Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Jadiel
Posts: 214
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2017 9:28 am

Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by Jadiel »

My current game is reaching the point where I’m so far ahead of the aliens that I feel like I’m in victory lap mode, and finishing Golden Path missions is a formality. I should probably go ahead and finish the game, but the temptation to restart is rising (and I always like to start fresh when a patch is released), so here’s feedback from this playthrough.

Difficulty: Legendary
Ironman: No - I don't save scum, although I do restart missions occasionally (maybe 5% of the time?) and I reload misclicks and cases where the game seems buggy (e.g. LoS)
LW version: 1.1
Dead Soldiers: 7 (mostly low rank - I don't think I lost anyone valuable on this playthrough)
Mods: Overwatch/Evac All
Options: Graze band = 10%, no Red Fog, no .ini edits

The biggest difference between this playthrough and the last one was that I set myself a house-rule of not going on any missions at less than 50% infiltration. This meant there were far fewer Supply Raids than before, and that the economy felt a lot more balanced. I focused a lot more on liberating regions (and protecting them from invasion), and they became my main source of resources.

General Feedback

I enjoyed playing the game this way a lot more than the numerous 10-man supply raid/troop column of my previous campaign. I’d both recommend other players try a game like this if you haven’t done so already, and I’d also tentatively suggest that the devs try and tweak the gameplay so that there are fewer incentives to take 10 men to every corpse collecting mission that pops.

Campaign timeline

I went for a mag rush this time, and found it to be very strong. I got basic Mag weapons online on the 4th May, and then Advanced a couple of weeks later. April was tricky, and I leaned heavily on Needle Grenadiers and Technicals (with a particularly dicey Troop Ambush at the end of April). I had already unlocked the network tower in my starting region, and had done 2/3 lib missions in another region. I sent a team in with shiny new Mag weapons to take one tower, and then the other, and had another 8-man team ready to take the HQ as soon as Adv Mag was done. The campaign proceeded as follows:

Predator armor unlocked: May 28th
1st region liberated: May 31st
2nd region liberated: June 12th
3rd region liberated: July 4th
Basic Coil: July 10th
Adv Coil: July 23rd
4th region liberated: July 30th
Warden Armor: August 2nd

Mission mix

I enjoyed the mission mix a lot more with my 50%+ rule. HQ Assaults are big-stakes ‘bring 8+ soldiers’ missions, with strong upsides for winning, but they don’t happen all the time and the occasional ‘sit in the corner and take what the aliens bring you’ mission is fun. The decisions to bring 8, 9 or 10 soldiers is also interesting, because of the huge effect on infiltration timers. I didn’t miss the supply raids at all (I think I did one in my whole campaign in July, as that was the only one I ever got where I had enough time to infiltrate 7 guys). My regions were bringing in $1000/month from July onwards, so with Elerium purchases from the Black Market, it felt like the resources were much better balanced, with never having enough for everything I wanted, but always having enough for everything I needed.

LW2 needs more 6 man missions, and missions with relevant reinforcements

I had a lot of fun 6-7 man troop ambushes (and I really enjoy Network Tower missions), but I do feel that LW2 needs more missions aimed at that size. I would like to see more missions which encourage aggressive play though (rather than turns of waiting for pods to patrol into your OW wall) – one mission type I found particularly engaging was Intel mini-retals (I have almost all my rebels on intel outside of liberated regions). The mission really incentivises you to move towards the objective, and there are interesting strategic decisions where you often end up with both aliens and xcom caught between enemies on both sides of them. On other missions, reinforcements ought to achieve this, but they don’t really, as in my experience they are very rarely seen (outside of Haven Defence missions). My missions are either stealth (in which case I’m usually evaccing the turn I activate the first pod, so no reinforcements) or Materiel missions with no reinforcements (Ambushes, HQs, that one supply raid, UFO missions).

Sabotage the Monument could fill this gap (especially as part of the liberation chain) with good rewards

I actually think the mission type which is missing is already in the game, but no-one ever does it: Sabotage the monument. There you can’t sit in a corner and overwatch, because as soon as you break concealment you’re on a reinforcement timer. There’s no incentive to go in at 0%, because you don’t get to keep corpses, but it has the small squad combat that people feel is missing from the game. The problem is that the reward from doing it is not particularly desirable. It feels like it should really be part of the liberation chain, which would introduce some variety (at the moment, all three lib missions are stealth missions), and also make more sense? Sabotage feels like it ought to be lib1 (and signposted as such), followed by either a hack to find the right person to extract who can tell you about the Tower location, or the other way round. I’d also like to see the reward for it changed generally, as I think most people ignore ‘vigilance spike’ missions. We already have Dark VIP missions for that, and I really don’t think we need two types (early game play of sending a solo rookie in to fail the mission feels like it’s not really WAD anyway). You could have ‘interested parties’ contact the resistance offering cash/elerium/alloys for the sabotage, or give +contacts which fits thematically, or maybe extra rebels? I feel like any mission which both uses the Reinforcement mechanic and has a sweep objective (but doesn't give Materiel) would give the game more of the mid range tactical combat it feels like it's missing, and if you're planning to design another mission type after Smash and Grab, one of these would fit really well into the game.

Killing VIPs with suicide soldiers doesn't feel very epic

While I enjoy using rookies as meatshields (it gives me those OG XCOM feels), I didn't really enjoy suicide Dark VIP missions. The ones where you take a sniper and line up the shot from a nearby building to kill the lead scientist on the latest DE project before making your getaway feel awesome, but the ones where you grab a poorly statted squaddie assault and run and gun into the room before evaccing your shinobi and watching the assault die feel much less awesome. I don't really like having this in the lib chain (though I think it works well as a DE or vigilance spike mission), as in suicide mode it feels way too easy especially with Command Oscar Mike Run and Gun letting you charge to the VIP from miles away. I think these missions would be amazing if you had to capture the VIP, as that's really hard to do with stealth, and requires you to bring a combat squad. I'm pretty meh about Relay missions in the Lib chain (why does destroying the relay reveal the location of the Network tower again?)

