Recovering from loss

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Sir_Dr_D
Posts: 84
Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2017 2:28 am

Recovering from loss

Post by Sir_Dr_D »

The most fun missions of all are the ones where you are badly outnumbered, but complete the object and then barely get out with all your soldiers alive, if badly wounded or unconscious. Like in a destroy the relay mission, where you sneak your 5 man squad to the objective, but then suddenly have every pod on the map down on you when you break concealment, and must hold the overwhelming horde off for 4 turns as you wait for Firebrand. There is so much excitement and adrenalin. and that is when lw2 is at its finest.

Now of course just using a 2 man stealth squad might make it easier. But let me say this.

Pure stealth squads are for wimps. :o 8-)

taking the max soldiers you can get away with and have 100% infilitration is the way to get the most out of the game.

But it does seem to cause a downward spiral. Most of that squad will be in the hospital bed for a month. Which means you are understaffed for later missions, which caused more loss, etc. In general lw2 is less forgiving then lw1 when it comes to recovering from loss. If you get a squad wipe, it is probably game over, even if it doesn't seem that way at first. it is the reason people need to resort to stealth. There is no room for risk. But I like the risk. The risk is for me what makes the game fun. Where your soldiers are always in danger and you never know what shot could connect. And you use tactics to keep finding ways to get out of tense situations. We should be able to lose half our force, but still find ways to recover. It is a war. It is what makes the most sense story wise. If you dominate or cheese your way through every encounter, it makes the game boring. At least for me. But currently it doesn't seem possible.

There should be ways to recover from loss. But There are 2 problems:
1) It is too hard to train up new troops.
2) resources for equipment are so scarce, if you lose your equipment you are in bad shape.

Here are some suggestions:
1) If research cost more resources and individual items cost less then we are able to buy into the technology, but can more easily reproduce once we are in. That matches real life. It is always producing that first laser that is the most expensive. Then you have your factory and equipment and it is easier after that. The balance will need to be right. We still want individual items costly enough that we want to carry a dead solider to the evac zone, but not so much that it is too hard too recover from the loss.

2) Have upgrades that allows the GTS to promote more then rookies to squaddies. With investments we can promote soldiers up higher ranks.. Maybe to a max of 2 levels behind the highest level character.

3) We all see those tv screens around the city that show the Xcom soldiers. It must make it harder for extremely wanted high ranking soldiers from doing infiltrations. What might make things easier is if they were able to take some less known soldiers along. In short have some sort of infiltration bonus in place for lower level soldiers. Every level difference between the soldier and the commanding officer of the mission, should provide more of a bonus. As things are right now, taking along lower levels is just deadly, as you need every high level that you can get. This will at least allow for bigger squads when you use lower levels to help even things out.

4) Always have some missions available that are suited to lower level soldiers. If you do missions in a new haven in an area where Advent has no reason at all to suspect XCOM actively, the aliens should be less dangerous. The aliens have been there for 20 years. So why do we see no Vipers at the beginning, but as the game progresses there is more and more of them. Why weren't they there all along? If they start showing up as a response to XCOM, why are they everywhere and not just in areas where they expect XCOM activity? Anyway, Advent strength should say something about the level of the soldiers needed. If you go back to strength 1, you should be able to use lower level characters there. Losing a power squad, should just set you back. You then have to go back to another area where things are easier, and train up lower levels again. Some missions where you need a power squad, and others where it seems okay to send lower levels will just make the game more interesting.

Of the above I would really like to see #3 the most. #4 would allow for where aliens appear to start making story sense.

I want a tense dynamic game. Recovering from loss better is necessary for that.
dstar3k
Posts: 91
Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2017 4:11 am

Re: Recovering from loss

Post by dstar3k »

Sir_Dr_D wrote:But it does seem to cause a downward spiral. Most of that squad will be in the hospital bed for a month. Which means you are understaffed for later missions, which caused more loss, etc. In general lw2 is less forgiving then lw1 when it comes to recovering from loss. If you get a squad wipe, it is probably game over, even if it doesn't seem that way at first. it is the reason people need to resort to stealth.
"I refuse to use one of the major mechanics of the game, and the game is too hard! WAAAAA!"

Okay, maybe that's a bit much... but as someone who plays on rookie and save-scums (with the caveat that I _don't loose anyone_, meaning that honestly it might be more difficult for me than for normal players a couple notches higher... missions commonly take a couple of hours for me as I try to find the way to succeed), I have no sympathy for you. If you don't want stealth to be a major factor, then LW2 isn't for you.

