Is something broken with my reinforcements?

[CreepyD]

I've been getting very frustrated with reinforcement arrival times, especially on hacking missions (I now hate trains).
I'm only playing on Veteran and am enjoying it (on about my 10th play through after many early restarts).

So my example.. I get discovered on the aliens 2nd turn, there was a pod in the building literally right next to me, which on their 1st turn walked pretty much into my spawn point - pinning most of my guys and discovering me the next turn in a nice ambush.
Also on their 2nd turn, another pod on the other side - that's ok.

By turn 4 I had 2 aliens left to kill - reinforcements.. Already?!
I was then bombarded by reinforcements behind me 4 turns in a row, doing my best to run through the aliens in front (another 2 pods were found) - This was only rated 'very light' and I had 5 soldiers.
I started losing people at the train as there was a pod on the other side and nowhere to hide.

This mission was failed from turn 1 when that alien pod walked into my spawn point.

Now what really bugs me is I have now edited the .ini file and changed the +ALERT_RANDOM_FACTOR to only 0.05 (from 0.3).
So the most that should get added is 0.2 for + 0.05 - 0.1 = 0.15.. Every 7 turns at worst.

I reload and try the mission again - discovered on turn 1 this time - there were aliens on the other side right next to my spawn point too - great.
Turn 2 - reinforcements coming in behind me - @*!#?!

How do I get reinforcements acting normally? Is this normal or broken?

[Jacke]

Hey CreepyD, how's it going, eh?

Are you infiltrating to 100% or better? If your infiltration is lower, you'll have more ADVENT and they'll see your concealed troops at greater distances.

And despite that, you'll still have some missions with pods too close to the XCOM deployment zone. What's really weird is when they spot your troops when they deploy before they are concealed. You'll get the enemy pod activating, but then they lose contact as your troops are concealed. They'll move actively looking for XCOM, but because all XCOM are concealed, they don't have any idea where you are. But they can easily become a pain. Worse is if you activated a turret, because turrets have squadsight so when you contect another pod, that pod will spot for the turret.

Otherwise, I think there's problems with the deployment in general and with some maps in particular. I remember a jailbreak in LW2 v1.1 on a hugh urban map, where my 3 soldiers were on the dead run all mission, barely saw 1 ADVENT pod for 2 turns, got the VIP out of the jail, and just got to the evac in 11 of the 12 turns. I've modded LW2 to preclude some of this silliness.

With appropriate savegames, you might want to back up and restart to avoid the silliness. I use the mod Tkyl's Save Scum to reroll the RNG seed so when I need to reload to fix problems, I can change things if needed.

[CreepyD]

Yeah this one was at least 100% infiltrated.
I had 5 soldiers and it was classed as Very Light, although by the end (2 soldiers dead with 1 turn till evac) I had over 25 aliens in sight as I tried to flee.
Usually these numbers should be easy, but not these train missions.

I've noticed a few times that reinforcements on those hacking missions are extremely unforgiving once you're spotted.
It's so bad that I literally start running for the objective as soon as I'm uncovered, and even that's not fast enough sometimes as obviously some aliens are in the way..

I've already increased the timers by 2 for all missions, that seems about right for me (total 4 increase on veteran).
But I wanted to find a way of removing these excessive reinforcements for certain missions. I can't find anything in the ini files related to having more reinforcements on those missions.

[Jacke]

I tried fiddling the timers for awhile. Did 4 extra turns on Legendary, later just 2. Later decided to go with the mod True Concealment for LW2, which with adjustable condition instead had the timer not count down while the whole squad is concealed.

Early missions you usually want to try to infiltrate enough to force enemy down to Extremely Light, which is 6-9 enemy on the map. Very Light should just be 10-13. The reinforcements aren't supposes to start until about 4 turns or so after you break concealment, and should at first be dropping a pod of 4, but close to right on top of the revealed XCOM.

Sounds like something else was off there. Oh, what was the date, and what was the ADVENT Strength in the zone? If it's a hack mission that went real bad real fast, sounds like the snare missions, where you get a hack mission with a good reward and about 6+ days to infiltrate. But ADVENT starts dumping on you real fast. Some info on the UFOpaedia page for LW2 missions, although it's a bit confusing itself. Can't remember where they are in the INI files.

http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Missions_(LW2)

[CreepyD]

I think the region strength is around 5 or 6, but can't be sure.
I don't think any I own are higher than that. It's August if that helps, I'm not sure what month it starts in.

So after retrying and being discovered on alien turn 1, I had reinforcements drop EVERY turn from turn 2.
It must be broken - on a very light mission I ended up with 35 aliens on the map with I think only 6 turns gone on the timer in total.
18 were in view standing near the hacked computer.