Sniping at Relays also feels lame

Speaking of which, sniping at alien relays doesn't feel particularly epic either. While I find the AI deals much better with squadsight sniping than it did in LW1, and it doesn't feel like nearly as much of an 'I win' button, it doesn't deal well with relay sniping at all. The fix seems really obvious here (add a line to Squadsight saying it only works on enemies), but the technicalities may be much harder to implement. It's a shame, because relay missions are another great example of missions which should be 5/6 man combat, but at the moment don't fill that purpose.

The mission variety in LW2 is really good, it just needs a bit of tweaking

I really enjoy stealth missions, and I really really like the variety of missions LW2 throws at you (you can do a solo mission, a 6 man troop column, a 3 man mission then a HQ assault in quick succession). However, I do feel that the mission mix balance is slightly mistuned at the moment. Having said that, I think if you repurposed ‘Sabotage’ missions with a good reward and added Smash and Grab (as long as they don’t turn out to be more 2-3 man stealth missions), then that could put things in a good place.

I think the xp balance should be moved more toward kill xp and away from mission xp

Finally, the last thing that I think should be looked at again is the split between mission and kill xp. I love that you get a substantial proportion of your xp from completing the mission objective, and that completing the mission without killing anything feels like ‘I won’ not ‘I missed out on a lot of valuable XP and loot’. However, I think it’s currently tuned too far towards mission xp. At the moment, if there are soldiers I want to rank up, I send them as a ‘third wheel’ on stealth missions, rather than sending them on combat missions, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Moving more of the xp to kills would make stealth ops where you go loud feel less like failures, and incentivise you to kit your troops out for combat rather than going as stealthy as possible.

Class & Item Balance

The more I play the game, the more I find the classes are better balanced than I thought, and the more I appreciate the design of the current trees. So my feedback on class balance is pretty sparse.

OW Rangers take a long time to feel worth it

I think these guys just don’t fit my playstyle well. I rarely take Sapper on my Grenadiers, and even if I decided to use Demolition so that the Ranger can finish up, I rarely feel like I need both shots. I want to like these guys more though, so I’m going to experiment with using them more in my next playthrough. I think they would benefit from a buff to respec times. I understand that perk choices should be costly to change, but I think halving the AWC respec times would introduce a bit of flexibility without making perk choices meaningless.

Assault scale super hard, and are really cool

I really learned to love this class on this playthough. They are tricky to use, and charging forward and pulling 2 additional pods is definitely a thing, but these guys scale so hard, and do so much damage late game. I also experimented with training pistol skills on my Assault, and will definitely do it again.

Conceal feels a bit too game-breaking

I haven’t got any experience with sword-spec Shinobis, so I’ll just talk about Stealth specced ones. They fit their role well, they make great scouts on combat missions. I think their tree is fine with one exception: Conceal. This perk is so strong, it trivialises a lot of stealth missions late game. I stop taking specialists on Hacking missions, because it’s easier and less-risky to do it with Shinobi duos. Part of me just wants to see the perk removed from the game, or if it stays in it should really move to MSGT (maybe instead of rapid fire?) There isn’t really a good stealth perk at MSGT at the moment, and its power level is definitely appropriate. I’m not sure what you’d put in its place. With current perks, Sprinter would work well, and would be competitive. If there’s a possibility of a new perk, maybe a perk which increases Hack skill would be nice? It would be a nice perk to put on the AWC (although not available to the Specialist) so that those people who can’t stand going on a mission without getting the hack rewards don’t feel they need to take a Specialist every time.

Mag tier weapons don't need buffs!

I really like the lasers vs. mag choice which exists at the beginning of the game, and the fact that there are players who swear that their approach is the best on both sides is a good sign. I’ve found mag rush to be very strong, as the power spike in May/June is huge when you’re liberating your first couple of regions. I know some have been calling for mag buffs, but the mag tier *really* doesn’t need any buffs.

Core upgrades dominate all other choices for research paths

At the moment it feels to me that unlike LW1, core upgrades (weapons and armor) dominate all other choices (autopsies, etc). None of the autopsies provide items which feel necessary, and the damage and survivability upgrades make such a huge difference to your effectiveness in the tactical layer. I’d like to see more incentives to research different ammo (ap and tracer rounds are both strong enough that other ammo types just don’t feel worth it), and I think you could buff defensive items also (ablative/+hp items). You could balance this by buffing lvl2 and 3 aliens, or nerfing higher level armor. I just feel like rushing to coil/warden is always the best choice at the moment, and I’d like to see more variety in research paths.
LeaderEnemyBoss
Posts: 106
Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2017 5:27 pm

Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by LeaderEnemyBoss »

Thanks for this. After several restarts i finally learned how to abuse supply raids and in conjunction with manipuilating the black market so that it usually wants one of my big corpse piles this more or less breaks the game on legend. While there are still challenging missions (a 0% supply raid in a strength 8 region with a b squad was a bit much even when outteching the AI, 4 active pods will eventually overwhelm you ^^) The campaign itself feels very relaxed.

Your comment on intel mini retals is spot on. These missions are kinda fun in how different they are. The same goes for the supply mini retals. Thing is: The way the game is designed most people will never see supply mini retals. Its the "meaningful reinforcments" mission you have been looking for (you have to defend a supply convoy from waves of reinforcements). Additionally the "rapid reinforcements" dark event makes sneaking on top of the objective even more important, as you cant fight missions the normal way anymore at all (reinforcements will just overwhelm you). I've seen one supply mini retal in my three campaigns. Also I never saw a recruit mini retal, how does that play out?

As for Main Weapon/Armor Tech vs. other stuff: I think if psi operatives get a bit help, rushing psi may be a viable alternative depending on how lucky you are with scientists. As of now we have three early game choices: rush laser, mag or exo. This is already quite good. I would also mention, that the muton autopsy is probably one of the few that is worth considering between your main upgrade techs.

