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Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347039] Sat, 24 September 2016 02:38 Go to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
AR is a 1.13 based mod I started on in hopes of post 7609 bugfixes and the new features, which seemed promising. AR comes with setup guidelines and aims to provide a hard game with much financial strife (no drop all, sell to locals recommendation 20%), and a live-off-the-land playstyle. There are a number of new towns (without mines) and every single sector I've seen so far has been reworked, sometimes being brand new, sometimes being familiar with a twist. Loot is carefully pre-placed, checking all containers and learning what is where is essential for your survival. Shipping costs have increased while times have been reduced, Estoni is now the only place where you can order from BR (delaying access compared to the regular drassen) and some NPCs like maddog and manuel are placed elsewhere - and more.

This is my 3rd attempt at AR, the first one failed financially, the 2nd one turned out too easy due to IMP number abuse. I'm trying to play with a single starting IMP this time (more radio operators to follow for later teams) and cheap hires with some

TWEAKED SETTINGS:
- sell to locals slightly increased to 25%. I found loot fairly limited for a long time from what I've seen so far, and lugging even only guns to san mona for better prices quickly became a full time job, leaving little time to actually defend held territory or conquer new ones. I had planned on using 33%, but became uneasy with it being two steps up after all.
- aggressive AI (responsible for large-scale counterattacks) isn't mentioned in the AR documentation and my two games with it activated were more of a chore than anything else due to the waves and waves of enemies that would attack every single location I held. Unfortunately, there is little middle ground with this setting, which is why I decided to deactivate it completely.
- sci-fi mode does not include creptius, I just want the new guns.
- no mine runs out, which allows better financial planning and won't ruin a full game by taking your main income away just when you can't get another one (this kept happening to me in 1.13)
- elite milita training is available from day 7. I used to delay to 30, but that made reliable AR town defense fairly impossible until that date. Delaying it for a week seems like a decent compromise. Note that in order to train a full squad of 10 milita the merc must have considerable leadership, otherwise he will train fewer. Letting a merc with 20 leadership train milita (the minimum required) will likely result in 1-3 militia per session only.
- classic progress calculation (25-25-50-0), the alternate version was another imbalancing factor in my previous game. Likewise classic repair system where everybody can repair anything to 100%. The alternate one was very, very slow and didn't play as nicely as it did in 1.13.
- BR shipments neither get lost nor stolen from. Also Tony is always there.

I don't use the food system, zombies or temperature, never have.

REFERENCE PIC, STRATEGIC MAP http://imgur.com/a/hH1q5
check here if confused by coordinate mentions, need a reminder where the new towns are or try to understand my poorly explained macro-strategic reasoning.

GAME SETUP SCREEN: http://imgur.com/a/YP18K
as you can see, new traits, NCTH, new interrupt, new inventory. sci-fi expert ironman, no drop all (as rightfully recommended). 10 max IMPs - we will only use one at startup though and 10 max team size (because I dislike team switching in tactical), enemy progression very slow instead of standard slow, BR quality minimum with quantity in the middle (so no need to keep shopping everyday for camo shirts etc - once they turn up and you have the money you can scratch that off your list, see).

STARTING IMP - http://imgur.com/a/qjdjl
Meet Godlight (read: god light, as in "now with 70% less fat")! - both a proper sniper and gunfighter, he's a killing machine at long and short ranges equally. He's stacked with secondary skills: ambidextrous (for twice as much gunfighting fun), atletic, stealthy, night operations, bodybuilding and scout. He is a german babe with common manners, and doesn't care about looks, manners, sex or ethnicity. He's malicious, ensuring he inflicts more stat loss hits and those that make the enemy fall down in pain. He has a wrestler background, giving him additional 10% damage res, a carrying capacity bonus and 5% faster running. In addition to his early gunfighting and later sniper duties, he's destined to be my "breaching merc", taking point - and presumably the bullets - whenever some bastard refuses to come out of a hiding place, which happens frequently. Remember, this is ironman - nothing worse than having to replay because literally the last guy straight up kills you! His stats are 75 for for everything except wisdom being slightly higher at 80.

There will be no more IMPs with the exception of one (presumably similarly buffed) radio operator per independent combat team later. Could be that my tweaked settings make this obsolete after all, but ever since they got introduced I found a jamming radio operator per team a neccessity, so I'm announcing it now.

STARTING HIRES
Bob (http://imgur.com/a/uC2Q1) is a cornerstone of our team - the only AIM radio operator, with teaching and auto weapons skill to boot. He has decent if not amazing physical stats (which are the slowest to increase) and his very high wisdom ensures he'll pick up any needed skills easily enough. We select the ammo starting package, which gives him a 12-range .40 S&W pistol with 6 magazines. This won't be easy to feed early on, but the shotgun or thompson SMG are worse.

Hector (http://imgur.com/a/tG77e) is the 3rd cheapest merc there is. Melee is useless, certainly in ironman, but athletics is always welcome. His physical stats are amazing though, and his wisdom is pretty decent. He gets premium gear because the .38 is short range crap, and this 9x19mm 11-range pistol will be easy to feed and useful for a while.

Gary (http://imgur.com/a/OabAH) is our first real compromise. His skills are fairly good, heavy weapons, bodybuilding for carrying more and demolitions for occasional grenade use - but he is a snitch, one of the most annoying and useless things you can be (he's also primitive btw). I'm going to hate him by the end of the first week for his constant, useless information. Extremely high str and health, decent agility but poor dex. Agility is the hardest physical stat to increase by regular play, dexterity kind of works out because I switched back to the old repair system, so anybody can train it now. It's important for to-hit calculations IIRC and I prefer it very high for that reason. But he's capable and cheap. Gary gets the ammo starting package, lots of magazines for an especially accurate 12-range 9x19 pistol!

Grizzly (http://imgur.com/a/Yw97b) is our second compromise. He's very much a carbon copy of gary, including him also being primitive. He's not a snitch though, which endears him to me despite his hand to hand skill being even more useless than demolitions. He gets the H2H package, replacing the useless standard knife with brass knuckles and being ~$100 cheaper. His deagle is pointless because it's too slow and fairly hard to feed actually.

Fox (http://imgur.com/a/YgNjO) is a merc I never use, but she is fairly cheap and holy smokes, those physical stats! The low str can easily be improved, and she'll be a killing machine once she levels up a bit. Additionally, while no gunfighter or even just -slinger, she's ambidextrous and able to fire two pistols at once for the same AP as one, which is especially helpful in the beginning. She gets the combat package, two 11-range 9x19 pistols and two holsters.

Buns (http://imgur.com/a/iCfV4) is our last member. As a marks(wo)man with very good stats, she will be useful throughout the game. She gets the combat package, giving her very accurate 11-range 9x19 pistol a welcome 6 extra mags.

Everybody got hired for two weeks, leaving me with 14.5k of my 75k starting cash and a daily team cost of $2855. Of course this depends on the 14-day discount and current xp level and will rise probably as soon as we get Ira on our team, or the next combat after.

GENERAL "LET'S PLAY" NOTES
- this LP will contain spoilers for AR. I intend to point out guaranteed loot, new maps, new factions, new quests etc. Read at your own risk.
- I have thoughts on a template of sorts for all actual gaming posts, but it will probably be adjusted over time. Feedback is welcome, see below.
- questions and discussions are most welcome. I'm fairly set to do this LP for my own enjoyment and there is a good chance I'll play and document the full game even if nobody comments, but I'd certainly prefer some sort of exchange to just posting for myself. Feel free to participate! I promised myself to not bring this up again, so I mention it once at startup.
- I like the challenge ironman presents (pre 7609 I relied pretty exclusively on combat saves and reloads), but there is still one cheat you can do: if you flee a combat sector from the map edge you land on the strategic map with paused timer. Now you can save! But not only that, you can cancel the movement of your mercs and have them re-arrive in the combat sector again without time or energy loss and get to select a new spot for deployment. Essentially, this enables you to "save in combat", and while it counts as a retreat in the stats, incurs a morale penalty on your mercs and an apparently map-wide loss of loyalty, it still enables whittling down overwhelming forces otherwise out of your league. This obviously has severe strategic influence and I will try to do without. You'll likely see me use this in underground sectors however, which I hate with a passion. In any case, I will mention if and when it happens.

This post took me most of my intended gaming time but it's a bit stupid to only give the premise and tell you to check back soon, so I decided to at least play the arrival sector and meet up with Ira.

DROPPED INTO COMBAT
Arriving after midnight on day 1 rather than 7am, the first attempt initially goes south when I realize that group formation is still on and the spread out mercs enter the first familiar building - but not bunched up, only hector and gary move in and are immediately face to face with an enemy south of the door. They flee into side rooms and the redshirt runs into the building where gary takes him out. All subsequent enemies are killed one after another, and I'm relieved when combat is over and only two mercs have wounds of 4 and 5 HP. However, nobody has even a first aid kit and the search for one brings this attempt to it's knees when godlight tries to untrap a door with his 75 explosives skill and suffers 33 damage. I had not saved after combat and he's bleeding to death now so it's reload number one.

Attempt two goes much smoother: everybody cowers behind the first building looking east, and soon the first enemy investigates the chopper noise. Godlight stops him with two shots and takes point in clearing the sector - he has a NVGI, NO and the best weapon, a 17-range HK MP4A4 in 9x19 which proves highly reliable using single shots. Both grizzly and fox get a kill, godlight takes 6. After combat I save, check out containers and save again before - successfully this time - trying to untrap the door. An outhouse holds a vital first aid kit, while a cupboard holds a .38 HP quickloader and two lockbuster shotgun shells. Two bloody throwing knives are on the ground, the rest is combat loot: two damaged viking 11-range 9x19 pistols, 5 9x18 magazines I have no use for, 3 regular 9x19 mags and two in HP. For the moment I'm taking everything. I hand whatshername the letter and follow her to the adjacent sector.

One thing already greatly upsets me: I noticed the gun cursors were different from last time but shrugged it off until I saw guns having their old accuraccy value as well. My recent, 2nd and longest AR game yet used not only a different cursor but also used a different accuracy system: all starting pistols had +0, a calico MP had -2 and pretty much everything else had bonuses in the single digit range. Even a sniper rifle had only +7 (until much later, when I saw a +11 one). I can't wrap my head around this, I'm certain I changed no settings that would affect this and have always taken it to be an AR feature. Why on bloody earth has this changed now? If somebody knows the answer please help me out, at this stage I can probably restart still if needed. At the very least you can save my sanity.

We follow whatshername, get taken to meet the rebels and get both the food quest and Ira. Godlight and hector, the only level 1 mercs, both level up. The rebel hideout is a source of valuable loot, with some items only accessible by using a hidden downstairs in a small shed up top. Here is the full list: a 15-range calico M-950 MP in 9x19, two 50 round 9x19 mags (one regular, one HP), a NVGI, a gasmask, a crowbar, a nearly full first aid kit, a german flecktarn vest, knuckle dusters, a smoke grenade, a double mag LBE thing, a 3-day pack, a .38 speedloader, a 2x scope and a flak jacket. For some reason the items in the secret-stairs area are greyed out but can be picked up manually without problems. I did however make the mistake to drop them again so I could copy them off the sector inventory view into this post and find myself unable to pick them up again. The speedloader and the NVG must be left behind, but I am able to take the scope, aid kit and gasmask again.

Time to loot the surface level, another really good haul especially welcome at startup: wire cutters, 2 canteens, one first aid kit, one med kit (both used), a malice3 backpack, a .38 speed loader, a .40 match pistol mag, a 30-round .40 mag in match and one in HP, a 10mm HP SMG mag, a .45 match SMG mag, a few 9x18 regular mags and one in glaser, 7 more lockbuster shells, throwing knife, a break light and a hunting vest which I have no use for. Also, very important for my technician-free game: a utility knife you can use for lockpicking.

A little dismayed with the lost NVG and the accuracy/cursor issue I leave it there for my first post. At this point I may still restart the game if I find out by testing tomorrow that a new game with these same settings uses the old accuracy/cursor, or that it's a sign of a more fundamental change I overlooked somehow. Sadly, the AR subforum is not all that responsive. For the moment:

time at end of session: day 1, 1:25am
reload count session/total: 1/1
kill count: godlight 6, fox 1, grizzly 1

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Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347053 is a reply to message #347039] Sat, 24 September 2016 13:08 Go to previous messageGo to next message
LatZee is currently offline LatZee

 
Messages:184
Registered:December 2015
That cursor and accuracy values mean that you are using old CTH, so something went wrong with that part.

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Staff Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347054 is a reply to message #347053] Sat, 24 September 2016 13:38 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Enneagon is currently offline Enneagon

 
Messages:51
Registered:July 2016
Location: Latvia
Hmm... just a random comment. ;)
I can be referring to outdated data or something...
...but doesn't Buns dislike Fox? Should be no real problem though as long you keep moving and killing, but it still might worth to investigate and split them.

I pesonally love Fox and somewhat dislike Buns. For some obscure reasons she regularly underperforming in (rare) cases I tried to use her, and, most annoying, required way too much sleep. While Foxy often perform over expectations and require less sleep than average. And I found this somewhat obscure property (sleep required) as a key for efficient combat team building especially early while there no vehicles. Nothing is more annoying than one guy or girl falling down while all others could keep marching for several sectors. For the same reason I found Trevor way less useful as he probably could be.

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Corporal
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347057 is a reply to message #347054] Sat, 24 September 2016 16:09 Go to previous messageGo to next message
ratpaz is currently offline ratpaz

 
Messages:137
Registered:April 2015
Location: Italy
Yep, Buns hate Fox so is not a good idea to keep them in the same party, however if i have to choose i prefear Buns.
As for the sleep need, i think there is a stat that influence it, i forget what it is, night ops skill should give a bonus, but anyway is not a big deal since i usually put the full party to sleep whenver they get a little tired so they are almost always full energy for every possible unexpected situation.

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Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347061 is a reply to message #347057] Sat, 24 September 2016 20:37 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
I'll be playing later, but here's an update - as ashamed as I am, it turns out I must have played AR with OCTH so far for some inexplicable reason (most likely not using my brain). I mistook the OCTH cursor and values for something AR specific because I hadn't seen it in so long it seemed like a novelty to me. Which is good news all in all, as it saves me from restarting. The Fox/Buns issue OTOH is more problematic. One of the reasons why I used 10 IMPs a lot in recent games was that it saved you a lot of trouble from people not getting along. Now I'll have to be ready for either of them to quit on me (and I don't think I get my money back)... I think I'd prefer fox just because of that insane dex and while buns has the more useful skills I really have a very good sniper already. I'll be mulling this over in the next hour or so and either decide to restart with another hire in place of buns, or just play on and keep an eye on them, possibly dismissing the one I am willing to let go before they come to a head. I'm leaning to the latter out of sheer laziness, the financial hit and missing body will just have to be dealt with. Thankfully no counterattacks, so I should have an easier time holding drassen once I swept it a first time.

edit: sorry, I would have liked to provide more content right away, but it's not going to work out for me today. However, I let time go on just standing in the rebel hideout sector and while Buns starts complaining about Fox about 12h in, she didn't leave until the clock force-stopped due to an enemy attack sometime day 5 and I ended the game. I'll play on with this selection and prepare for the fact that buns will sooner or later leave me, but it looks like I'll at least get some use out of her. Thankfully the cursor/accuracy thing has been cleared up. Continued play due tomorrow!

[Updated on: Sat, 24 September 2016 22:55]

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Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347090 is a reply to message #347061] Wed, 28 September 2016 01:23 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
Session start: day 1, 1:25am

After a far longer than predicted absence I'm finally back and hope to get the ball rollling again even if only with a short post. Anyway, after we have confirmed NCTH and decided to just deal with buns hating fox. I gave Buns's helmet with sun goggles to somebody else and made she holds nothing essential even though it seems she doesn't really run away all that quickly. Godlight gets the utility knife, finally doesn't have to use a crowbar for opening all locks, of which there are many more in AR than in vanilla. Before we start moving through the wild (slowly, without a hunter or ranger because we expect to recruit manuel in drassen soon), let's first take out A8, the third omerta sector. One other thing I kept in the back of my head since the inital post - this is the first game since radio operators got introduced in which I'm not able to jam right from the start (because Bob never has one, no matter the gear package). We'll have to see how that plays out, but the enemy being able to call in adjacent patrols will probably make the first few fights that much harder. Luckily the 3rd omerta sector only holds 6 with no adjacent enemies.

- First reload when godlight is checking a house and Ira takes a wound of 33 HP by someone my mercs cant see even after advancing four squares. Second attempt fails when one of the last greyshirt flanks the main team while godlight is busy killing two a little lower on the map and hector dies. Attempt three is successful and satisfying - godlight kills someone in the fenced in courtyard, then the team slightly north at the entrance gets shot at, Bob takes 4 HP. The team presses the attack (i.e. get up and run at the enemy for better range to get your shot off) and managed to kill the guy. Returning to real time for a brief moment and then suddenly turn based again - but I can't see anybody! I turn fox around and she finds herself face to face with an elite. Hector supports her and the enemy is taken down. Godlight kills another one running from the south. Another from the south, but the team hiding behind a fence gets an interrupt at the runner (from inside the fence through a hole btw, you would expect that spot to be solid in 1.13 normally but AR likes to do this) and he goes down. Godlight clears up the last elite way at the north somewhere, which nervewrackingly includes the elite running out of sight, flanking succesfully and getting two shots off at lone godlight - but he misses both, and godlight gets a chance to steal so to speak, as he gets interrupt on the elite who apparently wasn't done yet. Everybody dead, a minor wound. This went well. Combat loot is one holster and a few 9x19 and 9x18 pistol mags, the rest is all from containers: http://imgur.com/a/l8olJ - small things, but every holster is welcome (and a rig doubly so), as is any ammo. More .45 HP, mabye that thompson SMG wouldn't have been so bad after all. Anyway, the single most important item here is clearly the tool kit! From my experience there will be zero drops around drassen for far too long, and the surrounding sector structures must be relied on until you can get some elsewhere. Repair will therefore be highly micromanaged at the beginning, remember that drassen can't be shipped to anymore, and you don't want to run out of tool kits while your weapons keep getting used!

- resisting the urge to obsess over who gets to carry what largely unuseable loot right now, Fox is designated oddity-carrier with her multi-pocketed malice backpack. The main question is what to do now - the way to san mona is seducing, but I wanted to focus on a classic drassen-first game so it's out. The most obvious thing would be to head right to drassen, but I still wonder - farmhouses etc are extremely important at this stage for the loot they promise and I'm fairly sure directly below the middle omerta sector is one of those permanent roadblocks/weapon caches the enemy always reattacks and tries to hold whenever he loses it. I wouldn't mind a few shotguns or grenades at this stage! But a testattack reveals that not only aren't there any structures here, there are also 20 enemies directly below and since we can't jam them... No way to fight 31 at this point, we need to move east after all. The team moves to A11, where they find a MP-133 2-round shotgun, some shot, a SAW pouch and another wire cutter. There are 13 to the south and 14 to the east, and I remember from last time that the eastern sector held many structures so that is where we go.

- Both amazing and desasterous at the same time. Used way too much ammo, two major (ira 50 and gary 46 HP loss) and one minor wounds - but the sector is ours and all 14 dead. This (http://imgur.com/a/F5nKP) is just the combat loot (minus the 38 special which Ira dropped when wounded)! And this: http://imgur.com/a/L2gZE is the loot when you add containers - hotdamn, this was costly but well worth it! Godlight had trouble opening a lot of locks btw, despite 75 mechanical and lvl 3 now, and resorted to collecting keys. It's probably more important to bring a technician/engineer than before but so far everything has been doable. I'm running out of RL-time again, so I'll leave the sorting and outfitting to next time, as well as the wound count.

Time at end of session: day 1, 6:05am
Reload count session/total: 3/4
Kill count and stat/level gains:
- Bob:
- Buns: +2
- Fox: +4 (5), +2 mark (71)
- Gary: +1
- Godlight: +8 (14), +1 dex (76), +2 mark (77), level 3
- Grizzly:
- Hector: +3, +1 mark (62)
- Ira: +2, +1 mark (51)

[Updated on: Wed, 28 September 2016 03:20]

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Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347095 is a reply to message #347090] Thu, 29 September 2016 01:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
Session start: day 1, 6:05am

- one of my favourite things: outfitting mercs. Bob gets reorganized, as the only one with auto skill he gets the thompson (with 2x scope) and the less damaged one of the skorpion MPs (not too bad, and uses 9x18mm which I otherwise have no use for), the latter fitting nicely into the MP holster. He also gets the LBE thing with 2 large mags, grenade and canteen slot (once he gets a radio his backpack slots are gone and no standard room for a canteen otherwise). Godlight picks up the locksmith kit, maybe this works better than the utility knife. As the main combat guy he also gets the kevlar helmet (10% more coverage!) and the helmet cover, as well as the camo shirt for a total of 20% camo. He takes the gasmask as well. Hector switches his flak vest for a less damaged one and takes the dart gun on the offchance he might use it on a single enemy and can score a knife kill on somebody unconscious. Gary gets godlights steel helmet and takes all flashbangs (never used those before btw). Everybody reloads and gets backup ammo, now using HP if available. We are leaving 10 items behind, including three mines and a flak jacket in case we need any of it later and sell our first gun to locals, a 10-range 9x19mm pistol we get 93 bucks for.

