Is it odd to have zero avatar progress in November/December?

[marceror]

I'm still making my way through my first LW2 campaign, and on the whole enjoying it very much. I'm playing on Veteran difficulty and in full disclosure, while I generally will not save scum, I'm not completely opposed to it every once in a while. I can probably count my save scums on one hand for this campaign. I have no additional mods of consequence. Just a few cosmetic and a couple QoL mods.

At any rate, in November I hit zero avatar progress when I took out what I believe to be the only Blacksite currently existing in my game, which removed two pips, along with completing the psionic gate mission, which removed the three pips that existed at Waterworld. Those five pips were all that existed.

So my question is, am I just playing well or is this not intended to be possible? Avatar progress tends to be slowed by more than 100%. In November I established my 15th resistance haven, and in December the 16th and final, five of which are liberated -- so I have very good coverage of the world.

Early in my campaign I prioritized two things in particular, get all the recruits I can and hit the avatar project at every opportunity. I'm wondering if I went "overboard" with that second priority, or just somehow got lucky.

This isn't a problem, of course, but that tension that relates to the Avatar progress is rather non-existent in my campaign. Advent would have a hard time even constructing another Blacksite since they are pouring so many of their resources at dealing with the "XCOM threat", and even if they did, I'd be in a reasonably strong position to shut it down before it made much progress. So the Avatar Project is effectively obsolete.

So, should I be "proud" of the accomplishment, or bummed that I overplayed my hand? Is this outcome intended/expected by the devs if a player is able to hit Advent where it hurts?

[Tuhalu]

It means you are ready to play on a higher difficulty level. I'm doing all my learning on Veteran too and only have a few pips in December. I attribute most of that to playing the strategic layer correctly (although I'm taking my time on finishing so I can try the end-game toys).

From what I've seen from other people playing it and whats in the ini files, this is not really possible on legendary. Everything happens faster. Faster avatar progress, faster advent global strength increase, faster force level increases, more dark events. You also can't even attempt your first liberation missions until the second month.

The avatar project will eventually complete even on Veteran or Rookie. Once you've completed all the golden path quests, you can no longer remove pips from the Waterworld source. Over 100% delay just means pips take more than twice as long to accumulate, not that they don't accumulate at all.

[marceror]

Thanks for the response. Your points are certainly reasonable. I don't really think of myself as that great of a player -- certainly not one of the best -- so I guess even I'm surprised that I'm doing this well with LW2, even while only on veteran.

I will say that a key difference between my play style and, say, a lot of the popular Youtubers out there, is I have the luxury to take my time on, well, everything. I'm not at all concerned about being "entertaining" to others, so I will regularly check my Havens to make sure my rebels are doing optimal jobs for the situation, that I have the right advisors and that they are equipped as well as I realistically can make them, and I track everyone's assignments in a spreadsheet -- as just a few examples. That extra attention to detail at every step allows me to run a more efficient campaign, both on the strategic and tactical layers.

Running an extremely heavy UFO mission? I will usually take the time to scout the entire map to see exactly how many pods there are, what they are composed of, and where they patrol. This allows me to reduce my risks in engaging the enemy, choose the best defensive locations for those engagements, and just generally maximize my damage output while reducing my injuries.

Those small benefits mission to mission yield large advantages over the course of a campaign, since I'm not losing a lot of soldiers, and I'm therefore building a larger roster of more experienced fighters. I currently have around 105 soldiers in my barracks, comprised of 10 full squads of 6 - 9 soldiers, a bullpen with some replacement soldiers, and 14 Haven Advisors (I usually have 1 training as an officer at all times, and 3 engineers in liberated regions for extra supplies). Heck, supplies? I'm bringing in around 2k every supply drop. Cash is rarely an issue... though Elerium and alloys most certainly are. There are a ton of upgrades, and I have a ton of soldiers who want them!

I suppose that eventually I'll have to come back and try my hand at a LW2 legendary campaign. I'm sure it would be a very different outcome.

[Tuhalu]

That's a fairly large number of soldiers. I have 65 soldiers above Rookie and 29 of them at Master Sergeant. I can easily enough run 3 major missions (7-9 guys) at a time with some left over for hitting up smaller stuff.

I'm just about to liberate my 4th region, but I have 2 other tower missions and 2 other HQ assaults available when I feel like doing them. I probably could have pushed those other liberations through faster, but I didn't feel like they were strictly necessary.

