An alternative way of handling infiltration and mission types

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Undershaft
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An alternative way of handling infiltration and mission types

Post by Undershaft »

The problem with overpowered stealth missions and 0% supply raids mainly lies with the infiltration system.
Apart from the fact that it is easier and faster to stealth a mission than to do it "properly" (e.g. because of reinforcements), there are way too many missions your intel guys catch too late for proper infiltration, so you either send in the usual ninja duo, or skip them (or abuse the intended punishment for going in guns blazing to your favor in the case of 0% loot-orgies).

In my opinion, the game would be more interesting, controllable and diverse if mission types were more clearly defined, arranged and seperated from each other, and most importantly, not mostly based on the current infiltration mechanic.
At the moment, (especially at the beginning) almost *every* mission is a stealth mission, a) because it is not only possible, but preferable to do it the stealthy way, and b) because a large chunk of missions is only detected with so few days left that stealth is your only option. So, to no small degree, the random element of mission detection time decides wether the game offers you a pure stealth mission or at least the possibilty of a more traditional one. Instead of occasionally giving you missions you should pass on due to low infiltration time and the resulting difficulty (as is intended, I assume), the game involuntartily keeps offering you an overabundance of stealth missions.

I would prefer the following alternative:

1) Missions should be more clearly defined as to how many soldiers you can and must bring (I propopse three sets of mission types: 1-3,4-6,7-10), which would allow more proper level design and balancing.

2) Mission types should be more restrictive in the way they can be solved. Missions intended for 4-6 people must have mechanisms that make them unstealthable, missions designed for 1-3 people must have mechanisms that would make them hard to complete by brute force alone, missions designed for 7-10 could now be designed in a way that encourages going beyond just holing up in one corner of the map.

3) Missions would now always have a fixed number of enemies based on Advent strength in the region alone (with some randomness built in, of course). The value of the intel gatherers would now lie in detecting a mission either early enough to bring the maximum number of people (and not punish you for doing so) or so late that you can only bring the minimum for a particular mission type. This way, every mission type would work just as intended, and there would be no more reward for storming in totally unprepared.

4) When missions are detected, their expiration date on the globe and the "fatigue"-time needed for a squad of the intended size to infiltrate them should be at least roughly equal, within a reasonable margin. If you detected them early, you could bring the pre-defined maximum number of soldiers (or you could afford to wait some days instead); if you detected them late, you would have to start infiltration immediately and bring only the bare minimum intended for the mission type. If you don't do or detect the mission in time for the defined minimum squad to infiltrate it, however, the mission vanishes or is never shown at all. This would a) make the involuntary overabundance of "stealth"-missions go away and b) stop the annoying mission spam, when you keep getting offered guerilla missions with one day or one hour left that you would never do.

5) This way, you could more easily find the optimal ratio between combat and stealth missions, since you could just decide how many of the respective type will be spawned in a region.
Solomani
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Re: An alternative way of handling infiltration and mission types

Post by Solomani »

Low infiltration missions offer no concealment start and actually let Advent possibly get concealment from you. Don't know if the Advent AI is smart enough to deal with that though. Also, a deeper fog so less known about the map.

High infiltration missions reveal more of the map, letting you pre-plan routes. Possibly even being somewhat aware of Advent positions on the map before your first move.
rlkr83
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Re: An alternative way of handling infiltration and mission types

Post by rlkr83 »

Undershaft wrote:At the moment, (especially at the beginning) almost *every* mission is a stealth mission, a) because it is not only possible, but preferable to do it the stealthy way, and b) because a large chunk of missions is only detected with so few days left that stealth is your only option. So, to no small degree, the random element of mission detection time decides wether the game offers you a pure stealth mission or at least the possibilty of a more traditional one.
I read so many people stating this as though it's a problem, or unintentional, or out-of-balance, or unfair. But none of those are true.

