In my last post talking about one of the largest mega-mods for X-Com, I mentioned that the X-Com Files is one of the two biggest out there, well, it’s time to talk about the other one on the list. X-Piratez is something that kind of defies logic — a completely new game built in the X-Com engine that expands the game to the point that no other turn-based strategy game I’ve played has gone before. But what may hold this back from some people is something that none of you reading this would ever expect to see me write about.
An Uber Future
The story of X-Piratez takes place following the aliens winning the war in the original X-Com. The Earth is colonized and mutated by the aliens for years and they eventually leave the planet as a kind of backwater outpost in the universe. The populace, now mostly mutated, lives day by day. You play as a group of giant mutated women known as ubers who after being experimented on by a mysterious group, flee and discover an old X-Com base and decide to become pirates.
From there, it’s your job to take a group of six mutants and become famous as earthly pirates and maybe even fight the aliens who took over the planet. While the basic systems for progression and combat remain the same, X-Piratez throws out a lot of the conventions of the base game to do something different. Your ubers are far stronger and more durable than any squaddie would ever reach in the base game. Their stats even at the beginning are comparable to that of the highest-ranked squaddies in X-Com. To compensate, recruiting more is a lot tougher, you must either rescue or capture characters that you can then convince to join your crew until you unlock the ability to buy a fixed number each month. Other options include recruiting villagers and animals to fill out your team, but they come with their own penalties.
Money is the biggest factor that greatly slows down your game compared to the base version. To fund research, you need to hire brainers (the X-Piratez version of scientists), however, they cost 200,000 to hire and 100k to maintain monthly. Get too many at the start, and you will bankrupt yourself immediately. And you will need that research, X-Piratez features many more times of things to research and unlock compared to the base game. In fact, the game features branching tech trees in which your choices will permanently lock you from specific choices or unlock new mission types that can show up in the future.
Xpiratez’s maps can be very small for select missions, to massive sprawls (source mod.io)
Your first year of X-Piratez is going to be just figuring out how to survive and make any and all progress while keeping your ubers out of the healing ward, as recovering takes forever at the start. Almost like Firaxis’s take, have a bad starting month of wiping your entire team, and you should probably restart your game. But, getting into those positions takes a lot more bad play than the original, and the improvements and changes to combat also highlight the depth of X-Piratez.
Tough TUs
The tactical layer of X-Piratez also sees improvements and new challenges compared to the original. Your ubers are once again stronger and more durable than squaddies, and even just having 2 or 3 on the field can give you a fighting chance against a larger army if you can engage in smaller areas. Each character has far more TU than you might be used to from X-Com, and this goes with a greater focus and role on melee. Melee can be used to break down walls and cover, knock out characters, or deliver a strong hit against something that is armored.
As pirates, a lot of your money starting out will come from kidnapping people and ransoming them off, but you will need to get in close to do so. In one of my favorite moments from the mod, I was outgunned against a group of soldiers wielding far more advanced weapons than I had, so I snuck up, killed one with an axe, picked up their energy pistol and proceeded to mow down the remaining ones all on the same turn. However, this can be turned against you, melee-based enemies in the original like the chryssalids were devastating due to how cheap melee attacks are compared to guns TU-wise. A pack of attack dogs can easily rip apart your entire team if they get too close, and they have the energy and TU to move very far during their turns. As an interesting point, any time a unit is next to another in melee range, they suffer massive penalties to accuracy with their guns — allowing a melee unit a strong advantage if they can get to the enemy during their turn.
Besides new mission designs, the game features completely new enemies and weapons. While you will eventually fight aliens, there are more than enough mutants and humans left on Earth to get into battle with. On top of that, there are now weather conditions to keep track of which go with new protection gear that you can research and manufacture to keep your ubers safe from the cold, heat, or poisons of the planet. It is quite jaw-dropping just how much variety there is in the mission design while still being constrained to the setup and framework of the original X-Com.