Here is a suggestion, how autopsies could be buffed to provide a worthwhile alternative techpath:
- remove armor piercing/ tracer rounds as default items (maybe replace with one of the weaker alternatives), lock them behind mid or lategame autopsies (they are generally considered the most effective ammunitions for most cases)
- bring back the randomized ammo/vest creation system of vanilla
- doing autopsies adds their respective ammo/vest to the pool that can be constructed and also provides one ammo/vest piece for free
- ammo/vest projects should no longer require elerium cores, how can these minor upgrades cost cores, when armor and weapons cost none?
- possibly also necessary: reduce autopsy times, reduce proving ground costs, increase weapon/armor tech cost and duration

The goal is to make ammo/vests a cheap, easily researchable but somewhat specialized and randomized damage/protection upgrade - as opposed to the more expensive but "non randomized" way of upgrading your weapon/armor tier. In general making a proving grounds rush a competitive upgrade path would be a good idea i think.
Last edited by LeaderEnemyBoss on Wed Mar 01, 2017 12:34 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Saph7
Long War 2 Crew
Posts: 167
Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2017 4:00 pm

Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by Saph7 »

Good post! Matches my experience on a lot of points.

I think there are two reasons that weapons/armour tech dominates so hard:

1) They're the most efficient in terms of 'bang for your buck'. If I do a Stun Lancer autopsy, I get an upgraded sword for my Shinobi; that boosts one of the attack modes out of 1 of the 8 classes. If I get Combat Armour, I get Predator Armour, which boosts armour and HP for all of my classes. It's a no-brainer as to which is going to make more difference.
2) A lot of the side techs give you extra utility items like ammo or consumables. But AP rounds and Flashbangs are already as good or better than than 80-90% of the other choices, and one's free and the other's so cheap it might as well be. So you can easily win the game without researching any other utility items at all.

Regarding Sabotage the Monument, I think the problem is that it's a 'win more' mission. Most of the time you don't want to do it because you need the rewards from other missions, and doing a sabotage shuts off all those tasty low-vigilance ops like High Value Prisoner. In theory you could use it to draw in Supply Raids, but if you're focusing on a region that much then its vigilance is probably high already. As far as I can see the biggest reason to do it is to slow global Avatar progress, but if you're doing well enough late game that you aren't afraid of spiking vigilance in one of your preferred regions, you're probably going to win anyway.
justdont
Posts: 113
Joined: Wed Feb 15, 2017 2:36 pm

Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by justdont »

Great post, it matches with my own experiences quite a lot.
Saph7 wrote:In theory you could use it to draw in Supply Raids, but if you're focusing on a region that much then its vigilance is probably high already.
This is about the only time when I consider doing those - just past very early game, where Supply Raids are already doable with reasonable safety (whether you go for 0% ones or infiltrate) but usually aren't very common. During this very short period of time, doing propaganda missions is usually advantageous, especially if it's in a region outside of your immediate liberation plans.

Later, there are so much supply raids anyway, so baiting aliens to do more isn't needed at all.
Last edited by justdont on Wed Mar 01, 2017 12:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
cerebrawl
Posts: 137
Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2017 10:41 am

Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by cerebrawl »

LeaderEnemyBoss wrote: I've seen one supply mini retal in my three campaigns. Also I never saw a recruit mini retal, how does that play out?
I think recruit mini retal is the one with enemies on yellow alert (already on map, not reinforcement waves) and a bunch of faceless.

IE: The most whined about mission, the one many call a forced loss, and you can start under fire, before you're even given your first turn.
SouthpawHare
Posts: 73
Joined: Sun Feb 19, 2017 6:34 am

Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by SouthpawHare »

Saph7 wrote:Good post! Matches my experience on a lot of points.

1) They're the most efficient in terms of 'bang for your buck'. If I do a Stun Lancer autopsy, I get an upgraded sword for my Shinobi; that boosts one of the attack modes out of 1 of the 8 classes. If I get Combat Armour, I get Predator Armour, which boosts armour and HP for all of my classes. It's a no-brainer as to which is going to make more difference.
I think this has really always been the case, even in the vanilla game, and the original devs knew it: in the final game stats on the Victory/Defeat screen, "Days to Mag Weapons / Plasma Weapons / Plated Armor / Powered Armor" are some of the stats shown among relatively few, emphasizing their importance. And there's really nothing wrong with them being critical milestones of the tech in the game, I think - balance does not imply that all techs must be equally powerful, just that their relative power levels are interesting.
gimrah
Long War 2 Crew
Posts: 422
Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2016 12:25 pm

Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by gimrah »

Weapons and armour are the most effective research but only if you have the resources to a) do the research and b) build the stuff after. If you smooth out economy by addressing supply raids, and boost corpse items such as ammos (maybe make them cheaper?), that should address that issue.
LordYanaek
Posts: 940
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:34 pm

Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by LordYanaek »