What was the ultimate purpose of Long War? To make the game more comprehensive, make the enemy less stupid, properly reward players for good tactics, and properly punish them for bad tactics. The logical consequence of that is an early dependence on limited-goal shadow ops. You start the game with a handful of rookies and no knowledge of enemy strength, movement, technology, or goals. You are developing a resistance from nothing against a world domination force.

Do you really consider it reasonable to be able to field 8 rookies with heavy weapons on day 2 and survive any non-stealth mission? I don't. That's ridiculous. If that's the game you want to play, they already made it. It's called XCOM 2 without LW2 installed.
Steve-O
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Re: An alternative way of handling infiltration and mission types

Post by Steve-O »

Solomani wrote:Low infiltration missions offer no concealment start and actually let Advent possibly get concealment from you. Don't know if the Advent AI is smart enough to deal with that though. Also, a deeper fog so less known about the map.

High infiltration missions reveal more of the map, letting you pre-plan routes. Possibly even being somewhat aware of Advent positions on the map before your first move.
I like these ideas. Having more general intel on the mission area with higher infiltration makes sense (isn't that part of what your soldiers are doing while infiltrating - observing enemy movements and planning when to strike?)

I also like the idea of ADVENT potentially having concealment against you in low-infil situations (although I'd limit it to REALLY low infil, like 0-10%) That would really amp up the tension, especially early game, and make me seriously consider what constitutes "enough time remaining" when launching a mission. XCOM isn't exactly a "horror game" but it has always had a delightfully creepy tension about it. This would only help that atmosphere.
rlkr83
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Re: An alternative way of handling infiltration and mission types

Post by rlkr83 »

Steve-O wrote:I also like the idea of ADVENT potentially having concealment against you in low-infil situations (although I'd limit it to REALLY low infil, like 0-10%) That would really amp up the tension, especially early game, and make me seriously consider what constitutes "enough time remaining" when launching a mission. XCOM isn't exactly a "horror game" but it has always had a delightfully creepy tension about it. This would only help that atmosphere.
I don't understand. The enemy always starts with concealment. You don't know where they are. How is what is being described here different from how missions always begin?
Undershaft
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Re: An alternative way of handling infiltration and mission types

Post by Undershaft »

rlkr83 wrote:
Undershaft wrote: Do you really consider it reasonable to be able to field 8 rookies with heavy weapons on day 2 and survive any non-stealth mission? I don't. That's ridiculous. If that's the game you want to play, they already made it. It's called XCOM 2 without LW2 installed.
Erm...no. I never said that. I said something completely different and more complex. Have you actually read my post? All I want is some more variety on "day 2" - less (not none!) of the sneaky missions (which are almost all of them, technically, unless you play unnecessarily risky and inefficiently on purpose) and more "middle class" missions, as trihero put it. May I remind you that you do a "proper" fighting mission *literally* on day 1? That's possible, reasonable and very survivable, even with a squad made up entirely of rookies with standard equipment - and, most importantly, it is fun. The completely sneaky way of playing is fun in small doses, but not nearly as much as the guerilla-style fighting the game was created to simulate. And actually, I think I proposed a pretty sensible way of achieving a good mixture and controllable ratio of battle- and stealth-missions within the brilliant framework that LW2 offers - and would be interested in constructive comments.
rlkr83
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Re: An alternative way of handling infiltration and mission types

Post by rlkr83 »

Undershaft wrote:May I remind you that you do a "proper" fighting mission *literally* on day 1? That's possible, reasonable and very survivable, even with a squad made up entirely of rookies with standard equipment - and, most importantly, it is fun. The completely sneaky way of playing is fun in small doses, but not nearly as much as the guerilla-style fighting the game was created to simulate. And actually, I think I proposed a pretty sensible way of achieving a good mixture and controllable ratio of battle- and stealth-missions within the brilliant framework that LW2 offers - and would be interested in constructive comments.
Gatecrasher is a tutorial to immediately teach you that you will die if you try vanilla XC2 tactics in LW2. It's survivable IFF you understand the mechanics of LW2. How many times did we all immediately restart after getting spanked badly on Gatecrasher the first few times we played it? For me, I'd say about 6.

