LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

aimlessgun
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by aimlessgun »

nightwyrm wrote:Let's go with the higher numbers and say I can kill a pod of 4 in 3 turns on average
On average would suggest that it sometimes might take 4 or 5 turns. I feel like 3 turns is the absolute max unless your guys are dying, so the average should be lower. Taking 3 turns probably means your squad is somehow behind in either gear or ranks, or has already used every consumable and every cooldown beforehand.

Maybe should be more like: all consumables/cooldowns = 1 turn, some consumables/cooldowns = 2 turns, no consumables/cooldowns = 3 turns? Just spitballin' here, but you probably have everything up for 1 pod, some things up for 2 pods, and maybe the 4th pod you have nothing up. Which totals to around 8 turns of combat for 4 pods.

EDIT: Thinking through scenarios, 4 man teams are gonna have trouble killing 4 alien pods in 1 turn even with cooldowns unless they're high rank (and then at very high rank, just 2 synergistic soldiers can clear out a pod in 1 turn :) ). So those estimates are more for 5-6 man squads.
trihero wrote: (except for story missions, but the only one you have to send a large man squad is the gate mission)
I generally don't mind stealth missions but this actually really annoys me. Forge and Blacksite should be big epic bring your A team missions, not 'send a couple shinobis maybe with overdrive serum' missions.
trihero
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by trihero »

I'm beginning to think that vanilla had the idea completely correct - concealment is just a method to get the first ambush in, not as a mechanism to win missions. It's also why they disallowed Phantom as a Specialist perk, and also why pods wandered into your general direction in order to get the action started, but this mod has pushed the pendulum way too far over into the let's stealth it territory. Compounding the issue is reinforcements coming down based on you blowing concealment, making typical fighting a daunting risk, and how easy it is to squadsight relays/VIPs.

5-6 man missions need to be highly rewarded to make up for stealth/0% raids. I don't think stealth/0% raids need to be nerfed at all - they feel about right, they can be complicated and risky especially depending on dark events and map composition. It's just that we NEED a LOT of middle range missions. I want to be really juggling a bunch of 5-6 man squads instead of just juggling 3-4 shinobis and a big list of meat I dump into 10 man missions.
Skyfire
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by Skyfire »

I think a big part of the problem lies with how binary the stealth mechanic is right now. A concealed Covert/Ghostwalker/SMG Shinobi can practically pin a 'Kick Me' sign on Advent's back without being noticed, but if an enemy spots an unconcealed civilian VIP for even a split second at the extreme edge of sight range they immediately break out the micromissiles and heavy machineguns and the whole map turns into the OK Corral at high noon. It's not just that pure stealth is too low-risk - although it probably is - breaking concealment is also too big a risk for anything but a full-size A-team, because the way the yellow-alert and pod activation mechanics combine means that there's no reliable way to engage anything without being forced to engage everything.

One key thing to note is that this primarily matters for hybrid squads, not those that go all in on one tactic. Solo/duo full-stealth squads don't need to worry about combat at all; they can just moonwalk past everything in concealment and then drop a one-turn evac flare and get out literally without a shot being fired. Going to the other extreme doesn't have the same mission-trivialising effect, but does still fundamentally work: a 8-10 man full-combat squad has the firepower to burn down pods as they come in without being overwhelmed, so kicking the hornet's nest becomes survivable.

On the other hand, attempts at a hybrid squad run into serious anti-synergy problems. A low- to mid-rank shinobi/specialist/ranger/assault squad is more-or-less doomed to half its members being dead-weight; for as long as the squad is in concealment the ranger and assault are non-entities; if they go loud the shinobi and specialist drag the total firepower down too much to fight through any real opposition; and there's no tools for combining the two approaches.

It seems to me that the game needs more ways for X-COM to actually interact with the enemy and/or the environment without subsequently having to fight everything on the map, so missions aren't forced to the extremes of kill everything/kill nothing.

My suggestion:
1) Break up the schedules into larger numbers of smaller pods. For a pure-stealth approach, there's almost no difference between an eight-man rainbow pod and a solo drone - they're both effectively just a 5-10 tile radius red zone that you have to stay out of. Go loud, however, and one is a lot easier to kill than the other. Keep the same total number of enemies and split them into more pods, and you shift the balance of difficulty in favour of combat. (With points 2 and 3, it might even make sense to increase total enemy numbers as well - that would have to be playtested.)