Thanks Jadiel for this detailed feedback.
Jadiel wrote: I enjoyed playing the game this way a lot more than the numerous 10-man supply raid/troop column of my previous campaign. I’d both recommend other players try a game like this if you haven’t done so already, and I’d also tentatively suggest that the devs try and tweak the gameplay so that there are fewer incentives to take 10 men to every corpse collecting mission that pops.
I think they heard the complains. Finding the right way to implement this is harder. Simply forcing 50% infiltration without changing mission detection means you'll do almost no supply raids as you noticed which is not necessarily a good thing as they are also very useful to defend you liberated regions.
Predator armor unlocked: May 28th
1st region liberated: May 31st
2nd region liberated: June 12th
3rd region liberated: July 4th
Basic Coil: July 10th
Adv Coil: July 23rd
4th region liberated: July 30th
Warden Armor: August 2nd
Nice timing. I'm particularly impressed by those July coils :o I got mine early September and didn't research a lot of datapads or useless autopsies. How many scientists did you gain/purchase and how early? Did you have an early elerium coil for the lab? (both of mine were on 4th floor)
I didn’t miss the supply raids at all (I think I did one in my whole campaign in July, as that was the only one I ever got where I had enough time to infiltrate 7 guys). My regions were bringing in $1000/month from July onwards, so with Elerium purchases from the Black Market, it felt like the resources were much better balanced, with never having enough for everything I wanted, but always having enough for everything I needed.
Mhh, in my game Alloy is still the bottleneck, not elerium. Also even with 3 liberated regions and a lot of supply raids (i try to infiltrate as much as i can, but usually it's just 2-3 days) i don't feel like i have a lot of excess cash to purchase resources. Of course i didn't liberate as early as you. I think the first one was June, second July and 3rd early august. Infiltration on HQ is a big bottleneck to liberation speed.
LW2 needs more 6 man missions
I think everyone agrees on this. Again, finding the right way to do this without killing other options is the real discussion.
Sabotage the Monument could fill this gap (especially as part of the liberation chain) with good rewards
Agree on your view of this mission. I always avoid it because i don't want to draw more attention than i'm already doing so currently it's just a worse Intel mission. There are probably multiple ways to make it more attractive even outside of liberation chain.
Killing VIPs with suicide soldiers doesn't feel very epic
Never did this. I either try to capture them or snipe them, eventually i try to assassinate with a Shinobi and retreat to re-conceal but suicide missions are a big no for me.
It looks like i get the same rewards for killing them thought, which is quite lame and from what i understood not intended. It's hard to really know for sure as the post-mission pop-up don't really tell you what you gained.
Sniping at Relays also feels lame
Looks like you never got a 18h to infiltrate "Prevent Resistance Dataleak". Soldiers of squad "Sledgehammer" are now expert at fending off several 8 guys pods while the double-tap holotargetter officer takes care of the relay. Feels pretty epic to me and i often end up having killed half or more of the original pods plus some reinforcements with my 9 turns evac :lol:
I think the xp balance should be moved more toward kill xp and away from mission xp
I like mission XP rather than just XP from kills. XP from kills would have you go after pods just to get the XP which doesn't really make sense or have those evac zone shots become the rule (i have some soldiers doing it every mission but that's just because i role-play them this way). Overall stealth missions should stay as an option and being able to train the new guys on lower risk missions is also a useful feature as it helps you maintain and grow your roster even when the opposition becomes more serious. Taking a "dead weight" soldier on real fight missions seems like a bad idea and if we can't train them until they become useful, the risk is to have a much smaller roster and no way to recover from loosing sevreal of your A-Team guys, especially now that Black Market won't give you max rank soldiers.
OW Rangers take a long time to feel worth it
I don't have many rangers on the field (several as haven advisors) but i hear you on this. Jane Kelly is a Ranger in this run and since i always take her to Waterworld since my very first playthrough (DfA on a vanilla Ranger was so strong she won me several missions on her own) so i made her an officer and despite what i read i think it works nicely. Lots of options to fire-command or fire twice. She does a good job but it took some time to really reach her potential. I have an overwatch specced ranger in Sledgehammer squad and he does quite a good job at landing 3 shots during the alien turn, but again it took some time for him to be really good, and by MSGT every class becomes very strong anyway.
Assault scale super hard, and are really cool
Only one "real" Shotgun assault but man does she hit hard. Street sweeper out of concealment hits like crazy. Being able to better use the Shadowkeeper pistol is the reason why i trained her in pistol skills but it's a great addition to the shotgun when you don't feel like rushing ahead and the stungun is on cooldown. Extremely versatile class with very high potential damage. I loved them in LW1 and i think i'll try to use them more again.
Other "assault" is a stungunner and it's just crazy when you "activate" half the map with chain lighting to have them sit there and be slaughtered by the rest of the squad :lol:
Conceal feels a bit too game-breaking
Conceal is only an issue on hack-style missions. In most missions it's the only perk allowing your Shinobi to actually help you during a tough fight without totally sacrificing scouting. I would hate to see it nerfed, let alone removed. If anything, don't allow conceal when you are carrying something, it's a bit stupid to carry the unconscious VIP and be concealed! This would remove the abuse without killing it's intended use.
On a related note, i rarely hack with my Shinobi as i like the rewards (you never know when you'll get a large alloy cache or Enemy Protocol) and sneaking a specialist in LoS of the objective on the turn the pre-placed evac flare activates isn't that hard usually. The shinobi hack is merely plan B.
Core upgrades dominate all other choices for research paths
Agreed. Most items are quite underwhelming. I still have basic ceramic plating on my soldiers in early October and never felt the need to try and get Alloy plating for a miserable 1 added ablative HP. Most autopsies are best left for when they are instant. My PG is working non-stop since i built it but i rarely build more than 1 additional item after the prototype and sometimes don't even use the prototype. +HP vests feel the least useful to me as unlike LW1 you suffer wounds even if all the damage you took was applied to armor HP so if i take a vest it's for the added effect and so far i couldn't justify taking a Hazemat over a Medkit since poison is the only annoying DoT aliens regularly apply (the few Adromedons I've encountered so far never had a chance to shoot once). Tactical vest is an option for the armor point on EXO soldiers but that's about it since the only Tank is the Spark (no real biotank like LW1).
The only really useful autopsies so far were for Gremlin MKII, Stunblade and Plasma Grenade.
Alketi
Posts: 159
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Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by Alketi »

The criticism of Mag Weapons comes from people comparing them to Lasers, for which they typically have one more damage point and lose the aim bonus. However, you're comparing them to ballistics, as you jumped tiers, so, of course they seem very powerful in that circumstance. Next playthrough, for comparison, try building lasers and skipping mag weapon purchases.

Finally, whether you realize it or not, you're in a Victory Lap partly because you have no repercussions for your bad pulls. Remember that time when you popped extra pods from charging your Assault or Shinobi forward?? That would be multiple deaths or a squad wipe to someone on Ironman -- potentially end of campaign, really. All from one move. That's tension.

My very first XCOM playthrough I did the same as you. Only reloaded bad missions and reloaded them fully, not save scumming each click. Guess what? Half way through the campaign I was invincible and the game was stupid easy. I got bored. I restarted the whole campaign and have played Ironman ever since.