The word guerilla automatically implies stealth. That is how guerilla warfare works. Infiltrate, achieve limited objective, exfiltrate. Not kill everything you see the moment you see it, not exterminate with extreme prejudice, not run towards the objective and hope for the best, not overwatch crawl across the entire map.

If we're just arguing about an initial lack of mission variety and a failure of LW2 to capitalize on its own game mechanics, then sure, I agree completely. But it sounds more like everyone (yourself included) is arguing lately that there is an overall over-reliance on stealth in the mod, to which I strongly disagree. Particularly, the vocal hate for Shinobi/Specialist duo squads. This is how modern warfare is actually conducted, except that you don't generally hear about that part of it.

I would personally like to see a more concrete chain of initial tutorial missions so that everyone is on the same page about how to begin the campaign, covering at least some of the basic mission types and viable tactics to accomplish them. But that probably wouldn't work totally smoothly unless F or P got someone to do some new voiceovers and integrated the tutorial checkbox back into the LW2 game.
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Devon_v
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Re: An alternative way of handling infiltration and mission types

Post by Devon_v »

Have you run stealth since 1.2 dropped? I'm finding ADVENT grew a brain and left a few guards at important things like the super secret prototypes without which they can't field upgraded troops. That fits with xwynns comment that objectives were supposed to have guards sometimes but he never saw any. I need to send a force that can clear out a pod at the minimum now.

Frankly I'm 100% against any forced deployment systems. Fix the mission, don't tell me that my squad isn't tall enough to ride.
Undershaft
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Re: An alternative way of handling infiltration and mission types

Post by Undershaft »

rlkr83 wrote: Gatecrasher is a tutorial to immediately teach you that you will die if you try vanilla XC2 tactics in LW2. It's survivable IFF you understand the mechanics of LW2. How many times did we all immediately restart after getting spanked badly on Gatecrasher the first few times we played it? For me, I'd say about 6.
Well, for me, it's actually zero times, being quite familiar with LW1 and XCOM in general. But after the game has shown you the ropes in this particular way, why should it suddenly become a 95% stealth game with hardly any group combat, because *that's* too dangerous? That makes no sense at all, neither from an in-game-logic nor a tutorial perspective.
rlkr83 wrote:The word guerilla automatically implies stealth. That is how guerilla warfare works. Infiltrate, achieve limited objective, exfiltrate. Not kill everything you see the moment you see it, not exterminate with extreme prejudice, not run towards the objective and hope for the best, not overwatch crawl across the entire map.
But, most of all, it implies "war", being the diminuation of the Spanish word for it. Is there no middle ground between complete stealth and overwatch crawl in your view? For me, *that* would be the best kind of standard mission: Get as close as you can to the objective undercover, avoid an enemy squad or two if you can, but *then* start a quick offense and get out of there as fast as you can. If you like stealth without any kind of battle, I recommend "Invisible Inc."
rlkr83 wrote:But it sounds more like everyone (yourself included) is arguing lately that there is an overall over-reliance on stealth in the mod, to which I strongly disagree. Particularly, the vocal hate for Shinobi/Specialist duo squads. This is how modern warfare is actually conducted, except that you don't generally hear about that part of it.
1) First of all, it's boring and reduces a rich framework to some pretty simple mechanics. The Shinobi/Specialist approach ceases being very entertaining after you've done it fifty times in a row.
2) I don't see much modern warfare realism about abusing the sort of gamey mechanisms that you rely on all the time when doing the shinobi/specialist dance. You know: Flying drones through windows without anyone in the room noticing. Throwing evac beacons into a crowded square without anyone noticing. Enemy troops twirling their thumbs while the skyranger hovers in the air ten meters above their heads. And of course your guys running into a room, hacking a computer, getting out of it *and* climbing a rope into the waiting skyranger without any of the nasty aliens you've just activated bothering to fire a single shot at you, and all of this within a single turn , courtesy of Command and instant evacuation. Apart from that: This is a sci-fi game about stopping the humbug surrogate body scheme of friggin aliens - I'm not sure total realism is what to expect here. : )
Undershaft
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Re: An alternative way of handling infiltration and mission types