[marceror]

That's a fairly large number of soldiers. I have 65 soldiers above Rookie and 29 of them at Master Sergeant. I can easily enough run 3 major missions (7-9 guys) at a time with some left over for hitting up smaller stuff.

I'm just about to liberate my 4th region, but I have 2 other tower missions and 2 other HQ assaults available when I feel like doing them. I probably could have pushed those other liberations through faster, but I didn't feel like they were strictly necessary.

I just checked and I currently have exactly 40 master sergeants, 21 gunnery sergeants, 15 tech sergeants, 18 staff sergeants, 11 sergeants, and 2 lance corporals - for 106 soldiers in total.

As mentioned, I prioritized increasing my soldier pool as a top priority, so that meant that I purchased every recruit possible from the armory, black market, and ran as many jail breaks as I could with my recon squad (though these were not always successful). Once I got somewhere close to 100 soldiers I stopped hiring rookies from the armory, and now am really only adding soldiers from the black market each month. Jail breaks rarely happen anymore, so that's not really a major thing (though I do have one queued up in a recently occupied haven, but no soldiers will come from it).

Given the logistics of LW2, I figured it was better to have a few low level squaddies filling out my squads early on rather than no one at all. So initially I separated several of my early soldiers to be core members of separate squads, and filled their ranks with squaddies. I kept only one squad with all veteran soldiers as my A-team.

That worked out well for me, and now 3 of those squads are A-team status, with several others on their way there. 9 squads are balanced combat squads, and only one is a smaller 2 specialist, 4 shinobi stealth squad.

Of those 10 there's really only one that I would call desperately underequipped, with them still running with lots of laser and mag weapons along with predator/spider/E.X.O. armor. They currently take on those rare missions that try to get down to extremely light, or no more than very light.

[marceror]

If anyone is interested, here's what I currently have to outfit my soldiers in terms of armor and weapons:

Armor

• Predator Armor: 50 suits
• E.X.O. Suit: 4
• Spider Suit: 8
• Reinforced Frame (SPARK): 1

• Warden Armor: 23 suits
• W.A.R. Suit: 7
• Wraith Suit: 8
• Anodized Chassis (SPARK): 1

• R.A.G.E Armor
• Serpent Armor

Primary Weapons

• Plasma Rifle: 4
• Plasma Lance: 1
• Scramgun: 8
• Plasma Pistol: 1

• Coil Rifle: 5
• Gauss Cannon: 6
• Gauss Long Rifle: 6
• Scattergun: 4
• Subcoiler: 14
• Gauss Pistol: 5

• Mag Rifle: 12
• Mag Cannon: 3
• Mag Long Rifle: 4
• Shard Gun: 7
• Stuttermag: 17
• Helix Rail-Cannon: 2
• Mag Pistol: 3

• Laser Rifle: 7
• Laser Cannon: 3
• Laser Lance: 3
• Laser Stengun: 4
• Scatterray: 3
• Laser Pistol: 2

Secondary Weapons

• Fusion Blade: 3
• Arc Blade: 10
• Gremlin Mark II: 11
• Advanced Arc Thrower: 9
• Blaster Gauntlet: 2
• Gauntlet Mark II: 9
• Holotargeter Mark II: 10
• Vibroblade: 11
• Mag Shorty: 8
• Advanced Grenade Launcher: 7
• Advanced Psi Amp: 3
• Plated BIT: 2
• Ionic Axe: 1
• Enhanced Shadowkeeper: 1

There are certain weapon categories that I'm currently able to build, but have held off due to lack of resources, primarily alloys and elerium. I just can't seem to get enough of those items no matter what I do. Most of this equipment is still seeing active use, though I'm slowly trying to phase out all of the laser weapons, eventually.

[SouthpawHare]

I will say that a key difference between my play style and, say, a lot of the popular Youtubers out there, is I have the luxury to take my time on, well, everything. I'm not at all concerned about being "entertaining" to others, so I will regularly check my Havens to make sure my rebels are doing optimal jobs for the situation, that I have the right advisors and that they are equipped as well as I realistically can make them, and I track everyone's assignments in a spreadsheet -- as just a few examples. That extra attention to detail at every step allows me to run a more efficient campaign, both on the strategic and tactical layers.

While this is true, I will say that I've had the exact opposite experience: streaming for an audience and having people watch me has motivated me to become better at the game. The big factor is keeping me honest and incentivizing me to play Iron Man or otherwise not savescum.