I would suggest you play C/I (true Ironman) and compare it to your Legend-no-repercussions-that-I-don't-like playthrough, which, whether you realize it or not, is how you're playing. It's unreal how final each decision becomes when there's no ability to reload.

And, I'm only pointing this out because the Devs are being subtilely mislead, as in the 0% supply raid discussion, to think the game is too easy. But when you dig into the details, you find that people are reloading their bad pulls. This game needs to be balanced around IRONMAN, not 95% Ironman, because even reloading 5 missions out of 100 means the prevention multiple, high-level soldier deaths, which are potentially unrecoverable and campaign breaking.

Sorry for the rant, and otherwise, I agree with most of your observations.
justdont
Posts: 113
Joined: Wed Feb 15, 2017 2:36 pm

Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by justdont »

Alketi wrote:And, I'm only pointing this out because the Devs are being subtilely mislead, as in the 0% supply raid discussion, to think the game is too easy.
But it is. There are certain approaches that don't need luck with the dice to be successful. For instance, I'm still quite a scrub when it comes to timed missions, I added +2 to all timers and even after that I still sometimes need to redo a timed mission to save myself from a total squadwipe. However, for non-timed missions it was looooooooooooooong ago when I last restarted one - since then I simply learned about safe margins regarding pod activations, noise, good defensive positions, opening moves, and so on; and I stopped taking any noticeable damage on such missions. The difficulty almost doesn't scale at all when it's past ~20 enemies, it hardly matters if there's 20 or 50, as long as you're not on a timer.

Although, it's not like the game is too easy overall - but it is prone to abuses. There are certain definitive ways to make it MUCH easier than was probably intended (constantly looting 0% raids is one such thing).
hewhoispale
Posts: 62
Joined: Thu Feb 23, 2017 1:27 pm

Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by hewhoispale »

LordYanaek wrote: +HP vests feel the least useful to me as unlike LW1 you suffer wounds even if all the damage you took was applied to armor HP so if i take a vest it's for the added effect and so far i couldn't justify taking a Hazemat over a Medkit since poison is the only annoying DoT aliens regularly apply (the few Adromedons I've encountered so far never had a chance to shoot once). Tactical vest is an option for the armor point on EXO soldiers but that's about it since the only Tank is the Spark (no real biotank like LW1).
Personally, I've been finding the vests really useful with NCE & HP turned on since I get situations where I have things like master sergeants with 5 health. Also I've been finding that vests are super useful when sitting on the cusp of an armor tier upgrade. I'm going in a situation where I've just unlocked coil tech and should be getting warden in the near future, so I have a handful of support soldiers, mostly psi-ops, that are using a mix of kevlar, better plates, and various vests since I don't want to sink more money into soon to be deprecated predator armor while I could be buying coil guns instead.
I also put hazmats on all my technicals so they can run through all the fires they end up starting.
archangel
Posts: 40
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2017 9:44 am

Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by archangel »

SouthpawHare wrote:
Saph7 wrote:Good post! Matches my experience on a lot of points.

1) They're the most efficient in terms of 'bang for your buck'. If I do a Stun Lancer autopsy, I get an upgraded sword for my Shinobi; that boosts one of the attack modes out of 1 of the 8 classes. If I get Combat Armour, I get Predator Armour, which boosts armour and HP for all of my classes. It's a no-brainer as to which is going to make more difference.
I think this has really always been the case, even in the vanilla game, and the original devs knew it: in the final game stats on the Victory/Defeat screen, "Days to Mag Weapons / Plasma Weapons / Plated Armor / Powered Armor" are some of the stats shown among relatively few, emphasizing their importance. And there's really nothing wrong with them being critical milestones of the tech in the game, I think - balance does not imply that all techs must be equally powerful, just that their relative power levels are interesting.
This could be fixed by putting prerequisite for armor/weapon tech to be "Research X autopsies". Player can choose which ones, but they need to do X of them (X would be rising for each tier of armor/weapon) before you can access that weapon/armor research in a similar way they need X amount of scientists atm.
JoINrbs
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by JoINrbs »

Thanks for all that feedback Jadiel!
Jadiel wrote:At the moment it feels to me that unlike LW1, core upgrades (weapons and armor) dominate all other choices (autopsies, etc). None of the autopsies provide items which feel necessary, and the damage and survivability upgrades make such a huge difference to your effectiveness in the tactical layer. I’d like to see more incentives to research different ammo (ap and tracer rounds are both strong enough that other ammo types just don’t feel worth it), and I think you could buff defensive items also (ablative/+hp items). You could balance this by buffing lvl2 and 3 aliens, or nerfing higher level armor. I just feel like rushing to coil/warden is always the best choice at the moment, and I’d like to see more variety in research paths.
I feel strongly that the half of LW1 autopsies which is missing right now is the "Vital Point Targeting" bonus to soldiers half. The items are generally fine, some of them are even very strong, but because there's no reason to research all of them for something that you already have (get +2 damage against all those enemies with your damage classes who have VPT) the solution to the system ends up being to only pick up one or two autopsies which give you the items you need most and ignore all the other stuff they can give.

You're also describing the economy that I think legend should be aiming for, and in that economy the ability to trade research for items at no other resource cost would actually be quite valuable.

I think a very good solution here would be to make autopsies give prototypes (like weapon and armor researches give). The Proving Ground system where your Engineers have to work out how to reproduce that prototype could remain, but each autopsy could give you one plate or one ammo type for free upon completion. That way instead of the right solution on legend being to mostly ignore autopsies except one or two which you invest in in the Proving Ground to make a bunch of plates/vests and ammo (leading to all your soldiers having the same items and feeling same-y) you could have a competing solution which was appealing in campaigns where you had excess research but limited resources; to research all the autopsies and use the unique items provided by them to equip your soldiers without having to invest resources into engineering them outside of your labs. Plus I think that the gameplay in a campaign where you have one of lots of different items would be more fun than in a campaign where you have few.