- We don't have adjacent enemies but sunrise will preclude any engagements pretty much anyway - I generally don't do well in daylight, we are still short-range focused and we can't afford any more wounds. I expect we will spend most of the day running up and down directly west of drassen until nightfall, hopefully getting to loot a sector or two in between while fleeing from patrols. Moving down to B12 we find a farmhouse and loot a skorpion HP mag (20 rounds 9x18), a few buckshot shells, 73 dollars, a crowbar we don't need, two beers - and a first aid kit and another tool kit! We have a full one and then another 5%, and everybody but buns has a first aid kit (or med kit, like Ira). There are troops to the west of us but nothing below so we travel to C12 - ah, I remember this one! It has a large complicated structure part I distinctly remember not liking fighting in, but it's still a neat rework I think. Check it out here: http://imgur.com/a/DrJOe Both in here and B12 you can refill canteens btw. However, annoyingly I find myself unable to open a small room I can see a cabinet in - neither can godlight pick it (he even says "it's futile"), nor can our strongest merc grizzly crowbar it. Disappointed we loot a nearly full tool kit (merged with the 5% one), another dart gun and a rag. Regretting having sold the lockbuster ammo I decide to spend our only dynamite for blasting the wall and we are rewarded with an AKS-47 with 22 rounds (gary takes it as he only has a 12-range pistol otherwise), a flash suppresor that bob attaches to the thompson SMG and a russian 107 vest I don't prefer to the standard layout LBE (which has a medium general slot, 107 doesn't) and leave behind for later arrivals perhaps. There are again enemies to the west, those could be the same patrol as before of course. Below is free again, so we move to D12 which disappointingly is loot-free wilderness. Again enemies to the west, but 13 instead of 12. Guess there is indeed more than one patrol on that side. Buns has just given her opinion on fox for the first time.

- I tried setting hector and godlight to repair while fox doctors for ira and gary, but the retreating dance has begun. We get interrupted a short while in and have to retreat north, where the cycle repeats. At 18h I'm getting sleep warnings from people, so I decide to not make anyone work and sleep as much as possible instead. We intend to hit drassen at about 21:15, but we miss the mark and will arive in drassen mine against 19 at close to 22h. Godlight gained 1 health during the moving about. At least everybody should bascially only be worn out by that one sector travel.

- first attempt goes fairly well as we kill 7 with an 8th one being deadly wounded at the entry position (http://imgur.com/a/Ig5D6). But there are a few elites and redshirts at that building and we can't move for cover or reliably kill them before they come closer, any moment now we will be hit! OTOH, 7 isn't bad at all and the 19 got lightly reinforced as there are currently 14 enemies left... I really should save this but so far I didn't do any retreat saves. Goddamn, I'm going to me mad when (not if) this goes wrong... which is probably right now. Godlight changes his view direction and finds a redshirt sitting only a few squares away, but he gets to headshot him. Their turn, the other wounded guy still isn't dead, and now I suddenly have two elites sitting where the redshirt just died. Godlight tries headshooting and hits the 3rd and last, but the elite has a few HP left and the other is unwounded. It's preposterous that nobody else can see them and both of them fired during their turn but luckily missed, so I know they can see us. We are down to 13 with two guys so badly wounded they would die on their own - if only we don't retreat! Fox creeps forward two squares and headshots the healthy elite, connecting with the 2nd of her ambidex guns using glaser, but she misses the nearly-dead fallen down one. At the far end of the building another elite is already arriving. Buns creeps forward, firing her last shot into the prone elite she can't even see, but she makes it. We are down to 11. Everybody but spent godlight creeps up a square or two and we are still in map edge range to have the whole team flee if needed. Next turn the elite is what I assume to be sight range for him and I after failing to hit him with anyone I use my first flashbang which seems to keep the elite from attacking. He is up and running however and retreats before circling back. Another turn with a fresh redshirt arriving and I only manage to get 8 HP on the elite who at least falls down. More shots, he sits back up, the redshirt starts coming forward and Buns gets an interrupt - she bloody misses and hits the elite for 54 HP who falls down dead! Godlight takes out the redshirt next turn and we are down to 8. Another redshirt dies and then they stop coming. We creep up a little north and have to make a decision - flee and save or risk having to redo this amazing battle when somebody gets killed? We are taking a chance and unreal, we made it! Godlight did most of the work, but the rest of the team took one enemy down as well. Not even a wound, how great is that! Let's see, this is our combat loot: http://imgur.com/a/kB6bN (not sure about that tool kit), here is the combined loot with containers: http://imgur.com/a/8CeIb Godlight had trouble with a couple of locks and grizzly had to crowbar the church and the medical office (?) above it. When godlight hit 76 mechanics, the last resisting lock no longer produced the "this is futile" message and it eventually opened. Forcing the church backroom open allowed Ira to start the food quest, which immediately made godlight, gary, grizzly, buns, ira and hector gain a level and of course we talk to the foreman (616 bucks at 31% loyalty and 1/4 sectors held). Buns gets the backpack and is stuffed with junk, and we sell the 10-range pistols along with the third dartgun. We are set to move north inside the city against 12 when everything is stowed away.

- the 12 get reinforced to 19 real quick and after a decent start with a silent kill and moving to a better position they suddenly come from all sides. Hector takes a single shot for 63 HP and severe wisdom damage and godlight takes 18 HP when he proves unable to stop an elite. The good news: we are down to 6 now and they stop coming, giving me a chance to snipe the rest with godlight. Nice, that's how it actually worked out without any more wounds. Bob has levelled up. Neither godlight nor grizzly (whose crowbar is pretty damaged by now) are able to open the more enticing locks - which I'm starting to think is a bit over the top. 75 mec isn't enough with locksmith kit, really? Combined loot, as pretty much only the t-shirts and med kit are from containers so far: http://imgur.com/a/hzbbo - there is a complete house and one garage still to be looted. Sadly the backroom in the factory doesn't hold anything and the woman isn't around. Talking to the unnamed adults activates the factory overseer quest though.

I'm going to have to do wounds weekly or something, it's crazy hard to keep track of all these stats, even if you don't reload like today. I'm leaving trying to open the last resisting doors until next time, as well as conquering the remaining two drassen sectors. Income has risen to $1760 at 40 loyalty and 2/4 sectors held, but the team cost has also increased, to $3783!

Time at end of session: day 1, 22:40
Reload count session/total: 0/4
Kill count and stat/level gains:
- Bob: +4 (4), +1 mark (76), level 4
- Buns: +2 (4), level 3
- Fox: +6 (11), +2 mark (73), level 3
- Gary: +0 (1), +1 mark (73), level 3
- Godlight: +23 (37), +5 mark (82), +1 dex (77), +1 mec (76), +1 health (76), level 4
- Grizzly: +1 (2), level 3
- Hector: +3 (6), +1 mark (63), +1 med (7), level 3
- Ira: +1 (3), +1 mark (57 - wrong in last post!), level 3

[Updated on: Thu, 29 September 2016 02:21]

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Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347097 is a reply to message #347095] Fri, 30 September 2016 00:38 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
Session start: day 1, 22:40

- according to my strategic map snooping (which I'm not counting under reloads btw), both remaining city sectors are held by 12 each and won't be reinforced. We are heading north for the moment, to the former airport, which while still there does no longer allow ordering from BR. We enter here http://imgur.com/a/WM1MU below the classic gate and take out 9 with minimal problems (Grizzly took 6 HP), then godlight moves forward and snipes two more at this lower entry. The last guy I can see via the minimap overlay thingy (you got to love it, I certainly wouldn't play ironman without it and even in normal mode it's a great timesaver), and he gets taken down by the new NW gate (http://imgur.com/a/0NWUU). Combat loot: http://imgur.com/a/X7Ml7 - that NVGII is *very* nice and will go to godlight who can hand off his gen I NVG to somebody else. 9x19mm is good and while I technically don't need another holster those are always nice to keep. Also, dimitri and manuel will join our crew soon, and they'll need LBE and armor. The 9x18 isn't awesome, I have a bunch and I think it's only good for the really bad pistols and the skorpion MP, which is about the same as a starting pistol with burst fire capability. Godlight manages to open all locks (even though he really needs his canteen to get around) and hotdamn, container loot is excellent! See the combined goods here: http://imgur.com/a/6D1lx - the 20-range .30 car rifle is very nice, but not much better than godlights starting MP on single shot (which is also silenced), I might give it to buns who gets a tiny bonus for it's use. The shotgun isn't better than the one I have and ammo has been fairly short until this drop (I had 5 buckshot and 2 slugs IIRC) but it's still better range than a pistol and somebody will carry it I guess. The MP is a bit of a headscratcher as it has no single shot and only bob can make any use of it. With 28 AP for full auto it doesn't even really work as a quickdraw cq weapon... Dunno, I might end up selling it. Anyway, a welcome load of utility things and ammo!

- I've been carrying all our gear since we started, might as well drop what I'm not currently using in here. Buns gets the rifle with bipod and 2x scope, fox gets the NVGI, godlight finally is set up with dual 9x19 11-range pistols (although one is in bad condition; the good one is already suppressed and in our only large holster though) but keeps the starting SMG. Hector gets the AKS-47 with PSO-1 scope and what little ammo we have for it. Bob, fox and godlight have headsets and three or four have gasmasks. With buns getting a steel helmet, everyone's head is now covered and our demolition guy gets two molotov cocktails we made out of alcohol and rags. Time to clean out the last drassen sector.

- I suppose most people want to know what the new drassen sector looks like, so have a gander here: http://imgur.com/a/PRm2b Sadly there is a huge mob by the gate and at first I think we can make it even though godlight takes three small wounds in one round and we are left with 5 enemies in sight range. On our turn we take out three and throw another flashbang, but the enemy keeps coming and guns down bob to 2 HP - reload one it is. On the second attempt we come from the south behind the house lowest on the map when the point guy runs into a soldier in a house. The shot misses and the team scrambles to form a line and have one guarding the rear and the fight is on! The enemy keeps streaming towards us and godlight and bob do good work with the occasional assist from someone. Fox guards the NE line and keeps gunning down people with her glaser ammo in dual shots. Lots of misses, but glaser still works and I've seen a 222 HP hit - so once she connects it's almost a certain kill. At about 6 or 7 enemies remaining a stray shot of mine straight up kills a woman inside her house. Yikes. That never happens to me, but I play on. Shortly after Bob gets shot down to 17 HP (our 4th member with crippling wounds, luckily no stat loss) and I'm moving godlight aggressively north taking out enemies, now just determined to check if where in the building up north the last one will be hiding. Godlight enters the building but it's empty, and the last enemy comes around the corner outside where grizzly one-shots him with a face full of buckshot. It's so damn satisfying that I decide not to reload and just take the wound and civilian kill. We'll just have to check how many med bags we have and maybe do a bit of semi-skilled surgery after all. And before I forget it, one drassen sector has a combat hospital facility; I never use those but that could be really good right now. Combat loot: http://imgur.com/a/oVhP9 - that med kit is welcome, as is the 9x19. Can't have enough of that on hand really, not for a while. Containers add nice things: http://imgur.com/a/mGZrx - a still welcome type 85 (goes to gary, as does the match sights which fit on his pistol), some ammo and attachments. Bob gets the helmet cover, somebody switches helmets for a less damaged one. Grizzly attaches the shotgun choke as it works on shot, giving him +3 range. We are currently at 55% loyalty and get $4840 as long as we can keep all sectors. Time to think about organizing defense, repair and healing. Unfortunately training militia in all sectors at the same time won't work out I think, too many grave wounds and too low leadership for most.

- Wow, no kidding. We arrive in C13 which has the combat hospital at 23:16. All four wounded are cared for by fox, leaving three people to do the rest of the work. Leadership is low on buns and grizzly, but grizzly has at least 24 repair. He therefore gets the tool kit while Godlight and Buns train milita together. Two trainers work faster than one, and godlight has high enough leadership to get a full squad of 10 each time, while Buns's leadership is also climbing and not messing with the militia count despite being low skilled. I've let time go on a bit and it seems next day at around 15h there will be a counterattack by a very small force, but I'm already too RL tired to properly set up my mercs for that event as first the mine gets taken and then the sector we are sitting in - but nobody is positioned, everybody is just standing on the map edge doing their jobs. Next session: fortifying drassen!

Time at end of session: day 2, 9:23am
Reload count session/total: 1/5
Kill count and stat/level gains:
- Bob: +0 (4)
- Buns: +3 (7)
- Fox: +4 (15)
- Gary: +0 (1)
- Godlight: +16 (53), +2 mark (84), +1 dex (78), +1 mec (77), +1 health (77), level 5
- Grizzly: +1 (3)
- Hector: +0 (6)
- Ira: +1 (4)

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Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347103 is a reply to message #347097] Fri, 30 September 2016 23:28 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
Session start: day 2, 9:23am
Cash at start: $16458

Before we start, time for some corrections and notes: I've added to the template, notably including cash at start and end of session. I think AR stresses finances and this should help gauging how much or little trouble I have. Because I keep re-reading myself and then remember things I wanted to bring up or need to clarify I also added a "last thoughts" entry at the end in which I'll stuff those things (I won't edit further back than the last combat post though), it should make later edits more visible and hopefully decrease the chance that you'll miss them as you already read that post once.

As for game related things: last time I gave enemy numbers wrong, one of the two 12-man combats must have had 13. I'm sure about this because the kill count as written down is 100% accurate but comes out to 25. While I had made my peace with not having buns with us after she gets fed up with fox, I'm now starting to get annoyed at losing her again and am trying to come up with a plan to keep her around. I never tried to keep mercs that conflict together, advice would be welcome. If I keep fox and buns on different teams, can I keep both of them long term? Another thing I wanted to note is how high hectors wisdom damage was: 29! He regained like 2 points so far IIRC, thankfully fox is another paramedic (can't heal stat loss without one) as Ira, the other one, is a patient herself. Adding to the new drassen sector C14 - like other sectors with large bodies of water and only one landmass, enemies here are way more crowded than elsewhere, explaining the incredible mobbing. Seriously, try it out yourselves, it's very pronounced. What else? Oh, I'm trying to pick a good time for killing the factory overseer but I don't want to waste the expected loyalty bonus - should probably put it off as long as I still need to fear sectors being retaken. Also, I want to pick up manuel before (I know where he is, and it's close) just in case it gives the mercs xp, I don't remember. I have my eye on the food quest as well, although picking up dimitri requires drassen to be fairly secure - which it currently is not. Oh, and I had hoped to give the patients surgery before we settle in on normal doctoring, but the expected prompts didn't come. I never got a handle on the rules for those surgery prompts, sometimes you get them half a dozen times, sometimes only once.

That should have been all my wandering thoughts for the moment and I'll stuff future ones in the "last thoughts" bit as described. For now we get ready for that tiny counterattack during daylight!

- we don't get much work done actually and I'm sure we can pick up manuel before the attack comes, enabling us also to do the overseer quest - now that I think about it I suspect doreen has a key to the resistant locks in C13! Manuel is in D14 as I already knew, and we welcome a stealthy athletic hunter to our team (http://imgur.com/a/Wr4s7 includes sector loot as well). The journey here took us 1:43h, let's see how long the way back takes... 1:17h, much better. We arrive back at drassen airport, my impromptu stash, and change manuels shotgun for the saiga which has a larger mag (7 vs 4), using his starting slugs he has three full mags. He gets the glock 18 and a holster as well, sadly no first aid kit for him yet. Everybody is pretty tired (gotten warnings twice), so time to take defense positions. I decide the mine sector might as well be defended directly as it allows better cover anyway and the team piles inside the bar aiming at the door. Godlight takes over repair so we might just actually manage to repair one single thing, while fox tends to the wounded and manuel takes over for godlight at training militia. Only one tool kit on me and I'm not getting another one from the airport, so grizzly practises mechanical. We find Micky in here, so I guess now we can sell bloodcat parts if we ever care to.

- ouch. We obviously changed events, because the formerly tiny attack by 7 on drassen mine now includes a whopping 38 enemies. Still, if my positioning in this bar works out as planned (http://imgur.com/a/uVaBV) that should be well doable. It takes a bit of work to get this fight started properly as the enemy doesn't react much to my baiting shots in a safe position. Only when godlight sneaks to the door and shoots at two redshirts standing half a map away before running back in do they come. And boy, they really pour into the bar. Godlight only takes a kill when I must fear the enemy will soon get his turn back (no more than two misses or you invite return fire even if you had interrupt and lots more people ready) and everybody takes advantage of being in perfect pistol range. Occasionally the enemy stops coming but Bob wastes a whole bunch of 9x18 shots to bait them and when we are down to 6 they really stop coming even if godlight stands outside the door shooting unsuppressed at some rocks and things. One guy finally shows up in the door of the bathroom building and is dispatched. When we are down to 3 godlight and everybody unwounded venture out to check around houses and whatnot. After killing one in a house near the south (he shot at us but missed) we have two remaining and they are found by godlight in this position: http://imgur.com/a/ymvPE First one dies before the picture and godlight manages to use his last AP to headshot the other guy as well. 38 done with, largest battle yet! I didn't know drassen had what I started affectionally calling a "kill room" in my last game, this makes defense a lot easier. Loot http://imgur.com/a/jAV2T is a letdown, a bunch of pistols only worth selling (well, ira had a .38 as backup which bears replacing for stat reasons and scarcity of ammo, so she takes an 11-range 9x19 viking) and tons and tons of 9x19 with some 9x18 thrown in. There have been a few stat gains obviously, but the only big thing I remember is fox levelling up to 4. Note that I have deactivated all counterattacks due to aggressive AI, so this sort of attack is still normal.

- we move back to the combat hospital sector and set everyone to work once more. Interesting, now I get surgery prompts again but I pass up the opportunity after all. Omerta is taken over, and at 20h exactly drassen airport gets taken. 6 milita just became ready, which is how many manuel produces at 40-something leadership, and I decide to wait an hour until nightfall before I attack the 9 without fox and the wounded. We take the same approach as last time with much the same results, including one guy circling into our back where manuel manages to take him out. Interesting, that saiga shotgun isn't pump action, wasting less AP. It's probably better than the one grizzly has after all. Godlight takes 11 HP when he scouts too far ahead and risks three SMG headshots instead of using dual pistols, but otherwise everyone is well. Godlight did most of the work and I don't notice much new loot, a 10-range 9x19 pistol and a headset aside. The latter goes to manuel, and we rejoin the wounded. Grizzly picked up a tool kit and helps godlight with repair. I could attack 12 to the west of drassen but we really need to get some repair done (had one or two gunjams fighting the 38) and milita needs to get going too. At 15:16 day 3 we have 6 more milita, but two patrols to the east of drassen threaten to combine to attack the new warehouse sector. This one will be hard to defend, there are no single entry rooms so you need to cover at least two sides. Damn. Ira and gary are very nearly healthy again. Fox with dual guns will probably be better for guarding a door, so Ira takes over doctor duties (she can't use the hospital though as her med skill isn't high enough) and gary and fox join the combat detachment I'm trying to position inside the warehouse. Btw, hector is still at 45 wisdom. At least both his and Bob's health is coming along nicely.

- first try failed because I thought they would open the garage doors and didn't position right. On a reload I still covered the garage doors but had godlight, fox and buns up north behind the regular door (http://imgur.com/a/VHibC) where they proceeded to take everyone out. Fox and buns did most of the work, with godlight only stepping in when needed (he will keep racking up kills especially once he gets a sniper rifle, so he'll hit lvl 9 and 100 marksmanship soon enough). Godlight took 3 HP trying to lure in more enemies when they stopped coming, which happened a fair bit. I was surprised, I thought on this cramped map they'd surely hurl themselves at my men like lemmings off a cliff but in fact I had to step out and lure them multiple times. I'm mad about the screenshot, I had a better one with buns levelling up after killing the last guy but absentmindedly pressed print screen when I checked loot so it got overwritten. Here it is http://imgur.com/a/fAnyz - lots of ammo and a few handguns that most likely will be sold, although I think this skorpion is in better condition than one of my two others. I'm reloading everyone and head back to the hospital sector. While other weapons have been fully repaired the skorpion thing turns out true and it is switched. Repair can take a backseat at the moment, getting milita running is more important. I take godlight, gary and buns to the mine sector to train milita there as well while gary tries to repair at least a little at 24 mec. At 23h the map looks like this: http://imgur.com/a/Rr7Sr (note that A12 and D15 are permanent hold locations and are not threating as such) - and I already know the mine will get attacked by the lower patrol in ~20min. I move the milita elsewhere and prepare our stand in the bar, sending in hector and manuel for support.

- the 18 arrive soon enough, but take their sweet time coming to the bar even after hector slowly empties out a 9x19 mag to bait them. Godlight has to step out after all and comes under fire above the bathroom building, but fortunately manages to escape unscathed. Soon after the first elite steps through the door and hector obliterates him, as he does with the next one but afterwards they stop coming again for a long time. This time we stay inside, bait more and finally two redshirts join their deceased comrades, although it really seems I can sit and wait forever but when I alt-tab out to write down something a new enemy reliably arrives. I wonder if this confirmation bias or really true. Finally we are down to only 2, with hector taking almost all kills and only manuel snatching one occasionally. The team moves out of the bar and godlight guns down both remaining enemies in quick succession somewhere towards the southern edge on the map. Loot is unsurprisingly crappy pistols and 9mm ammo - surely a consequence of me setting enemy progression down a level - but a fresh first aid kit is most welcome even though I previously gave manuel a surplus one and everyone is able to do first aid. We split teams as they had been before this attack and set hector to patient in the hospital while manuel resumes milita training. At about 7:30am on day 4 Ira needs a new med kit and soon after Bob is fully restored. He grabs a tool kit from the airport and works on improving his 20-something mechanical. Shortly after there is an unexpected attack on drassen airport which gets taken over, and 20 soldiers are showing up below the mine. After a reload and repositioning the airport attack doesn't come and the 20 attack. I decide to give up for the day and leave solving this to next session.

