Masamune Shirow's artstyle fits pretty well with this mod. The main problem I have with the visuals is that there's not much aesthetic consistency. However, I don't think paying artists hundreds or thousands of dollars to make all the graphics you would need is a feasible solution. We're not dealing with suspiciously wealthy furries here.
I feel like with the amount of crap this mod needs to cover you could just pay a friendly artfag by the hour or something but maybe that's not lucrative enough for anyone to take up the offer.
I feel like with the amount of crap this mod needs to cover you could just pay a friendly artfag by the hour or something but maybe that's not lucrative enough for anyone to take up the offer.
Unless you want doodles, you're looking at a shitload of man hours any way you slice it. Any sane person would probably settle for not giving every entry its own graphic.
You can make a drinking game out of seeing how many images in the bootypedia you recognize. From the last update, I count one Resident Evil 6 nude mod screenshot and Koakuma from Touhou.
I don't recognise many of them specifically, though I do notice general things like one being a RAGE screenshot, and another being Ada (Resident Evil) fanart. I do wonder the sources for some of them but I never checked to see if there was a list anywhere.
I'm excited that we've only seen it scratch the surface of Masamune Shirow's pirate books so far. I don't even like big boobles much as a rule but I'll take as many greasy bitches as that dude can draw.
One thing I find funny about Shirow is he made some all time classic manga, some are still getting spin offs to this day, but Shirow himself just draws porn and pin ups now, because why not?
Wait until we get to the futa conversion research. I'm making that up. I think.
Masamune Shirow's artstyle fits pretty well with this mod. The main problem I have with the visuals is that there's not much aesthetic consistency. However, I don't think paying artists hundreds or thousands of dollars to make all the graphics you would need is a feasible solution. We're not dealing with suspiciously wealthy furries here.
The ones that have Mom and (FUCK YOU) Dad's credit cards spend it on high-articulation figurines, wall art, body pillows, box sets, anthologies, and other physical goods that aren't straight-up sex toy merch or multi-thousand dollar porn commissions. Real, tangible things that make one cringe at a different, slightly less soul-crushing wavelength.
Maybe they exist? There seems to be a whole ecosystem around shit like pixiv that I've only seen glimpses of. But unlike furpeople they speak Japanese (idk why you'd buy anime from anyone but an authentic japanman) so they wouldn't flaunt it, don't generally seem that interested in taking money from foreign weebs, and their internet is a mysterious iceberg so I'd never know.
I feel like with the amount of crap this mod needs to cover you could just pay a friendly artfag by the hour or something but maybe that's not lucrative enough for anyone to take up the offer.
In my experience this would be incredibly expensive for the amount of stuff you'd need from an artist talented enough to make it worthwhile if you didn't want them to immediately flake. And even if you could pay their weight in gold you might still need to chain them to a desk.
The only practical idea I can think of is finding someone who already specialises in the extremely specific genre of sexy sci-fantasy pirates with an extensive pre-existing body of work then secretly gangstalk them into deciding they're a huge fan of this obscure niche mod so they give permission out of love.
You can make a drinking game out of seeing how many images in the bootypedia you recognize. From the last update, I count one Resident Evil 6 nude mod screenshot and Koakuma from Touhou.
The image for Medical Staff or something like that. (Asian woman with a facemask) is from the 90's DnD dungeon crawler Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession. The mod has a large pool of stuff it uses for images.
The overall inflation of cash in this mod is fucking massive, just a casual look at what the wiki described as an endgame base was churning through 15-18 million credits as maintenance.
We're rolling up on the Ratmen with weapons that are easily overkill for the job, but it'll be good target practice.
The range on these shotguns is ridiculous. These are still loaded with scatter shells too, not slugs.
Niggermancer somehow gets hit hard enough to recieve five fucking wounds of damage.
Moths blows away a guard dog straight out of Wolfenstein 3D as it charges her.
To give you an idea of the power of one of these shotguns here's a before and after of NerdShamer blowing multiple holes in one of these annoying hedge maze tiles with just one shot.
