Yet another idea about stealth missions

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Stroggus
Posts: 46
Joined: Thu Jan 26, 2017 8:29 am

Yet another idea about stealth missions

Post by Stroggus »

I don`t know if it was intentional to create these "stealth" missions, or people just found a way to cheese (I think it`s the latter), but anyhow we are here now.

So I just came up with idea that may be rebalance these missions (hack some stuff etc) to actually be real stealth missions, like intentionally.

-Make max squad size for these missions 2 ppl. Lorewise we need small infiltration team bla bla doesn`t matter

-Rebalance these missions regularity, so that they would appear much more rarely and/or significantly decrease the amount of rewards. So that these missions would be still viable but you just can`t live and cheese from them.

-Actually make these 2 ppl teams fight something small. Like couple pods of 3 ppl, but nothing insane like vipers (kinda randezvous where pods are rather weak), just regular goons. May be you should be able to stealth, but somehow leave some good chance that you might end fighting (or may be not, I dunno) via pod placement or other meanings like loot/whatever (?)

-Or some kind of mission variety where you have stealth 2 ppl team on one side of the map, and small 4 ppl fighting squad on the other side. Like fighting squad should make noise and kill some baddies (make an objective to kill 3 pods for example) and stealthed team should do it`s objective and may be kill 1 small 3 ppl pod guarding the objective, then rendezvous with team A and extract. This should cover "middle class" missions and stealthed missions all in one (yeah probably too much work, not going to happen)

-Add more small combat oriented missions for squads like 4 people to cover new lack of cheesy stealth missions and move "cutted off" rewards from old "stealth" missions there. May be something like attack local intel storage (server farms whatever).

In other words, I think a better approach is to hard divide missions on stealth and combat ones and balance them appropriately rather than to nerf stealth alltogether or trying to balance for both approaches. In theory it is good, but in practice dividing is better and more balanced, IMHO.

What do you guys think?
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
Posts: 364
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2017 8:43 pm

Re: Yet another idea about stealth missions

Post by chrisb »

Personally, I just don't do that many stealth missions. I see it as being completely counterproductive and I think it's why people undervalue upgrades like Vulture, then complain they have no elerium cores! Too funny.

In my campaigns, I'm mostly sending out 4-5 man squads. The only real time I stealth anymore is if it is a super important mission that I can't afford the intel to boost to get a full squad of 5 into it. Even then I'll do many missions underinfiltrated slightly, very light and even light are not that hard if your doing them enough. In fact sometimes I will hit a mission underinfil on purpose just so I can kill more dudes and get more loot, especially since I try and pick up vulture very early.

The gains I believe are worth it, you end up with more experience on soldiers that actually matter in fights instead of just spiking XP on specialists and shinobis. You also end up with much more loot. I'm very often equipping suppressors and eventually chameleon suit to get the infil time down.

Bottom line is, stealth is more of a crutch that only weakens you in the mid-late game. Learn to play without it and the game IMO gets alot easier.
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
Posts: 364
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2017 8:43 pm

Re: Yet another idea about stealth missions

Post by chrisb »

Another note on this and the use of Vulture. Im just crossing into may in a campaign I'm running that has a barracks that is 100% Grenadiers making heavy use of needle grenades. I have so many elerium cores that I actually get a little Icon in the bottom left of the avenger that says
UNUSED ELERIUM CORES
because I have so many of the damn things. Getting 2 or even 4 from a mission is not uncommon. Especially in missions where there is no forced evac, and I can rush complete the mission then go off and farm the pods that I didnt kill blitzing the objective.

For example on destroy the relay missions, I often will stealth my squad most if not all the way to the objective, blow it up, drop the evac behind me, then setup an ambush as the ayys run toward the beacon getting mowed down by overwatch. If things get dicey I keep the evac close enough that I can 1 turn evac out.
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