2) Increase the detection radius on enemies in yellow- or red-alert. This probably wouldn't have that big an effect on its own - and in fact is almost completely irrelevant to the pure-stealth tactics that are the biggest issue - but it makes thematic sense and I think it's an important balancing factor to allow us to:

3) Add an additional ability to all soldiers that allows them to re-enter concealment if there are no enemies on the map currently in red-alert and the squad (or this soldier) hasn't taken an action this turn. (Or have the squad auto-conceal at the start of the players turn if there are no red-alert enemies. The former is better for discoverability, since it puts an icon directly on the abilities UI, the latter is probably less prone to edge-cases/exploits.) This lets players use the combat tools without having to totally abandon stealth. If you can pull off a good ambush, you can kill a pod and then go back into concealment; but between the gunfire/explosions and the corpses the enemies are going to go to yellow alert and get boosted detection and extra reactions, and because the enemies are more spread out you're much more likely to need to take a shot to clear a path to the objective. Using 'stealth' to clear a mission thus becomes more about setting up surgical strikes when the enemy moves out of position than about staying out of the red tiles until you can evac.

Hopefully this won't step on Conceal's toes too much, since the new reconceal mechanic ideally only works if the entire squad can break contact for a full turn (which should be more difficult with the extra independent groups patroling the map from point one). Soldiers with the perk will still have a significantly easier time going back into stealth. Even if it does, though, I feel that reworking one perk would be an acceptable price to pay as long as the rest works out the way I expect it will.

Point 3 probably will be overpowered in the hands of a shinobi/specialist duo hack squad (hide in a corner, throw flare, reconceal... :roll: ), in which case I'd suggest 4) Add a noise rating to throwing the evac flare, and make it disable the default reconceal option for the current turn (or use the auto-conceal at start-of-turn mechanic, which sidesteps the issue). If there are enough (smaller) pods on the map, and the nearby ones go to yellow-alert and come looking when you drop a flare, staying out of line-of-sight through an enemy turn to reconceal should be an interesting challenge rather than a trivial exploit.
nightwyrm
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by nightwyrm »

aimlessgun wrote:
nightwyrm wrote:Let's go with the higher numbers and say I can kill a pod of 4 in 3 turns on average
On average would suggest that it sometimes might take 4 or 5 turns. I feel like 3 turns is the absolute max unless your guys are dying, so the average should be lower. Taking 3 turns probably means your squad is somehow behind in either gear or ranks, or has already used every consumable and every cooldown beforehand.

Maybe should be more like: all consumables/cooldowns = 1 turn, some consumables/cooldowns = 2 turns, no consumables/cooldowns = 3 turns? Just spitballin' here, but you probably have everything up for 1 pod, some things up for 2 pods, and maybe the 4th pod you have nothing up. Which totals to around 8 turns of combat for 4 pods.

EDIT: Thinking through scenarios, 4 man teams are gonna have trouble killing 4 alien pods in 1 turn even with cooldowns unless they're high rank (and then at very high rank, just 2 synergistic soldiers can clear out a pod in 1 turn :) ). So those estimates are more for 5-6 man squads.
I often have a Shinobi scout that I don't want to use on the first pod or 2, which means I'm functionally down a man for those first 2 fights, which can make it longer.

By consumables, I assume you mean offensive grenades/rockets/shredder gun of various sorts. Those things are good at wiping out pods, but also very good at attracting other pods.

