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[ChairmanPoo]

Blood plasma. And it's not a journal proper, as much as a brief publication at a congress.

As far as indexing goes, I appear in a couple of Blood's but not at first author. Yet. I was hoping to fix this by doing a tour of duty at a certain place in UK, but the people coaching/mentoring me on this have fallen awfully silent during the last month. I kind of hope it was holiday season or something.

[sambojin]

Congrats anyway. Any publication is good publication. Plus you'll now have TFtD to while away the time until they get back to you

(totally figure the two concepts can be combined for a modded weapon in openXcom though. A frozen spike of blood that explodes into highly contagious plasma on impact. Like a long-range chryssalid bite, with burny bits)

[NullForceOmega]

Wow, Xpiratez has way too much stuff going on, this may be the most ridiculously complicated tech tree I have ever seen, and the sheer randomness of spawns is just untenable.  Also, having the government raid your HQ, successfully killing them with minimal losses, and then taking a reputation hit for it is flat out silly.  The mod is a lot of fun, but could use some cleanup.

[Darkening Kaos]

     Completely agree, NullForceOmega, there is far too much in it.  A lot of the guns could be culled and not really impact the game.

[NullForceOmega]

I mean, the mod is an absolute blast, but it just gets ridiculous so quickly, I can reliably make it a bit over a year in, but then I just stall.  The fighter/transporter is fine for a few months, but then you need the hunter killer, and that works as long as you can keep ammo for it, but once the medium and heavier ships start to pop I need vastly better weapons, and I just can't get to them.

Ground combat is great though, the gals are amazing fighters in spite of having piss-poor stats to start (the enemies only having guns about as good as your own helps a lot)  Of course once the star-gods (effing Ethereals) roll in, it gets hectic (manageable, but hectic).  Also, why are the enemy bases loaded with gauss weapon carrying academy personnel?  Weren't they supposed to be opposing pirate groups?

Definitely a fun mod regardless.

Edit because doubleposting is a crime:

You know what should never be allowed for basic enjoyment reasons?  Blaster bombs and base defense in the first two weeks.  You know what happened to me twice today?  If you thought to yourself, "blaster bombs and base defense in the first two weeks"  you are correct.

Seriously, random is fine as long as it is mitigated by some level of sanity, I really don't know how I could be expected to even play the game when shit like this happens.

[Crazy Horse]

Anyone know if grenades/explosives 'stack' in OpenXcom? I mean if you chuck multiple grenades at a single alien will they all apply damage? I'm pretty sure they don't in the original but they did with the UFO Extender mod. I can't quite tell since explosive damage is so random (50-150 procent at random) and there's nothing about it in the changelogs.

EDIT: I know there's an 'instant grenade' option in the menu but I don't use it.

[ChairmanPoo]

AFAIK: They don't in OPENUfo, but they DO  in OPENTFTD.

It's not as much a matter of explosives stacking, as it is of explosives having enough armor to withstand their own explosions. In UFO they don't, and the first explosion destroys the stack. In TFTD they do, and thus every explosive lives long enough to explode.

In fact, I think there are OPENUfo mods that add that feature by tweaking the rulesets.

[Crazy Horse]

I see. That's useful, thanks. I suppose it doesn't matter so much in Ufo since there aren't any Lobstermen who seen to enjoy grenades being thrown at them.

In other news I am enjoying the Ironman feature. Makes the game more interesting.

[ChairmanPoo]

... I dont think explosive stacking will help you any with lobstermen. I've seen the damn things walk away from THREE high explosive blasts.

In fact, I'd advise foregoing Gauss (useless as it is), and going for sonic straight away. A few sonic pistols evened the field quite a bit.


Two stage missions are still annoying as hell, though.

[sambojin]

Rise, ye, from your grave!

Anyway, "Rock, Paper, Shotgun" did a small review of the Xpiratez mod by Dioxine for OpenXcom. Cue increased popularity of an excellent game, and one of the best total-conversion mods around. Up to version 0.98b, and getting better all the time. Both the mod and the "Open Xcom Extended+" .exe are making great strides, so if you checked it out before, take another look. They're amazing now, and fully playable from start to finish.

Hard, yes. Inscrutable on the first few playthroughs, yes. But absolutely amazing once you get past the initial "wtf do I do?" thing. You capture people and booty. That is what you do. There's no running to laser rifles here, it's a not a Long War, it's a campaign of genius.

Article here:
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/03/30/x-piratez-xcom-mod/

Main mod thread here:
http://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=3626.0

Board for mod here:
http://openxcom.org/forum/index.php/board,18.0.html


It's one of my favourite mods to anything ever. Try it out some time. Check out Meridian's excellent .exe mod too, it brings masses of quality-of-life features to the basic Xcom experience, and is damn handy for Xpiratez. It was made for just this purpose (and other mods too, I guess).


Yes, it has weaponized Parrots and Dogs too. Potentially with grenades (or chainsaws!). It's tradition.

[Rince Wind]

You might also want to look at Boltguns let's play in this very forum.

[sambojin]

I may have already done so, and requested a character in it. Didn't realize there was an update.

For them's that never check the "Play With Your Buddies" subforum, Boltgun's Let's Play:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=151935.0

(it's damn good)

[ChairmanPoo]

Is it just me or Xpiratez resolution is screwed up?

[Crazy Horse]

I tried X-Piratez and it's quite an ametuer effort. Campaign balance is way off and just isn't interesting or rewarding. The basic concept has potential but the execuction is very poor.

Final Mod Pack on the other hand gives a more solid campaign experience if you want an overhauled X-Com. Then there's the Modest Rebalance mod if all you want is a simple but well balanced ruleset that is more challenging than vanilla.

[ChairmanPoo]

I favor Redux myself.

As for Piratez... ehh, I've always had lots of problems trying to tell heads or tails in it. I really want to get into it, but it's very confusing.

On top of that: the aforementioned mysterious resolution problems