The last enemy is of course wandering around somewhere near the start rather than the edges of the map where I was searching.
I'm rather displeased with Witty and Niggermancer being fucking injured again.
Some research we've completed. Note that the "transformations" this game is referring to aren't of the literal kind, instead an act of transformation simply replaces most if not all of the unit's original stats with heavily modified ones. This will come into play later.
Even Thebes has abandoned its misgivings towards us.
I only have three Gals ready for this mission but they'll have to do. At least now we know the armored stormtroopers need to be taken out with grenades.
We make our entrance. Dr. Ricearoni even manages a one-hit kill on an SS Trooper despite having low accuracy. Not shown: a whole bunch of civvies dying in the turns in between these shots.
One trooper down. The Humanists start to panic here now that some of their leadership is dead.
Let's give em three more reasons to panic.
Jesus Christ!
Two can play at that game!
Anyone still in the fight panics after we get the last stormtrooper.
Just about all the mutants we were there to save were killed again. I have no idea how you're supposed to prevent so many deaths when the enemy often spawns right on top of the civvies like that.
Incidentally, here's the Condemnation Pocket Dragoon got earlier that I failed to get a shot of.
Some new research completes, nothing super special, and there's another fucking attempt on my life again.
Oh fuck. We have like no hideout defenses at all right now. I think the option to fight is supposed to be a reference to the 1980 Flash Gordon movie, though the precise wording of that line in that movie is "Open fire! All weapons!"
Finally we're doing a base defense mission in one of these LPs.
You might recall that basically all of our Gals are wounded, but I have it set for the wounded to defend the base so long as their health is above 30%, which means almost all 9 of our gals are ready for action, the sole exception being Pocket Dragoon who is still too fucked up to fight and currently locked in her quarters to prevent her from getting killed out here.
I am of course, locked up in my office, where I am heroically directing the fight using our security cameras.
Rather than the enemy coming in through the Access Lift XPiratez has them land in the Hangars instead. Niggermancer and Chuckles both started on the upper levels, and Niggermancer has already taken up a position overlooking the Lift where she can frag anything that wanders past it.
The cameras draw a ton of enemy fire which gives me plenty of time to get NerdShamer, Witty Squid and Forever Sunrise into position inside the Access Lift. Witty takes a stun dart but stays on her feet after a nip of vodka.
Most of the enemy gets taken down here, including their air support which gets skeeted by Chuckles from an access door.
The last enemy rushes Witty and manages to jab her in the neck with a stun dart.
She doesn't last long herself.
Everyone gets a brand new Condemnation. Well, except for Pocket Dragoon. Better luck next base defense.
I'm not really sure why you have to research these Summary entries, it seems more like these should just be included from the start unless they're for advanced weapons like lasers or something.
Great. I only have NerdShamer in fighting condition right now.
This will mostly be a matter of just staying low and not taking a hit.
NerdShamer is loaded for bear.
NerdShamer isn't there half a minute and she already gets showered with fire from some kind of energy weapon. She somehow avoids taking a hit and manages to retaliate.
Fortunately for my solo runs there aren't that many enemies on these maps right now.
Overall, could have gone worse. At least NerdShamer didn't get hit.
We research this unique facility which will somewhat improve recovery time for our wounded Gals but also is apparently required for a bunch of other research. I start construction on one immediately.
Some research completes, allowing us to now recruit/hire Workers to increase our storage space. And I was under the distinct impression that I had country bios turned off but I suppose they've been officially updated and added to the mod now, complete with country flags. I'm not really sure why, but the idea of all of these different locations having things like a flag or a Gravball team kind of breaks the immersion for me. Sure some of them would, but what about the ones that are barely functional anarchies?
The game not so subtly reminds me that I should research Bounty Hunting already and advance the plot. Fine, asshole.
Sticking with fewer hideouts isn't exactly the worst idea if you put the main ones in fairly central locations but, whatever.
Its up to NerdShamer once again to bring in one of our wayward sisters.
It seems it never occurred to me that these places have all of the enemies spawn in one building.