I still think 8 turns to kill 4 pods is optimistic for LW2. It's probably doable with the right 5 men team in the right circumstances but if anything goes wrong, like the RNG not liking you or an RNF pod dropping by, you are SoL.
justdont
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by justdont »

I don't like the idea of re-concealable squad at all. It will shift all combat extremely into "kill a pod in 1 turn" mentality. In fact, the less re-conceal abilites are there in the game, the better. AI isn't equipped with anything at all to deal with concealment, and currently it's just an absolute "get out of jail free, forever" card. You can even have an entire class (holotarget sniper) built around the idea of safely staying invisible through entire mission while also doing quite a lot work every turn. It's... not a very fun class, even through it's decently balanced.
nightwyrm
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by nightwyrm »

justdont wrote:I don't like the idea of re-concealable squad at all. It will shift all combat extremely into "kill a pod in 1 turn" mentality. In fact, the less re-conceal abilites are there in the game, the better. AI isn't equipped with anything at all to deal with concealment, and currently it's just an absolute "get out of jail free, forever" card. You can even have an entire class (holotarget sniper) built around the idea of safely staying invisible through entire mission while also doing quite a lot work every turn. It's... not a very fun class, even through it's decently balanced.
Actually, in Xavier's latest video, it seems the AI knows exactly where his re-concealed Shinobi is....
Alketi
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by Alketi »

nightwyrm wrote: Actually, in Xavier's latest video, it seems the AI knows exactly where his re-concealed Shinobi is....
I saw that. And, I also experience the exact opposite.

On one stealth mission I Commanded a Specialist to extract, and on the next turn the Alerted enemies ran in all directions, EXCEPT where my Shinobi was hiding.

It's very possible what Xavier witnessed was just a pure (unlucky) coincidence.
Napalm292
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by Napalm292 »

Another option along with changing the infiltration times to favor 6 person squads is increasing turn limits to allow for fighting, and changing the xp rewards. Decrease the xp awarded for mission completion and increasing the xp for killing.
trihero
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by trihero »

Alketi wrote:
nightwyrm wrote: Actually, in Xavier's latest video, it seems the AI knows exactly where his re-concealed Shinobi is....
I saw that. And, I also experience the exact opposite.

On one stealth mission I Commanded a Specialist to extract, and on the next turn the Alerted enemies ran in all directions, EXCEPT where my Shinobi was hiding.

It's very possible what Xavier witnessed was just a pure (unlucky) coincidence.
It's coincidence, I've done many many missions where I've reconcealed shinobi and they don't know where I am at all. It's a bit of luck, but also recall that enemies prefer to hide behind high cover if they can. It's not as much coindence as you think if you look at the situation - he was in high cover, and that high cover was within reach of the sectoid. In fact, he should have NOT hidden behind the high cover in order to minimize the chances of someone bumping into him.
stefan3iii
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by stefan3iii »

I'll add my own vote for "way too many stealth missions". I don't want them to go away entirely, the variety is nice, but right now it's crazy how much easier missions are to stealth than to fight through. And it's not just infiltration times that are a problem, even if you brought 6 soldiers to a maximally infiltrated extremely light mission, there are still very heavy incentives to stealth all the way to the objective before breaking concealment.

The biggest problem with breaking concealment early is reinforcements. The sooner you break, the sooner you get reinforcements, and in some cases the "Cavalry" which are the 8 troop death pods that drop on top of your head. I feel reinforcements either need to be punishing to stealth teams, or they need to be far more lenient on non-stealth teams, or both. One suggestion is to make the reinforcement timer longer than it is now, but start ticking it before concealment is broken. But I'm sure there are other ways to accomplish this.

The next issue is that it's usually more turn efficient to stealth than to fight, though I only find this to be an issue on certain mission types and maps, like jailbreaks, which for whatever reason always seem to be gigantic maps.

There is another broken stealth tactic that I haven't seen discussed much. I call it the "suicide rookie". Have a hack mission with a 3 day expiration, and a 5 turn evac timer? No problem, take your rookie with the worst stats, give him an SMG, and run him into the objective to win. 30 intel, or some other rewards, for the cost of one rookie with bad stats? Great! Maybe you should need at least once soldier to evac with the intel to actually beat the mission?
trihero
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by trihero »