It's hard to argue that there's a solution other than to go all-in on one or two autopsies right now, but this would provide a competing strategy so that there were more interesting decisions in navigating the tech tree, especially in midgame.
steave
Posts: 33
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 7:44 pm

Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by steave »

JoINrbs wrote:Thanks for all that feedback Jadiel!
Jadiel wrote:At the moment it feels to me that unlike LW1, core upgrades (weapons and armor) dominate all other choices (autopsies, etc). None of the autopsies provide items which feel necessary, and the damage and survivability upgrades make such a huge difference to your effectiveness in the tactical layer. I’d like to see more incentives to research different ammo (ap and tracer rounds are both strong enough that other ammo types just don’t feel worth it), and I think you could buff defensive items also (ablative/+hp items). You could balance this by buffing lvl2 and 3 aliens, or nerfing higher level armor. I just feel like rushing to coil/warden is always the best choice at the moment, and I’d like to see more variety in research paths.
I feel strongly that the half of LW1 autopsies which is missing right now is the "Vital Point Targeting" bonus to soldiers half. The items are generally fine, some of them are even very strong, but because there's no reason to research all of them for something that you already have (get +2 damage against all those enemies with your damage classes who have VPT) the solution to the system ends up being to only pick up one or two autopsies which give you the items you need most and ignore all the other stuff they can give.
And almost as important - allowing you to view perks on autopsied aliens.
JulianSkies
Posts: 301
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2017 12:17 am

Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by JulianSkies »

I have to disagree on a couple of points here.
First off, the game needs more missions like the HQ raids, not less. In fact I with those made up the bulk of mid-late game missions.
Also, sniping relays is, in fact, epic as he'll. Actually sniping anything from across the map is the absolute best, style wise.
JackDT
Posts: 44
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2017 7:07 am

Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by JackDT »

Thoughtful post, I am in strong agreement with most of it. The only thing that makes me wary is the kill XP as I never enjoyed micro managing that. I wouldn't mind if it wasn't increasing the importance of individually tracked kill XP -- the whole squad got the benefit. But overall I agree that it would only take tweaking a few small things to have a vastly different feeling campaign. Pretty much everything is already in LW2, it just has to be incentived and balanced so that players end up with those experiences rather than running Supply Raids all day.

For example, I too have never seen a recruit-mini-retaliation and I almost never do the monument map, even though it is a nice mid size squad mission. And it does makes sense thematically in the liberation chain. I really should load a save and just force a recruit-retaliation because I might never see one otherwise. Personally I'd be fine with adding a random element to the retaliation mission selection. Maybe make it 50% based on your workers so that remain a factor to consider, but also have a 25% chance to get one of the other types regardless of what your workers are doing. All I see in the part of the campaign I have gotten through are Intel retaliations.
Last edited by JackDT on Wed Mar 01, 2017 10:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
JackDT
Posts: 44
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2017 7:07 am

Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by JackDT »

I think a very good solution here would be to make autopsies give prototypes (like weapon and armor researches give). The Proving Ground system where your Engineers have to work out how to reproduce that prototype could remain, but each autopsy could give you one plate or one ammo type for free upon completion. That way instead of the right solution on legend being to mostly ignore autopsies except one or two which you invest in in the Proving Ground to make a bunch of plates/vests and ammo (leading to all your soldiers having the same items and feeling same-y) you could have a competing solution which was appealing in campaigns where you had excess research but limited resources; to research all the autopsies and use the unique items provided by them to equip your soldiers without having to invest resources into engineering them outside of your labs. Plus I think that the gameplay in a campaign where you have one of lots of different items would be more fun than in a campaign where you have few.
In love with this idea. I think this would lead to a lot more players messing around with items and loadouts.
Jadiel
Posts: 214
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Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by Jadiel »