I ended up putting god mode on as the game is clearly cheating here, so I cheated back at it..

[Tuhalu]

Sounds like you hit a Snare mission to me. With Snares, reinforcements drop at vastly accelerated rates as they are literally waiting for you to show up.

They only happen in regions with at least 7 Advent Strength at the point when they are generated. When a region reaches high Advent Strength like that, any mission that presents as a "hack" mission, can be a snare instead.

It isn't the game cheating so much as a mechanic to encourage you to avoid high advent strength and hit them where they are weak instead.

[josna238]

Sounds like you hit a Snare mission to me. With Snares, reinforcements drop at vastly accelerated rates as they are literally waiting for you to show up.

They only happen in regions with at least 7 Advent Strength at the point when they are generated. When a region reaches high Advent Strength like that, any mission that presents as a "hack" mission, can be a snare instead.

It isn't the game cheating so much as a mechanic to encourage you to avoid high advent strength and hit them where they are weak instead.

Can we know or guess what mission is a snare? for example "below XXX strength we are sure to not receive a snare"

And for the reinforcement madness, if we are unconcealed very soon and very far from objective, usually is better (in my opinion) to request an EVAC right now, kill some aliens, try to pick up the hacking reward from a traffic lamp nearby in the last turn and move on.

[CreepyD]

I just came across a snare mission in the ini and was going to look it up - that would make sense.

It seemed stupid to have a mission where you either stealth it or die, but it makes sense they are trying to lure you into a trap.
I see it adds 0.5 to the bucket, which in combination with the dark event to make reinforcements faster (which I may have and didn't realise), I can see how that would equate to every turn for reinforcements.

Just an idea comes from this.. If it was explained that a snare event exists (maybe the very first time it happens), it would have saved a LOT of frustration, and in fact me almost shelving the game if I hadn't come here and got an answer, so thanks a lot because I am enjoying it muchly overall!

[Antifringe]

The mod really needs documentation. I almost reported my first snare mission as a bug. Snares are unfair, by design. This is fine. It's a trap, and the objective changes to "get out alive." But without documentation, the player will either assume it's a bug or that this is the new status quo and will just quit playing.

BTW, there's another type of trap, although I don't think it uses the official Snare designation. I had a Lib 3 Neutralize VIP mission listed at Light difficulty. I went in expecting 13-15 enemies and got more along the lines of 20. But the real kicker is that literally every civilian on the map was a faceless. I had two of them transforming every turn, while fighting a much stronger force than expected. I reverted an earlier save and aborted the mission, because I thought that it was an obviously bugged mission, but I now think it was a legitimate, if totally undocumented and unexplained, feature.

[Ithuriel]

With appropriate savegames, you might want to back up and restart to avoid the silliness. I use the mod Tkyl's Save Scum to reroll the RNG seed so when I need to reload to fix problems, I can change things if needed.

Do you know if this works with the Restart Mission button? The reason I ask is because I'm running Bronzeman (Ironman but you can restart missions), but restarting the mission doesn't change the map or the seed at all- so if I restart a mission I immediately get an unfair advantage because I know so much already.

[KevlinTallfellow]

So I have a mission infiltrating now in a region with 7 strength, and it's a light hack mission on a train with a 14 day timer on it.

Surely this is a trap mission, right? But here's the kicker:

It also says it will counter a dark event.

My questions are these:

If a hack mission is a trap, can it falsely report countering a dark event to sweeten the bait?

If a mission actually counters a real dark event, can that mission also turn out to be a trap?

[Jacke]

Do you know if [ Tkyl's Save Scum mod ] works with the Restart Mission button?

You'll have to test it out. I think you'll need a Geoscape save from before launching the mission.

[JulianSkies]

So I have a mission infiltrating now in a region with 7 strength, and it's a light hack mission on a train with a 14 day timer on it.

Surely this is a trap mission, right? But here's the kicker:

It also says it will counter a dark event.

My questions are these:

If a hack mission is a trap, can it falsely report countering a dark event to sweeten the bait?

If a mission actually counters a real dark event, can that mission also turn out to be a trap?

I want to say that a mission that counters a dark event can't be a snare. I'm not 100% certain but I don't think countering dark events is part of the snare missions.

[Tuhalu]

Missions that counter Dark Events can't be snares.

Basically, there are activities that Advent undertake and those activities generate missions. If they are trying to trap you, that's a Snare activity and it only generates Hack missions. If they are doing research which would result in a Dark Event when completed, then that's either Counterinsurgency Research (COINResearch) or Counterinsurgency Operations (COINOps) and they can generate a few different mission types, including a Hack.