While I agree with your other points, I do not understand this one
There is another broken stealth tactic that I haven't seen discussed much. I call it the "suicide rookie". Have a hack mission with a 3 day expiration, and a 5 turn evac timer? No problem, take your rookie with the worst stats, give him an SMG, and run him into the objective to win. 30 intel, or some other rewards, for the cost of one rookie with bad stats? Great! Maybe you should need at least once soldier to evac with the intel to actually beat the mission?
You don't "win" when the objective is hacked, you actually have to evac with the item in someone's inventory. You actually DO need at least once soldier to evac with the intel. Unless I missed something, how did you get this tactic to work?
stefan3iii
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by stefan3iii »

trihero wrote:While I agree with your other points, I do not understand this one
There is another broken stealth tactic that I haven't seen discussed much. I call it the "suicide rookie". Have a hack mission with a 3 day expiration, and a 5 turn evac timer? No problem, take your rookie with the worst stats, give him an SMG, and run him into the objective to win. 30 intel, or some other rewards, for the cost of one rookie with bad stats? Great! Maybe you should need at least once soldier to evac with the intel to actually beat the mission?
You don't "win" when the objective is hacked, you actually have to evac with the item in someone's inventory. You actually DO need at least once soldier to evac with the intel. Unless I missed something, how did you get this tactic to work?
I did it just last night, the victory screen said "Mission Complete", and I got the intel reward for it, and countered the dark event. MVP Rookie, got a really nice funeral. I don't know exactly with which mission types it does or does not work, as I just started using this strat. All I remember in this case is that I had to hack a console, so maybe it's only for hack missions and not recover item?

edit: Pretty sure it was Hack Workstation mission: http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Missions_(LW2) . Would also work with a Dark VIP, though may need to send two rookies and just lob 2 grenades.

edit2: Yeah, just did another Hack Workstation with a sacrificial rookie. Was a Light-Moderate, with 5 turn evac, 75% infiltrated. Feels pretty broken.
Last edited by stefan3iii on Fri Feb 24, 2017 6:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
trihero
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by trihero »

Yeah I'm sure it works with neutralize targets, maybe like you said it's hack the workstation and not the "recover an item" objective.

That definitely puts the continental bonus "to serve mankind" in an entirely new light for me.

Playing LW2 makes you appreciate that vanilla got stealth right - it's not meant to be a way to win the mission, but merely a way to choose your first engagement. And I think part of the problem is that the game is kind of balanced around you being able to stealth a lot of missions, otherwise you just skip so many and your progress is slow.
aimlessgun
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by aimlessgun »

nightwyrm wrote:
I often have a Shinobi scout that I don't want to use on the first pod or 2, which means I'm functionally down a man for those first 2 fights, which can make it longer.

Yes this is a good point.

Grenades pulling more enemies to you isn't a serious problem IMO if you're planning on killing everything anyways. It may even have positive benefits like speeding the mission up or making sure you fight more enemies in a favorable position that you chose to go loud at.
stefan3iii wrote: The biggest problem with breaking concealment early is reinforcements.
Oh yeah, this is a massive contributor to why medium combat teams are suboptimal.
trihero
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by trihero »

I really want to try a sword/shotgun shinobi but dem scout shinobis are so stronk =.=

Maybe shinobis should switch places with psis; you have to build a "stealth lab" to train shinobis and they might not be able to learn conceal or phantom. :o
nightwyrm
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by nightwyrm »

trihero wrote:I really want to try a sword/shotgun shinobi but dem scout shinobis are so stronk =.=

Maybe shinobis should switch places with psis; you have to build a "stealth lab" to train shinobis and they might not be able to learn conceal or phantom. :o
Faceless!! We have a Faceless here!!
trihero
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by trihero »

I always thought that trihero guy was too eager to please...
Saph7
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by Saph7 »

Thinking about it, both the 'too many stealth missions' complaints and the '0% supply raids' complaints come down to how incentives currently work in LW2.

In Hack/VIP missions, the objective is to hack or rescue the VIP. Engaging in combat is low reward and high risk. Result: players are incentivised to engage in as little combat as possible.

In Supply Raids, the objective is to kill everything. Engaging in combat is high reward and medium risk, and the more combat you do, the more rewards you get (since more corpses). Result: you get players deliberately fighting as many enemies as possible.

So of course you're not going to get 'middle class' missions – the reward system for LW2 as it stands encourages you to either not fight at all, or go all in.
wobuffet
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by wobuffet »

Saph7 wrote:In Supply Raids, the objective is to kill everything. Engaging in combat is high reward and medium risk, and the more combat you do, the more rewards you get (since more corpses). Result: you get players deliberately fighting as many enemies as possible.
What if on supply raids, a larger squad led to much fewer reinforcements instead – e.g., % infiltrated / 20 = # of reinforcement drops the aliens send? So sending in the cavalry means an easy mission, but few corpses; or, you can play it riskier by sending only 5 troops for higher risk, higher reward.