[Antifringe]

I just checked and I currently have exactly 40 master sergeants, 21 gunnery sergeants, 15 tech sergeants, 18 staff sergeants, 11 sergeants, and 2 lance corporals - for 106 soldiers in total.

This is why you have so few Avatar pips. With that many soldiers, and with that many ranks, you have doing mission after mission after mission. ADVENT Vigilance is probably through the roof by now. Each point of Vigilance above Strength adds 10 hours to the time for facilities to create pips. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that you are 50 or 60 points in the lead.

I wonder if there's a cap on how much delay you can add to the Avatar project? If there is, you've probably hit it by now.

[marceror]

I just checked and I currently have exactly 40 master sergeants, 21 gunnery sergeants, 15 tech sergeants, 18 staff sergeants, 11 sergeants, and 2 lance corporals - for 106 soldiers in total.

This is why you have so few Avatar pips. With that many soldiers, and with that many ranks, you have doing mission after mission after mission. ADVENT Vigilance is probably through the roof by now. Each point of Vigilance above Strength adds 10 hours to the time for facilities to create pips. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that you are 50 or 60 points in the lead.

I wonder if there's a cap on how much delay you can add to the Avatar project? If there is, you've probably hit it by now.

Well, sure, I tend to run every single mission I can, and with 10 full squads plus some benchwarmers, plus 14 haven advisors, it's rare that I can't muster up troops (so far only once have I had all 10 squads infiltrating at the same time... back in October I believe). I also tend to have a lot of intel with all those havens producing it for me, so I usually don't hesitate to boost a mission if I think it's going to be too hard otherwise. The point is, run missions, get experience, loot, etc., and most of all hurt Advent.

My global resistance rating is severe, and Avatar progress has been slowed by 115 - 120% for some time.

[chrisb]

I would be interested to see what your regional alert/vigilance values look like.

The command to run is LWDumpRegionInfo it will show up in the Launch.log which would be in 'My Documents/My Games/XCOM2/XComGame/Logs.

Word of warning, don't open this with notepad if you have been playing for awhile. The file is huge and notepad can take many minutes to open it. The log file is recreated each time you start the game, so doing it after a fresh game start is easiest to work with.

It's pretty cheaty to use this for the campaign, but given where your at, I'd say it's ok, and would be some good science!

[marceror]

I would be interested to see what your regional alert/vigilance values look like.

The command to run is LWDumpRegionInfo it will show up in the Launch.log which would be in 'My Documents/My Games/XCOM2/XComGame/Logs.

Word of warning, don't open this with notepad if you have been playing for awhile. The file is huge and notepad can take many minutes to open it. The log file is recreated each time you start the game, so doing it after a fresh game start is easiest to work with.

It's pretty cheaty to use this for the campaign, but given where your at, I'd say it's ok, and would be some good science!

I kind of hate that I was tempted to do this, as up until this point I didn't even know how to enable the console. I just generally like to stay away from hacky stuff when I'm playing a game, as it can ruin some of the immersion, wonder and even fun. But, I mostly didn't know what I was even looking at in the file. I found vigilance and regional alerts from keyword searching. I believe this is what you're looking for:

Code: Select all

[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (WorldRegion_EastNA) -- Force: 17 ; Alert: 2 ; Vigilance: 1
[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (WorldRegion_WestNA) -- Force: 17 ; Alert: 1 ; Vigilance: 1
[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (WorldRegion_SouthNA) -- Force: 17 ; Alert: 2 ; Vigilance: 1
[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (WorldRegion_NorthSA) -- Force: 17 ; Alert: 4 ; Vigilance: 15
[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (WorldRegion_SouthSA) -- Force: 17 ; Alert: 3 ; Vigilance: 15
[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (WorldRegion_WestEU) -- Force: 17 ; Alert: 4 ; Vigilance: 8
[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (WorldRegion_EastEU) -- Force: 17 ; Alert: 2 ; Vigilance: 6
[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (WorldRegion_NorthAF) -- Force: 17 ; Alert: 6 ; Vigilance: 17
[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (WorldRegion_EastAF) -- Force: 17 ; Alert: 3 ; Vigilance: 13
[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (WorldRegion_SouthAF) -- Force: 17 ; Alert: 4 ; Vigilance: 18
[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (WorldRegion_EastAS) -- Force: 17 ; Alert: 8 ; Vigilance: 35
[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (WorldRegion_WestAS) -- Force: 17 ; Alert: 4 ; Vigilance: 15
[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (WorldRegion_NorthAS) -- Force: 17 ; Alert: 5 ; Vigilance: 25
[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (WorldRegion_SouthAS) -- Force: 17 ; Alert: 3 ; Vigilance: 12
[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (WorldRegion_NorthOC) -- Force: 17 ; Alert: 1 ; Vigilance: 2
[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (WorldRegion_SouthOC) -- Force: 17 ; Alert: 1 ; Vigilance: 1
[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (Totals) -- Force: 272 ; Alert: 53 ; Vigilance: 185