LordYanaek wrote:Nice timing. I'm particularly impressed by those July coils :o I got mine early September and didn't research a lot of datapads or useless autopsies. How many scientists did you gain/purchase and how early? Did you have an early elerium coil for the lab? (both of mine were on 4th floor)
I had 9 scientists in August (one of whom I purchased in April). I'm afraid I didn't write down when I got them, but I think I had 5 at the start of June? I also did Basic Research as my second research project. I did have a power coil on the 3rd floor which helped.
LordYanaek wrote:Looks like you never got a 18h to infiltrate "Prevent Resistance Dataleak". Soldiers of squad "Sledgehammer" are now expert at fending off several 8 guys pods while the double-tap holotargetter officer takes care of the relay. Feels pretty epic to me and i often end up having killed half or more of the original pods plus some reinforcements with my 9 turns evac :lol:
I have had short Prevent Resistance Dataleak missions (although if I saw an 18 hour one, I'd probably just get a squad ready for a haven defence mission...) I usually do them with either a duo Ranger/Shinobi or trio Ranger/Ranger/Shinobi, and look to alpha the Relay. If you're going to fight the pods anyway, I don't think a sniper is a good idea for most of the game (admittedly if you have a Double Tap sniper, they might be the best choice, but before then rapid fire on an Assault probably is).
LordYanaek wrote:I like mission XP rather than just XP from kills. XP from kills would have you go after pods just to get the XP which doesn't really make sense or have those evac zone shots become the rule (i have some soldiers doing it every mission but that's just because i role-play them this way). Overall stealth missions should stay as an option and being able to train the new guys on lower risk missions is also a useful feature as it helps you maintain and grow your roster even when the opposition becomes more serious. Taking a "dead weight" soldier on real fight missions seems like a bad idea and if we can't train them until they become useful, the risk is to have a much smaller roster and no way to recover from loosing sevreal of your A-Team guys, especially now that Black Market won't give you max rank soldiers.
I wasn't proposing abolishing mission XP altogether, as I really like it. I just feel that it's tuned too far towards mission XP and away from kill XP. At the moment, I think the split is 80/20 - I'd think it might be better at 67/33 or 75/25. At the moment, there is too little incentive to engage in combat on e.g. Jailbreak. When I first started playing LW2, I'd often kit out 3-4 man teams with high damage gear (shotguns, grenades, technicals, sword shinobis) with the goal of playing aggressively, alphaing pods (which are generally only 3-4 enemies) which got in my way and moving on quickly before additional pods arrived. And it works reasonably well. Now though, for small squad missions like Jailbreak it's generally SMGs all the way. The risks of going loud are pretty high (being trapped in a fire fight with aliens while the timer ticks down, additional pods arrive, reinforcements drop), and the rewards for doing so are minimal. But I think both when playing the mission ('Do we hope these guys patrol the right way so we can sneak past, or do we just ambush and kill them?') and when kitting out a squad (shotguns vs. SMGs) there are potentially interesting decisions to be made, whereas at the moment it just feels like stealth dominates the alternatives. If you sacrifice a bit more XP for sneaking past pods, maybe that's enough to push the decision to a point where it feels more interesting, and less dominated in one direction
LordYanaek wrote:Conceal is only an issue on hack-style missions. In most missions it's the only perk allowing your Shinobi to actually help you during a tough fight without totally sacrificing scouting. I would hate to see it nerfed, let alone removed. If anything, don't allow conceal when you are carrying something, it's a bit stupid to carry the unconscious VIP and be concealed! This would remove the abuse without killing it's intended use.
Yes, I guess it is only hack missions where Conceal feels really broken (although it makes solo Jailbreak/Rescue missions a lot easier too). But it's because those missions are often high-stakes (lib chain, DE missions, etc.), it feels like they should be a challenge. But if one pops with 1 day to go, I can double shinobi infiltrate to 50%, and it's easy, even at Moderate or Heavy. It just doesn't feel challenging enough. Whereas there's no way I'd attempt it with a Shinobi/Specialist duo.
Alketi wrote:The criticism of Mag Weapons comes from people comparing them to Lasers, for which they typically have one more damage point and lose the aim bonus. However, you're comparing them to ballistics, as you jumped tiers, so, of course they seem very powerful in that circumstance. Next playthrough, for comparison, try building lasers and skipping mag weapon purchases.
Yes, I've tried Lasers in my last two playthroughs. In my experience, there's no comparison between the power spike Lasers give you in April and Mags in May. Mag represents between a 25 and 35% damage increase over lasers, and means you one shot almost all enemies you hit, even on a graze for some of them. If you haven't tried it, you really should...
Alketi wrote:Finally, whether you realize it or not, you're in a Victory Lap partly because you have no repercussions for your bad pulls. Remember that time when you popped extra pods from charging your Assault or Shinobi forward?? That would be multiple deaths or a squad wipe to someone on Ironman -- potentially end of campaign, really. All from one move. That's tension.
Nope, the reason I'm in a Victory Lap is because XCOM is inherently snowbally. When you do well, you gain more resources which you can invest into further improvements, and compound your lead into a bigger and bigger tech advantage over the aliens. I used the huge power spike Mag weapons gave me to liberate two regions in May and June, and then invested in infrastructure which consolidated my lead. I was lucky I didn't lose anyone, and I had a lot of wounded on my roster after I took down the Alert 11 HQ in June, destroying 10 strength by that point in the game put ADVENT so far on the back foot that they couldn't reinforce fast enough, and liberating regions 3 and 4 sealed their fate.

I played through all my bad pulls. The missions I restarted were all stealth missions, because I wanted to try a couple of different strategies to see which worked better. If I'd lost them horribly, I don't think it would have made any major difference to the campaign as they were all 1-2 soldiers in free gear. In any case, the fact that this campaign has snowballed in my favour doesn't really impact the feedback I'm giving at all. The mission mix is the same whether you are winning or losing. It's not like I'm calling for the game to made much more difficult because this campaign happened to go really well...
Alketi
Posts: 159
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Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by Alketi »

Jadiel wrote:
Alketi wrote:Finally, whether you realize it or not, you're in a Victory Lap partly because you have no repercussions for your bad pulls. Remember that time when you popped extra pods from charging your Assault or Shinobi forward?? That would be multiple deaths or a squad wipe to someone on Ironman -- potentially end of campaign, really. All from one move. That's tension.
Nope, the reason I'm in a Victory Lap is because XCOM is inherently snowbally. When you do well, you gain more resources which you can invest into further improvements, and compound your lead into a bigger and bigger tech advantage over the aliens. I used the huge power spike Mag weapons gave me to liberate two regions in May and June, and then invested in infrastructure which consolidated my lead. I was lucky I didn't lose anyone, and I had a lot of wounded on my roster after I took down the Alert 11 HQ in June, destroying 10 strength by that point in the game put ADVENT so far on the back foot that they couldn't reinforce fast enough, and liberating regions 3 and 4 sealed their fate.

I played through all my bad pulls. The missions I restarted were all stealth missions, because I wanted to try a couple of different strategies to see which worked better. If I'd lost them horribly, I don't think it would have made any major difference to the campaign as they were all 1-2 soldiers in free gear. In any case, the fact that this campaign has snowballed in my favour doesn't really impact the feedback I'm giving at all. The mission mix is the same whether you are winning or losing. It's not like I'm calling for the game to made much more difficult because this campaign happened to go really well...
Fair enough! Only you know how/when you're restarting missions, so if you're truly playing with all consequences from bad pulls, getting spotted by a Drone in your starting position, not even grazing with a needed 89% shot, etc. then you're playing Ironman as far as I'm concerned. It would seem you played very well because Xavier, who's similarly crushing the Tactical portion, is in danger of losing because of to the Avatar timer.

An AS 10 HQ raid is no joke. I did one at AS 9 and ended up chain pulling (not by choice) 3 or 4 groups at the starting position. Ending tally was 50 Advent and I only took one injury, but it was very dicey for a while.
Jadiel
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Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by Jadiel »

Alketi wrote:An AS 10 HQ raid is no joke. I did one at AS 9 and ended up chain pulling (not by choice) 3 or 4 groups at the starting position. Ending tally was 50 Advent and I only took one injury, but it was very dicey for a while.
I didn't do mine by choice. It was str 7 when I started infiltrating, but had jumped to str 11 by the time I hit 66% inf and boosted to start the mission. It wasn't actually as hard as I was expecting (I think the final tally was 56 aliens), but I think I was also lucky. I started on a tower, and had 4 pods patrol into me (over several turns, not all at the same time). Then my scout spotted about 20 aliens converged just outside my vision, so I ran for the corner of the map. The rest of the mission was pods patrolling into me one at a time and then I cleaned up the command pod. If I hadn't spotted those aliens, or if they'd patrolled a little bit further, or if I'd missed a couple of 80% shots the previous turn, it would have been a lot more costly. As it was, I think I finished up with 4 wounded soldiers.