Time at end of session: day 4, 8:10am
Cash at end of session: $23625
Reload count session/total: 1/6
Progress: 21/21
Kill count and stat/level gains:
- Bob: +2 (6), +1 mark (77), +1 dex (67), level 4
- Buns: +11 (18), +3 lead (27), +1 mark (87), level 4
- Fox: +19 (34), +1 lead (22), +2 mark (75), level 4
- Gary: +8 (9)
- Godlight: +20 (73), +2 mark (86), +2 dex (80),
- Grizzly: +1 (4),
- Hector: +19 (25), +2 mark (65)
- Ira: +3 (7), +1 mark (58), +1 med (41)
- Manuel: +9 (9), +1 mark (79), +3 lead (48)

Last thoughts:
- disabling the counterattacks really didn't change all that much it seems, although it's now ~30 soldiers a few times rather than 80-120 who keep piling up. I'm not particularly worried anymore that this game will turn out to be a pushover, on the contrary this seems like a reasonable adjustment so far.
- team cost has risen to slightly over 4k, but with a projected 8.8k for drassen I can well afford to pay this team forever and still train militia to defend drassen and the SAM. I should probably remember to kill the factory overseer at startup next time to push loyalty to 100% while it still makes sense. Waited too long after all.

[Updated on: Sun, 02 October 2016 23:19]

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Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347134 is a reply to message #347103] Mon, 03 October 2016 03:30 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
Session start: day 4, 8:10am
Cash at start: $23625

Huh, I only now realized I put this thread in the wrong subforum (vacations instead of revisited), sorry about that! No matter, we play on.

- the drassen airport attack doesn't come again, but the 20 reliably attack the mine (combining with 13 to 33) so we take up positions in the bar as usual. The fight takes place during rain, lowering the sight range considerably - but of course that matters fairly little in our kill room. Godlight needs to start the fight again by stepping out and taking a shot at an elite, but as soon as the shot is done (and missed) the elite gets interrupt and does medium damage to godlight. That's a reload. On the 2nd attempt we target a redshirt roughly in the same place and this time godlight makes it safely back inside with the enemy arriving soon after. I have fun trying to give certain people kills and unpaid ira and manuel get the lion's share, with neglected and cheap grizzly getting a few as well. Something I have never seen before happens - despite nine guns pointed at the door, a bloody redshirt runs in and we don't get interrupt before he does tiny amounts of damage to hector and fox - I don't even know what with, didn't hear a shot. I'm assuming he used H2H, but on two people? That doesn't really happen either... Anyway, we shoot him in the head and are unsettled enough not risk any more interruptions, so buns, gary, bob and godlight take their kills as well. There is a couple of particular rounds where I very very nearly run out of AP on all mercs to kill everyone coming in the door, another reason why godlight needs to mop up occasionally. The last two don't come towards the bar, which by now is expected, and godlight sneaks out to find them. He exchanges fire with a redshirt but manages to kill him and using the "last enemy map overlay" or whatever it is called (I must remember to make a screenshot next time) he locates the approximate position of the final enemy - who turns out to be an elite and wounds godlight lightly when his three SMG shots all miss. Godlight doesn't risk missing again and uses his athletics to sprint behind a house and kneeling right around the corner. The elite arrives two turns after in pistol range and godlight switches to his dual 9x19 pistols and takes him down in one attack. This house is now clean! Loot consists of 10 and 11-range pistols with the usual ammo (although this is the first time AP 9x19 dropped!), but there is another headset and two gasmasks. Everybody reloads and we sell all but one fairly damaged pistol which goes to grizzly, whose backup pistol is in .40 S&W and that hasn't dropped yet. Checking the encyclopedia (http://imgur.com/a/VPoIs) we find that the food quest is already done so once we can leave drassen we can pick up dimitri. I'm reluctant to only send one merc to fetch him as the recruiting gives xp IIRC and I fear ambushes. However, killing the factory overseer is something we can do right now!

- I give manuel the honor of gunning her down, and hector levels up. What do you know, she had a key. Godlight, who still tries unsuccessfully to open all locks without key, gains entry to the house I couldn't loot and finds a nice KAC PDW SMG with 18 range and both burst and full auto for 30 AP. There is a 2x scope as well and two clips of AP and one of HP ammo, sadly it's in the quite exotic 6.35mm caliber. With 18 range it's still better than the pistols half our team still relies on and goes to fox. We also grab our first regen booster, leaving two energy boosters behind. If someone can tell me what the latter are for, I'd be delighted. Noteworthy: grizzly with his strength of 95 and a nearly mint condition crowbar still couldn't open any locks. Madness.

- There are now 18 to the west of the airport and I suspect the previously averted/aborted attack might finally come so I send everyone there and take position behind waldo's hangar and set everyone to their jobs - a pointless affair it seems as soon enough the fight is joined and despite the area being just a tiny bit too small for my large team to stay securely out of sight all goes well aside from four situations where bob or godlight were spotted before the enemy fully stepped around the corner and usually godlight had to move to ensure a kill. Twice had return fire that missed thankfully, and bob use the skorpion on full auto twice and managed to miss the elite four squares away with both 5-round salvos. Well done Bob. Btw, here is what the last enemy locator looks like: http://imgur.com/a/OPoIx - he's somewhere in that red area. This fight way highly enjoyable for me as manuel made like 10 kills at the northern corner while Ira bagged a few on the eastern one. This is my stash sector and thus new loot is hard to ID, but I can see a few pistols again and some ammo. I don't think we had three flak jackets here, maybe one of those is new as well. We sell some pistols, including someone's starting deagle, manuel's starting shotgun and that full auto only MP. Hopefully now we can get some milita training done - although we enter the tricky phase now: so far I've been able to keep the militia out of any attacks but once we hit three full sectors there is no way to keep them out of the fight anymore and they are likely to all get slaughtered before the enemy even gets to me. We'll have to switch to retreating mercs and letting two sectors of militia auto-resolve the affair and hope our losses aren't too bad. The only good news is that our weapons are fairly well repaired and only hector still needs doctoring because of his wisdom damage (at 50 now).

- I send fox, hector, bob and manuel to the middle sector (called factory sector, I'm going to start using those names) where fox administers to hector while the other two train militia. The airport team does much the same with some repair thrown in and ira training leadership. Annoyingly two 12-14 patrols show up in the west and one attacks the factory sector. The team isn't positioned and there are small numbers of militia around so that's another reload (strategic though, so not counted). I'm getting tired of this micromanaging to be honest and have to repeat myself from last time: no longer do I fear disabling counterattacks will make the game too easy. Even more annoyingly, after the reload and repositioning in the factory sector there is now suddenly an attack on the aiport instead. So I reload *again*, make sure everybody is in position and send all milita to the mine - and of course the drassen attack doesn't come. After a bit of cursing the factory sector gets attacked (by 12 IIRC) and our four brave heroes try to defend this tiny bathroom (pic of fox getting the last kill in there http://imgur.com/a/bJ3e5), which is an entirely unsafe affair as manuel does well enough but bob misses three out of four shots on average. Fox, who has a different line of sight due to the small space, repeatedly has to run forward to kill a threat and there is quite a bit of return fire that luckily misses us completely. Hector doesn't do much as his sight line is even worse, but in the end everybody is unwounded and can return to their tasks. No weapon drops, only a bit of 9mm ammo and one gasmask. There are no new attacks so we leave everything as it is. The next day we are close to 60 green militia and hector regains 2 wisdom (not just 1? I guess his health is full and now it's full speed ahead on the stat healing) a few times which is very welcome and shortly after noon he is fully restored. I send him and fox in a third sector to train militia together even though their scores are extremely low (22 and 28), the sooner we are done training and can go on the offensive again the better. At 17h we have very nearly 80 green militia and I can see 14 to the west of the airport and 20 below the mine. After a save I let time go on to see how that plays out and learn the 20 will attack the mine shortly after and wipe out 40 militia (if given the chance) and an average of 10 enemies left. Also, there will appear two patrols to the east and west of the sector below the mine, each ~15 men strong, so we already know the enemy count is increasing again. At this rate we'll hit elite milita training at day 7 before we have a chance to get out of drassen. Resigning myself to having at least 20 militia wiped out I select a mine defense team and send them to the bar. Just noticed that buns has complained about fox in quite a while.

- we send 6 to the bar, leaving our safety godlight behind at the airport. The 17 militia manage to kill 6 before the last one perishes, then the usual barfight starts. Too late do I realize I didn't bring a cleaner for the last few that refuse to come into the bar but it's too late now. Let's see if it works out. At 6 to go they stop coming and buns steps out with her .30 car rifle, then rushes back inside when turn-based hits and she can't see anyone. Three more walk into their deaths, then it's time to sweep for the last trio. The first dies easy enough and the second gets killed in a house after he missed his single shot, but the third is trickier: he is south of a house and we are north, but the northern side has windows leading out to doors or windows on the south, so hector gets caught in sight. He fires three long range pistols shots scoring 7 damage (the AKS would have cost 70 AP for a single shot!) and ducks out of sight. Fox goes around the western corner until she has him in her sights, but she only has enough for one ambidex shot... She risks it instead of running back (too far anyway) and does about half his health in damage. His return salvo costs fox 34 HP however and she starts the new round with 11 AP, which isn't enough for anything. Buns steps up to one of the north wall windows and luckily has line of sight on him. Her first shot misses, but the second one nails the enemy for over 100 HP and the fight is over. Phew! No loot worth mentioning.

Until next session!

Time at end of session: day 5, 21:47
Cash at end of session: 38357
Reload count session/total: 1/7
Progress: 28/28
Kill count and stat/level gains:
- Bob: +7 (13), health 78(+1), agi 68, dex 67, str 72, lea 47(+3), wis 91, mark 77, mec 28, exp 36, med 40, xp 4
- Buns: +7 (25), health 79, agi 78, dex 87, str 59, lea 31 (+4), wis 93, mark 88(+1), mec 8, exp 4, med 48, xp 4
- Fox: +11 (45), health 78, agi 85, dex 100, str 56, lea 23(+1), wis 76, mark 77(+2), mec 15, exp 8, med 70, xp 4
- Gary: +7 (16), health 83, agi 68, dex 60(+1), str 90, lea 7, wis 70, mark 75(+2), mec 24, exp 42, med 14, xp 4
- Godlight: +8 (81), health 77, agi 75, dex 80, str 76(+1), lea 76(+1), wis 80, mark 87(+1), mec 78(+1), exp 75, med 75, xp 5
- Grizzly: +10 (14), health 94, agi 69, dex 50, str 95, lea 16, wis 72, mark 80(+1), mec 24, exp 37, med 8, xp 3
- Hector: +4 (29), health 79, agi 84, dex 88, str 83, lea 28, wis 72, mark 66(+1), mec 38, exp 17, med 7, xp 4
- Ira: +8 (15), health 78, agi 68, dex 67, str 55, lea 18, wis 83, mark 61 (+3), mec 8, exp 2, med 41, xp 4
- Manuel: +16 (25), health 76, agi 72, dex 91, str 76, lea 50(+5), wis 83, mark 80(+2), mec 8, exp 22, med 40, xp 4

Last thoughts:
- for making it easier to keep track I need to do all stats for every merc in every post, else I'll go mad scrolling through all my posts to check stats that haven't changed in a while. God I hope I didn't mess it up above, I'm going to rely on this from now on...

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Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347137 is a reply to message #347134] Mon, 03 October 2016 06:13 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Deleted.

 
Messages:2663
Registered:December 2012
Location: Russian Federation
Quote:
Annoyingly two 12-14 patrols show up in the west and one attacks the factory sector. The team isn't positioned and there are small numbers of militia around so that's another reload (strategic though, so not counted). I'm getting tired of this micromanaging to be honest and have to repeat myself from last time: no longer do I fear disabling counterattacks will make the game too easy. Even more annoyingly, after the reload and repositioning in the factory sector there is now suddenly an attack on the aiport instead. So I reload *again*, make sure everybody is in position and send all milita to the mine - and of course the drassen attack doesn't come.

Strategic AI decides to attack sectors with weak defenses, if you move your militia/mercs there, it will decide to attack another sector. To avoid this, you can wait for AI to actually start moving (see red arrows indicating enemy movement direction) and move your mercs/militia only after that (since they move between city sectors they should be able to reach destination before enemy). Unfortunately, enemy movement indicators are broken in official 1.13 7609 as far as I remember.

[Updated on: Mon, 03 October 2016 06:21]




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Lieutenant

Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347140 is a reply to message #347137] Mon, 03 October 2016 07:29 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
Thank you sevenfm, I suspected such a mechanic being responsible but I never did the work to get to the bottom of it. Seems like my efforts to save militia threw a wrench into the works, but we are thankfully past that now. From here on in drassen will depend on militia for defense and not so much on mercs anymore.

I don't get red arrows right now, but I've seen them. Don't those require someone awake at work in an ACA facility? I assumed Arulco revisited to include bugfixes after 7609, is that not true?

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Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347141 is a reply to message #347140] Mon, 03 October 2016 08:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Deleted.

 
Messages:2663
Registered:December 2012
Location: Russian Federation
gimmehints wrote on Mon, 03 October 2016 09:29
I don't get red arrows right now, but I've seen them. Don't those require someone awake at work in an ACA facility? I assumed Arulco revisited to include bugfixes after 7609, is that not true?

As far as I remember, militia should give the direction information for enemy in adjacent sectors.
Facility gives direction information with some longer range, see FacilityTypes.xml for more details.
From the code:
// DETECT_ENEMIES_IMMEDIATE: Detection in sectors near to where the merc is working.
// DETECT_ENEMIES_DYNAMIC: Detection in sectors where Mobile Militia are allowed to roam.
// DETECT_ENEMIES_LONGRANGE: Detection in all explored sectors.
// DETECT_ENEMIES_ANYWHERE: Detect enemy units all over the map.
// Also there are two Counting methods, which allow reading the exact number of troops in specific sectors.
// COUNT_ENEMIES_IN_WILD: Can count enemy numbers in non-city sectors only.
// COUNT_ENEMIES_IN_CITIES: Can counter enemy numbers in city sectors only.


Unfortunately, there's a bug in 7609 that prevents enemy direction detection to work.
This was fixed in r8256 and also unofficial releases for 7609. For example, in Ja2+AI, merc with scout skill can detect enemy direction, and also Skyrider can do this when flying over a sector with enemy. link

http://i.imgur.com/JLfhiY0.png

UPD: Arulco Revisited is a map mod, it only changes maps and some related data, so it doesn't fix anything. If you want bugfixes, you will have to update to latest unstable or risk using unofficial ja2+fix.exe or ja2+AI.exe

[Updated on: Mon, 03 October 2016 09:05]




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Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347290 is a reply to message #347141] Wed, 12 October 2016 01:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
Session start: day 5, 21:47
Cash at start: 38357

We'll keep an eye out for those movement arrows but for now it's time to get back to fortifying drassen.

- soon after we resume the timer two patrols of ~18 show up west of the airport and the factory sector. Hector and buns finish their training session and get sent to support godlight (who is hanging out alone in the airport), where Buns joins the militia training and hector practises marksmanship. The factory sector gets attacked and I retreat the mercs so all militia from surrounding sectors can help out at the same time and don't get slaughtered in small bunches as reinforcement arrives piece by piece in real time mode. 63 militia against 18 enemies, we win with 56 militia remaining. That's not bad at all, considering we are still at ~80% green ones! The fleeing team can't be cancelled as gary is too tired to move even within city sectors that only take 5min per, so he stays behind to repair at the airport while the rest returns to the factory sector with grizzly repairing there, bob and manuel training militia and fox and ira practising leadership - their score is so low it's not worth seperating them and letting them train in another sector I think. Btw, I've taken some care to seperate fox and buns in situations like these and buns hasn't complained in a while. This may work out after all.

- shortly after everyone is set to their jobs the airport sector gets attacked as well. Nobody but godlight is positioned safely so this is bound to be a huge mess... I decline calling in adjacent militia and make buns, hector and gary flee from the map edge. We have 6 green milita here and they get slaughtered quickly at the western gate while godlight is running to the middle one of the three small houses on the western map, where a tiny windowless bathroom promises safety that is otherwise fairly rare on this map. It takes a few turns but he makes it there just before the last militia is killed outside the very same house he is now hiding in. However, trying to get the enemy to come inside the room proves futile even after 30 unsuppressed rounds. Occasionally godlight risks looking out the door and finally takes a shot at a redshirt who is just standing behind a civilian, but hits the latter instead for 18 HP. He retreats into the bathroom hoping this will be enough to get the fight started - but it isn't. We finally resign ourselves to go out and take a moment in the doorway which is looking out through a window. There is a small light in front of this house, so this isn't a bad spot for a fight - all squares I can see at all are still in pistol range and I can duck back into full cover whenever I want. A wandering redshirt gets taken out and just as the fight is about to finally kick off properly a rainstorm starts. Visibility is now so low I can't see outside the window anymore, even though it's a lit area, and godlight is forced to carefully move even further forward. He takes out a few redshirts and three elites in short order with double headshots but gets gunned down himself just a few squares outside the door (http://imgur.com/a/BjcEY). That's a reload, damn. For the 2nd attempt we move everybody including almost laughably tired gary to the NE wall of the hangar on the far NE corner of the map (where we fought before and godlight is sitting still), guard both sides and send all milita away. Godlight has to move out quite far before he takes a shot at an elite and runs back, but nothing happens for a while and gary does a few baiting shots. A redshirt comes around the corner and gary takes him down, then godlight carefully creeps around the corner to find a single redshirt half down the length of the hangar, kills him and then runs back. Godlight has no AP left and another redshirt comes around with only gary there to take him out. This works fine, but then one elite shows up and when he is gone, another one... Gary manages to take them all out, but if there is another we are getting shot at! Thankfully nobody else comes around in this turn and we are safe. Phew! Down to 13. Another elite wanders up after a while and gary takes another kill. Now it's getting quiet for some time, but when godlight creeps to the NE so he can look around gary's corner safely he finds a redshirt sitting around the northern corner and when he takes aim, another one a bunch of squares back. His dualshot does only 9 damage and he runs back to the safety of the wall. And then they come: two come around the north corner and both buns and hector get a kill. Three more come around the eastern corder and gary takes them out reliably, but for the 4th one godlight needs to step in - he only has one (dual) shot in him and thankfully makes it. Another round goes by and then silence again. We are down to 5 now, and that rainstorm sets in just when I wonder if it won't come. Mopping up the rest is going to be either very easy or very hard...

- Turns out it's very hard although I probably should have tried more baiting shots despite the sound dampening that I think is a thing in rainstorms. All 5 are around the northern corner bunched up, and godlight gets caught in the open by three, taking 13 damage and killing two. Hector runs up but has basically no sight range and literally ends up face to face with an elite at the end of his turn and only manages to wound him. Buns runs up as well (she has a sight range of 3 straight ahead, but one square to the side only 2! Rainstorms really do a number on you) but misses and gary barely makes it around the northern corner before he is done, all he can do is throw a flashbang as there is no way he can hit anyone from there with an aimed shot and there is a high risk of friendly fire anyway. The flashbang doesn't go off immediately, I forget if that is a thing about them. I'm pretty sure it was at 100% condition. Anyway, we take more wounds and when everything is over buns took 37 HP, Hector 24 (also 5 agility damage) and godlight 17. Flashbang exploded just before the final shot at the last enemy. I'm not a fan, but I may use them wrong. Loot is two 10-range pistols and one skorpion plus some ammo. I think the 9x18 AP ammo dropped just now, don't remember seeing it before, but I don't have much use for it either. Both hector and gary repair at the airport and buns and godlight train militia.

- Another patrol shows up west of the airport after a while but our milita count has increased and they don't dare or care to attack. We keep training etc and on day 7 manuel has levelled up while training milita and shortly after noon the merc-less mine sector gets attacked by 20 - two sectors worth of milita take them out and 13 survive. Harsh, but we can work with this. Elite militia is now available once we filled our ranks again and I guess we won't move to attack anyone until we got all four sectors full of dark blue. To that end we send ira and fox to the warehouse sector and set them to train milita as well, despite them being at ~23 leadership only. We have 7 days left before we need to rehire our team and even though elite milita is costly at 1.5k per session we can probably make that work. I expect I can only rehire them for a week each at that point though. Hm, this may take some doing after all, the warehouse got attacked at 19h by 18 and left only 5 survivors out of the 38 defenders. Ouch.

- at day 9 7am the factory sectors gets attacked by 18 again, but we only have 7 losses out of 80 defenders. At 11am the airport gets defended against 18 and suffers 10 dead (all of them blue). At 14h the mine gets attacked by 20 and 11 out 35 defenders are left alive. There is another ~15-er patrol next to the airport, jesus. Will this never stop? We are down to 50 milita again, many of them green. At the morning of day 10 our employer enrico sends his "concerned" email and our snitch has informed me that many people think "my planning sucks". I'm getting a bit antsy and try to hire everybody for another week to see how much that would actually be - I'm left with 25k, but buns has flat out refused to have her contract extended. Before the day is through 18 attack the warehouse taking out 10, then 20 attack the mine taking out 22. At least the training speed is picking up noticeably and there is some repair being done as well. Another 18 shell themselves on the factory sector with only 4 losses - this is the strongest sector as you can get 20 milita each from three adjacent ones. On day 12 4am we are all full of blue milita - let the elite training begin!