NerdShamer kills most of them before she even gets in the front door. Of course that hooker at the top of the stairs manages to score a hit on her as she's coming up though. God damnit.
The last enemy tries to run away.
NerdShamer is the first among the Gals to master a weapon.
There we go. Bounty Hunting missions will now activate next month, though they won't be anything super exciting for awhile.
Here are our three customers. I'm surprised to learn that Captain Jack neither looks like Captain Jack Sparrow nor Captain Jack of Captain Jack fame, and instead looks like Albert Wesker. The Mutant Alliance is a mutant rights organization that first appeared in XCOM: Apocalypse, though other than the name they share little in common with their original incarnation. Saya is a brand new character as far as I know. And it has literally taken me until just now to realize that (((Goblin Zaxx))) is a pun on Goldman Sachs. Though I obviously got the Jew joke forever ago.
I have to wonder just what the fuck Goblin Zaxx even is. Are they the survivors of the Jewspiracy, reduced now to a minor faction in this crazy post-apocalyptic world? Are they just what has become of regular Jews? Are they an unrelated tribe of mutants who thinks that Jews were some kind of ancient super race and takes /pol/ as gospel? Or like, are they literal Goblins? How the fuck does that work?
Anyway, the way Bounty Hunting missions work is that completing one does not directly increase your relations with an organization, as XCOM lacks the framework to make our bounty hunting customers separate organizations. Instead, performing a successful hunt allows you to recover specific loot which can be exchanged to its respective faction for Bounty Tokens. Jack accepts Assassination Trophies, Ninja Badges and Aircar Race Trophies among other things, Goblin Zaxx accepts Elimination Trophies and forms of old Earth money such as gold coins and briefcases full of useless USD currency, and the Mutant Alliance accepts Humanist Trophies, as well as rescued Experiment Victims and Smooth Captives we can recover from certain missions. In addition, if we capture Mutant Traitors alive, we can have them executed for Mutant Alliance tokens.
In order to advance the Bounty Hunting plotline, we need to manufacture the next level of badge, in this case Brass, then research it which is the flag that unlocks the Bounty Hunt C level missions, and so on up. Originally, Badges had a flat cost in tokens to manufacture them, but that has since been replaced with a flat Glamour cost. The Brass Badge is 200 Glamour. In order to unlock the Badge, you need to purchase and research a certain amount of Prizes which each have a token cost. In this case we only need one prize from each faction.
Everyone's fucking wounded again, so I'm going to get around that by adding two more recruits.
While I wait for the two new recruits to get ready, these events occur. Examination of the background picture to Election Meddling reveals its some older historical photograph, but I find it hilarious just how much one of the dudes looks like Biden. Additionally a local bard writes a bawdy tune about our Gals.
In short order the two new recruits are ready to go.
I guess leave it up Honka to end up getting one of the few relatively normal looking heads in the roster. There isn't one wearing clown makeup that I know of, otherwise I'd cheat and use that one.
For those of you keeping track of where we found these two, Callow was recovered during that mission where we decimated a whorehouse with our brand new shotguns and Honky was picked up on this most recent one NerdShamer had to solo.
We get in touch with some car thieves who can now supply us with more specialized aircraft. As far as I'm aware the red color scheme of the hover vehicles is a tip of the hat to XCOM: Apocalypse, where all of the hover vehicles that XCOM can purchase for their own use are supplied in bright cherry red. Red's a nice color.
As we're planning on what we should consider ordering, a call comes over the main viewing screen. The person on the other end is a young girl with a shrill voice. She calls out "Big Sis!", evidently talking to Witty Squid who is standing right next to me. What she has to say is mostly unintelligible, but her letter does include a data fragment on how enemy missile strikes work.
(This is one of the mechanics ported over from the ill-fated Terminator mod, where SKYNET would conduct nuclear missile strikes on your bases since they were above ground. You were then forced to quickly transfer everything out of your targeted base and dust off with all of the craft to a backup location, with the presumption being that you would need to do this multiple times over the course of the game in the finished mod. In the case of XPiratez that has been modified so the missiles are now ground-penetrating bunker busters, and I presume the attacks are not quite as devastating).