Thematically, ADVENT gives up if it sees 10 XCOM troops destroying everything, but will keep trying to overpower you if you send only a few soldiers.

It'd be odd to reverse the higher infiltration = fewer enemies rule just for this one mission type though, of course.
seananigans
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by seananigans »

The more I see these issues discussed, the more I think: LW1's economy requiring lots of corpses, alloys, elerium etc. was, IMO, good. I like resource variance, and collecting things for my bank gives me those good feels. Unfortunately, due to the X2 theme change, all the evac'ing changed the dynamic and now it's not "thematic" to collect corpses/etc on those missions.

But what if we just say "meh, screw it" to the thematic portion of it? Just make corpses et. al. retrievable on all missions, and adjust costs accordingly. This incentivizes combat in ALL missions (it's a damn tactical combat game at its core, anyway), while still retaining some reason/necessity for the occasional small stealth mission due to infil timers standing in for fatigue timers, thus lack of soldiers, etc.

Dunno, just spitballing here. What if we paid in Canadian dollars?
DerAva
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by DerAva »

I'd approach this from the other side: what if you could no longer sell corpses at all? This means the rewards for a supply raid would remain almost static - yes, you could render those corpses, but you won't be rendering corpses for 100 days straight, so there's no advantage going from 20ish to 50+ corpses on a mission.
The only advantage of having more enemies would then be the higher amount of loot drops that you might be able to get, but getting those is always risky.
The basic reward of the mission in supplies, crystals and alloys, would be static, and you might even have a better chance to get all of it since you're less likely to blow up some crates.
With corpses no longer providing cash you might rely on regular loot sales to keep your economy going, which gives incentive to fight on more missions for loot drops. Hell, why not add "small supply cache" as a lootable item?
Sines
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by Sines »

seananigans wrote:But what if we just say "meh, screw it" to the thematic portion of it? Just make corpses et. al. retrievable on all missions, and adjust costs accordingly. This incentivizes combat in ALL missions (it's a damn tactical combat game at its core, anyway), while still retaining some reason/necessity for the occasional small stealth mission due to infil timers standing in for fatigue timers, thus lack of soldiers, etc.
Actually, I can see this working.

"Firebrand, all X-Rays neutralized. How's the sky looking?"
"Strike team, no birds in the sky. You're clear for recovery operations."

If you can kill every alien on the map, and there's not currently an incoming re-inforcement wave, and there's more than 1 turn left before forced evac, then the mission auto-ends with you recovering corpses. The basic idea being that you managed to do a good enough job to take the time to recover objects. The team and Firebird scamper around the map, collecting corpses (and loot drops), before the re-inforcements arrive.

This encourages combat, for obvious reasons. However, it also encourages medium team sizes. Going with 8 soldiers is going to be suicide on a timed mission, as the map will be swarming (not literally) and you won't be able to kill everything and complete the objective on time. But a team of 4-6 could infiltrate to a relatively small number of enemies, and quickly neutralize them. If you can do it with time to spare, you've got yourself a corpse-recovery mission out of what would normally be a shinobi stealth job.

This would also discourage 0% Supply Raids as well, as you now have other sources for corpse recovery, so you're not quite as deseperate to collect as many corpses as possible from every Supply Raid or Troop Column. While doing those at 0% is still probably a good idea, they are also VERY long, and might tire out players. A more reasonable and quick way to get corpses will make Swarming Supply Raids just seem tiring and obnoxious due to length. The problem isn't just that it's the most efficient way to get corpses. It's also one of the few good ways to get corpses. Adding other good options, regardless of 'absolute efficiency' would help that a lot.
stefan3iii
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by stefan3iii »

Increasing rewards for doing combat would be good, but I don't think it'll be sufficient to stop 80% of missions from being stealth ones. You only have so many troops, and a big advantage of stealthing missions is that you can infiltrate 5 missions at once because they each only require 1-3 people, and also infiltrate much quicker. You'd basically have to cut rewards almost entirely from stealthing a mission I think to balance out the risk/soldier cost of doing them.
Undershaft
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by Undershaft »

A lot of interesting ideas here. Cannot remember and haven't read every post, so no offense if I repeat anything which has been said already.