- on day 13 10am we are finally, finally done and maxed out with elite militia. Buns is about to leave soon, we have 30k left right now and our milita costs $2080 upkeep (although that will slightly increase after midnight when the latest arrivals will have to be paid for the first time. Should be minimal though). We need to get dimitri ASAP, attack and defend the SAM site (which is still in the same place, but there are a few new ones as well IIRC), make sure to unload buns before she leaves (I fear bugs with the leaving gear process and would rather not risk it at the moment) and consider a new hire to replace her. Oh, and before I forget it, I wanted to kill the smugglers in A16!

- We try to pick up dimitri first as everybody is fairly awake and head out against 13 to the west of the airport. This is going to be trouble, daylight fights with short range weapons. Oh well, I'll try. First the patrol moves away and we have to follow. But of course this time the enemy calls in reinforcements and we fight well over 20. Our starting position is however well selected and we benefit heavily from the enemy lack of long ranged weapons. While it takes most of our uncommon ammo (i.e. everything aside from 9x19) we manage to whittle down the opposing forces to 7 from our starting position. Fox was especially good with her PDW thing in 6.35 and a few others got kills too. Godlight is out of glaser.

- oh bloody hell! When I alt-tabbed back after writing the above bit I forgot about the persistent alt-key for a moment and pressing l to change the view direction instead reloaded the game. FML. I'm counting this one under reloads to punish myself. Time to retry. This time goes markedly worse as we run out of long gun ammo on several people and the spread isn't as nice as it was before. To top it off, when we are down to 5 we cross a little stream and get caught in the open (http://imgur.com/a/UgT55). Buns gets shot down to 18 (!) HP, but we take it as she'll be leaving in the next 40-something hours anyway. This was the sort of daylight engagement I don't enjoy, once we get a sniper rifle things should get much easier. Oh, and on the second attempt I managed to see that the patrol got reinforced by 11 for a total of 24. Manuel also took a tiny wound when crossing the stream and buns used up a full first aid kit to bandage herself, which had to be finished by ira. All things considered this was okay, and now we should be able to reach omerta to pick up dimitri. Loot was three pistols (of which we sold two) and some 9mm ammo. Note that this is featureless wilderness and we hadn't been here before. The top route from omerta to drassen we took at the start of the game was a better choice loot-wise it seems, although we find the previously skipped-over, badly damaged ppsh-41 with 4 rounds in B10 (where you may remember we wanted to go at startup but the sector would have meant a fight against 33). We can already turn north here for the rebel sector and do so. At 14:42 on day 13 we recruit dimitri and have buns switch all gear with him, including identical armor pieces. Grizzly has levelled up.

This is where I'll leave it for today. I have to make a choice re buns and consider a new hire, but that will probably go into last thoughts. Until next session!

Time at end of session: day 13, 14:42
Cash at end of session: 33047
Reload count session/total: 2/9
Progress: 31/31
Kill count and stat/level gains:
- Bob: +2 (15), health 78(+1), agi 68, dex 67, str 72, lea 60(+13), wis 91, mark 78 (+1), mec 28, exp 36, med 40, xp 5 (+1)
- Buns: +7 (32), health 80 (+1), agi 78, dex 87, str 59, lea 47 (+16), wis 93, mark 88(+1), mec 8, exp 4, med 49 (+1), xp 5 (+1)
- Dimitri +0 (0), health 75, agi 73, dex 51, str 71, lea 21, wis 56, mark 77, mec 71, exp 12, med 17, xp 1
- Fox: +2 (47), health 78, agi 85, dex 100, str 56, lea 36(+13), wis 77 (+1), mark 77, mec 15, exp 8, med 70, xp 5 (+1)
- Gary: +8 (24), health 83, agi 68, dex 60, str 90, lea 7, wis 70, mark 75, mec 24, exp 42, med 14, xp 4
- Godlight: +14 (95), health 77, agi 75, dex 81 (+1), str 76, lea 81(+5), wis 81 (+1), mark 89(+2), mec 78, exp 75, med 75, xp 6 (+1)
- Grizzly: +0 (14), health 94, agi 69, dex 50, str 95, lea 16, wis 72, mark 80, mec 24, exp 37, med 8, xp 4 (+1)
- Hector: +5 (34), health 79, agi 84, dex 89 (+1), str 83, lea 29 (+1), wis 72, mark 67(+1), mec 43 (+5), exp 17, med 7, xp 4
- Ira: +3 (18), health 77, agi 68, dex 67, str 55, lea 37 (+?), wis 84 (+1), mark 63 (+2), mec 8, exp 2, med 41, xp 4
- Manuel: +1 (26), health 76, agi 72, dex 91, str 76, lea 60(+10), wis 84 (+1), mark 81(+1), mec 8, exp 22, med 40, xp 5 (+1)

Last thoughts:
- imgur was screwing me for some reason, I couldn't upload anything for a long while. As I noticed many screens only having 2 views (one of which at least has to me mine) I'm considering not taking as many in the future. Speak up if you want more than the ones I do for myself, like loot.
- check out all those stat gains! Ira had two mistakes that are now corrected.
- I'm thinking about dismissing buns right now, leaving her minimal gear (an LBE thing, dimitri's desert eagle, helmet, flackvest) in omerta. OTOH once I have conquered the SAM site I can drop new hires right in drassen, so it might be useless here as I won't be back for quite a while. IIRC I need two more towns before I can get carlos, maybe even three?
- related: must check how high team cost is when buns is gone, currently at $5545. Together with the milita upkeep I'll basically only keep this team afloat and might not actually want to hire someone new, rather get some money together to train milita in the SAM site and probably aldea. While the SAM site is the next overall goal I should head to aldea ASAP afterwards, because I can pick up maddog down there.
- with all that being said I'd appreciate recommendations for hires. Obviously a very cheap one, but as has come up before I don't remember much about conflicting MERCs and would prefer not to work with someone I can only keep for two weeks like buns, or worse, who will up and leave before their paid-for time is done!
- just seing now sevenfms update re bugfixes after 7609. Damn. I was hoping that the heli at least would be reliable, but that's not a given now. Considering AR is markedly less crashy than 7609, at least for me, we are just going to have to hope for the best.
- this latest absence was a long one, hopefully I can post more regularly in the near future. My apologies.

[Updated on: Wed, 12 October 2016 02:13]

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Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347302 is a reply to message #347290] Thu, 13 October 2016 22:43 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
Session start: day 13, 14:42
Cash at start: 33047

- We fire buns, getting a (partial?) refund for the remaining time (another thing I should know about but don't). Her gear (which we removed prior to firing her) gets carried to drassen airport where we give manuel the rest of our shotgun ammo and the choke from grizzly, who takes the damaged PPsh-41 (range 19! that's still excellent for us right now) instead of his shotgun due to ammo scarcity: only 1.5 7-er mags of shot and half a mag of slugs left, so manuel gets it as he has shotgun skill thanks to his hunter status. He can make the most use of it. Godlight and dimitri (who has excellent mec skills despite his lack of dex, which hopefully will be trained by repairing. His wisdom is quite bad however, and he *is* primitive, adding another repair malus, but he is highly skilled in comparison to the rest, so I'm hoping it's a win overall - at the very least I think repair skills determines how much of the tool kit gets used up, and they are still limited if not critically short) repair, hector - who is already at full health and only needs to repair stat damage - gets doctored by fox who is considerably more skilled than Ira. Bob (who comes in at 2nd highest score) trains leadership for everybody else and exchanges the 11-range skorpion MP for a twice as accurate 14-range beretta MP in worse shape and 9x19. I also notice a new gasmask and headset at drassen airport which are passed around. Pretty sure everybody has a gasmask right now, although I prefer sight item and headset and so tend to get caught unaware in ironman most of the time anyway when the enemy uses gas grenades. still good for breaching and indoor fighting in gas alarm areas of course) The team cost dropped to 4483 after buns left, which is a lot more manageable. Igor is very good and at 6k/two weeks not much more expensive than considerably worse skilled other hires, he can always be hunter (enabling faster movement on the strategic map, the semi-skilled version of ranger) for another team in the future and is a good choice overall.

- 3h later hector is healed and both him and fox start training leadership along with the others as bob's students. We are at 22h - what to do now? We resupply to the sensible maximum (taking care not to exceed weight limits, but carrying med and repair supplies along with all ammo we can reasonably carry) as the city is now maximally defended and we'll be outside of it for a while, trusting the elite milita defenses. Godlight gets a bit of glaser, bob reloads .45 ACP, more AP ammo for the .30 car rifle that dimitri holds. We sell a few excess weapons. The ppsh is still in bad shape but a bit better off. Should we set out right now towards the smugglers or do a bit more repair? As I realize I can move recent loot from other city sectors together at the airport again we stay and consolidate our stash. After moving all items we switch out a few 11-range pistols for 12-range ones, make ira carry all our 100 match 9x19 rounds for special fights that demand more accuracy and range and pack a few breaklights. A few more sales including 10 out of 15 boxes of unneeded 9x18 ammo and dimitri gets a canteen despite his lack of dedicated slot. They are usually useless in turn-based, but moving around the map in real time is often greatly improved, especially if you are in a sector that allows refilling canteens. Godlight often relies on a refillable canteen to reach all locks in a conquered or newly explored sector, and if people are very tired they can be just as vital in getting them to a good spot when you just try to position people safely for an incoming attack. Milita cost has risen considerably after midnight to now 2.4k, which is a bit surprising in it's scope. We'll need to rely on drassen's income for fortifying at least the drassen SAM site as well, thankfully without buns this doesn't present us with a problem at the moment - and to be truthful, I guess we can swing it either way now that we are free to be on the offensive again.

- On day 14 10:20am drassen mine gets attacked by 20 without losses. Everybody is fairly fit except dimitri who is at half energy - but this is the time to do something again, I tend to turtle a bit (wouldn't mind training up mec, lea and mark for everyone so repair and milita training doesn't depend on individuals but can be done by anyone who is free and unwounded) and that is a bad idea in AR from what I've seen so far - the time you lose is precious as AR keeps pushing you with an ever-increasing enemy count. The PPsh is at ~65% now, and the switched out pistols are in slightly better shape than before if not what I would call reliable. Everybody is set to move directly north, then over to the far east side of the map. The sector above drassen airport holds a steak knife, a leather vest, a 4-round shotgun and 4 flechette rounds. Until A16 nothing but wilderness and we arrive after 16h with 10 enemies to the south of us. looting all but one locked control-type room produces this list: http://imgur.com/a/BLpbn - of course all of it is owned and can't be taken without starting a fight. With dimitri nearly falling down right now I'm considering sleeping until nightfall hoping the 10 won't move towards us. Alternatively I might try a daylight fight against the smugglers. Talking about them: I've met them in three locations in previous games, and it doesn't seem like there is a quest tied to them. They have no dialogue, only "quote [number]" - therefore I'll kill them all for the owned loot they hold. As an aside: - where can I find a damned radio FFS? It's about time bob makes himself useful by allowing me to target specific enemy numbers without having to worry about reinforcements. After the smugglers we'll look for skyrider and take on the SAM site. I must remember to use grizzy with his high marksmanship as a trainer when two milita trainer and 2-3 repairs slots are filled. A few mercs are still barely over 60 marksmanship and it is becoming noticeable, plus it's one of the quickest stats to improve. On impulse I decide to rehire everyone for another week (everybody at 14 days now) and end up with slightly over 13k which should be well enough to train up elite milita in the one-sector SAM site given our secure income.

- Tried a daylight test attack on the smugglers and learned to my surprise that they seem well armored. HP and glaser hit like 4 times without damage. I'm counting this reload and wait until nightfall for another try with standard ammo - everybody who has some is using AP. Oh great. Attempt #2 goes south in the 2nd round, when fox loses half her HP. We keep trying, but manage to kill only two smugglers after more rounds and getting shot up on several of our guys. Interestingly dimitri refuses to shoot at them to start the fight (although he joins in normally as soon as somebody else does). I wonder if that is due to his low level or if the smugglers aren't meant to be fought after all... Because we don't know what/how much they'll drop and I only really want the 4x scope and the russian grenade launcher from what I can see so far we decide to sleep until 19:40 then move south hoping to find the 10 again (who have moved out of sight while we slept). Luckily they are below our new sector (which is featureless wild) and at 22:48 we attack them in a swampy, wooden wilderness map. We take out half of them at the entry position (fox takes two kills and gary snags one IIRC) then begin a sweep of the sector with godlight taking point. His glaser still works against these guys and he one-shots all remaining enemies. We loot three 11-range pistols, a bit of 9x18, 3 pistol mags of 9x19 plus one in AP and one LBE thing, and sell everything except the 9x19mm. We are now two squares away from the SAM site and because I'm fairly sure it's better to attack it from the east rather than the north we move down to D16. There is nothing to loot here, and it turns out dimitri is again too tired to travel. It's ~0:40 now, we'll try sleeping for two hours and then hope to attack the... wow, 22 enemies in the site still under the cover of darkness.

- Our planning works out and even though we have a little trouble at the entry position in the lower right corner (gary takes 22 HP when they come from the west and high grass only allows us to spot the enemy when he is in shooting range himself), godlight and his glaser make short work of everybody. Got a 246 HP hit on an elite, it was glorious. One single enemy is well armored and withstands three glaser hits though (no damage), and bob and others fire at him what they can. After another round, he is finally subdued and we creep further forward into the compound through one of the pre-existing holes in the fence. Btw, even with godlights high level, NO skill and NVG he did get spotted a few times before he got to act, but was lucky enough to escape fire each time - with the exception of one that cost him 12 HP. The last remaining enemies are sniped standing in light outside effective weapon range by godlight, two at the southern guardhouse and one at the far western corner of the fence. Combat loot is excellent: http://imgur.com/a/3gYkH - that bizon and the rifle are especially welcome, as are two more NVG. That zylon vest is awesome as well, good ammo. I'm loving this, and we haven't even checked containers! And you got to love military sectors, this is the combined loot: http://imgur.com/a/7Uem7 - another most welcome long gun, armor, ammo, attachments. I was going to count the reloads it took to open all chests without setting off the traps, but lost count at ~10. Time to settle in and distribute the goods, then train milita up ASAP - this sector doesn't have a real safe position, certainly not for a large team like ours, and would be crappy to defend. However, we can assign three milita trainers here instead of the regular two which should speed up things considerably (there is a military barracks here which only gives improved resting AFAICT, but maybe that's the reason). Somebody needs to do repair, the PPsh had two gunjams and all that new loot is pretty badly damaged in comparison to our stuff, otherwise we are doing well enough.

- We sell all weapons (that HK MP is only range 11, pah) except the bizon (range 18, still an improvement), the two rifles and one pistol, which doesn't have better stats than our 9x19 ones but is in .40 S&W and will probably work still when the 9x19 loses it's punch. Bob gets the 106 vest, kevlar helmet with mkI cover, zlyon vest and the NVGII, now that he has a medium general slot to store his gasmask, and takes the .45 AP mag, handing off 30 rounds of .45 match ammo to whoever gets the Cx4 storm. He also attaches the reflex and laser sights to his thompson, because I don't see a better place for it. Hector adds the 20 rounds of 7.62x39 to the AKS which was down to 6 shots and takes the NVGI, the bizon and the double large mag LBE thing. Manuel takes the storm rifle as his shotgun is down to half a combat worth of ammo and attaches the match sights to his backup pistol. Dimitri gets the headset, takes all grenades (he's the only one who is skilled in them) and a first aid kit, which he didn't have yet. Grizzly takes the camo helmet. Godlight reloads the small mags into an SMG glaser mag and uses the kevlar pants. Fox takes the kevlar vest. Ira takes the 5.56x45 rifle with 2x scope. After everything is done we move the team to relative safety behind the car (not that this is a good spot in daylight or anything) and set to repair and training milita. Hector and dimitri do repair, bob, manuel and godlight are responsible for training milita and ira trains everybody but fox in leadership. She only has 37, but somebody else only has 8 and she is a teacher, maybe that will do something. Fox, who is at 36 and can't be instructed by ira, is very close to gaining a str point, so we let her self-practise that.

- at 15h day 16 we are done with training elite milita. There have been no attacks and leadership increased a fair bit for everyone I think. Three trainers certainly work faster than two, but you can really tell training speed has picked up. Weapon repair was pretty good, even though most of them aren't at 100% - still good enough for combat I think. We'll explore three sectors on our way back to drassen, then we've been everywhere east of drassen in the upper right corner, and skyrider hopefully hangs out in one of them, otherwise we'll have to check around drassen elsewhere. C15 has a ruined house without loot and a small shed that holds a hat, a hunter vest and a duckbill, none of which I have use for. In B15 we find skyrider and agree to escort him, thankfully he fits into our 9-man team perfectly. Dimitri levels up, and everybody has complained about sleep at least once now. B14 is a nice suprise with plentiful loot in two houses http://imgur.com/a/Nz8Ox but the caliber the rifle comes in is very, very exotic. We'll take all of this along with us and decide what to sell later. We arrive very tired in drassen airport and move everybody to the chopper where Skyrider gives his little speech and hector and ira level up. Before I forget it I move the merc drop off sector to the factory. This is where I leave you today - until next session!

Time at end of session: day 16, 20:15
Cash at end of session: 24204
Reload count session/total: 2/11
Progress: 34/34
Kill count and stat/level gains:
- Bob: +1 (16), health 78, agi 68, dex 67, str 72, lea 64 (+4), wis 91, mark 78, mec 28, exp 36, med 40, xp 5
- Dimitri +0 (0), health 75, agi 73, dex 51, str 71, lea 21, wis 56, mark 77, mec 71, exp 12, med 17, xp 2 (+1)
- Fox: +2 (49), health 78, agi 85, dex 100, str 57 (+1), lea 36, wis 77, mark 78 (+1), mec 15, exp 8, med 70, xp 5
- Gary: +0 (24), health 84 (+1), agi 68, dex 60, str 90, lea 14 (+7), wis 70, mark 75, mec 24, exp 42, med 14, xp 4
- Godlight: +25 (120), health 78 (+1), agi 75, dex 82 8+1), str 76, lea 82 (+1), wis 82 (+1), mark 91 (+2), mec 79 (+1), exp 75, med 75, xp 6
- Grizzly: +2 (16), health 94, agi 69, dex 51 (+1), str 95, lea 20 (+4), wis 72, mark 80, mec 24, exp 37, med 8, xp 4
- Hector: +2 (36), health 80 (+1), agi 84, dex 89, str 83, lea 29, wis 72, mark 68 (+1), mec 45 (+2), exp 17, med 7, xp 5 (+1)
- Ira: +0 (18), health 77, agi 72, dex 91, str 56 (+1), lea 40 (+3), wis 84, mark 63, mec 8, exp 2, med 41, xp 5 (+1)
- Manuel: +0 (26), health 76, agi 72, dex 91, str 76, lea 62 (+2), wis 84, mark 81, mec 8, exp 22, med 40, xp 5

retired/dead:
- Buns: 32 kills, health 80 (+1), agi 78, dex 87, str 59, lea 47 (+23), wis 93, mark 88 (+2), mec 8, exp 4, med 49 (+1), xp 5 (+3, retired)

Last thoughts:
- I've come to the conclusion that not only aggressive AI is a thing best deactivated in AR, it is probably best to leave leadership skill out of determining number of trained militia as well. Seems the enemy produces constant pressure and additional handicaps in terms of settings have an increased balance effect compared to 1.13 which I've played comfortably using wildly varied settings. In the next game I'd probably not delay elite militia training at all either.
- corrected Ira's dex score from inexplicably 68 to the proper 91.
- we'll be picking up maddog in aldea next, and afterwards I am kind of lost... I've seen chitzena and cambria in AR already, and cambria takes heat from all sides due to the center map position it has. In my experience it will bind a full team indefinitely and/or require at least one permanent stay-behind to retrain milita frequently. The proximity of the cambria SAM and Tixa increase the pressure cambria regularly faces even more. Chitzena is a terrible, terrible choice: it's the lowest mine yield and now has four instead of two sectors, which are expensive to hold with elite militia given the low income increase. I'm therefore aiming for alma, which I've never seen in AR. I am counting on two things however: the existence of a kill room there (classic alma had my favourite one) for defense and that people aren't so heavily armored that standard 9x19 just bounces off them - godlight would be almost useless in that case. If we can take alma we'll have a second mine and will be able to hire a 2nd team, and I feel like I can then explore escondite, which I've also never seen, and then conquer east to west across the map later. This situation should be vaguely prefereable to trying to hold cambria.
- because I'm likely to play on before getting answers once the situation hits I'm asking now, which non-conflicting mercs would you recommend for a second team? Consider a buffed radio operator with some combo of gunfighter, sniper or machine gunner (I can do two expert/tier-2 primary skills at once with one half-skilled/tier-1 additional primary and fill up with secondary skills until we reach 10 slots - if I use all stuff I can, which I probably don't want to) as a given, as well as Igor, who is a hunter and cheap. Money will be the limiting factor, but we have up to 8 other slots open.
- just noticed there is an option for "insert image" - would everyone prefer screens being visible as a part of the write-up? That could add up quickly, what's the board policy on this?

