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[Aoi]

Go figure. I load m2.2 onto my laptop for use while traveling with data caps and an update drops the next day. 

Is Thebian Hive the one in central Africa too? That's my usual start since it gives coverage over land for all but the largest set of radars.

[E. Albright]

It kinda feels like there may be some spots on the map where there's no bonuses at all. I ran 2 games with bases in the southwesternmost reaches of Thebes (ie in central Africa, but not in Central Africa) from start to Jun or July not doing any missions and just researching, and I never found a secret door before the nations finally got sick of me doing nothing. Wrong version.

If you want a base in the center of Africa, Thebes' southwestern border is pretty central so you can get a centralized location with all those start bonuses, yeah.

If you'd rather have a foot in Europe, though, there's parts of the Iberian Peninsula where you'll get European region bonuses but Theban national ones.

[Dostoevsky]

Go figure. I load m2.2 onto my laptop for use while traveling with data caps and an update drops the next day. 

Is Thebian Hive the one in central Africa too? That's my usual start since it gives coverage over land for all but the largest set of radars.

Yeah, Thebes is in N Africa. Overall it seems like the easiest start, initial infamy malus aside.

Iron Tribe sounds interesting, though I'm still dubious just how useful aircraft that slow really can be for intercepting - and the 14mm chainguns can't dent Ninja APCs.

I have a decently far along save already though, so won't be spinning up a new one quite yet.

[E. Albright]

The RNG has a nasty sense of humor. Rushing through the early game to see what different regions give has given me more free heroes, damsels, freaks, and young ubers per soon-to-be-abandoned game than I've ever seen in my actual playthroughs. The last one I did gave me a damsel plus these two beasts in the first two months:

Spoiler: Heroic taunting (click to show/hide)

(I'm not even remotely tempted to keep them, b/c the base is in Red Revolution which is an awful position, but even by cruel RNG standards this felt mean...)

----

So here's a question: when y'all say Theban Hive, where precisely do you mean? Right on the coast? Right on the city? I only got 10xSeagull Missiles at the following location: Wrong version.

[Nirur Torir]

So here's a question: when y'all say Theban Hive, where precisely do you mean? Right on the coast? Right on the city? I only got 10xSeagull Missiles at the following location:

[E]: Looks like Australia/Death Realms starts w/Power Armor Parts, a Vibro-Sword, and a Raygun + 4 power packs.
Japan/Fuso gave 10xMedical Supplies, as did South Africa/Rogue Fields and Russia/Eurasian Autonomy.

Are you sure you're on the right version, M3.1.1? Japan gives some swords and knives. Australia gives animal parts plus the 20 explosive cannonballs from Oceania. You should see the region bonuses very quickly, and the government bonuses around day 4.
I've found secret doors in old versions, so I don't expect that they're linked to starting location.

[E. Albright]

OMFG. I've been playing the wrong version, yeah. I went back to my old version to check some settings and then didn't switch to the new version before spending a couple hours testing things. *hangs head in shame*

I've now wasted A LOT of time testing starting positions for a version where starting positions mean nothing...

----

Spoiler: A selection of national starting bonuses now that I'm using the right version (click to show/hide)

Antarctica is 6 tribal clothes, 750 infamy, knowledge of human polar suits, plus (from "no country") a random beastly knowledge, 2 Lok'naar scriptures and 3 Grrl Guides. Arctic is same but only 500 infamy. It seems like it'd be decent if you're REALLY bad your first month.

Huh. Hawaii (Pacific) is a pile of infamy and a human hero "pilot", plus "no country". That feels pretty harsh given how little land you'll have, though, and you don't even start w/undersea missions like Oceania.

South Africa/Rogue Fields: Monster Hunting and 200 infamy but $500k in gov't fines. Ouch.

Nigeria/Hidden Expanse: North Africa stuff (beer, amphores, -50 infamy) plus 3xFlak Tower Kits.

Nordfederation is 5 Young Ubers. Practical, but boring.

Romanica: Crusader and Nun armor. Hmm.

Cali Republic is $250k in cleaning bills plus some unexciting drugs. Eww.

Canada gives you enough Cultural Wealth to create another Land Deed when you eventually learn how, hmm.

All told, I'd say the most interesting-looking from my POV are gonna be Thebes (surprise, I know), Turan, and Romanica, in that order. I do find myself with a deranged desire to do Antarctica now, though...