Surely two rookies can handle a simple watchtower assault, right?
Honky is a surprisingly good shot for someone who can barely handle the weight of her gun.
Pretty damn flawless first outing.
Nobody was even injured.
I switch to a new research model where I have one Brainer research some kind of general or lore topic, one always researching the various hostages we have and one always researching weapons, just so I can try to get the massive amount of crap we have available to research out of the way.
The Personal Computer sprite I swear I've seen in something before, but I can't place it. The Snubby looks a lot like Deckard's gun, the LAPD 2019 Blaster, from the movie Bladerunner. That said it has black furniture on the handle instead of wood so maybe its something else. Its not exactly a weapon that's great for taking down armored targets either unlike in the movie.
Our next end of the month report goes well.
I'm not super interested in dealing with civilian shipping right now but a landed one shows up on the map and I decide not to pass it up.
Whoever the Hell these guys are, they aren't human.
Shit!
We manage to get one more of them, but Forever Sunrise passes out and needs to be dragged out of the gas cloud by Chuckles.
What looks like a Sectoid wearing a rice hat opens fire on Ricearoni with a laser of some kind and wounds her.
Callow defies her newbie status by brazenly closing in on the enemy and landing the killing blow.
Some interesting loot on this one.
It's at this point I notice there's a bunch of extra research in the Bootypedia that had been unlocked that I never got around to screenshotting, so here's everything, including two bios that finally give us an overview of The Academy and the Humanists.
Hopefully this won't be in one of those miserable psychedelic biomes again.
Well, that's a pretty fair amount of enemies.
We're finally engaging at a range that our Heavy Shotguns can't really reach anything at, so the Gals have to take cover and advance slowly.
Everyone takes out what they can from a distance. The firefight actually goes on for quite awhile.
Eventually the base is stormed.
I'm less than thrilled about the amount of people who got wounded in the fight. It seems like the enemy is great at landing one or two blows just as I'm getting ready to wrap up the mission.
These random events are beginning to annoy me honestly.
Might as well not pass up a decent landing site.
These little bastards again. At least we can pick up some decent technology from them.
They do go down pretty easily.
All that's left is their UFO.
Sending Chuckles up there alone was absolutely a reckless move and could have gotten her killed, but at least she was able to handle things herself.
She is appropriately (I think?) the first one to receive the Gal of Steel Condemnation.
Finally, our first Bounty Hunt, a mission to kill off some Mutant Traitors. Only A Callow Youth and Figger Naggot are ambulatory right now, but this mission shouldn't be too difficult.
They wipe out the guard pretty easily but the rest of the traitors are all grouped up around one building so Callow and Figger end up needing to take cover.
Callow spots three of these idiots moseying around outside their hideout, so Figger throws a frag grenade right in the middle of them.
BOOM
Cleanup is real easy after that.
I'd say our first bounty was a success.
Some more research finishes up in the mean time.
The Mutant Alliance sends us an irritating threatening letter about the Capitatory Taxes we owe on all of the mutant civilians and Lokk'Naars that have died under our watch. I for one refuse to pay them and consider them extortion of the highest order, as most of those deaths occur because there's no way in Hell our Gals can possibly disembark fast enough to save everyone.
I presume there's a random event later on in the game designed to fuck you if you just try and sit on them all. I'm willing to test my luck for now.
Our incredibly annoying number one fan gives us another call. Maybe we can get rid of her in the future.
Just a few more Ninja Gals who still refuse to wear armor.
Business as usual.
I guess if both shells are fired into the enemy at once this weapon is capable of a lot of damage but in practice the Heavy Shotgun is much more versatile and thus far superior.
More Ratmen. These missions are kind of a waste of time honestly-
Oh no.
I considered leaving at this point but my Gals managed to take down this zombie in 3-4 hits so I resolved to stay and whittle them down.
They're tough but they're not invincible.
Seems like that purple one was the toughest, the rest of these just go down in two hits.
It gets to the point where we have three of these guys knocked out around the front of the airvan and one actually dead one.
Watch it!