Post by Undershaft »

Devon_v wrote:Frankly I'm 100% against any forced deployment systems. Fix the mission, don't tell me that my squad isn't tall enough to ride.
Yes, that might actually be enough to get rid of over-stealthing. I was also offering this alternative as a means of fixing 0% exploits and making the game easier to understand for beginners, though. Also, if you fix the problem by putting guards on every objective, then there might be no room for small infiltrations at all anymore - and, like I said, the *occasional* ninja-op, I rather enjoy.
stefan3iii
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Re: An alternative way of handling infiltration and mission types

Post by stefan3iii »

The biggest advantage of stealth is that it lets you take low level, zero equipment troops, and throw them into the mission for a significant strategic reward.

I really don't think infiltration times are the primary problem, except maybe in the early game when you only have a couple of regions. If you had infinite infiltration time, you'd rapidly run out of leveled up soldiers to send on missions. Right now in mid game I'm often infiltrating 5-7 misisons at once, while leaving 8 decent soldiers in reserve for retaliations.

Even bigger issue, later in the game when you've unlocked upgraded weapon tiers, there is no way you can afford enough weapons/armor to equip 25 soldiers infiltrating simultaneously. It would take some significant reworking of the strategic layer: Lowering weapon costs, wound timers, increasing XP rate, and probably increasing roster size in general. Right now it's a struggle to field even two 8 man teams in mid game that are strong enough to do story missions/retaliations.
Jadiel
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Re: An alternative way of handling infiltration and mission types

Post by Jadiel »

Undershaft wrote:At the moment, (especially at the beginning) almost *every* mission is a stealth mission, a) because it is not only possible, but preferable to do it the stealthy way, and b) because a large chunk of missions is only detected with so few days left that stealth is your only option. So, to no small degree, the random element of mission detection time decides wether the game offers you a pure stealth mission or at least the possibilty of a more traditional one. Instead of occasionally giving you missions you should pass on due to low infiltration time and the resulting difficulty (as is intended, I assume), the game involuntartily keeps offering you an overabundance of stealth missions.
This isn't really my experience at all. I find that I can't do many stealth missions at the beginning of the game, as I don't have the right class mix (read: enough shinobis/specialists). So for early missions I tend to take lots of rookies and fit them out for combat (rifles, not SMGs), or high damage squads (shotguns, grenades, rockets) and brawl a lot more than I do later in the game. Later in the game, hack/rescue missions are done stealthily, primarily because my combat squads typically have enough to do with tropp columns/network towers/hqs/ufos/etc. It doesn't usually have a whole lot to do with the timer on the mission at all, which I think is a shame, as I think the game would be improved if there were more 'real' choices about how to do a mission.
rlkr83
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Re: An alternative way of handling infiltration and mission types

Post by rlkr83 »

Undershaft wrote:Well, for me, it's actually zero times, being quite familiar with LW1 and XCOM in general.
Congratulations, your game penis is larger than mine, and nothing challenges you. If you're actually familiar with XCOM in general you know that the Firaxis reboot games utterly destroyed important game mechanics that MicroProse got to work correctly, and most complaints about these games, including of LW2, stem from that. For example, you can't have a coherent turn-based game with so many methods built into the game to undermine the concept of turns.
Undershaft wrote:But after the game has shown you the ropes in this particular way, why should it suddenly become a 95% stealth game with hardly any group combat, because *that's* too dangerous? That makes no sense at all, neither from an in-game-logic nor a tutorial perspective.
The 95% stealth game only exists at the very beginning of the game, when you are weakest and ADVENT is strongest. Which is completely logical. By endgame, when you are strongest and ADVENT is weakest, it can be a 0% stealth game if you want. At that point you are in a position to dictate the terms of engagement. At the beginning of the game, ADVENT dictates the terms of engagement.
Undershaft wrote:But, most of all, it implies "war", being the diminuation of the Spanish word for it. Is there no middle ground between complete stealth and overwatch crawl in your view? For me, *that* would be the best kind of standard mission: Get as close as you can to the objective undercover, avoid an enemy squad or two if you can, but *then* start a quick offense and get out of there as fast as you can. If you like stealth without any kind of battle, I recommend "Invisible Inc."
We're not arguing etymology here, since it's a loan word. We're arguing the usage of the word in the context of modern warfare. Also there is nothing preventing you from using the tactic you just described right now except your own competence at infiltrating a large squad to the objective vs a small one. Are you saying you want the mod to make that easier? What happened to the giant game penis you bragged about 6 sentences ago?