I'm not really sure why the strategy layer went so well. I think I was lucky with extraction missions early, and both early engineers and scientists have a big effect on the early game.
JackDT
Posts: 44
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2017 7:07 am

Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by JackDT »

I haven’t got any experience with sword-spec Shinobis, so I’ll just talk about Stealth specced ones. They fit their role well, they make great scouts on combat missions. I think their tree is fine with one exception: Conceal. This perk is so strong, it trivialises a lot of stealth missions late game. I stop taking specialists on Hacking missions, because it’s easier and less-risky to do it with Shinobi duos. Part of me just wants to see the perk removed from the game, or if it stays in it should really move to MSGT (maybe instead of rapid fire?) There isn’t really a good stealth perk at MSGT at the moment, and its power level is definitely appropriate. I’m not sure what you’d put in its place. With current perks, Sprinter would work well, and would be competitive. If there’s a possibility of a new perk, maybe a perk which increases Hack skill would be nice? It would be a nice perk to put on the AWC (although not available to the Specialist) so that those people who can’t stand going on a mission without getting the hack rewards don’t feel they need to take a Specialist every time.
The AI just can't deal with Conceal. Shinobis do need a way to run into a group of enemies and survive, but it shouldn't trivialize stealth missions.

Hack skill makes sense thematically but for balance it might be better to put it on a different class, as Shinobi/Specialist already dominate so many stealth missions.
trihero
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Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by trihero »

At the moment, if there are soldiers I want to rank up, I send them as a ‘third wheel’ on stealth missions, rather than sending them on combat missions, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Yeah it doesn't make too much sense that the third wheel gets experience for essentially walking to the evac flare. I'd prefer squads try to kill things and level up killing things together, that's the band of brothers feel.
dstar3k
Posts: 91
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Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by dstar3k »

trihero wrote:
At the moment, if there are soldiers I want to rank up, I send them as a ‘third wheel’ on stealth missions, rather than sending them on combat missions, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Yeah it doesn't make too much sense that the third wheel gets experience for essentially walking to the evac flare. I'd prefer squads try to kill things and level up killing things together, that's the band of brothers feel.
Actually, I think it does work well: "See, this is how we do this -- if we'd gone around the other way, they'd have been able to spot us. This kind of cover is a godsend if you're trying to ambush a bunch of Advent. If this was an actual combat mission, we'd open up by throwing a flashbang right in the middle of them, then mow them down while they're disoriented."
aimlessgun
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Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by aimlessgun »

Jadiel wrote: I had 9 scientists in August (one of whom I purchased in April). I'm afraid I didn't write down when I got them, but I think I had 5 at the start of June? I also did Basic Research as my second research project. I did have a power coil on the 3rd floor which helped.
Whoa. 9 scientists in August sounds incredibly high to me. And you only bought ONE of those?! I think I ended my campaign with 11 scientists and bought like 5 with 0% supply raid money.

In any case, you could push those Coil and Warden research dates back 2 months and still be fine, so no wonder everything feels like a formality :D Did you actually have the resources to build them soon after research though? I didn't get Warden until October and even with 0% supply raids I ran out of elerium crystals. If/when supply raids are rebalanced I don't want the game to be like "well we have all this cool tech but can't build much of it".

RE: Rangers, their strength is overwatch camps, so if you're doing fewer of those, they're just not that great. They're solid and reliable and don't rely on cooldowns but if you're not abusing Rapid Reaction then a gunner is going to be better.
Jadiel
Posts: 214
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2017 9:28 am

Re: Feedback from no <50% infil campaign

Post by Jadiel »

aimlessgun wrote:
Jadiel wrote: I had 9 scientists in August (one of whom I purchased in April). I'm afraid I didn't write down when I got them, but I think I had 5 at the start of June? I also did Basic Research as my second research project. I did have a power coil on the 3rd floor which helped.
Whoa. 9 scientists in August sounds incredibly high to me. And you only bought ONE of those?! I think I ended my campaign with 11 scientists and bought like 5 with 0% supply raid money.

In any case, you could push those Coil and Warden research dates back 2 months and still be fine, so no wonder everything feels like a formality :D Did you actually have the resources to build them soon after research though? I didn't get Warden until October and even with 0% supply raids I ran out of elerium crystals. If/when supply raids are rebalanced I don't want the game to be like "well we have all this cool tech but can't build much of it".

RE: Rangers, their strength is overwatch camps, so if you're doing fewer of those, they're just not that great. They're solid and reliable and don't rely on cooldowns but if you're not abusing Rapid Reaction then a gunner is going to be better.
Yes, I had the resources to kit out at least one squad with every upgrade as soon as I researched it. I had a surplus of alloys, but ran short on elerium, so I was buying it from the black market whenever I saw it. I felt the economy overall was pretty well balanced, better than it was in my 0% supply raid game. There I had more supplies than I knew what to do with, whereas in this game I was having to make difficult decisions. So one of the best things about getting Warden armor was that I could deploy 1-2 other squads with Predator, as before then I was still using Kevlar on my non-frontline troops (I think I'd built 10-12 suits of Predator total).
dstar3k wrote:Actually, I think it does work well: "See, this is how we do this -- if we'd gone around the other way, they'd have been able to spot us. This kind of cover is a godsend if you're trying to ambush a bunch of Advent. If this was an actual combat mission, we'd open up by throwing a flashbang right in the middle of them, then mow them down while they're disoriented."
Maybe it works for bring Rookies on missions... Maybe. But when you're bringing your highest ranked TSGT soldier because you want a second AWC tube, not so much...
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