[Updated on: Fri, 14 October 2016 04:04]

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Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347310 is a reply to message #347302] Fri, 14 October 2016 14:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Deleted.

 
Messages:2663
Registered:December 2012
Location: Russian Federation
Quote:
because I'm likely to play on before getting answers once the situation hits I'm asking now, which non-conflicting mercs would you recommend for a second team? Consider a buffed radio operator with some combo of gunfighter, sniper or machine gunner

I always hire Leech as he is best sniper early in the game, with marksman/hunter skills and no relation problems, and he is very cheap.
Another good early sniper is Bud, he only has problems with Mitch and Postie, according to MercProfiles.xml
There are very few radio operators in stock 1.13 - Weasel, Capt. Bob and Ears, not much to choose from.
There is a good merc relations table for Ja2: http://ndnw.net/JA2/relationships.html , but it's only for vanilla mercs.



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Lieutenant

Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347319 is a reply to message #347310] Fri, 14 October 2016 20:41 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
Thanks sevenfm, just to be clear though - the radio operator was supposed to be an IMP again, although now I'm considering ears... He's also a scout, and I could just attach either gary or grizzly to the 2nd team for a heavy if needed. Then I'd only need hunter, paramedic, marksman and auto, maybe throw in meltdown for a gunslinger. All of those slots could be done without an IMP I think, even if the resulting team wouldn't be a powerhouse exactly. I appreciate the link, it certainly helps a bit. But we already have manuel, bob and hector who aren't listed, and the AIM gallery (ascending by price) has many more of them http://imgur.com/a/4pzmw - and that's only AIM, there's MERC as well, and if we want another non-IMP radio operator we need to use them too.

I'm not a huge fan of leech myself, he regularly underperforms I feel (probably due to the terrible wis and so-so dex), but he *is* cheap as hell and would fill both sniper and hunter slot. How about him, MD as paramedic, barry as lock opener/technician, ears as radio operator/scout, meltdown for ambidex gunslinger and heavy and Ice as a proper gunner? He's fairly expensive actually, but that's a small team so far and I expect the alma mine to yield more than drassen.

Again, it will be two or more sessions before it becomes relevant but if somebody can spot a flaw in the above lineup already that would be great!

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Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347321 is a reply to message #347319] Sat, 15 October 2016 00:15 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
Session start: day 16, 20:15
Cash at start: 24204

Hope you caught the "last thoughts" edits on the previous post and subsequent discussion about new hires.

- everybody sleeps until 1am (I only wanted to check militia upkeep after midnight - 3k, that's a considerable increase. Seems it's 600 bucks for every 20 elite milita - but then I saved absentmindedly so we might as well play on. I was planning for slightly less sleep, but whatever), then we head out for aldea to recruit maddog, a free engineer (doesn't matter that he's psycho), and loot E13 for a canteen and first aid kit. E12 is loot free. F12 has many large houses (http://imgur.com/a/q3TRW) and yields http://imgur.com/a/Y3r54 - we are most grateful for the tool kit, but the leg protector isn't bad either, nor is the medkit. We make another molotov cocktail out of rags and alcohol as well. After the screenshot I realize I forgot about that one lock I couldn't open and try my best again. It's kicking in the door that succeeds after lockpicking and crowbar failed (seriously? I thought crowbar would be stronger, should I have been kicking stuff with grizzly all this time? All those times I used multiple IMPs including one engineer come back to haunt me it seems) and we proceed to find a CMMG, a two-handed long-range pistol (I love those, 5.56x45 and range 20, 30 with match ammo! Can't dualwield them, but at with limited sight ranges at night they are the equivalent of a rifle, except that a proper gunfighter might get 4 aimed shots off instead of two for a rifle, thanks to the AP discount weapon skills tend to give and pistols being fast), a cold loaded AP mag for it and some AR mag LBE thing (cold loaded mags are slightly less powerful than normal rounds of their type, but are also less noisy. They are meant for silenced or suppressed weapons during proper stealth attacks, but I rarely ever use them. Less than grenades actually, which means "/maybe/ once in a full game" now that I think about it). We are now set to attack 15 to the south at ~5:50am, then we'll be technically able to swing west into aldea - not really though as it will be defended and daylight will hit before we reach it and so we'll have to sleep and maybe run a bit if interrupted by patrols until next nightfall after this combat.

- damn, that's a wrench thrown into our gears:
http://i.imgur.com/LjYx550.png
those 20 to the south and east will join the fight thanks to our still missing radio. We're inserting for a test at the upper left corner so we can flee right into aldea when we need to. That probably won't help our situation either, but we'll give it a go. Turns out not all enemies join in, we "only" fight against 30. After a desasterous start (for some reason nobody uses scopes for two rounds and we fight two redshirts firing all guns and not taking them down) we get into the groove and take out a good number of enemies. There are large mobs coming directly from the east and we only make it this far because dimitri throws three grenades to rob groups of nearby foes of their AP, and everybody uses up all their AP for a few rounds. When we are down to 22 we get two breaklights thrown at us and Bob takes a small wound
http://i.imgur.com/llFavtP.png
we have to get out or here right now while hector has interrupt! But where do we go, north or west? Is Bob even able to travel or will he bleed to death? I can't save to test it out... Is this going to be my first cheat save after all?

- because I'll use the retreat-saves in underground sectors for sure I decide to go without this time. We escape the map and travel into aldea where we arrive just before 7am with 19 guarding the sector and 12 still at the sector we just left. Those 12 might follow us any moment. Daylight breaks, but thankfully we arrive during a storm. We take up position behind the fence here
http://i.imgur.com/Kix8F7N.png
and fire a baiting shot. Shortly after an alarm sounds and that elite shows up. The fight is joined. We kill a few guys coming around the corner, but at 11 to go an elite comes from the back and hits us with a breaklight. I decide not to run, turn 5 guys around and throw a breaklight myself - manuel hits him with buckshot for 53 HP and in the next turn (he doesn't get to act) we combine fire and take him out. Godlight is still the only one who can see when someone comes around the south-eastern corner and collects kills alone. I also don't dare to move out because our sight range is terrible in the storm and I don't want to ruin this if at all possible. Another elite comes from the north and we survive only through great luck as his auto fire misses completely. When he is gone we are down to 8 and nobody is coming for my baiting shots - just remembered, this sector has a single entry room in which the last guys like to hang out. If I really don't want to retreat to save, we'll have to risk moving about. Oh boy, here goes nothing...

- lightning illuminates the enemy a few times, dropping us into turn-based, but of course we need to creep a lot further before we are in proper sight range. One goes down at the southern corner of the fence, then we are in the open. Godlight gets spotted and shot at through a hole in the fence here
http://i.imgur.com/hCicyOG.png
but takes only 1 damage and then gets interrupt. He blows up the elite's head and we move on, but lightning flashes and we get dropped into turn-based again - we are looking east and south, and that blip was definitely in our back up north! Godlight swings around and guns him down, we have five remaining. Godlight moves into the courtyard to the west and takes out one guy sitting inside by a window, then someone who came out a garage-type door north. After a short tactical retreat he moves back in and takes out another one in the building. Two to go! I already know someone is in the shed thing in the back here, so we move everybody in front of the door, take aim and let godlight open it.
http://i.imgur.com/Jpc0DNA.png
He takes a decent wound, but the elite inside is dead and now we can see where the last one is (in the bar building in the lower left of the map). Let's hope that one doesn't ruin what we achieved so far, this was an amazing fight!

- Got him!
http://i.imgur.com/37xdX4n.png
Hotdamn, this was /great/. I'm very pleased I didn't retreat-save yet, it was great fun pulling this off. Combat loot (http://imgur.com/a/b2pdS) is awesome, I love the commando and that AR is also pretty good. Neat ammo as well. With containers: http://imgur.com/a/obSUL Maddog is being disagreeable as he refuses godlight's and a few others' invitation, finally bob is able to convince him to come along. Say hi to our new aggressive psychotic mental patient of an engineer!
http://i.imgur.com/gDEEMkG.png
Time to outfit and whatnot, and mull over whether or not to do the underground sector that is part of this map (you can see the stairs in the room where we shot the penultimate enemy)...

- bob gets the commando and attaches all his sights to it as well as the foregrip hector had attached until now, and takes sunglasses. Maddog, who wears no armor, gets the kevlar pants and leg protectors, a first aid kit, the canteen and the locksmith kit. Grizzly takes the galil AR because the 40mm grenade launcher attaches to it, loads a HE grenade and pockets the rest, along with the extended ears. Dimitri takes all mini and mk2 grenades. Fox takes the remaining sunglasses and we stuff everybody with ammo. We expect to find to find a gun in that caliber soon so we decide to take the 7.62x51 along, which may prove to be a mistake. Maddog gets the surplus thompson and will pass manuel the CAWS as soon as his new mag of buckshot is empty. I'm not doing the underground sector right now, I did it last time with 10 IMPs and 10 hires/rebels and it took /forever/ while still relying on retreat-saves. Also, the loot there was kind of okay but not great IIRC. I'm half thinking about fortifying aldea as well - we could just afford it, 3.6k for militia upkeep and a team costs of 4.7k, leaving us with 500 bucks per day. And we are going to rest here anyway... Oh alright, it's not like we are going to hold it for long. Bob and godlight train militia, dimitri and maddog repair and we set up training in leadership and marksmanship for those that need improvement.

- 11 elites attack drassen SAM but we have no losses. At 22h on the dot bob and godlight have trained the first 10 green militia. There are a couple of patrols around and I guess we should attack one even though we are all at half energy. 12 to the east, 15 to the north, 10 to the north-east ready to help out either target. As we haven't been to the norther sector yet we try our luck there.

- the 10 move away, but there were 20 north of the 15 we're attacking. We take positions in the lower left corner and bait a bit there. Turns out not all of the 20 join the attack, but we are getting mobbed badly and they are better armored than we are used to, glaser is a no go. A bitter fight breaks out when manuel gets shot nearly to death and we throw what we have at the enemy, most of our grenades, a 40mm HE and a tear gas one. Bob breaks out a large auto-fire volley for the first time that saves everybody's skin, two of the five enemies we can see die and the rest gets wounded and takes cover. More grenades hit the prone foes and one that goes too long tells us there are more enemies behind them. Grizzly also gets shot down to 33 HP and takes serious wisdom damage. Godlight takes a number of small wounds that add up to 25 HP and ira has a scratch as well. Not only is the enemy clearly better armored than before, he has better sight range as well. While it keeps challenging all the time we mange to bandage all our wounds and finally kill the last two in the same round - good god, we haven't once sat in darkness outside shooting range of the enemy after the first kill I think! After all this hardship and the elation of making it the loot turns out to be bitterly disappointing: three pistols and small shit: http://i.imgur.com/MZXsk7n.png
that med kit doesn't even replace what we used up and the only thing I really like is the 9x19 AP ammo and the new NVG.

- it's late again and I need to stop here I think. The recent fights have made me question my plans of attacking alma next, I'm not sure I can take the soldiers there. It's famously the queen's military town and I expect tons of elites with good armor and NVG. OTOH I don't know what else to do. Defending Aldea seems unproductive and hard, here just the currently known patrols:
http://i.imgur.com/FhIIZTl.png
After a bit of rest I'll hopefully be thinking clearer. Until next session!

Time at end of session: day 17, 23:23
Cash at end of session: 30188
Reload count session/total: 0/11
Progress: 38/37
Kill count and stat/level gains:
- Bob: +9 (25), health 79 (+1), agi 68, dex 68 (+1), str 72, lea 64, wis 91, mark 79 (+1), mec 28, exp 36, med 41 (+1), xp 5
- Dimitri +4 (4), health 75, agi 73, dex 52 (+1), str 71, lea 21, wis 56, mark 77, mec 71, exp 12, med 17, xp 3 (+1)
- Fox: +2 (51), health 79 (+1), agi 85, dex 100, str 57, lea 38 (+2), wis 77, mark 78, mec 15, exp 8, med 70, xp 5
- Gary: +1 (25), health 84, agi 68, dex 60, str 90, lea 16 (+2), wis 70, mark 75, mec 24, exp 42, med 14, xp 4
- Godlight: +29 (149), health 79 (+1), agi 75, dex 83 (+1), str 76, lea 82, wis 82, mark 93 (+2), mec 80 (+1), exp 75, med 75, xp 7 (+1)
- Grizzly: +0 (16), health 94, agi 69, dex 51, str 95, lea 21 (+1), wis 72, mark 80, mec 24, exp 37, med 8, xp 4
- Hector: +1 (37), health 80, agi 84, dex 89, str 83, lea 30 (+1), wis 72, mark 68, mec 45, exp 17, med 7, xp 5
- Ira: +2 (20), health 77, agi 91, dex 67, str 56, lea 40, wis 84, mark 64 (+1), mec 8, exp 2, med 43 (+2), xp 5
- Maddog: +0 (0), health 91, agi 91, dex 91, str 78, lea 8, wis 56, mark 66, mec 68, exp 18, med 7, xp 1
- Manuel: +3 (29), health 76, agi 72, dex 91, str 76, lea 63 (+1), wis 84, mark 82 (+1), mec 8, exp 22, med 40, xp 5

Last thoughts:
- I told a good friend of mine who doesn't play JA2 about me writing this and it turns out he read and liked it. It has happened once or twice already, but I'll occasionally explain mechanics that are well known to seasoned players for his benefit (see: cold loaded et al). Also, hi rob! happy
- the $600/20 elite militia thing may surprise few people but me, but I've played around with 1.13 financial settings quite a bit in the recent past. If I had 10 IMPs and found myself with too much money, I'd jack up militia upkeep or decrease sell-to-locals etc until I thought my advantages were balanced out. FWIW, this game uses fairly standard values IIRC.
- fighting is getting much harder in the south, and I dislike godlight taking pretty much all kills - but it was a matter of survival far more than convenience, I can assure you. IDK how to change it right now.

[Updated on: Sat, 15 October 2016 02:34]

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Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347322 is a reply to message #347321] Sat, 15 October 2016 00:21 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Flugente

 
Messages:3509
Registered:April 2009
Location: Germany
Not sure if this intentional, but if you click on a pic uploaded on imgur, then on the arrow and then on Get Share Links, and then on BBCode, you get a link that will actually show these pictures in your post. Clikcing on each link is kinda annoying.


I know now that it could never work between us, as much as we wanted to, it could never be! Not because you're a rabbit, but because you're black.

If you want, you can donate to me. This will not affect how and what I code, and I will not code specific features in return. I will be thankful though.

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Captain

Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347323 is a reply to message #347322] Sat, 15 October 2016 00:38 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
Noted flugente! Thanks for the feedback. Let's see if I can edit the post accordingly.

edit: aha, it works, but only if the image is fresh. Some of this was from last night, and those links are no longer accesible it seems. Made mostly non-loot screens visible in the last post. Next time I'll do it properly and align the text as well, this is a bit messy, sorry about that.

edit: went over it again, this should do. Expect much longer-seeming posts in the future happy Seriously though, I'll do combat loot plus container loot (when applicable) as non-visible links (I still could use this for my next AR game to check for guaranteed loot), but will put in the rest directly visible. So far I never had trouble with the game crashing when alt-tabbing out and back in a lot (not in AR, 7609 was much less stable for me despite the recent news that it doesn't technically contain bugfixes), as long as that keeps up I'll try and add a few crucial combat situations I've up until now only described as well. I'm a bit worried about overloading a post when I do this, so I'll just go ahead and wait for someone to tell me to stop...

[Updated on: Sat, 15 October 2016 02:41]

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Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347386 is a reply to message #347323] Sun, 23 October 2016 05:06 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
Just to let people know, this game is still active. Sadly, Real Life interferes and I don't know when I can update again, but I'm still on it - and also feeling the mounting pressure of keeping at least a semblance of a schedule. Nonetheless, please keep an eye out for this thread on the active topics list. Also, I had saved a bunch of things after the last post for the next update (composing posts is actually a lot of work, what with the screenshots and trying to describe the cool parts of combats - by alt-tabbing and typing in here - before you end up summing up stuff afterwards and leaving out all the juicy bits) but since I'm bumping this thread with this "update" I might as well paste it in now. Enjoy these preliminary notes until the next proper update:

"Before we get back to the action, some gear distribution and both general and specific game related questions and musings (if this sounds like it's going to be long, it's because you are correct):

- gave the 2x scope that came with maddog's CAWS to manuel for his rifle that was without. He has high marksmanship, it's a good weapon and he'll make the most of it for the moment. We still have a few long guns without scopes, but that can't be helped. Maddog gets a steel helmet when someone else takes the damaged camo helmet (which is just a steel helmet with 5% camo). Btw, he's also an annoying thief who will fill all his pockets with (semi-?)random sector inventory no matter what. I usually stuff all his slots with junk or low weight items of use so I don't have to deal with that. Anyway, IDK when that happened but he was holding two near mint condition titanium platings we gave to godlight and bob as vest inserts, increasing their armor value considerably. I think titanium plates are half the protection of ceramic ones, but are lighter and can be repaired? Another tangent: once we repair more armor we can use the 2nd compound 18 we found (it's for "hardening" armor, and I only use it when the target is at mint condition. Tell me if that is time wasted please), the first went to godlight's kevlar helmet which has better coverage than a steel one and will be in use for a while yet.

- talking about coverage: every armor piece has a coverage value, and if I understand correctly any hit has a 100%-coverage chance of bypassing armor altogether and doing full damage. I tend to prioritize coverage over camo in ironman, but zylon gear is fairly close to, if one step below dyneema/spectra (aside from the dyneema helmet, which is a low-coverage piece of shit) in terms of armor but gives camo. Coverage is about the same as well, so I might just stick with zylon stuff for a while longer and hope to get camo gains.

- another sidenote: I don't use camo kits, because whenever I do I don't see any uptick in camo value. Never. Is that because of the high coverage I usually have (only uncovered skin is subject to camo kits IIRC) or am I doing something wrong? While we are at it, I assume that improper camo (like woodland camo in urban or desert sectors) doesn't actually increase your visibility in adverse environments. Is that correct? I'd go woodland if given a choice, which seems to be the default one on gear anyway. If someone wants to break down camo for me, be my guest - please! Actually the same goes for variable LBE - I never got the hang of neither MOLLE nor 3.11, but I hear it allows camo increases beyond what you can get from armor. Enlightenment regarding this is also welcome, although we need estoni for BR access before that info becomes valuable. I'm almost tempted to take cambria just so we could take and hold estoni as well, and start ordering cool stuff - our progress is already very high, so the selection should be quite nice. But see the point re holding aldea below.

- worth noting: there is known loot from the combat we fled into aldea from, a mini-14 (good rifle in 5.56x45), another calico MP like ira has but with flash suppressor and a couple of 5.56x45 mags. The sector might be well worth returning to soon.

- I've come to believe we should defend aldea after all - we desperately need healing, and to a lesser extent repair as well. A full repair might be worth it for the NVG alone, which come late in the repair order and I'm never sure if a NVG at 50% is less effective than a 100% one. Aldea is also one single sector with good hiding spaces I think, at least one of which should be a kill room equivalent, we'll check possible locations for fence holes etc ASAP. It also seems easier to collect better weapons and ammo while defending from such a position than attacking out in the open (seems there is at least a chance of better loot in the south than near drassen, even if we had back luck recently - enemies down here clearly hold better gear, by now I see frequent non-pistol autofire and hear good rifles, they spot you early enough to assume face items and scopes etc. In a new game I'd go with enemy progression slow instead of very slow after all, as that should give you the chance to score something better than pistols around drassen). And finally: aldea is certainly an "enemy hold location" that will attract enemy troops while taking pressure off drassen - where we /didn't/ leave anybody behind to retrain militia in case of heavy attacks. We should be able to afford to train and spend militia freely here (while being able to hold out safely if all of them should perish in large scale attacks) for a good long while here and get fully healed, repaired and outfitted for finally attacking alma from this spot.

- Oh wow, how about this? There has been discussion about a 2nd team above for when we get a 2nd mine - hopefully the alma one - under control. There are only two radio operators (which were my only valid reason for adding more IMPs later, and I'm thinking I may try to do without) remaining via MERC, the low rent AIM competitor, and Ears would be my first choice for a 2nd team. BUT, /right now/ we could afford to hire to hire weasel, the last one, for an eventual 3rd team (I don't expect to run more than three full teams of 8-9, with the remaining mercs being militia-training stay-behinds). He costs $160/day at level 1 and is with 21 leadership able to train militia already, if only just. We could drop him in drassen factory right now, let him self-practise leadership until there are losses and once he reaches a satisfying level of lea he could continue training marksmanship. By the time we set up a 3rd team he would probably have levelled up twice without ever seeing combat and be valuable as a militia trainer and decent shot. All of this should be affordable even before we secure another mine. Does that sound crazy? Eh, I'm doing it."

[Updated on: Sun, 23 October 2016 05:45]

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Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347403 is a reply to message #347386] Fri, 28 October 2016 00:52 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
NOTE: due to the limit of 10 images per message I'll have to split this fairly short post. I'll keep it in mind for the future, but I'm not deleting images and then writing down what info they contained, I'm too tired today. Next time single post per session again.

Session start: day 17, 23:23
Cash at start: 30480

Despite lots of night left we retreat the team back into aldea as we need to heal. I'm also hiring weasel, who will drop into drassen factory, without gear - his selections are all crappy except the last one. But that costs almost 3k and really doesn't include anything we don't already have laying around.

