Continent bonuses: which are underpowered?

[wobuffet]

+5 Power is pretty poor compared to the others, at least IMO.

[Louis Cyphre]

The one that makes Rookies cost nothing is weak as well.
How many Rookies do you recruit per campaign? 10-20? So the continent bonus only saves you 100-200 supplies.

[trihero]

The OP "me want these every time" ones are spare parts (-33% proving ground project costs, this applies to the item requirement as well as the resource cost so it drops the weapon addons from requiring 3 down to 2, which is MASSIVE) and armed to the teeth (+1 weapon slot). You'd think 3 slots baseline on everything is enough, but it really isn't. Just about everyone and their mother requires a better magazine size + reload clip, then a third slot helps their offense in the way that makes sense (hair trigger vs scope vs stock vs laser sight), and you'd still want a suppressor after that.

I also happen to like the lab research one (-10% research time).

Everything else is mushy/meh to me.

Btw: is there a place in the LW2 ini files to specify which continent bonuses you want? I have some other mod that can do that with vanilla but I'm afraid of how it might interact with LW2, especially since LW2 adds new continent bonuses like "Wired In."

[marceror]

I got the 20% boost to supply drops on my starting continent, and wasn't exactly crying about the early influx of additional funds.

[GavinRuneblade]

The one that makes Rookies cost nothing is weak as well.
How many Rookies do you recruit per campaign? 10-20? So the continent bonus only saves you 100-200 supplies.

>.>

<.<

I recruit a lot more than that. Heh. But then I also deliberately play reckless and get my peeps killed off because it feels more like xcom when they die

[Zerikin]

Bonus power and free rookies both seem pretty awful. Don't remember what the rest are.

[Zyxpsilon]

Gee... all i'd like to add to this thread is ..
LAByrinth!
(( https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... =726644031 ))

I devised a specific article about Continent Bonuses which mostly still apply.. but, i've since changed my mind about "Hidden Reverves".

Once i started to aim for a single Power-Relay (on Coils) strategy & putting Shadow-Chamber on the other.
IF you have it in your startup continent (with 2 regions are the very best kinda luck), your earlier key facilities are activated MUCH more rapidly (GTS+AWC+COMM)... and you're off to the races.

OP; Armed to the Teeth & All-In ... and now with LW2 == Spare-Parts & Under The Table ... No contest!

[nightwyrm]

The one that makes Rookies cost nothing is weak as well.
How many Rookies do you recruit per campaign? 10-20? So the continent bonus only saves you 100-200 supplies.

>.>

<.<

I recruit a lot more than that. Heh. But then I also deliberately play reckless and get my peeps killed off because it feels more like xcom when they die

I have like 50 soldiers in my roster so I can infiltrate multiple HQ/Blacksites at the same time....

[trihero]

What difficulty? o.O

According to ironman/legendary writeup they only have enough to outfit one good team at a time due to turnover and resource costs.

[Arcalane]

Btw: is there a place in the LW2 ini files to specify which continent bonuses you want? I have some other mod that can do that with vanilla but I'm afraid of how it might interact with LW2, especially since LW2 adds new continent bonuses like "Wired In."

As far as I can see, no. There isn't even a place in the vanilla files!

You might be able to tweak your mod's config files to add the the new bonus - it's just ContinentBonus_Wired. Not sure there are any other new bonuses in there.

[trihero]

Btw: is there a place in the LW2 ini files to specify which continent bonuses you want? I have some other mod that can do that with vanilla but I'm afraid of how it might interact with LW2, especially since LW2 adds new continent bonuses like "Wired In."

As far as I can see, no. There isn't even a place in the vanilla files!

You might be able to tweak your mod's config files to add the the new bonus - it's just ContinentBonus_Wired. Not sure there are any other new bonuses in there.

I might just try to use the mod I've used in the past (choose continent bonus) where you set up a vector in the config file of the bonuses you want. I don't want the variance of not having armed to the teeth, even as hard as they tried to smooth it out by giving everything baseline 3 slots, that 4th slot seems quite impactful to me since it allows you to conveniently put in a suppressor without compromising offensive output. My ranger's already stuffed at hair trigger/laser sight/magazine/reload on a plasma rifle which seems to come with 4 slots, having a 5th slot would mean a suppressor makes it in

[nightwyrm]

What difficulty? o.O

According to ironman/legendary writeup they only have enough to outfit one good team at a time due to turnover and resource costs.

I'm at Vet. I'm not a masochist.