It seems my long nights spent watching old horror movies with my mistress haven't paid off as she starts to freak out and panic knowing she's surrounded by the living dead. Its made more embarrassing by the fact that she has seniority compared to Figger Naggot and newcomer Callow.
Witty stops panicking long enough for me to get her and everyone else back into the van, which turns out to be impervious to zombie gas or whatever the Hell it is.
Hey, didn't Dioxine add windows to vehicles specifically to stop camping?
Get wrecked, zombie bitch. Witty is able to recover enough of her sanity to continue on with the mission. I'm not really sure how many enemies are left on the map, but I'm willing to bet its somewhere around the 1 range.
Figger Naggot eventually hunts her down. The female zombies apparently explode when they drop to the ground dead or alive, which prevents a live capture here. Well, "live" anyway.
We did collect a few specimens though, maybe we'll find some answers as to why these things keep popping up.
We're not back very long before we catch word of Blood Rituals taking place. One of our wayward sisters is in trouble, so its time to load up. Pocket Dragoon is finally back in the fight!
We've got this neat jungle ruins theme going on here. Unfortunately I didn't really stop to take decent screenshots of the structures, but this update is already longer than the Korean War and its hardly the last time we'll be seeing this map anyway.
There's the altar our next Gal is passed out on.
Not sure who these guys are supposed to be.
Guess we'll find out soon enough.
Before that though, we've got another bounty opportunity, a Crackhouse. Before anyone asks, yes, we get to keep the crack.
Pocket Dragoon has come a long way from having to carry around just a pistol. She'll be joining Dr. Ricearoni, Moths and Callow on this run.
There's way more of these purple tards than we're used to dealing with. Pocket Dragoon is almost immediately wounded again.
Hey, its just the man we were here to see!
Winners don't do drugs.
I could have done without Pocket Dragoon getting fucked up again.
Next Time: Probably more of the same for at least another update. The early game is slow, sorry.
Not a bad statline, all things considered, and far from my least favorite character model. Garbage stamina, but that's one of the easier skills to improve. Part of me was hoping for a young uber, but I'll live.
Fire extinguishers are another one of those "keep one in the van" items, fire damage is fucking bullshit in this mod. No clue if there's an event to punish you for not paying your taxes, but they take up a massive amount of storage space, so you really should clear them out anyways. I will raise a red flag about your lack of brainers, though. Yes, they're expensive as all fuck, but you really should be trying to max out your lab space. I'd also put a priority on researching Warehouse Wars missions, those are a good source of materials for once we start manufacturing in earnest.
I'm not really sure why, but the idea of all of these different locations having things like a flag or a Gravball team kind of breaks the immersion for me. Sure some of them would, but what about the ones that are barely functional anarchies?
Yes though the line of fire to get inside the Shortbus is a weird diagonal one.
Also I hate to be that guy but there's a annoying research choke point with zombies, specifically the fat ones, you need a live one AND a dead one plus both varieties of regulars simply to unlock researching the fatties. The fatties can, by grace of RNG, not show up for months at a time if you are unlucky. In general you can stand to take more live captives, that blue suited guy is worth $100k alive, to say nothing of the immense research values in interrogating captives again and again.
I guess leave it up Honka to end up getting one of the few relatively normal looking heads in the roster. There isn't one wearing clown makeup that I know of, otherwise I'd cheat and use that one.
The bounty hunting scheme reminds of those factions from War of the Chosen. Too bad that all you're getting is extra money instead of random item drops and research boosts.
The bounty ideas are pretty interesting, I'm also excited to see that base invasion. From a few looks into the game those who don't speak of XPiratez in hushed tones like they're hoping to avoid getting a ruler smack from teacher have declared it 'A proper test of an Xcom veteran with fanservice'. I feel that's underestimating nearly all the aspects but seeing early invasions and a large number of jobs cropping up where you need to solo or duo it with a gal seems accurate.
Also if the Mutant Alliance wants to collect taxes they'd best start providing a service that deserves it, otherwise they'll need to come drop by and speak to our financial/mutant tiger pit manager to collect.