Changes to infiltration
In general, I think it would be a good idea if you couldn't do infiltration missions below 100%. You either infiltrate, then you can do them and start in concealment, or you don't, then you cannot do them at all. Extra preparation to 200% is still viable. (*Maybe* allow 80-90%, as a consequence of late mission discovery and/or bringing an extra soldier or two, but it would cost you)

Big battle missions, like supply raids, on the other hand, don't need infiltration time at all anymore, whether they allow you to start in concealment or not. This is ridiculous at the moment. The 2-3 days one usually gets to infiltrate a supply raid are neither a meaningful fatigue restriction nor do they change mission difficulty in any significant way. The raids should be instantaneous and have a fixed number of enemies proportional to a squad of 10.

Enforcing intended soldier numbers for a mission
There should be more stipulations regarding soldier numbers. Some missions would give you a strict maximum in the squad selection screen, others punish you for not bringing the intended number by making inflitration time and Advent forces stay the same regardless of you bringing fewer people.

More emphasis on Mission types
Being - theoretically - able to bring 8 people on a stealth run is sort of cute, but you cannot win the mission like this. The same goes for supply raids with less than 10 people, to a lesser degree. So there should be more restrictions based on mission types.

1-3 stealth
Maximum of three soldier slots, very low number of days to infiltrate.
The current stealth missions fit the bill.

3-5 stealth combat
Maximum of five soldier slots
Low to medium number of days to infiltrate
  • Objectives similar to stealth missions, but usually require you to fight at the end.
    - Hack/Recover item that cannot be gremlined and is located in a guarded place where you cannot yellow-move to the extraction zone.
    - Destroy a relay in a non-snipable position
    - Free prisoners from a guarded room
    - Abduct, not kill, a dark VIP
5-7 skirmish combat
Maximum of seven soldier slots, but #6 costs you some and #7 significant extra infiltration time.
Either instantaneous mission types with high risk or high infiltration time mission types, both with a bigger reward.
  • - Destroy the statue (increases vigilance, but make it more worthwhile. Recruitment bonus of some kind due to public display of power)
    - Troop column ambush
    - Ambush outpost / storehouse. Kill all enemies and place explosives (Like destroy the statue but with a turn timer - *only* after it passes reinforcements arrive. You get no corpses, but lower Advent strength or gain supplies respectively)
    - Mini Retaliations (these could be changed to be more in line with smaller squadsizes)
    - Kill an extra tough captain / alien and his entire entourage
8-10 raid
Maximum of 10 soldiers. Usually no infiltration time at all and a fixed number of enemies.
  • - Retaliations
    - Supply raids
    - Kill a super tough general / giant alien and his army
wobuffet
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by wobuffet »

To disincentivize large underinfiltrated squads, just punish < 100% infiltrated missions further.

If < 100% infiltrated,
x% infiltrated = (100–x)% of enemies spawned get +2 to forcelevel
70% infiltrated = 30% of enemies spawned get +2 to forcelevel
50% infiltrated = 50% of enemies spawned get +2 to forcelevel
0% infiltrated = 100% of enemies spawned get +2 to forcelevel. Good luck.
Undershaft wrote:Enforcing intended soldier numbers for a mission
There should be more stipulations regarding soldier numbers. Some missions would give you a strict maximum in the squad selection screen, others punish you for not bringing the intended number by making inflitration time and Advent forces stay the same regardless of you bringing fewer people. [/list]
Yep, just enforce some hard caps on some missions. If you're going to invest 6 troops anyway, you'll want to kill.

Or perhaps bringing 1 more soldier increases extract time (as it does now) but also increases the mission timer (ADVENT needs more time to brief/ready troops to combat a larger squad). So solo stealthing a hack mission is fine, but much more prone to failure because you just won't have enough time.

Also, scale XP from kills by mission type. For example,
  • If it's a stealth mission, kills earn 0 experience.
  • If it's a troop column/supply raid, kills earn 75% experience (corpses are reward enough).
  • If it's a jailbreak, kills earn 150% as much experience as they do now.
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