I will now be disabling the console posthaste, and trying to forget about it... lest I be tempted to start picking my game apart further.

At least until I complete my campaign, it's enough to know that I'm the good guy, Advent is the bad guy, and I'm fighting to reclaim the Earth for humankind!

[Antifringe]

[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (Totals) -- Force: 272 ; Alert: 53 ; Vigilance: 185

Hoooleeee

I thought I was punching ADVENT in the mouth when I had a 40 point lead. You have a 132 lead, and ADVENT strength is super low. I didn't think this level of strategic victory was even possible.

[Jadiel]

I would guess the OP is doing a lot of Supply Raids and Troop Columns. Both have a huge effect on your lead over advent, as they remove a point of strength from the map and add 3-4 points of Vigilance. The more Vigilance you create, the more Supply Raids that appear, and you can see how it can snowball.

[marceror]

[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (Totals) -- Force: 272 ; Alert: 53 ; Vigilance: 185

Hoooleeee

I thought I was punching ADVENT in the mouth when I had a 40 point lead. You have a 132 lead, and ADVENT strength is super low. I didn't think this level of strategic victory was even possible.

Okay, so apparently I'm doing well from a strategic point of view, but what does this really mean? I'm not aware that "vigilance" is even really mentioned in the game as something I should care about.

My observations are simply that I have substantially slowed the Avatar project (to practical irrelevance) and likely Advent strength (force) is lower overall than it otherwise would be -- meaning I will have lower baseline enemy activity in most regions.

Is that a fair interpretation?

[marceror]

I would guess the OP is doing a lot of Supply Raids and Troop Columns. Both have a huge effect on your lead over advent, as they remove a point of strength from the map and add 3-4 points of Vigilance. The more Vigilance you create, the more Supply Raids that appear, and you can see how it can snowball.

I wish there were more of these offered for me to do, but yeah, I basically do all of them that I can. Even if I can't fully infiltrate them I will usually try to do them, since more enemies equals more rewards if I succeed at the mission.

[chrisb]

[0117.94] ScriptLog: Regional AI (Totals) -- Force: 272 ; Alert: 53 ; Vigilance: 185

Hoooleeee

I thought I was punching ADVENT in the mouth when I had a 40 point lead. You have a 132 lead, and ADVENT strength is super low. I didn't think this level of strategic victory was even possible.

Okay, so apparently I'm doing well from a strategic point of view, but what does this really mean? I'm not aware that "vigilance" is even really mentioned in the game as something I should care about.

My observations are simply that I have substantially slowed the Avatar project (to practical irrelevance) and likely Advent strength (force) is lower overall than it otherwise would be -- meaning I will have lower baseline enemy activity in most regions.

Is that a fair interpretation?

Vigilance is created by you succeeding at missions. It affects many parts of the game, but is not communicated well if at all just yet. It doesn't really seem to be designed to go much more than +20 above global alert. This is the threshold where you start getting UFOs that add +4 alert in addition to the +2 alert. This is supposed to be the 'catch up' mechanic that puts advent back on the map. Unfortunately at lower difficulty this basically just gives you more to farm if you already have most of the regions locked down with strong intel and can roflstomp intel raids.

Unfortunately right now, this scenario is actually easy to pull off, even on Legend although it wouldn't be as extreme. If you can pull of an early supply raid, which isn't really too hard and is always worth the gamble. It's pretty easy to restart when your still in March. This was the same problem in LW1, but it was much more RNG as to whether you would even get a large landed ufo in March. In LW2 it's a near certainty with the way you spike vigilance in the starting region.

The 1.3 patch seems to be attempting to remedy this. Not sure exactly what's coming but I heard 8 man limit and maybe more?