Invisible, Inc. has nothing to do with waging a war, and the notion that beginning LW2 by using intelligent stealth tactics amounts to stealth without any kind of battle is obvious hyperbole. I wonder what your conception of victory is, if you think it's better to accomplish a mission with rather than without unnecessary exposure, danger, and loss of life. The simple fact of LW2 is that many of the missions are doable without any combat at all. How could that possibly not be a good thing in the context of a larger campaign in which you have to ration your human resources as carefully as possible? If you like combat without any nuance at all, I recommend Bullfrog's 1993 hit Syndicate. Its basically XCOM without any need to think about anything. Apparently that is the experience you're after.
Undershaft wrote:1) First of all, it's boring and reduces a rich framework to some pretty simple mechanics. The Shinobi/Specialist approach ceases being very entertaining after you've done it fifty times in a row.
Nobody is putting a gun to your head and making you field the optimal squad. If you want to do it the wrong way on purpose because it's more fun for you, why don't you? That makes more sense than advocating that the entire mod is rebalanced to cater to your arbitrary preferences.
Undershaft wrote:2) I don't see much modern warfare realism about abusing the sort of gamey mechanisms that you rely on all the time when doing the shinobi/specialist dance. You know: Flying drones through windows without anyone in the room noticing. Throwing evac beacons into a crowded square without anyone noticing. Enemy troops twirling their thumbs while the skyranger hovers in the air ten meters above their heads. And of course your guys running into a room, hacking a computer, getting out of it *and* climbing a rope into the waiting skyranger without any of the nasty aliens you've just activated bothering to fire a single shot at you, and all of this within a single turn , courtesy of Command and instant evacuation.
You want drones to be detectable? That for once is a coherent suggestion. Not necessarily a good one, but at least coherent. The problem there is that the entire shtick of drones is that they're not seen. If they are seen, they may as well not exist, at least as implemented now. I guess they still have use as long range healing (implying the specialist should be reclassed to a remote medic), but the whole point of using drones to hack is to avoid detection. That would also make security towers literally unhackable.

Throwing evac does break concealment, so I don't know what you're talking about there. I'm not even 100% sure why it breaks concealment, since both XCOM and alien beacons aren't real objects in the game environment. They're usually treated as visuals for the benefit of you, the player. That's why LW2 turns off alien reinforcement beacons. They're metaphorical. Not being able to see them makes you not automatically know where reinforcements are going to drop, which makes sense. You don't seem to understand the difference between aspects of the game that are part of the simulation and aspects that exist only for your own reference. For example, when you hit escape and open the game menu, your guys don't actually see a giant floating menu over their heads. Crazy, right?

Who said Firebrand is ten meters up? Cite your source.