- Finding a good spot to hide in aldea proves a little more difficult than previously thought. I had my eye on this position
http://i.imgur.com/rQPYVon.png
(at least roughly, nobody is positioned in the shot, just checking for holes there) because the entrance to the east should be relatively easy to defend, even with three squares (garage = 2, then regular door) access instead of a single door space. Mobbing could become a problem, but unfortunately there are two holes in the fence of this area anyway - big enough not only to look through, but to actually jump over like this
http://i.imgur.com/Xv5Jcec.png
meaning I'd have to cover too many directions and at disadvantageous ranges. Other areas have either the same problem or just holes you can see through, which won't do either against 30+ enemies. None of the houses are suitable for holing up against large mobs either. I give the pseudo-kill room (with the downstairs) a try, but as predicted the stairs block too many squares for my mercs to stand safely. Example:
http://i.imgur.com/TXCHWhq.png
Fox can cleary see outside despite hugging the wall, and that means that someone outside will be able to spot her in return. If there are a few enemies outside there in a bunch she can hopefully (but not reliably!) kill the first one - but then what? The next one will step up and fire at her and she won't be able to do anything about it. having used up her AP. Nobody can back hre up either without stepping into firing lines themselves, and she can't move out. This won't do as a kill room, not for 10 mercs. We will have to split them. But where? For a moment I thought I had it here
http://i.imgur.com/1ZqBM8H.png
but due to workbenches or something you can't hug the wall and that window messes up positioning as well, as indicated by the orange squares. The problem is the same for other people in the shot except one. But I can't put only one guy there, he'll get overrun. In the end the best I can come up with is a 50/50 split like this
http://i.imgur.com/YE5bkqX.png
half the team in the mini kill room (literally no sixth safe position inside that) and the other half in a tiny windowless bathroom with a closed door. Due to the outside window placement they are screwed if someone comes in, I don't think they can safely take out even a small group that stands outside the building. I'm gambling that, like in the combat where godlight was alone and got killed, nobody will actually go inside this bathroom. Especially if the people inside keep quiet and the other team uses baiting shots continuously to draw all enemies to their position. We'll just have to see how that goes. For now we set godlight, maddog, dimitri and hector to repair (highest mec scores) while bob and ira train militia. This is suboptimal but should work well enough, we're not counting on militia for fighting until we've taken out a few patrols. Fox doctors for manuel and grizzly and gary practises leadership.

- we resume the timer and at daybreak weasel arrives. We give him a 9x19 11-range pistol with holster, a canteen, a blackhawk patrol pack, two breaklights and a desert eagle, then set him to practise leadership. An hour later 10 more green militia are produced in aldea. Midday 18 attack drassen warehouse, one militia dies. Shortly after 20 attack drassen mine with the same result. At 5am the next day we are full of blue militia and elite training begins. Shortly before 14h 10 attack drassen SAM without losses. At 18h we set everyone to sleep so we can move out at night and at 20h everybody is fairly awake. I don't know how it happened, but maddog is holding another mint condition titanium plate. It's not one of the two I mentioned before, those are still with their respective owners. Fox has the only other vest capable of taking inserts and makes use of it. Everybody is healed up nicely, only grizzly is still at 53 wisdom. The only adjacent visible patrol is to the east, and because we can take 12 easily and want to pick up the loot mentioned previously, that is where we go. Ah, I *say* 12, but it will probably end up more...
http://i.imgur.com/7VAdtA2.png
It's been a while, I forgot we still don't have a radio.

- Oh wow, I sure get rusty fast. One more reason to return to a semi-regular schedule. Anyway, we manage to take 6 down with amazing luck and only a tiny wound on Ira, which considering the amount of return fire we face is very, very lucky indeed. The enemy spots us early and there are snipers around - during one round with a standing elite in sight range I saw a(and heard) a shot coming from the edge of the screen somewhere. They are also well armored, glaser doesn't do any damage. We do our best but arrive at this situation
http://i.imgur.com/ULNkGhe.png
and now we have to go or get messed up bad. We can't keep them away, nor kill them in the same round they see us, they have snipers *and* there are still 18 remaining. Unwilling to resort to retreat-saving for this non-critical situation we flee from the map edge and continue all the way to aldea, where we arrive at ~22:20 and bandage ira. Everybody reloads.

- I'm starting to think offense down here is not the way to go yet. I'm clearly outclassed in gear and it's very hard to get anywhere when you can barely take 10 and the actual combat size is twice that at least. I'm not abandoning the alma idea, but maybe we should clear upwards of aldea and west of drassen first, where there should be more unexplored farm houses etc, one if which might just give us a radio - and if not, hopefully still better guns, scopes or NVG. As everybody is still very fit and we've been to the sector north of aldea already we head out west - where we haven't been yet - with the intention of swinging north afterwards. Sadly, the sector is loot free. The next sector is hilariously named hick farm, and we bypass it because I'm never sure whether or not you can kill them and then turn in the quest in cambria or have to get the quest first. IIRC any loot here is owned and can't be taken without starting a fight, and in any case I can't check because it's night during which the hicks shoot on sight. E10 is also a disappointment, being swamp without buildings. Shortly after 3am we arrive in D10 which is the same (albeit a better combat map I guess) and now I'm kind of mad that this plan works out so poorly. This keeps up, and we are only interrupted on our way down to D11 by 18 shelling themselves against drassen factory. No losses. D11 provides a novum: it's wilderness again, but I notice something that looks like an old camp fire and go investigating
http://i.imgur.com/wD4Rl5q.png
turns out there is a patrol pack and a hat there. Hm. I sure hope nothing like that was hidden in the sectors we just passed through. I'm certainly not going back to check, but I'm also reasonably sure there were no similar visible features in the other maps. Unfortunately everybody is pretty tired by now and E11, the last unexplored sector on the way down to aldea, is being held by 12. We sleep all day until 20h, then we are set to attack them just after nightfall. We should probably hurry back to aldea after this, look what's piling up there:
http://i.imgur.com/Z0VZTwr.png

[Updated on: Fri, 28 October 2016 03:02]

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Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347404 is a reply to message #347403] Fri, 28 October 2016 00:54 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
- what a terrible, terrible fight. First of all, the 10 from F12 moved up and so we ended up fighting against 22. We inserted in the middle of the northern edge, faced from south west to south east and baited. Shortly after the enemy comes a-running, with half coming from the east as expected. But our sight range is weak on that side and we take a few minor wounds - until dimitri takes a big one! When five enemies bunch up and dimitri misses all three of his grenades I am barely interested in keeping this going. Just to see how long we can keep it going I let godlight do all the killing and this proves to be the correct decision - he kills four out of those five in one round alone and somebody else very nearly takes out the last one. While it's a bit boring and doesn't help the other mercs, he afterwards manages to sneak around and take out more and more until we are down to 6. We assume they are down in the middle around the houses and so move out, but godlight scouts too far ahead and suddenly fox and grizzly are being shot at from the west. Godlight turns around, creeps two squares closer and damages the foe, then the other two take him down. The rest is shot sitting inside near windows, only the last two are sitting outside guarding doors. You can still see where the last one went down near the cursor
http://i.imgur.com/L511K1B.png
This was messy and dimitri also took wisdom damage - but after we survived that mob of 5 I enjoyed it very much, and part of the whole idea of playing ironman is taking wounds and not replaying until everything goes absolutely smoothly. I declare this sector therefore cleared and will not reload! But enough of that, let's see what we find here.

- Oh HELL YES! Feast your eyes:
http://i.imgur.com/5b8LUpl.png
Not only first proper sniper rifle in a semi-common caliber, A FRIGGING RADIO! Hotdamn, we are cooking with gas now, and no mistake. Let's see what containers add, this should be good as well...
http://i.imgur.com/CtSOYyF.png
Oh that is all very nice, even though still minor compared to that fantastic combat loot. The MP is middling at 15 range, but has both single and auto fire. Nothing beats thermobaric grenades (the red striped one), and dimitri could do with another few handgrenades. All in all very good, and probably one sector worth doing early. Time to outfit and especially put that radio to good use!

- Maddog was the last one without headset, so gary gives him his damaged one and uses the new arrival. Dimitri stuffs his pockets with grenades and gets the helmet cover. Godlight reloads and merges his glaser reserves. Grizzly takes the 40mm launcher and stuffs himself with grenades. I also give him the russian 106 vest with two medium general slots as he has bodybuilding and can carry a lot, yet still had the basic LBE starting thing. When I realize the russian vest has two (regular) grenade slots and gary has demolitions I make the two switch weapons and LBE. Grizzly retains the 40mm launcher and grenade panel however, everything else is exchanged. We give the sniper and the MP for someone to carry for the moment and march down to aldea where we arrive just after midnight. Setting up in a semi-safe position, my last act of the session is switching on bob's radio and setting him to jamming
http://i.imgur.com/PTp8BNr.png
From here on out we can target isolated patrols and rest assured they won't get reinforced!

Time at end of session: day 21, 0:08
Cash at end of session: 40616
Reload count session/total: 0/11
Progress: 38/38
Kill count and stat/level gains:
- Bob: +1 (26), health 79, agi 68, dex 68, str 72, lea 67 (+3), wis 92 (+1), mark 79, mec 28, exp 36, med 41, xp 5
- Dimitri +0 (4), health 76 (+1), agi 73, dex 52, str 72 (+1), lea 21, wis 56, mark 78 (+1), mec 71, exp 12, med 17, xp 3
- Fox: +2 (53), health 79, agi 85, dex 100, str 58 (+1), lea 38, wis 78 (+1), mark 79 (+1), mec 15, exp 8, med 71 (+1), xp 5
- Gary: +0 (25), health 84, agi 68, dex 61 (+1), str 90, lea 20 (+4), wis 70, mark 76 (+1), mec 24, exp 42, med 15 (+1), xp 5 (+1)
- Godlight: +24 (173), health 79, agi 75, dex 84 (+1), str 76, lea 82, wis 82, mark 94 (+1), mec 81 (+1), exp 75, med 75, xp 7
- Grizzly: +0 (16), health 94, agi 69, dex 51, str 95, lea 21, wis 72, mark 80, mec 24, exp 37, med 8, xp 4
- Hector: +1 (38), health 80, agi 84, dex 89, str 83, lea 30, wis 72, mark 68, mec 46 (+1), exp 17, med 7, xp 5
- Ira: +0 (20), health 77, agi 91, dex 67, str 57 (+1), lea 43 (+3), wis 84, mark 64, mec 8, exp 2, med 43, xp 5
- Maddog: +0 (0), health 91, agi 91, dex 91, str 78, lea 8, wis 56, mark 66, mec 69 (+1), exp 18, med 7, xp 1
- Manuel: +0 (29), health 77 (+1), agi 72, dex 91, str 76, lea 63, wis 84, mark 82, mec 8, exp 22, med 40, xp 5
- Weasel: +0 (0), health 56, agi 44, dex 36, str 50, lea 25 (+4), wis 61 (+1), mark 54, mec 7, exp 40, med 4, xp 1

Last thoughts:
- even after splitting the post I can see some images, but not all of them. I don't know why, and I'm sorry but I'm too tired to deal with this now. I'll check back tomorrow to see what can be done or if it resolved itself. For the record, all links use the same format and come from get the "get share links" thing I was recently told about. If you know what causes this issue please tell me, it's very frustrating to try and take good shots and make them part of the narrative only to have the whole thing messed up in the end.
- btw, when is this thread going to go on to a new page? Is it maybe the amount of screens per page that messes the display up? After closing and re-opening the page and starting scrolled down to the new posts I can now see all screens without problem, and I'm still confused.
- that 15 range MP is in 9x18, which might make it more useful. It can certainly be easily used in a safe spot in lieu of a 9x19 pistol if that should ever be needed, and it's 15 range, so still superior to our normal 11-range pistols. As godlight is a real killer even with his SMG or dual pistols I'm not using the sniper unless the situation absolutely warrants it.
- despite using only fox as a doctor because of her superior med skill (the count of which determines how quickly the med kit is depleted IIRC) she used up a whole med kit just doctoring our wounded and will now have to deal with dimitri as well. Note that we don't do surgery (which depletes the kit even faster) at all! We still have at least two full ones, but you can't heal anyone without a med kit so they're surely worth conserving - as you may have noticed, kit drops of any kind are uncommon.
- it might be worth considering trying to take enough cambria sectors to start the hicks quest, even if we let the enemy retake them afterwards. We don't have to turn in the quest until we are ready to hold cambria permanently, but could probably use the kills and loot, even if it's a bunch of shotguns for sale.
- because I notice myself tending to hole up in aldea again - which could take a while to yield the aimed-for result of bettering our gear - I should probably add this as a note to myself: there probably *is* a kill room in alma. If you just keep reloading until you finally make your way there successfully, you can probably gear up considerably and defend against the waves and waves of enemies trying to retake the city. However, as you've never seen AR's alma the old kill room is probably not available. Be prepared to scout without saving or take alma in full.
- I forget who got the 2x scope. The reflex one also was attached, but I'll be damned if I remember to what.

[Updated on: Fri, 28 October 2016 03:04]

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Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347412 is a reply to message #347404] Sat, 29 October 2016 01:08 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
Session start: day 21, 0:08
Cash at start: 40616

As the first act of this session I rehire everybody for another week, leaving us with slightly over 6k. Everybody is paid for 15 days now. Three mercs could level up soon and I get slightly antsy when I'm down to a week, so why not. As everybody is still fairly fit and we just got our radio, we head out to the east of aldea against 18 - and for the first time since we started, that is a hard limit.

- we insert at the upper left corner of the map and form a line with godlight at the center. While regular 9x19 isn't pretty much guaranteed 2-hit kill anymore we make short work of the first 6, then they stop coming even after extended baiting. Godlight takes point again and we move to the upper middle of the map where he continues to scout ahead and takes out more enemies until we are down to 7. When checking out the latest corpse he gets a breaklight thrown at him and three shots ring out, but all miss. Time to get out of here and link back up with the team to the north east
http://i.imgur.com/XsWkh5r.png
but when godlight starts running more shots from the west interrupt him. Thankfully he only takes 2 damage and keeps running. We face a few similar situations, but eventually we are down to 2, and godlight uses dual pistols to take out the last elite (he takes five dual shots! 9x19 really doesn't pack that big of a punch anymore) and finally wipes out the last redshirt. We only managed to give two kills to someone else I think, but you have to work with what you have. Finally we can loot the sector, and it's a very nice haul:
http://i.imgur.com/FiM1DD8.png

- maddog takes the zylon vest and now has all three armor pieces. He also takes one med kit, while the rest of the kits get merged with pre-existing ones. The gasmask gets changed out for a damaged one, which is then sold along with a few other small things. After that it's actually quite hard to take everything that we want to preserve along, and we end up selling a bunch of smoke grenades, 9x18 and 9x19 glaser. Fox is the most overloaded at 111%. I would normally head back into aldea, drop excess and repair/heal - but it's 1:31am still and we have a selection of 12 to the east and south, both of which allow us attacking alma afterwards... I'm not sure what to do, but we can do one more combat during the night and 12 are - or should be - manageable. For faster travelling and reduced energy use we advance on H12, which is a road sector unlike G13.

- Ah, I remember this level, I've been here in the previous game. Fairly complicated building layout and very woody
http://i.imgur.com/jcwBO5b.png
I'm pretty sure that the lower middle structures feature smugglers, which are still non-hostile to me. I've asked twice about what they are good for but never got a response. Once we are done with the queen's troops we may try to slaughter them as well. For the moment we start by baiting on the northern fence, which seems not to have any holes in it. It's very enjoyable seeing non-godlight kills for a change, and hector snags a few long range ones. When we are down to 6 godlight has to sneak forward again and takes out the remaining forces piece by piece. Combat loot is poor, but contains one NVGI and 30 rounds of 9x19 AP. Looting the non-smuggler houses produces a tool kit, first aid kit, KCB knife (those can cut fences and are nice to have) and a rifled choke. Opening smuggler-owned containers add advanced ammo (I largely have no use for) as well as three long guns: an excellent knight SR-25 sniper rifle in 7.62x51 I prefer over most other snipers, a jackhammer shotgun that is capable of auto fire and a HK 23E large machine gun, which is kind of okay, but very, very heavy and only has a range of 36. We are quite stuffed with loot and can't use most of it right now, but I haven't reloaded in quite a while so we'll just start shooting at the smugglers - who still have nothing to say - and see how it goes.

- It does not go well:
http://i.imgur.com/3Rzl5Lk.png
That's a first reload. Someone stepped up inside the fence and one-shotted manuel who missed his two shots. Gary previously hit the guy for 1 damage - with his AR in 5.56x45 btw! I'm repositioning and giving it another try, but I fear the worst. Those fears are confirmed by the 2nd attempt, when godlight fires at a smuggler, runs back around the corner and awaits the enemy. One steps up and hector fires but misses - the enemy gets interrupt and fires what I presume to be a LAW
http://i.imgur.com/hU28NDs.png
2nd reload it is. I still haven't killed a single smuggler, so I'm going at it again. By now I expect that attempt to fail though.

- Oh hello! Third time's the charm. Taking no more chances godlight is now always the first one to shoot and aims for heads with dual pistols. We kill enemies coming around both corners (fox is defending the upper corner with dual pistols, too late do I see her using HP ammo... But she encounters only single enemies and hits everytime. One soldier takes two dual headshots without damage and I'm getting concerned, but then the second hit of her third salvo does over 120 damage and he goes down, phew), then there is a lull despite lots of baiting. Unfortunately we can't see how many enemies are remaining so scouting is sort of tense, but godlight manages to kill two more on the other side of the house we are hiding behind, switches to the SMG for better range once he spots someone on the roof of the neighbouring building and, over a few rounds, takes her down to ~20% HP. Soon after we hear her fall unconscious out of sight. Godlight kills two more, one in the house across the street (he shot at us but missed) and then finally the last one outside the door of the same house. Killing all of the smugglers added a good number of very nice long guns, some 40mm HE grenades and some armor:
http://i.imgur.com/HqmsDiF.png
Note that the OA-93 is old loot and was dropped by fox, who otherwise couldn't store her long gun and dual wield pistols. The tool kit is also from pre-smuggler loot and is left over from bringing all our carried kits up to 100%. Annoying that some of the loot is still owned and needs to be picked up manually. That wad of money is 1.8k btw. We now have more good guns than we can use, and must decide what to do with the leftovers - make a stash or sell them to locals? Ammo availability for the more advanced weapons is a problem and must be factored in, for example we'll hardly be able to feed two KAC PDW anytime soon, at least not if they are both in frequent use. And finally, it's going to be interesting meeting smugglers in the future - will they respawn? Will smugglers in other locations be hostile outright from now on? Oh, and I forgot - Bob used his 15-range MP for the first time and did well with the burst setting (no full auto)!

Time at end of session: day 21, 3:10am
Cash at end of session: 7351
Reload count session/total: 2/13
Progress: 38/38
Kill count and stat/level gains:
- Bob: +5 (31), health 79, agi 68, dex 68, str 73 (+1), lea 67, wis 92, mark 80 (+1), mec 28, exp 36, med 41, xp 5
- Dimitri +0 (4), health 76, agi 73, dex 52, str 72, lea 21, wis 56, mark 78, mec 71, exp 12, med 17, xp 3
- Fox: +3 (56), health 79, agi 85, dex 100, str 58, lea 38, wis 78, mark 80 (+1), mec 15, exp 8, med 71, xp 5
- Gary: +2 (27), health 84, agi 68, dex 61, str 90, lea 20, wis 70, mark 76, mec 24, exp 42, med 15, xp 5
- Godlight: +26 (199), health 79, agi 75, dex 86 (+2), str 76, lea 82, wis 82, mark 96 (+2), mec 82 (+1), exp 75, med 75, xp 7
- Grizzly: +0 (16), health 94, agi 69, dex 51, str 95, lea 21, wis 72, mark 80, mec 24, exp 37, med 8, xp 4
- Hector: +3 (41), health 80, agi 84, dex 89, str 83, lea 30, wis 72, mark 69 (+1), mec 46, exp 17, med 7, xp 5
- Ira: +1 (21), health 78 (+1), agi 91, dex 67, str 57, lea 43, wis 84, mark 65 (+1), mec 8, exp 2, med 43, xp 5
- Maddog: +1 (1), health 91, agi 91, dex 91, str 78, lea 8, wis 56, mark 66, mec 69, exp 18, med 7, xp 1
- Manuel: +1 (30), health 77, agi 72, dex 91, str 76, lea 63, wis 84, mark 82, mec 8, exp 22, med 40, xp 5
- Weasel: +0 (0), health 56, agi 44, dex 36, str 50, lea 26 (+1), wis 61, mark 54, mec 7, exp 40, med 4, xp 1

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Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347423 is a reply to message #347412] Sun, 30 October 2016 03:19 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
NOTE: I feel bad about my long pauses between posts and intended to play today, but only got so far... Allow me to paste in my current pre-post notes again - I hope (!) to do a proper session tomorrow! (don't hold it against me if I don't, but you might as well read what I've got so far)

"Given the amount of new loot and stuff we just carry around I believe it's time to rearrange everyone's layouts. I wisely save before doing anything, as the first attempt of undressing everyone and stacking loot results in literally every item in the sector being "greyed out" and thus inaccessible (they're not shown on the map either, so no manual pickup as a last resort). The second time around I take great care to drop, stack and merge (stacking and merging seems to happen at the currently selected merc's position, even in sector inventory view) items in a spot outside and away from the smugglers' buildings, and whether or not that was responsible for the previous bug now everything seems to work out. All mercs keep their first aid kit, LBE vest, backpack(s), armor pieces and face items, but everything else is pooled. Have a look at our full possessions:
http://i.imgur.com/vvNG3vO.png
I'll do pictures of every merc's new layout individually in a moment (edit: next post!), but allow me to explain some basic reasoning beforehand:

- Manuel, the hunter, is the only one skilled in shotguns. They are generally slow and have middling range, and as you can tell ammo drops aren't all too common. It would be hard feeding more than one shotgun (assuming it was to be in constant use) and unskilled mercs would be better served with different guns. The jackhammer is the most accurate shotgun aside from the CAWS - but the latter needs special ammo that is even more uncommon and we'll find another one if we ever want to use it. The jackhammer's auto AP are worse than those of the USAP-12, but the single shot is more accurate. It can't take chokes (only a duckbill) though, and we end up selling all surplus shotguns, the CAWS and it's ammo as well as the chokes.