This is not a game that you’re going to pick up and finish within days…or weeks…or months. There are hundreds of hours of play for an average run, on top of the tech tree branches means that most people may never see 100% of what this mod has to offer. The freedom to build as you see fit and the game being large enough that if you are keeping in the black with your finances you can do what you want is a nice touch. In my piece about the X-Com Files, I talked about how the slower progression helped the game, and X-Piratez also fits nicely. While you can start fielding six ubers at the beginning, chances are most of your early missions will be far fewer considering how slow healing is. There are multiple weapons in each type that you can find or craft, along with rarer weapons that can help you even more. I don’t personally think I’ll ever see everything in this mod with how limited my time is.
So far, everything I’ve typed would make X-Piratez one of the easiest recommendations I could ever make. However, there is one massive caveat that you cannot ignore and again, you will not see this coming if you don’t already know about the mod. I’m about to type something that I never thought I would ever have to with writing a design piece — X-Piratez may feature too much nudity for a tactical strategy game.
XXX-Com
You cannot talk about X-Piratez without mentioning the graphic images that go with the game. The intent of the designer was to create something that goes back to the days of 50’s sci-fi pulp: stories of beautiful alien women getting into all kinds of adventures. However, it does go far beyond just alluding to sordid details. The opening slideshow cinematic features at least two scenes showing orgies happening. If you choose, you can also take all your characters topless or completely naked into combat as well. Now, all of this is still in the pixelated style of the original X-Com engine, but the game’s “bootypedia” is a potential landmine of images that vary between fan service to just imagery that I can’t show here.
It’s hard to state here just how complicated and deep this mod is. (source mod.io)
This is a fan-made mod for X-Com, so it’s not my place to render a verdict on the designer’s wishes for their mod. It does present one of the strangest dichotomies I’ve seen. X-Piratez is not a porn game, this is an incredibly creative and challenging mod that may be one of the best turn-based experiences for fans of the original X-Com. The nudity is not even a reward for playing the game, nor are there any actual mechanics built around it. There are plenty of H-related games on Steam and elsewhere that would give you similar and even more graphic rewards for far less work (and before the comments come in, no I don’t play those games, but they keep showing up on the newly released section). Imagine someone outdoing Factorio with an even bigger and better logistic/automation game, but also filling it with sex at the same time. No matter how great the mod is, you cannot talk about one without the other with it — you can’t disable it, you can’t ignore it, and trying to stream it would be a very interesting challenge. The problem is that even if you completely ignore the bootypedia, the game pops up with random events out of your control, and those can be of anything. At the time of writing this, I haven’t even completed one full year in the game, and a part of me wonders just how much more will be there as the game goes on.
Pros and Cons of Pirating
X-Piratez is one of the strangest mods I’ve played, let alone for a tactical strategy game. There is nothing quite like it and if it ever is finished, it may go down as one of the largest and most game-changing mods for any game. In terms of the design that’s there, it is on the difficult side. While you do have to unlearn some of the original game if you want to play it, the random events can come back to bite you even if you’re careful. The bootypedia also acts as the game’s tutorial, which helps teach you the basics, but your test is going to be surviving and thriving for at least six months.
The one legitimate problem I have about the design of the game, much like the original X-Com, is that it’s still hard to understand how armor and reaction firing work. Part of it I think is just looking more into openXCOM and what quality-of-life features have been added. Due to the complexities of the map designs, expect to take an unlucky shot because you thought a character was behind cover but a shoulder or leg was sticking out. Even though you need to relearn X-Com, you still need to know the basics in terms of the GUI and general play before you start playing this. And to keep your sanity, I would highly advise not turning on ironman difficulty for your first couple of attempts at playing. For an example, in one map, an armored car spawned directly in front of my airbus, to then open up the door and fill my ship with Gatling gun bullets on its turn.
It seems like every few years, a strategy fan will uncover X-Piratez and start diving into it. While playing the game and looking for other reviews/impressions, I’ve found pieces in 2016 and 2019 from Rock Paper Shotgun talking about how big it will be when it is done. Who knows, someone may be writing a piece about this game in 2027 or further. If you aren’t squeamish about nudity and adult subject matter, this is a defining example of amazing turn-based design that is free*.
*X-Piratez uses a bundled version of openXCOMEX which does require you to have the base files of X-Com UFO Defense and Terror of The Deep to play it.
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