Rince Wind]

A stun baton or cattle prod won't kill you. Enemies that have those are classed as harmless by me and will be imprisoned. Yeah, they can stun a gal, but that doesn't matter much, if you aren't down a couple already.
No need to gimp the AI further by giving it even worse weapons. Unless you want them to have worse weapons so the players can't loot them.

It comes down to different play styles, and the beauty of pirates is that they are all equally valid.

Gun down enemies quickly so the rest will surrender, stun them or skewer them with a saber. Not stunning everyone means you are slightly worse off financially and maybe have a little less space, but you probably win a lot of real time and need less time to finish a month, so you'll progress through the game more quickly (again, real time).

[Iduno]

Unless you want them to have worse weapons so the players can't loot them.

Yeah, that one is the problem. A weapon you reasonably get from your first mission shouldn't be a good weapon against everything short of power armor. At least not if none of the other weapon types you'll see in the first year are expected to be kept more than a few months. Maybe at least require an upgrade for the additional damage from reactions, to put it on par with a shiny niner (even though you wouldn't try to take Marsec or Megapol down with a niner).

I guess part of it is melee is higher damage and safer than ranged (you don't hit your own people when you miss, unless you're using ranged melee weapons like the hammer) to make up for needing to run up to people.

Also, lethal damage increases your morale. That sounds good, but that means it lowers your freshness (the new mechanic). So each kill adds some recovery time to every gal on the mission. I'm guessing that's unintended, and may get fixed, but it's how things are in the current version (which is part of why I'm avoiding it for now).


Edit: Dioxine has some interesting ideas and is a capable modder, but needs whatever the game design equivalent of an editor is. He does not see unintended consequences, and is usually dismissive of them when they are pointed out.

[sambojin]

I haven't had real problems with freshness lag yet, but that may change if I start doing my normal x-grog everything technique for life and well-being.

[Iduno]

Dang. Don't hang around in the Discord if you want to keep liking X-Piratez.

[E. Albright]

I probably shouldn't ask, but... ?

[Soadreqm]

Are you trying to use reverse psychology to get more people into the Discord? Because it's working. I don't even use Discord and I want to go check it out.

[sambojin]

Wouldn't a lot of the problems with freshness be solved by just having an extra 8-20 gals hanging around the base? I mean, with the amount of injuries you tend to end up with, and with that now meaning that they won't get fresher, just having replacements seems fine. Between a mess hall, your basic facilities, etc, you're probably getting about +10 freshness a day, and unless injured, combat probably won't knock that much off a gal on any given day.

Grog is a problem. That -2 freshness per use really adds up. But it looks to be more of a playstyle/item-use thing. Use grog for self-healing when you really need it, but you now mostly want someone else healing you with medikits. X-grog is still handy for the massive +25 energy/-12 stun, but it's no longer your cure-all for everything.

Having an extra ~16 gals hanging around might make base defenses a chore, most bases will need one extra barracks or a +freshness facility or a few less runts, and you'll need to use healing items instead of grog/drugs, but it doesn't seem insurmountable as far as gameplay problems go.

It might just be people refusing to change how they play a bit, rather than there being a massive problem here. Yes, it's a hassle if you've got to make these changes over 6 bases in a campaign you've been playing for months. Yes, medikit healing is harder to do than drinking rum. But Dioxine has just changed the tools you use and the advantages/disadvantages of them (rum/x-grog/etc was simply superior to actual healing items before),  and made stuff like mess halls a requirement for combat bases, he hasn't "totally destroyed/changed his own game" because of this new mechanic. Not relying on one team of uber ubers constantly, and having actual disadvantages to "otherwise supercedes an entire class of items" items, isn't really a bad thing.

That's the beauty of X-piratez. Its always changing slightly, you just have to change with it and find new ways of doing things.