- We should phase out our 9x19 backup pistols right now where possible. Nobody but godlight is skilled in pistols, and the available MPs are more accurate (~20 instead of 5-6) and have better range (14-15 instead of 11). The AP cost is fairly comparable, the only drawback is that they don't fit into holsters and take up a long weapon slot somewhere. OTOH, not needing a pistol holster - we sadly have only two MP holsters - frees up a leg LBE slot. We have two "exotic" 12-range pistols that are worth preserving, one in 7.62x25 (the regular round is AP!) and one in .40 S&W. Godlight will probably use 12-range, 8-round 9x19 pistols that accept the match sights, because he'll also have to carry sniper rifle and ammo, as well as the CMMG two-handed pistol plus 5.56x45 mags and thus won't have the space for two additional different kinds of pistol ammo - even though he'll use the new russian 106 vest for increased carrying capacity. With his AP and range benefits from being a gunfighter, he can still use 9x19 effectively.

- the kar 98k has a terribly large reticule despite nominally high accuracy and featuring a specialized 5x scope. It also costs 28 AP to rechamber after a shot, leading to at best (!) one fully aimed shot per round. The ammo is super rare and any normal rifle or preferably AR in a more common caliber will serve better, even if the 98k's ammo becomes more common later - or rather by the time it does you could use a non-bolt action sniper rifle with a still more common caliber anyway. We'll sell the whole lot.

- given our stash of over 500 shots 5.56x45 ammo we can by now rely on single shot 5.56x45 weapons, which include rifles and ARs with good range, high accuracy and at least decent AP cost (ready/draw AP are fairly bad on the ARs we got, but those matter only situationally and can largely be worked around if you keep a faster backup weapon). Auto fire still uses too many bullets, but feeding at least half a team using the caliber with single shots only shouldn't be a problem, especially if we keep on the offensive down here where that sort of combat loot is comparatively common already.

- We should probably sell all glaser ammo, and maybe HP as well, at least for the very small, common calibers like 9x19 (still wouldn't sell 5.56x45 or 7.62x39 HP for example). Enemies down here have too much armor for those rounds, and they take up a fair amount of slots on our mercs. With our improved skills, physical stats and xp levels we can deal with unarmored enemies using standard rounds by now.

- apropos of nothing I remember we need to keep an eye on weasel (whose daily salary isn't included in any displayed calculation IIRC) and check our MERC account. Payed out 800 bucks. Our team cost has risen to $5014, our militia upkeep to 3600. Keep in mind that aldea has only 10 elite militia, the other 10 are regular blues. Sadly it will - as a single sector town incapable of being reinforced by adjacent militia in case of large scale attacks - eventually be overrun. This is also the main reason why I don't want to make a stash there, it's unreliable and not really strategically important once we take another city. Anyway, we are currently making only ~200 bucks/day at best but can still support our current operations without problems fairly indefinitely unless we "suffer" multiple paid mercs levelling up."

- because suppressed pistols don't fit into anything but large holsters and we only have one of them, godlight will run with unsuppressed guns - if he shoots with two and one doesn't have a suppressor, what is the point? The pistol silencers fit on a few short range long guns, like the HK MP5A4, and will be used there.

[Updated on: Sun, 30 October 2016 03:38]

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Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347425 is a reply to message #347423] Sun, 30 October 2016 10:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
wolf00 is currently offline wolf00

 
Messages:1148
Registered:September 2006
Location: Czech Republic

you can try deidriana lives mod for 1.13 if want try some new maps & game stuff,dl is far more fun for me,urban chaos for 1.13 mod is right choice if want more chalenge ...


caliber's: .41Lc,.45Lc,.455british,.380[9x17].410 . not in game at this time ...Dr Zelenka can help you ;o}R.M SgAmb asrock a75m amd x6 3670be 4gb ram hdd 1tbb sgt,zvuk creative x-fi extreme audio case z-7

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Sergeant Major
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347449 is a reply to message #347425] Tue, 01 November 2016 00:09 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
Thanks wolf00, but I'm not looking for another mod until this game is done at least.

Because it's 10 pics - the post limit - anyway, the final layouts of everybody outside a normal session post. You can see stats and their progress, weight, camo, armor and layout in the pics. We sold a bunch of stuff as described but I couldn't part with a few weapons like the 2nd KAC PDW just yet. Because we are still carrying all our possessions with us and somebody (Fox) ended up fairly overloaded with just the intended layout anyway, a few mercs are just carrying excess 9x19 etc and also went over 100%. I also spied into H13 - where the alma kill room used to be - and saw that it's gone (didn't fight there yet though). The whole wall is full of windows, which is a bummer. We will however have a crack at alma anyway to see how it goes.

- GODLIGHT
http://i.imgur.com/TsLBdQG.png
Godlight has the 9x19 pistols with match sights, the CMMG pistol with 2x scope for longer range and the good sniper with 10x scope.

- BOB
http://i.imgur.com/jMhAKiV.png
was annoying to outfit. I was tempted to give him the HK MP5A4 or the largest AR, but he's the only one that has any chance of using LMGs without too much trouble, so that's what he ends up taking. It has a 2x scope and our only foregrip. I don't do prone often, and we'll have to keep an eye on his energy levels as only kneeling and aiming a LMG consumes it IIRC. His 14-range beretta MP isn't quite as good as some of the SMGs (14 vs ~20+ accuracy and range), but it fits into an MP holster, is pistol-fast and still twice as accurate as our previous 11-range pistols. The beretta is silenced for no particular reason.

- HECTOR
http://i.imgur.com/AM90cnh.png
has the commando, a very nearly pistol-fast 30-range AR. This would have been my first pick for bob, if it weren't for that damned LMG I don't have the heart to sell. He has a 2x scope on it. The Bizon SMG - with reflex sight - is pretty much like the other ones we have available, range 18-20, low draw AP and fairly fast. It has a large mag size and uses 7.62x25, which we have a decent supply of and is AP in it's normal form. He just carries the surplus KAC PDW I can't bring myself to sell either although I might still do that at the start of next session. It's a good weapon, but not great and once we reach the point where single shot isn't good enough anymore we can't feed two at all - and there will be better backups by then.

- GARY
http://i.imgur.com/ihqFfpM.png
has the galil SAR that takes a 40mm grenade launcher (remember, he's one of our heavies), but sadly no scope. Because it has high draw AP and isn't too fast either, his backup is a 15 range calico MP that is superior to our largely abandoned standard pistols in both accuracy and range. We don't have ammo yet for the HK G3KA4 (or rather not much, and godlight uses it for the knight sniper; the soon-to-become-common 7.62x51) but it has very good stats with fairly low draw AP for an AR with respectable 43 range (making it good for both night and day). It's too good to sell, so we bring it with us until it's outclassed or can be fed. As with grizzly, the bodybuilding helps dealing with the load and he's one of our least stressed mercs.

- GRIZZLY
http://i.imgur.com/3NWqcCa.png
has one of the most recent additions, the AN-94. It's an AR with terrible, terrible draw AP, that is fairly fast to fire and has a burst mode in addition to the AR-typical full auto, which is handy for conserving ammo. It also comes in another semi-common caliber we haven't seen before this (5.45x39) but expect to keep dropping much like 7.62x39, and it accepts our PSO-1 scope, which is nice because it's the russian 4x one. He has a 12-range pistol in .40S&W as a backup, and because he can carry it and is a decent shot he also gets the scope-less russian sniper rifle and it's ammo. He can switch the PSO-1 scope to the sniper if needed and also has the other, stand-alone 40mm launcher with related grenades as well.

- FOX
http://i.imgur.com/G8hu44F.png
has the mini-14, a decent rifle in 5.56x45 with good range (~36 IIRC), with 2x scope. She also has our remaining dual 9x19 11-range pistols since her being ambidextrous still counts in close quarters, but also has the intended-for-use KAC PDW with all related ammo - meaning she will have to drop one of those long guns if she wants to use pistols. It's all very disappointing and must be changed in the very near future.

- MADDOG
http://i.imgur.com/W7HHPjZ.png
carries a lot of stuff although he'll probably only use the .30 car rifle (using up HP ammo before breaking out the AP) and/or his 7.62x25 12-range pistol. The two-handed OA-93 pistol needs repair before use but will then outclass most backup weapons (just like the CMMG already does) in any metric - even draw/single shot AP are awesome, 2/22! The AKS-47 was basically our AN-94 before the latter arrived, but uses 7.62x39 instead 5.45x39 and is thus just as valuable to us still, if for enabling some auto/suppressing fire in times of need. For some reason I like to give one team member russian ARs, even if I have better 5.56x45 ARs with C-mag adapters, and we'll use either AKS-47 or AN-94 depending on ammo availability. The PSO scopes fit on either of them, but we only have one currently.

- IRA
http://i.imgur.com/vH1q9pO.png
has the very nice storm rifle with 2x scope we haven't been using much. Part of the reason is that it uses .45 ammo, which we don't have all that much of (look at those paltry mags) - although it's looking better now that we sold the thompson SMG. She has the other calico MP, which I personally find misnamed as it doesn't have burst nor autofire. The AEK 919K is nearly identical in stats, but has at least full auto. It uses 9x18, which given our stash of 9x19 is no longer a nice backup to have, but she can use it when she needs her backup weapon and single shot isn't enough.

- MANUEL
http://i.imgur.com/fh0VhA4.png
has the jackhammer, our remaining shotgun with all our ammo. Because it's fairly slow he gets the HK MP5A4 as a "backup". It's not quite as fast as a pistol and so not totally optimal as a emergency/backup weapon, but at 4/23 draw/single it's tolerable and has 17 range - plus, we can spend 9x19 on burst and auto freely by now, so it might even work for suppressing fire when cornered. It's what godlight used to get most of his kills in the field and will serve manuel undoubtedly well. It's also silenced, has a laser sight and a 2x scope, so maybe manuel can actually put his stealth skills to good use.

- DIMITRI
http://i.imgur.com/l2OsGhp.png
has a decent rifle in 5.56x45, but without a scope he won't be able to hit much. He's obviously loaded with grenades and molotov cocktails, and he can hopefully rely on the PPsh-41 for closer ranges where he can spend the 7.62x25 ammo rather freely on auto if needed, but it's a fairly accurate 18-range SMG on single shot as well. Those red mags are 71 rounds (and AP of course)!

In summary, we have upgraded noticeably in attack power with better, longer ranged guns using AP ammo, although I have to admit I was expecting it to be more pronounced somehow. We still lack scopes, which complicates things. We sold a few pistols, the thompson and the type-85 along with the small amounts of specialized ammo we don't - and probably never will - have any use for like .50 BMG etc, making between 3 and 4k I think. Next proper post we'll check out the first alma sector, where we should arrive sometime before 5am, and see whether our newfound strength allows us to take and hold or we still need to run (in which case we'll say hi to cambria, which I know we can take).

[Updated on: Tue, 01 November 2016 06:37]

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Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347458 is a reply to message #347449] Tue, 01 November 2016 23:58 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
Session start: day 21, 3:14am (we lost 4min manually collecting gear)
Cash at start: 12798 (we sold lots of stuff and added the 1.8k money wad)

Finally time to fight again! We'll attack 20 in H13, the NW alma sector. Remember, this is a military town, we expect well-armed and armored elites en masse. This could be a whole bunch of reloads...

- somewhat disconcertingly we kill two redshirts outside the gate and then nobody else shows up, despite the noise. We creep a little further until we are just outside the lights around the gate, bust still nothing. Aside from the many new windows and those two cars between gate and main complex this map looks very much the same as the vanilla one
http://i.imgur.com/7ncE7Lg.png
Manuel takes a chance scouting forward and gets interrupt on two redshirts next to each other. What the devil? Didn't I just spread the burst cursor around? Why the single shot? The why of it becomes academic when both enemies fire pistols at him, one dualwielding:
http://i.imgur.com/3oRl8Xu.png
Alright, reload one. If nothing else a reminder of where we are, and how a level 7 merc with NO and better NVG is probably better at spotting the enemy early than manuel.

On the 2nd attempt the gate is manned by an elite and a redshirt. We disable them quickly and then use manuel again to scout, but this time much more carefully. One square inside gate he sits and waits, and we move in bob to his side, with the latter going prone. Soon a few enemies are in sight range and while we use godlight from the back with the sniper to lead the attack, bob takes one down. Manuel covers to the east of bobs firing line - he'll use up too many AP changing direction when prone, the main reason I don't like it - and this pays off as he takes down two redshirts with bursts from the MP5A4. Fox was just running towards them and is close to one of the lights (not in it though) and shots ring out at her. We retreat everyone back to the line outside the gate, but Fox catches 14 damage. There are still a few sound pings around and we sit tight and shoot when somebody comes into range. Interestingly, godlights CMMG pistol cursor is much smaller than the sniper one, I think it's the 10x scope that makes the sniper suck at this range. Either way, he is fine doing this:
http://i.imgur.com/xM3Ohuy.png
16 AP for a fully aimed single shot, 24 range. Gunfighters really are great fun. When nobody comes into sight range anymore I make gary use one of our 40mm illumination grenades - those otherwise are just... there - and we take out two more elites. Godlight has now spent a full mag I think, aka 25% of our sniper ammo. We are down to 10. Using another breaklight we make sure nobody awaits us just behind the dark parts of the entrance, then we pull the full team inside. Aw man, the alt-tabbing messed up cursors and cover view, stuff blinks a few times then disappears. I guess that was the problem I had with the illumination grenade earlier, it wouldn't stay on grenade launcher whenever I aimed. Can't save and restart of course, so we'll have to hope this session doesn't crash... And we still have to engage in indoor combat, that is usually a reload or two. Oh well.

Godlight tries to spot somebody from outside and manages to kill two elites, then silence. Nobody is coming out anymore. We leave bob as his backup and lead the rest of the team around the east towards the shooting ranges. Manuel scouts too fast ahead and sees an elite guarding one of the doors. His first burst hits so well I think manuel can take him and allow him to spend the rest of his AP on a second, but he misses. I hastily ready everbody's weapons in the direction of the elite who comes storming towards manuel, but everything misses and even my attempts at suppressing fire don't deter him - it is a great mercy when he misses manuel, and in the next round manuel wounds him again, then hector comes in strong from long range (no sight on him) and takes him out. Down to 5.

Manuel opens the SE large doors and finds an elite covering the familiar control room from that angle. Sadly his burst only does 18 damage and he doesn't come out but retreats out of sight. Instead godlight gets shot down to 26 HP by some other elite that apparently is uninterruptible. Bob has to step up and uses his beretta to wound him, then both retreat a square back - bob in front covering the door, godlight running to the back and bandaging himself. The elite runs out of the room and dies when bob sends a burst into his head. We are down to 4 and things are not looking good. There is at least one more elite in that control room, probably the one from manuel as well. I don't know where the rest are and our designated breaching merc with 35% damage reduction is one shot away from death... We are going all in and godlight creeps forward to the door of the control room. An elite runs up and uses some handgun on auto, but godlight only takes a few more HP, then kills him in return. Bob spots a redshirt coming from the NE corner of the room and gets interrupt, but only manages to damage him. Next round godlight steps into the control room - the redshirt managed to hit the switch and the rocket rifle cabinet explodes - and shoots the redshirt. Nobody else in here but the captain guy, which we'll leave for later. Down to 2.

OH I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you!!!!!
When alt-tabbing back I forget about the fucking alt key sticking again and changing view direction with godlight reloads the game. I'm counting this, of course, but I'm mad as hell - at myself, which makes it much worse. Screw this, I'm done for the day. I can deal with failing, but self-sabotage is right out.

Time at end of session: same as start
Cash at end of session: same as at start
Reload count session/total: 2/15
Progress: 38/38
Kill count and stat/level gains: - no changes
- Bob: +0 (31), health 79, agi 68, dex 68, str 73, lea 67, wis 92, mark 80, mec 28, exp 36, med 41, xp 5
- Dimitri +0 (4), health 76, agi 73, dex 52, str 72, lea 21, wis 56, mark 78, mec 71, exp 12, med 17, xp 3
- Fox: +0 (56), health 79, agi 85, dex 100, str 58, lea 38, wis 78, mark 80, mec 15, exp 8, med 71, xp 5
- Gary: +0 (27), health 84, agi 68, dex 61, str 90, lea 20, wis 70, mark 76, mec 24, exp 42, med 15, xp 5
- Godlight: +0 (199), health 79, agi 75, dex 86, str 76, lea 82, wis 82, mark 96, mec 82, exp 75, med 75, xp 7
- Grizzly: +0 (16), health 94, agi 69, dex 51, str 95, lea 21, wis 72, mark 80, mec 24, exp 37, med 8, xp 4
- Hector: +0 (41), health 80, agi 84, dex 89, str 83, lea 30, wis 72, mark 69, mec 46, exp 17, med 7, xp 5
- Ira: +0 (21), health 78, agi 91, dex 67, str 57, lea 43, wis 84, mark 65, mec 8, exp 2, med 43, xp 5
- Maddog: +0 (1), health 91, agi 91, dex 91, str 78, lea 8, wis 56, mark 66, mec 69, exp 18, med 7, xp 1
- Manuel: +0 (30), health 77, agi 72, dex 91, str 76, lea 63, wis 84, mark 82, mec 8, exp 22, med 40, xp 5
- Weasel: +0 (0), health 56, agi 44, dex 36, str 50, lea 26, wis 61, mark 54, mec 7, exp 40, med 4, xp 1

Last thoughts:
- I hate myself. Once I don't anymore I'll take this sector, but I swear I just lost my goddamned mind. At least is fairly doable in terms of armor and whatnot.
- Interesting auto moderation on this board. As you can guess, "I love you" wasn't quite the original text.
- after my tantrum I went back and successfully conquered the sector. Saving it for next post, but it's already done.

[Updated on: Wed, 02 November 2016 01:32]

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Sergeant
light45.png  Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347464 is a reply to message #347458] Wed, 02 November 2016 09:04 Go to previous messageGo to next message
SmokinGun is currently offline SmokinGun

 
Messages:69
Registered:June 2007
Location: Land of New Rising Sun
Hello g.hints-

Kudos on doing an aar, its kinda strange that you're posting an aar of the {Arulco Revisited} mod in the "Arulco Vacations" mod section?

I wonder if this Arulco REVISITED aar can be moved into the proper mod section rather than the Arulco VACATIONS section? Especially considering A.Revisited
has not been worked on since v1.4 (years ago) and Arulco Vacations is a mod currently in active development. This can certainly create confusion as to which mod you're actually playing. Or at least I'm confused suprised



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Corporal
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347469 is a reply to message #347458] Wed, 02 November 2016 17:59 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Deleted.

 
Messages:2663
Registered:December 2012
Location: Russian Federation
Quote:
When alt-tabbing back I forget about the fucking alt key sticking again and changing view direction with godlight reloads the game. I'm counting this, of course, but I'm mad as hell - at myself, which makes it much worse. Screw this, I'm done for the day. I can deal with failing, but self-sabotage is right out.

I usually press WIN key instead of Alt+TAB, this allows switching to windows without Alt problem.
Also, you can press middle mouse button to change view direction or press 'W' key (it works the same as 'L' but more convenient).



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Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347473 is a reply to message #347469] Thu, 03 November 2016 01:39 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
@smokingun: I'm definitely playing arulco revisited, and I'm aware that it's in the wrong subforum. If you read back the whole thing I made mention of my mistake and apologized. I don't know who or if someone can move this thread, at this point I'm just ploughing ahead.

@sevenfm: if I didn't have to write down stuff while playing this wouldn't happen at all, so doing the accidental reload only twice so far is probably not all that bad... It sucks of course, and your hint re WIN key is appreciated - hopefully I can retrain myself to use it!

Session start: day 21, 3:14am
Cash at start: 12798

Because I've had it with the stupid mistakes, the third time around we aggressively use godlight to make literally every single kill except one (either bob or fox got it I think). No wounds, not even that much sniper use, and the cabinet didn't explode either. After more extended shooting than before at the gate We moved directly towards the control room and covered both sides, so anyone who'd run to the switch at the western door - or the eastern door one of us just attacked from - could be gunned down. After a while we were down to 2 and godlight took out the last one in the control room by just walking in. The final enemy was behind a locked door in the indoor shooting range
http://i.imgur.com/fsDGrWs.png
and we had to pick up a key card before we could get to him, but godlight took him out without any trouble. What a relief, last session drove me crazy. I have hinted at it before, but I consider relying on our only "supersoldier" for pretty much all critical situations a failure of sorts, despite technically being fine with the game setup. And yet, alma isn't the place for being precious about things and godlight can still level up twice...