Shalon Wood
aimlessgun
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Joined: Tue Feb 07, 2017 2:22 am

Re: Recovering from loss

Post by aimlessgun »

Sir_Dr_D wrote: 4) Always have some missions available that are suited to lower level soldiers.
I like this because it serves a double purpose. One you can train up low ranks. Secondly, you can send your high ranks and have fun just rolling over Advent. With LW2 flat difficulty curve (which I really like) it's sometimes hard to feel that your soldiers are getting stronger, so this can be a way of reminding the player how far they've come.
Solomani
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Joined: Sat Feb 04, 2017 2:52 pm

Re: Recovering from loss

Post by Solomani »

Or be able to recruit more than rookies from the recruitment list. Might be nice to find a few more veterans for recruitment.

If you lose a squad, you can sort of recover buying veterans from the black market. If you lose a squad of your best, yea it is really hard and you'll need some luck of not having the doom clock counting days shortly after.
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Devon_v
Long War EU Crew
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Re: Recovering from loss

Post by Devon_v »

My approach has been not to train a "best" squad. Sure, when there's something important to do, I may throw all the best together to tackle it, but I try to maintain four functioning squads who are all "good". Got some new blood? Have them tag along with a veteran squad whenever the mission allows for it. They don't have to do anything but not die.

Certain missions are best tackled with stealth. Hacking is too easy to do with a two man team (and hey, there's room for a rookie to absorb that third cut of XP) to waste a larger squad on it when you need those guys for more important stuff. ADVENT eventually somewhat gets their stuff together and occasionally actually guards the important things they're supposed to protect, so having some combat capacity is good.

VIP extracts suck. There's just no reason not to cheese them, as they still play exactly the same as vanilla, but you have to fight through Long War enemies to reach the immobile evac volume or you auto-squadwipe. There's no reason to ever send an actual squad on these.

Funny thing is the last hacking mission I did I actually sent a six man squad on because I was concerned about escalating pod sizes and pods actually defending the scoring zones, and the whole damn squad stealthed the mission. Including two turns standing around out of concealment waiting for the evac flare to pop. :)
Jackal
Posts: 147
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 2:10 pm

Re: Recovering from loss

Post by Jackal »

Devon_v wrote: VIP extracts suck. There's just no reason not to cheese them, as they still play exactly the same as vanilla, but you have to fight through Long War enemies to reach the immobile evac volume or you auto-squadwipe. There's no reason to ever send an actual squad on these.

Funny thing is the last hacking mission I did I actually sent a six man squad on because I was concerned about escalating pod sizes and pods actually defending the scoring zones, and the whole damn squad stealthed the mission. Including two turns standing around out of concealment waiting for the evac flare to pop. :)

so, VIP extracts? You don't send an actual squad, what do you do? You aren't in conceal?


Hack Mission how did you stand around after coming out of concealment once you popped the evac flare... ?
justdont
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Re: Recovering from loss

Post by justdont »

Jackal wrote:so, VIP extracts? You don't send an actual squad, what do you do? You aren't in conceal?
Cheesing it out via officer Shinobi with Oscar Mike is usually a way to go. Advance a little until your civve activates a pod (on aliens turn, of course), then just oscar mike + command him to run the remaining distance (3 actions + mobility boost cover huge distance). Then get your concealed Shinobi out.
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Devon_v
Long War EU Crew
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Re: Recovering from loss

Post by Devon_v »

Jackal wrote: so, VIP extracts? You don't send an actual squad, what do you do? You aren't in conceal?


Hack Mission how did you stand around after coming out of concealment once you popped the evac flare... ?
Troops with Phantom are always concealed to start. If the only people on the mission have Phantom, you have a full concealed start. The VIP will be visible, but you scout around and see where the enemies are so you can move them without drawing line of sight to any pod. Early on this is all you need to do. Later you need the Shinobi to be an officer at least, and eventually you need Oscar Mike as well to get the VIP out passed all the pods. Since the Shinobi never leaves concealment, you shouldn't ever lose them unless the AI cheats. Which it does sometimes.


As for the hack, nothing saw them. I know for a fact there was a pod of snakes right on the other side of the building, but they chose not to come over and see what the network alarm was about, or what that blue flare signified. I did watch the patrols and wait for the MECs to go away before sending the GREMLIN in, and I made sure everyone was standing where the roof turret couldn't see them.
Jacke
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Re: Recovering from loss

Post by Jacke »

Devon_v wrote:Troops with Phantom are always concealed to start. If the only people on the mission have Phantom, you have a full concealed start. The VIP will be visible, but you scout around and see where the enemies are so you can move them without drawing line of sight to any pod. Early on this is all you need to do. Later you need the Shinobi to be an officer at least, and eventually you need Oscar Mike as well to get the VIP out passed all the pods. Since the Shinobi never leaves concealment, you shouldn't ever lose them unless the AI cheats. Which it does sometimes.
Having mods that show enemy LOS and where an unconcealed VIP or troop will activate a pod spotted by a concealed soldier really help here. Gotcha Again, LOS Preview Ability, and Pod Activation Preview are great for this and figuring out other LOS issues.
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