[Dostoevsky]

Here's a compendium compiled from someone on the discord - will spoiler both for size and spoilering (and and awkward format):

Spoiler: Region (click to show/hide)

Continent/Region   Bonus Items   Bonus Tech   Added Infamy
Arctic   6x Tribal Outfit   Human Polar Outfit   450
Antarctica   6x Tribal Outfit   Human Polar Outfit   700
Siberia   8x Luxury Fur   Ushanka   200
North Atlantic   6x Tribal Outfit   Sea Transport   450
Europe   3x Rare Earth Elements   Rare Earth Elements   -50
North America   5x Vodka   Uber Wheat   200
South America   10x each: Red Pepper, Devil's Pepper,  Eggplant, Orange, Coconut   What Do?   450
North Africa   6x Beer   1 of Golden Ankh, Amphore, Golden Cup, Golden Cross, Crown, Ol' Coins, Diamond   -50
South Africa   3x Blowpipe, 24x Blowpipe Poison Darts   !Monster Hunt!   200
Central Asia   777x Capitulatory Tax   Necropirate   200
Southeast Asia   10x each: Mutant Fish, Mutant Egg, Pumpkin   Mutant Egg   200
Australasia   20x Eplosive Cannonball   !Undersea Treasures!   450
Pacific   1x Hero   The Deep Ones   700

Spoiler: Nation (click to show/hide)

In addition to the below, the country's tech is also researched - which can lead to some considerably early Contacts options for certain sellers. This means e.g. pretty early Big Ben SMGs for Rogue Fields or Faust electrocarfighter hybrids from Blackmarch.

Country   Bonuses
The Confederation   Govt Pistol x1, Big Iron x3, Glamour x10, Big Pistol Rounds x50, -150 Infamy
Eurasian Autonomy   Baby Nuke x1, Uranium Weapons Documentation x1, Govt Fine x1
Iron Tribe   Junk Pile x8, Necroplane Parts x30, Chemicals x50, Scrap Metal x50
Eurosyndicate   Super Maid x6, Maid Outfit x6, Raygun Battery x9,  Energy Weapon Parts x3
Blackmarch   Gnome x1
Romanica   Crusader SS Armor x6, Peasant Nun Outfit x6, Olde Sworde x6, Quarterstaff x6, Golden Cup x1, Golden Cross x1
Nordfederation   Young Uber x5
Central Province   Sectoweed x75
Fuso   Fuso Sword x3, Sudoku Blade x3, Fan x6, Fuso Knives x30, Glamour x20
Death Realms   Chitin Plates x20, Animal Poison x10, Spider Silk x10, Demon Skull x20, -75000$
Hidden Expanse   Flak Tower Kit x3
Ghostgates   Slave x24, Slave Maid x24, Slave Gladiatrix x4, Slave Lasher x4
Rogue Fields   Govt Fine x5
Theban Hive   Assault Clone License x12, -600 Infamy
Kingdom of Canada   Cultural Wealth x50, Personal Database x15, Glamour x10, Govt Personal Code x3, Exquisite Lingerie x1
Cali Republic   Mutant Porn x50, Glamour x50, Crack x50, Hideout Cleaning Bill x50
Dark Dominion   Arcane Book x3, Esoterica x2
Latin Empire   Old Earth Books x1, -50 Infamy
The Technocracy   Optronic Parts x20
Pirate Straits   Hoe x3
Turan   Turanian Gal x3
Steel Pact   Metal Ore x10, Prepper Box x1
Red Revolution   Worker x10
None   Lokk'Naar Scriptures x2, Grrrl Guide x3, +50 Infamy, 1 free tech of: Ainmal Poison, Spider Silk, Monster Teeth, Monster Eye, Luxury Fur, Chitin Plates

As you can see, some interesting potential starts but also some definite stinkers / challenge modes.

Spoiler: A few thoughts (click to show/hide)

Initial Infamy boost/malus is pretty significant given the amount of potential money it works out to being. Having a few extra hundred thousand in month two should be pretty useful.

Romanica's better than it looks, as the nun outfit provides a considerable boost to VPower and an anti-E511 ability while still leaving both hands free. Early suits of Crusader armor would certainly be nice for a Male Touch run, and 6 Olde Swordes are quite powerful for early game.

Rogue Fields is more than just a fine - the aforementioned Big Ben is usually a bit stale by the time you get the contact, but getting an early contact for it would make it a really powerful option. And a fair bit more besides in purchase options. Opening up Monster Hunt missions from the start is also spiffy.

Similarly, Blackmarch gnome is in addition to the contact with the Faust, a really solid early ship with 6 crew, 2 light slots, and decent speed. Getting the required parts to trade for one would probably require rushing airgame a tad, though.

Turan's Turanian Gals are Hyena Riders with good stats, but require a bit of research to recruit.

Death Realms providing basic undersea adventures sounds pretty handy - you'll likely get some harpoon guns from the Academy quickly enough, and skinnydipping is perfectly sufficient for the basic underwater missions. The pile of chitin should be good for a few suits of scale male when you get the tech, too.

Free Hero from the Pacific seems neat, except that the location means you'll likely have trouble getting to early missions in the airbus and are much more likely to get spotted for base invasions due to how their search patterns are coded.

Lastly, according to the discord chatter there is now a more brutal version of cold weather to look out for, so the new outfit (and a few of the new starts) make a bit more sense for survivability early on.

[Rolan7]

Oh great.  Because cold mechanics were already so fun.
...Maybe it's a good reason to pay attention and bundle up.