[Arcalane]

I might just try to use the mod I've used in the past (choose continent bonus) where you set up a vector in the config file of the bonuses you want. I don't want the variance of not having armed to the teeth, even as hard as they tried to smooth it out by giving everything baseline 3 slots, that 4th slot seems quite impactful to me since it allows you to conveniently put in a suppressor without compromising offensive output. My ranger's already stuffed at hair trigger/laser sight/magazine/reload on a plasma rifle which seems to come with 4 slots, having a 5th slot would mean a suppressor makes it in

That's terrifying. And probably a typo.

I can confirm it seems to be the case in my copy as well though!

[GavinRuneblade]

What difficulty? o.O

According to ironman/legendary writeup they only have enough to outfit one good team at a time due to turnover and resource costs.

I had been on vet but didn't like the pressure of trying for flawless victories and keeping my guys alive. So I backed down to rookie specifically so I could afford to have my soldiers die.

Thanks to practice and better advice from the forum and Reddit I'll probably be able to step back up to veteran on my next campaign and still be a reckless loonie.

[Mooncabbage]

I initially thought that the Oceanic free rookies would be a great perk, but by the time I got there I had paid for maybe 3-4 rookies. They are so cheap to hire in terms of supplies, it's pointless. Also, a lot of Jailbreak missions spawn with 2 rookies anyway! Granted I'm far enough into my campaign to have 2 tech sergeant rank troops now, but I just did 3 separate jailbreak missions, and got enough rookies to start a whole new squad! Combined with the fact that I have almost no Resistance peeps set to Recruit, preferring supplies and intel, and it's just absolutely worthless.

Ofcourse it's worth noting that some continents cost more than others. South America, with 2 regions and one tower, is particularly cheap for the benefit it gives.

Perhaps the region with bonus power should be adapted to reduce power costs, or give an increase in power generation? +5 per Reactor, or a 20% reduction in power usage, seems like it might be more balanced.

I have no idea how you might fix Australia though. Half price recruiting from the black market maybe? I basically never use that either.

[Manifest]

You'd think 3 slots baseline on everything is enough, but it really isn't.

Yeah, having to equip suppressors over vanilla basically means it's a slot less than you think.

[Jacke]

Once i started to aim for a single Power-Relay (on Coils) strategy & putting Shadow-Chamber on the other.

Digging through the LW2 INI files, the highest power consumptions in LW2 are for the upgraded Shadow Chamber (needs 14) and the max upgraded Laborartory (needs 9). so they should be on the Power Coils. If you have a 3rd Coil, it should get upgraded Resistance Comms (needs 7) or a Power Relay (boosts output by 7).

I use the mod Commander's OCD to force the minimum 2 Power Coil's to the left end spaces on the 3rd and 4th floor (and the empty space on the right end of the 1st floor). That way I can locate the Lab and the SC on them without taking out a gremlin spot for the planned location of the Workshop in the centre space on 2nd floor.

[Sines]

Hidden Reserves is a really hit or miss one. If you get it early on, you can significantly delay building a power coil, and get yourself an early Comms Station or Proving Grounds (I think AWC + GTS is the best use of your starting power). It can also buy you a bit more time before you have to start committing engineers to power duty, allowing you to dig out the rest of the Avenger faster. However, if you don't get it very early on... it's underwhelming.

It's still better than the free Rookies one, though. I don't find myself buying all that many rookies, and if you don't plan on going for Psionics, you have even fewer reasons. Contrast with another Supplies continent bonus, the one where you get more money from the Black Market. You get a 20% boost. I'm not sure how much Rookies cost on other difficulties, but on Veteran, they cost $10. That bonus would give me a 'free rookie' every time I sold $50 supplies to the black market. Unless you rarely sell things to the BM, and you churn through a lot of rookies (you monster) you'll probably never be better off with free rookies than the improved black market selling prices.

Most of the other bonuses are okay (except the ones that are obviously awesome). Better buying rates from the Black Market doesn't impress me all that much, as I never really feel any great need to purchase from them. In particular, the Black Market is most useful early game when you want to pick up some extra alloys, scientists or engineers. After that, I find I'm doing mostly fine, and Black Market purchases are just for the occasional particularly valuable PCS or Mod. As a first continent bonus, it's probably really good to get yourself some Engineers and Scientists, but that's about it.

[Zyxpsilon]

Something else to consider when trying to estimate best CB qualities or worst flaws.

No matter how lucky you are with your starting region, the most valuable time to obtain more than one bonus is within the first three to five months at most.

The most obvious way to point at that factor is to evaluate a New-Chile/or/Brazil start. Oceania & Europe are only two or three new regions away from any of these South-America spots.
COMM developping is edgy and you'll have to put-up TWO new radio relays to obtain the second & third CB.