We open all containers - more on that in a moment - then we talk to the guy who isn't hostile or for hire, I forget his name. He "gives" us the already looted and thus accessible rocket rifle and makes a speech about fingerprint IDs (don't remember that from standard 1.13 btw, I'm not sure he's wounded either, wasn't he usually? Does the speech he gives unlock the RR in AR, or is that just info about the ID system? IDK. I don't bother with rocket rifles usually and don't use any vendors, repairmen or others aside from tony in san mona or BR outright, I certainly wouldn't carry RRs to the one guy in grumm that can delete fingerprint IDs. Having one accessible right now though should at least be interesting enough to use up available ammo before selling to locals) and how he'll talk highly of us around alma as we expected him to. Manuel and maddog gain a level. Afterwards we surround the general before trying to talk to him:
http://i.imgur.com/mLfUq2O.png
and when he gets uppity we take him down, getting reliable interrupt as all 10 are aiming at him as he goes hostile. Everybody - well, nearly, Ira is holding an empty gun - gets to take a shot and hector finally mows him down with the commando. We leave Conrad, the other non-hostile NPC alone for the moment, he's a decent auto weapons specialist and teacher IIRC, but he costs 2.5k/day even after dismissing his salary demands the first time and we don't have the new mine yet. He also turns hostile real quick if you don't hire him yet try to talk to him again, so we'll leave him alone. He might be worth including in combat team 3 (too expensive for team 2), but that is a long way down the road.

Combined loot from combat and containers is good, but we expected more from this sector:
http://i.imgur.com/18Qzyjo.png
We have no reason to moan however, that's valuable ammo, scopes and other attachments, some endgame armor and other armor that still upgrades us (we still have a lot of flack vests)... The wad of money is only $313, and the mini-14 was dropped by Fox. The G3A3 is in the still too rare 7.62x51 caliber (our knight sniper ammo), but has a very, very nice accuracy of 79 and magnificent range of 57. By the time we can feed it it's probably going to be outclassed by faster others, but still, alma promises that sort of caliber and we might be able to use it soon enough. That mortar with sadly only one round is so crazy tempting... it's the very heavy non-commando version with a negligible range advantage, but one of our heavies might just be able to carry it without being overloaded and nothing is quite as amazing as mortaring a large mob if they bunch up just tight enough. I've seen the enemy call in mortar strikes from adjacent troops in other games, that is basically the only thing that tops it. Shame it's much harder to do as the player.

While checking for defensive positions I'm starting to question if this sector really is the one where my kill room used to be. Now I'm leaning towards no and suspect the SW sector of alma of being the one I meant, but I'm not 100% sure. In any case, we have at least two (if not three - the rocket rifle not exploding on this attempt means the wall on that side is intact - workable locations in here, even though all of them require us to cover two directions. Once we distribute the loot and reload everyone (the scopes alone are going to be awesome! Even a 2x scope makes the difference between being a good shot and just hoping to hit something eventually, and we have still two people without any scopes on their primary weapon IIRC) we will attempt to clear the other three alma sectors. Outside of a city the next combat would take place during daybreak, but with 5min flat travel time per city sector we can pretty much be sure to clear all sectors once during this night, then hopefully retire to some safe position while using "move item" to establish a monstrous stash - the foothold we desperately need to withstand the undoubtedly numerous and large-scale attempts to retake the city.

We give bob the 7x scope and he passes on his 2x to gary. Everybody now has a scope on their primary weapon, even though in dimitri's case it's only a reflex sight. Gary also takes the new NVGI. We pass out armor, rid fox of her dual pistols (the KAC PDW is just as fast on single) and give her a 3-day pack instead of the malice3 one, relieving her weight troubles. Bob is the only one who is fairly overloaded at 127%. After switching out someone's calico MP for the better repaired new one we are ready to attack another alma sector. One thing that upsets me is the small mag size on godlights very accurate pistols (those match sights are pretty awesome), he keeps running low when dealing with multiple enemies. One of our heavies carries the mortar... The SW alma sector holds a whopping 38, so we are attacking the NE sector with 20 first.

Neato, that went much easier than expected! The map is again familiar with a small twist - the space between the two large buildings is filled with minor, roofed-over extensions
http://i.imgur.com/FZVEf5s.png
Godlight started us off on the west side by cutting a hole in the fence. We moved down to the small office building, where bob found a redshirt and gunned him down silently with the beretta. Afterwards we take positions NE of the office, as godlight isn't able to open the back door to the NW side and ready ourselves. We take out a few single enemies, then move godlight around the large western building where he kills a few elites around the gate and coming from the eastern building. Plans to sneak in the top room of the western building - where there should be a switch to open all garage doors - are scrapped when godlight takes out two people in one round, then has to sit there and take three more enemies firing on him while he is out of AP. Luckily he only takes two very minor wounds and runs back around the corner. We make maddog hit boths switches in the office, one of which sounds an alarm and the other one having no visible effect. However, soldiers are starting to run out of the buildings and we take them down one by one, with godlight staying mostly out of it. Ira uses the calico MP for very accurate headshots sitting around a corner as a few enemies try to flank us coming out of the NW door we couldn't open, but the team that got hit with a breaklight manages to run away and the pursuing enemies are taken out by ira and dimitri. Gary took a few nice shots as well. At some point I am surprised to find we are down to 3 and all of them are outside the buildings. We shoot two of them, and the last one that had already been wounded bleeds out. This was pretty good! Let's see what we loot here.

http://i.imgur.com/uGUJEGx.png
note that I sold three pistols already. The sniper rifle is combat loot, but the other guns come from containers. All very nice, those two NVGII especially so, as well as the armor. I pass around what we have use for now - not going into too much detail, I have a feeling the remaining two sectors will make us switch out many more things, but we replace two rifles with the new, decently repaired ARs - and just when I'm ready to move I realize that the NW sector has been retaken while we fought in the NE sector!
http://i.imgur.com/4kpWUO1.png
Call me strange or unobservant, but I don't think I've ever seen that happen before, not while a team was still active in the same city (i.e. before we pause for repair etc, at which point counterattacks are normal). At the very least there's usually a notice, no? Anyway, we'll continue clockwise for the moment, heading for 29 in the SE (mine) sector, which seems to have been reworked a little more than the others:
http://i.imgur.com/7toUU6e.png
We take out the first two, then lots of enemies run towards the noise and we keep gunning with nearly everybody to great effect (quite a few non-godlight kills). Twice we need to evade breaklights, and we very nearly get flanked twice as well, but thanks to the limited space outside the gate to do so those crafty elites have to run along our lined up team and they die. We can't get through the gate before we are down to 9, but finally we pull the team to this position
http://i.imgur.com/vCB85A8.png
From here godlight moves down the road and kills a whopping seven in quick succession. Manuel and hector get to kill the last two (one elite by the general store, one redshirt inside the mine building's fence) and this sector is clear! Like the previous one, this would be suboptimal to defend. Combined loot is nice enough, but again not all that great - and those weapons are crap, the only good one is the AN-94 (which we already have) and that came from a container.
http://i.imgur.com/OSCEePh.png
The best part about this sector is getting our hands on a 2nd mine, but we also make sure to talk to auntie about the bloodcat problem and give joe (one of the terrorists) a once-over. The new scopes and things have made themselves felt, the rest of our team is pitching in a lot more now. Everbody (but weasel, who is far away) has NVG as well. We move to attack the last unseen sector of alma defended by 20, which looks to be heavily reworked
http://i.imgur.com/MgDlPa3.png
and now I'm pretty sure this used to be the kill room sector. If there is no good place to defend here we will have to make our stand in the first one we attacked. Remember, that sector has already been retaken, but it shouldn't be too much of a problem. Far more worrying are the 43 I can see in J13!

[Updated on: Thu, 03 November 2016 01:40]

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Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347474 is a reply to message #347473] Thu, 03 November 2016 01:41 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
we form a line outside the gate as usual - the light cones seem slightly larger than normal, but I could make that up - and start shooting. Godlight stays mostly out of it while hector and bob shine among others. I don't quite think we can make it safely through the light so once we can't spot anybody for a while godlight cuts a hole in the fence left from the gate and moves through.
http://i.imgur.com/dER1xvV.png
We'll try to bring him around the houses, flank possible defenders and make the area secure for the team to follow in. We are down to 10. But things don't work out quite as elegantly as we hoped, first of all godlight wounds an elite to the NE only to find out that somewhere between him and the team outside the gate a redshirt has sight on him, and when the team fails to deliver from afar he has to run. Noises are coming from two sides and he has to cover both on his own. He kills the redshirt and another elite, then it's quiet again. When he moves up behind another house he suddenly gets shot for 46 HP and drops one of his pistols. It was the wounded elite from earlier, and luckily he manages to take him out
http://i.imgur.com/6r78J1K.png
and then bandage himself. I'm considering giving him a regen booster, there is still work to do and we want him mopping up everybody indoors. We are down to 7, and I take a risk by switching off stealth mode on the team and move them quickly past the lit gate to this position
http://i.imgur.com/ztLYjLa.png
and luckily nobody is on the roof or anything. We have 4 regen boosters and godlight really is looking bad, so we send out hector to pass him one and I'm fairly mad it only heals 30 HP, leaving him at about half his max health. I never use regen boosters really and keep "saving" them for emergencies until the game is over, but I expected more. With a bit of luck that should enable him to wrap us this fight though. After a sweep of accessible areas inside the fence it seems like the rest are inside somewhere, with two of them being in this small guard house (I can tell by the pings)
http://i.imgur.com/p8pYNbn.png
Godlight can't get an angle on the guy between the black file cabinets so manuel scouts forward. He gets interrupted though, and the elite throws the switch. Mustard gas is triggered in the large complex. There is one behind the door godlight just untrapped and before we bother with the remaining complex we will have to deal with him - he's not coming out, so it's going to be a gamble again. I'll have someone sitting behind him when he opens the door though, just to be sure he has backup. Of course the game decides to be a dick, and neither godlight nor our engineer maddog can open the lock. Godlight collects all three keys we found so far, but none of them fit. Excellent. Fan-fucking-tastic.

Time-consuming search of houses finally produces a key card, that not only opens up another unpickable lock (although there is literally nothing to find behind it) but also the one manuel is still covering. Godlight moves up and opens it, and the elite inside shoots manuel
http://i.imgur.com/anF99HI.png
but he was fairly fit and can take it. The return fire by godlight ends this annoying situation. We are down to 5, but all of them have to be inside the prison part - and there is only one entrance to it. I really, really hope I have some smoke grenades left, because I think this is what they are made for. But as I suspected I don't have any on me (I remember replacing them with ammo on at least two mercs very recently, like within alma) and none have dropped in this sector. Godlight is pretty shot up and I don't think he can take another burst, certainly not by multiple enemies. Although I'm not proud of it I decide to flee the sector, pick up some smoke and if some of the enemies are outside when we come back, then all the better.

I move everybody to the west edge of the map - forcing everybody to be inside the fenced in area, the west is not accessible outside of it - because if we flee north we land in combat with those ~18 that took our first conquered sector. This proves to be a desasterous decision:
http://i.imgur.com/XCSiCxQ.png
and the game crashes... So much for that idea then. Guess I'll have to replay the thing, but probably not today. I'll add up the stat changes and kills, then retire for the day, just keep in mind that the last bit basically never happened. At least I already made sure to bring 2 smoke grenades the next time; restarted the game, picked them up and saved again.

Time at end of session: day 21, 5:46am
Cash at end of session: 16048
Reload count session/total: 0/15
Progress: 40/38
Kill count and stat/level gains:
- Bob: +7 (38), health 79, agi 68, dex 68, str 73, lea 67, wis 92, mark 81 (+1), mec 28, exp 36, med 41, xp 6 (+1)
- Dimitri +2 (6), health 76, agi 73, dex 53 (+1), str 72, lea 21, wis 56, mark 78, mec 71, exp 12, med 17, xp 3
- Fox: +0 (56), health 79, agi 85, dex 100, str 58, lea 38, wis 78, mark 80, mec 15, exp 8, med 71, xp 5
- Gary: +0 (27), health 84, agi 68, dex 61, str 90, lea 20, wis 70, mark 76, mec 24, exp 42, med 15, xp 5
- Godlight: +44 (243), health 80 (+1), agi 76 (+1), dex 87 (+1), str 77 (+1), lea 82, wis 82, mark 97 (+1), mec 83 (+1), exp 76 (+1), med 75, xp 8 (+1)
- Grizzly: +3 (19), health 94, agi 69, dex 51, str 95, lea 21, wis 72, mark 81 (+1), mec 24, exp 37, med 8, xp 4
- Hector: +4 (45), health 80, agi 84, dex 90 (+1), str 83, lea 30, wis 72, mark 71 (+2), mec 46, exp 17, med 7, xp 5
- Ira: +3 (24), health 78, agi 91, dex 67, str 57, lea 43, wis 84, mark 66 (+1), mec 8, exp 2, med 43, xp 5
- Maddog: +2 (3), health 91, agi 91, dex 91, str 78, lea 8, wis 56, mark 67 (+1), mec 71 (+2), exp 18, med 7, xp 2 (+1)
- Manuel: +5 (35), health 77, agi 72, dex 91, str 76, lea 63, wis 84, mark 83 (+1), mec 8, exp 22, med 40, xp 6 (+1)
- Weasel: +0 (0), health 56, agi 44, dex 36, str 50, lea 26, wis 61, mark 54, mec 7, exp 40, med 4, xp 1

Last thoughts:
- rocket rifles are so sadly underwhelming. They are inaccurate, slow and really don't do all that much damage even with HEAP rounds, certainly not reliably. Any merc unskilled in auto with high to-hit related stats (mark/wis/xp level/dex?) would be better served with a decent AR on multiple bursts or auto volleys. I'll try and give the one I got a go just for fun, but it's destined to be sold soon (at least they are expensive). I was told once that they are rifle type weapons, and as such are primarily influenced by hunter/ranger skill (marksmen/snipers get half the bonus IIRC), which also seems wrong - clearly those are meant to be heavy weapons. I've previously encountered auto rocket rifles, which sadly aren't much better and would have to be ID-unlocked in grumm anyway, and the very fact of having access to the place would mean they'd have been made obsolete by then available weaponry already. It's a shame. What we really want is that one type of fairly serviceable sci-fi 28 or so range AR that features an inbuilt three round 40mm launcher that is capable of shooting all three at once. I like to do a HE/stun/mustard gas combo with those (although others are sensible as well) - do a bit of damage, make anyone without gasmask fall unconscious, then mustard gas. The gas spreads over the helpless, knocked out enemies and everybody dies... They are a fair bit of progress away though I think, and really only good for feeling all kinds of mean about killing the enemy. Gas is only for style IMHO. If someone can educate me about smoke I'd appreciate it, that one I feel I neglect to my detriment. (edit: this was written before we took on the SW sector, but still applies)
- one thing that has always confused me are calibers. If you go by displayed stats on guns and ammo alone (I'm talking about both hover info as well as the three-tabbed detail info for both ammo and guns), 9x19 shouldn't be any less effective than any more "advanced" round like 5.56x45 or 7.62x51 - but it very, very cleary is! AP 9x19 still serves well and will for a while yet (I'm just not ready to spend our meagre supplies is all), but the standard round is already pretty much done for I feel. I haven't used it much in this game, but I feel that standard .40 S&W for example will still serve better already, so it's not a matter of AP properties. Am I making this up? If two guns say they do XX damage at YY accuracy over ZZ range, but one is in (AP) 9x19 and the other in 7.62x51 (where AP is the standard round) - are they really the same? It occurs to me that my answer would be "no", but I really can't tell why that is. If you know this to be false, I really, really need you to speak up.

[Updated on: Thu, 03 November 2016 01:43]

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Sergeant
Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347475 is a reply to message #347474] Thu, 03 November 2016 08:34 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Deleted.

 
Messages:2663
Registered:December 2012
Location: Russian Federation
Quote:
- one thing that has always confused me are calibers. If you go by displayed stats on guns and ammo alone (I'm talking about both hover info as well as the three-tabbed detail info for both ammo and guns), 9x19 shouldn't be any less effective than any more "advanced" round like 5.56x45 or 7.62x51 - but it very, very cleary is! AP 9x19 still serves well and will for a while yet (I'm just not ready to spend our meagre supplies is all), but the standard round is already pretty much done for I feel. I haven't used it much in this game, but I feel that standard .40 S&W for example will still serve better already, so it's not a matter of AP properties. Am I making this up? If two guns say they do XX damage at YY accuracy over ZZ range, but one is in (AP) 9x19 and the other in 7.62x51 (where AP is the standard round) - are they really the same? It occurs to me that my answer would be "no", but I really can't tell why that is. If you know this to be false, I really, really need you to speak up.

In stock 1.13:
Colt 9mm SMG: impact 26
HK 53A3: impact 29
FN FAL: impact 37

AP round reduces armour value by 25%

So FAL is 40% more powerful than Colt 9mm.

If two guns have same impact and ammo type, they will do the same damage, but you need to remember when performing ingame tests that actual impact has some randomness (+- 25%) and there's also a bonus to damage from good aim.
Also soldier traits can influence the actual damage.
In 1.13, damage to soldiers is not reduced from range.



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Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347476 is a reply to message #347475] Thu, 03 November 2016 10:05 Go to previous messageGo to next message
silversurfer

 
Messages:2793
Registered:May 2009
That line of mercs makes me want to grab my mortar and start firing... big grin

The assertion you got looks like a map problem to me. Someone seems to have forgotten to add an isolated entry point that you need if you want to restrict certain access to sectors. The map author has to fix that.



Wildfire Maps Mod 6.07 on SVN: https://ja2svn.mooo.com/source/ja2/branches/Wanne/JA2%201.13%20Wildfire%206.06%20-%20Maps%20MOD

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Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347477 is a reply to message #347473] Thu, 03 November 2016 18:20 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Enneagon is currently offline Enneagon

 
Messages:51
Registered:July 2016
Location: Latvia
gimmehints wrote on Thu, 03 November 2016 01:39
I'm definitely playing arulco revisited, and I'm aware that it's in the wrong subforum. If you read back the whole thing I made mention of my mistake and apologized. I don't know who or if someone can move this thread, at this point I'm just ploughing ahead.


My uninformed guess would be, the person most likely in power to make the move should be shanga; his email is under the "contact" link in the footer of every page. Is that the most appropriate way to resolve this I don't know, but it certainly might be one.

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Re: Let's play scifi expert ironman Arulco Revisited (2014-11-03)! Semi-mildy adjusted settings.[message #347483 is a reply to message #347477] Sat, 05 November 2016 08:18 Go to previous message
gimmehints

 
Messages:140
Registered:May 2016
Hi guys, gaming time is limited as always and after the crash I relaxed with an Imperial Guard Dawn of War Dark Crusade campaign on easy mode. I only have the eldar and tau left, so I'll return soon and take and hold alma after all (we can most certainly do this, and while training up militia will be a pain in the ass, once we hold the mine at least semi-reliably we can start on a second combat team! I'm thinking of hiring only very few and splitting of either gary or grizzly (as resident heavy) off to the new team, as well as probably Ira, whose scouting skills prevent ambushes and are a must to have. We'll have to see how much money we have available).

re thread location: I don't care if this gets moved, but I'd appreciate a notice as I've given out this link on two occasions. I assume the URL would change, if it doesn't then nevermind.

@sevenfm: alright, so I'm not crazy. Thanks! I take it "impact" isn't a value displayed ingame? Is there a list to check out somewhere online? Or is there some related file I can open locally with notepad to read out (the limit of my technical expertise)? Furthermore, please allow for some related rambling on calibers: I find 5.56x45 remains viable all game, assuming ARs with burst and/or auto (the volume surely carries it past the value of single shots), and once I get fast ARs with C-mags I rarely feel the actual need to upgrade. But 7.62x51 should - going by "feeling" again - be even better and all those super special calibers like G11, MP7 (4.6xSomething ?) and probably the KAC PDW I'd also expect to be superior, at least technically. Finally I have a great weakness (almost to the point of detriment) for FN57s and P90s as backup weapons late game, so once we secure estoni expect me to spend some heavy cash on their AET ammo at Bobby Ray's - 3k per box IIRC...

@silbersurfer: the map thing was my fault I think - I know this type of error from 7609 and in truth I did NOT have to be inside the fence to flee from the map, I just didn't think properly - I came in on the road outside the fence myself. Hm. Anyway, I understand how you're feeling about the line, but I like to think it's fairly safe from anything including mortars - as long as you make sure nobody survives a turn while having eyes on any of your guys ... Not as doable in daylight I don't think, but bunching up like this at night has the benefit of making sure nobody ever survives contact. If the mobbing gets too bad you need to use explosives/heavy weapons to hold them down, and even unaimed suppressing fire will help if using the "spread" cursor with care and especially using a weapon capable of the largest volleys. Unless I get hit by breaklights, everbody that moves towards us dies. After that all that is left is mopping up (usually indoor) campers with the specialists. I used to use breaklights excessively, but noticed that keeping a tight team - be it in a line or in a bunch - is the superior night time method. Unless you let an athletic NO ambidex gunfighter run around, of course.

I'll continue the LP soon, read you later! cheeky

[Updated on: Sat, 05 November 2016 08:32]

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