I sorta wonder what my classic start, corpsica Corsica, would be. 
Probably Europe, nationless.  I guess I'll find out soon.

[Sime]

As a permadeath-only player who is getting pretty bored with the same old start, this sounds somewhat promising.

One potentially true criticism  i read  on the x-pirates forum about the mod in general that bothers me, is that in spite of the diversity of the tech tree there are only a few "true" paths that cope with the endgame.   If this is true, then I might switch to another mod. 

[EuchreJack]

If you get to the endgame before the next update, congrats.  Otherwise, probably not worth worrying about.  I'm usually pretty motivated to start over every few updates, and its a long game.

[Aoi]

One potentially true criticism  i read  on the x-pirates forum about the mod in general that bothers me, is that in spite of the diversity of the tech tree there are only a few "true" paths that cope with the endgame.   If this is true, then I might switch to another mod.

Isn't that because there's only one actual endgame implemented right now? Regardless of how you do it (of which there's at least two that come to mind), you need to be able to research the top tier units of each major branch. Alternate planned(?) endgames, like the Shadow stuff, are way off on the to-do list.

[Robsoie]

From what i read in the xpiratez board ,it looks like since M1 release there's an increased time pressure that basically force you to rush some researches in order to avoid getting into a losing situation way earlier than in pre-M1 without ways to relax the time pressure with your actions.

If true, it then means the game does not allow you to take your time like in the past versions (something i appreciated as the time pressure was more relaxed than in default xcom).

[Dostoevsky]

It's partly difficulty dependent, but the short version is that there's an active antagonist now.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Ninjas. While they have a finite number of main bases (with timing largely tied to tech advancement), those bases can send out missions to setup smaller outposts, and if you don't try to keep a handle on them it can get out of hand. Furthermore, if you leave the base long enough - 12 to 18 months - it'll upgrade into a massively more dangerous version that sends out attacks against your backers. Think worse versions of mutant pogroms.

Their growth/attack rate, and the score penalties associated therein, are not as punishing as they were in the last version. Additionally, they send out fewer interceptors with slightly lower radar coverage, meaning less of a chance of getting your airbus ambushed early on.

The biggest issue is that their growth can easily spiral out of control - if you stamp out the initial bases before they can upgrade and stop their expansion efforts, the game doesn't change too much. But taking on the initial bases safely basically requires tanks or similar levels of heavy armor. This means doing some tech rush is much more incentivize than before.

That said... thanks to how their growth mechanic works, if you simply assault their bases and debug-kill them, you can effectively delay or wipe their presence in the game with very little hassle.

I play on difficulty 2 and I ultimately decided on debug-killing their first base after a certain thing happened, but that was before the most recent update.

Also worth noting that as of a few versions ago sale price is altered depending on difficulty, meaning that the economy is actually harder instead of easier as you go up in difficulty.

[Robsoie]

Thanks for the explanation, will be helpfull on my next play to see what i must do.

For people playing the latest wh40k mod for openxcom (version 030) , there are a few additional bugfixes :

- get the "Stormtalon_base.png" from there : https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,6413.msg140560.html#msg140560
and put it in your
...OpenXCOM WH40K Directory\User\mods\40k\Resources\Stormtalon\IMPERIALF\

- get the "extraSprites_40k.rul"  from there : https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,6413.msg141355.html#msg141355
and put it in your
...OpenXCOM WH40K Directory\User\mods\40k\Ruleset\

- get the "terrain_40k.rul"  from there : https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,6413.msg142281.html#msg142281
and put it in your
...OpenXCOM WH40K Directory\User\mods\40k\Ruleset\

- get the "startingConditions_40k.rul "  from there : https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/topic,6413.msg142343.html#msg142343
and put it in your
...OpenXCOM WH40K Directory\User\mods\40k\Ruleset\

[Dostoevsky]

One potentially true criticism  i read  on the x-pirates forum about the mod in general that bothers me, is that in spite of the diversity of the tech tree there are only a few "true" paths that cope with the endgame.   If this is true, then I might switch to another mod.

Isn't that because there's only one actual endgame implemented right now? Regardless of how you do it (of which there's at least two that come to mind), you need to be able to research the top tier units of each major branch. Alternate planned(?) endgames, like the Shadow stuff, are way off on the to-do list.

There is indeed only one victory ending at the moment, though there are several storylines whose timing and completeness are partially RNG dependent (which may seem annoying on paper, but given how much content there is in practice more means that the arc of an individual campaign shifts depending on which factions end up more prominent).

Also the case that there are a few decision-sets that change the tech tree available, with the biggest being the codex choice. The 4 different colors are better-balanced than they used to be, with all 4 being viable in endgame (from what I've read, at least). The fifth choice, rejecting the codex outright, is intended as a challenge mode / failsafe if you sell a critical component that you start with - there are some exclusive bonuses from that path, but missing out on all codex tech makes it much harder overall.

That said, certain techs/choices are easier than others, but that's true in any game like this. And the new antagonists have some strategic and tactical assets that shake up some of the traditional tactics.