Then whatever else happens to be anywhere is most probably too late in gameplay coverage terms to be of relative worthy use. For example, if All-In is in Asia and you are far away to connect all four regions (with a second COMM) including required two Relays... all of that Supply 20%+ amounts has already been spent by you! Sadly, it's a Null-Null ratio in that case.

And since there are a maximum of six CB and a variety of inter-Links can fall off the cracks to prevent rapid expansion into your neighboring potential... what you honestly want is some pure LUCK of the draw for your first activated TRIO.

PS; This thread should be moved to "Strategy" i guess.

[Tuhalu]

Here's all the continent bonuses I'm aware of so far. Let me know if I missed any (for instance, do Suit Up and Fire When Ready still exist in LW2?).

• All In: 20% more supplies from supply jobs
• Spy Ring: 15% more intel (reads as including both Intel jobs and Intel from mission rewards)
• Future Combat: 50% off cost of GTS projects
• Pursuit of Knowledge: 10% less research time
• To Serve Mankind: 0 cost for new recruits
• Hidden Reserves: 5 extra power in Avenger
• Quid Pro Quo: 20% less supply costs to buy in Black Market
• Under the Table: 20% more supply for selling on Black Market
• Spare Parts: 33% reduction in all costs for proving grounds projects
• Wired: PCS can be replaced without being destroyed.
• Armed to the Teeth: +1 weapon slot.

IMO, in order of strength they are:

1. Armed to the Teeth. Aside from the early game when you are struggling to get more mods, when would this ever be undesirable?
2. All in. So much extra cash over the course of the game. Doesn't lose too much value to pick it up after 3 months.
3. Under the Table. May be stronger than All In if you are successfully farming the corpse dropping missions, especially if you get them Very Interested in Advent Trooper Corpse.
4. Spare Parts. So much easier and cheaper to unlock projects.
5. Spy Ring. Pretty great since you can pump infiltration on more missions or spread to more regions more quickly.
6. Future Combat. Best if gotten in the early game, drops way down if you can't.
7. Pursuit of Knowledge. Basically an extra Scientist that can only be used for pure research. Once you get Laboratories started, worth even less.
8. Quid Pro Quo. maybe you have some black market buying strategy that will pay itself off compared to the cost of a Radio Tower and the lost opportunity on a better supply bonus, but seems weak to me so far.
9. Hidden Reserves. Worth 1 or 2 POIs that give extra Avenger Power, not super useful in the long run.
10. Wired. Slightly useful if you get it super early, but otherwise not that useful.
11. To Serve Mankind. So terrible for the reasons others have mentioned. Even if you pick up 20-30 recruits over the length of the game, it doesn't compare to the bonuses that just give you money to spend how you like.

[JoeShmo]

Pretty disappointed with the selection of bonuses.

I mean..what happened between LW1_15 and LW2_1 ? In original LW ...you had dozens of options between starting picks for bonuses on campaign start, as well as captureable bonuses for continent coverage.

LW2 gives less than a dozen? And generally speaking....all but 3 of them are junk.
I just don't get that. It's a huge let down.

No +Aim
No +dmg
No quicker "foundry" project
No instant autopsies
No start with some higher ranked soldiers
No unit incentives
Nothing

Don't even get me started on the gutted "Second Wave" options.
I don't see how they spent any time on configurable campaigns, they couldn't even provide the base minimum from beforehand.
And they have a TON of new material to attach things to in LW2. Wasted potential.

[Zyrrashijn]

instant autopsies is actually among the possible continent bonuses. As for starting bonuses, there are none, and you can't pick your starting country. So what?

[Arcalane]

Quid Pro Quo. maybe you have some black market buying strategy that will pay itself off compared to the cost of a Radio Tower and the lost opportunity on a better supply bonus, but seems weak to me so far.

Even with RM's mod for increased supply opportunities from missions and the standard LW2 option to render corpses, I find myself hurting for alloys and elerium dust. Knocking a bit off the BM prices for those isn't a bad thing.

Plus it makes getting other stuff from there cheaper. It doesn't take them very long at all to start offering top-tier PCS and weapon mods. Being able to buy More Stuff is never a bad thing, even if supplies are relatively easy to come by in the first place.

Otherwise I'd say you're about on the money. Spy Ring is definitely pretty good since Intel is now a much bigger factor in LW2.

[The Boz]

instant autopsies is actually among the possible continent bonuses. As for starting bonuses, there are none, and you can't pick your starting country. So what?

Does instant autopsies include rendering?

[GavinRuneblade]

With "all in" does that change how fast you exhaust a territory, or increase the 2000-2500 supplies available?

In other words, is it really more supplies or just faster?