As for the rest of those complaints, refer above to where I said Firaxis broke the turn-based core mechanic of the game in many ways that it is outside the scope of LW2 (or anything outside an official patch which will never come) to fix.
Undershaft wrote:This is a sci-fi game about stopping the humbug surrogate body scheme of friggin aliens - I'm not sure total realism is what to expect here. : )
The way to reward players for good tactics and punish them for bad tactics is to make tactics which ought to work work and tactics which ought not to work not work. Ought in this context is determined by a certain amount of logic and comparison to reality, but realism isn't really the point. Making a consistent game experience that doesnt throw totally arbitrary solutions at the player is the point. When a player feels that there should be many ways to victory, but only a single seemingly contrived one actually works, that insults the player's intelligence. That's what the vanilla game did, by shuffling pods around behind the scenes to make stealth effectively impossible even on missions where it logically should be viable. That is not what LW2 is doing by taking that out of the game. The fact that a two-man stealth/hack team is an optimal squad for many missions does not mean it is a necessary squad. You can still play the game however you want, but you will discover that it is, in fact, best to conserve manpower. That is simple resource management. If you don't find it "fun" to manage resources efficiently to achieve victory... then don't? That's just called playing badly on purpose. Whatever floats your boat, dude.
rlkr83
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Re: An alternative way of handling infiltration and mission types

Post by rlkr83 »

Jadiel wrote:
Undershaft wrote:At the moment, (especially at the beginning) almost *every* mission is a stealth mission, a) because it is not only possible, but preferable to do it the stealthy way, and b) because a large chunk of missions is only detected with so few days left that stealth is your only option. So, to no small degree, the random element of mission detection time decides wether the game offers you a pure stealth mission or at least the possibilty of a more traditional one. Instead of occasionally giving you missions you should pass on due to low infiltration time and the resulting difficulty (as is intended, I assume), the game involuntartily keeps offering you an overabundance of stealth missions.
This isn't really my experience at all. I find that I can't do many stealth missions at the beginning of the game, as I don't have the right class mix (read: enough shinobis/specialists). So for early missions I tend to take lots of rookies and fit them out for combat (rifles, not SMGs), or high damage squads (shotguns, grenades, rockets) and brawl a lot more than I do later in the game. Later in the game, hack/rescue missions are done stealthily, primarily because my combat squads typically have enough to do with tropp columns/network towers/hqs/ufos/etc. It doesn't usually have a whole lot to do with the timer on the mission at all, which I think is a shame, as I think the game would be improved if there were more 'real' choices about how to do a mission.
Honestly those missions can be done with rookies if you march them prudently and bring smoke grenades. I think that shouldn't be possible, and I think it would be a good idea to nerf rookies so that they're detectable from a long way off. I mean, they're rookies. That means by definition they suck at stealth, right?
Undershaft
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Re: An alternative way of handling infiltration and mission types

Post by Undershaft »

rlkr83 wrote:Congratulations, your game penis is larger than mine, and nothing challenges you. [...]
What happened to the giant game penis you bragged about 6 sentences ago? [...]
Apparently that is the experience you're after. [...]
That makes more sense than advocating that the entire mod is rebalanced to cater to your arbitrary preferences. [...]
That for once is a coherent suggestion. Not necessarily a good one, but at least coherent. [...]
You don't seem to understand the difference between aspects of the game that are part of the simulation and aspects that exist only for your own reference.[...]
Who said Firebrand is ten meters up? Cite your source.[...]
Whatever floats your boat, dude.
I find your post rude, petty, humourless and unnecessarily aggressive. It doesn't speak well of your character to take part in a harmless and reasonable discussion about game mechanics in such an ill-natured way and you're not the kind of person I will further argue with. Go lurk under your bridge and pester other passers-by - I'm done with you.
Jacke
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Re: An alternative way of handling infiltration and mission types

Post by Jacke »

rlkr83 wrote:If you're actually familiar with XCOM in general you know that the Firaxis reboot games utterly destroyed important game mechanics that MicroProse got to work correctly, and most complaints about these games, including of LW2, stem from that. For example, you can't have a coherent turn-based game with so many methods built into the game to undermine the concept of turns.
I'd like to hear more about this. It may make me understand better how XCOM and LW should change.
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Re: An alternative way of handling infiltration and mission types

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Locking thread. Behave like grownups or get booted from the forum.

... and unlocking after a cooldown.
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