Pistols (underused) and AWC

[ndessell]

it's not abnormal for one soldier's pistol perks to be dealing 45 damage in a turn as you enter the latter stages of the game, and earlier on in the game abilities like lightning hands, clutch shot, and fanfire are extremely strong.

You say that like 45 damage over multiple shots is impressive.

'Multiple shots' is irrelevant. It's the actions you're spending that matter, and pistols are preposterously action-efficient. Like, exploding two or three separate pods with Faceoff is a single action - you can do other things on your turn in addition to that. That skill alone is competitive with a lot of high rank perks (especially in combination with other abilities that can elevate it from 'pretty good' to 'downright broken'), for the cost of as little as 9 days AWC time and a utility slot.

It is disingenuous to lift up pistols while ignoring to power of base solid abilities. Compare it to a well down serial, reaper, rapid fire, chain shot, cyclic fire, area suppression, guardian, sentinel, rapid reaction, or kill zone.
Pistols arent terrible, but lets be very clear they are a best secondary to standard skills.

[Veneficus]

I think it'd be a shame to cut it entirely, because I personally love how goofy and awesome it is, but the way it interacts with Shadowstrike etc. should probably be adjusted in some way, yes.

I should clarify that I'm an immersion curmudgeon who usually hates things happening in a tactical sim if they wouldn't at least arguably be able to happen within the presumed several-second timeframe that each turn represents. I realize not everyone feels that way though.

Mechanically and in terms of balance, Faceoff's many mathematical interactions are certainly the issue. It's not some kind of superpowered ability otherwise, but boy-oh-boy does it interact potently with perks!

I must admit that I like a bit of suspended reality in my late game tactical combat.

If I wanted reality, I would just go back to a real war...

[fowlJ]

Yep, Faceoff works great through high cover, especially with +Defense and +Tac Sense stacking.

Well, yes? First of all, making lots of shots through high cover is inherently better than making few shots through high cover, so it is pretty effective in that regard, but second, I think you're misunderstanding something here: 90% of the reason Faceoff is so ridiculous is the ability to open with it from concealment, especially with Shadowstrike, which applies to all shots made as part of the ability. Cover of any kind is irrelevant, because the enemies aren't active yet, and you're looking at 100% Hit and 100% Crit (or pretty close) against every target. Without that interaction it is a lot less silly.

Who has time to pop "two or three" pods? Three pods? Are you guys running 0% Supply Raids? Are you setting up hour-long ambushes with True Concealment? Some of us are doing neither. Maybe if you're running 0% Supply Raids then you've power-leveled your soldiers to the point where you have MSGTs with laser weapons and can freely train all the way down the AWC, but the rest of us are prevented from power-AWC training by the natural leveling process.

Snarkily implying that people who have experienced situations in the game that you haven't have done so because they are playing it wrong or using mods to make the game easier is kind of rude at the best of times, and a little silly when one of the people in this discussion is literally a Legend difficulty balance tester for the mod. No, I'm pretty sure JoINrbs is not, in fact, using True Concealment to trivialise ambushes, and I know for a fact he houserules out 0% Supply Raids.

As to your actual statement here, I'm not sure what's really so absurd about having two or more pods in vision at a time? It hardly takes an 'hour-long ambush' to walk a couple moves away from the spawnpoint and find some pods patrolling, and engaging that many enemies at once is fully possible if most of them are going to be dead by the time their turn rolls around.

This is a 9-day skill that, for all these "broken" advantages, must be trained on one of only a couple of classes that get crit bonuses, it's location on the AWC is random (I'm just getting it mid-August on my Assault and haven't even had a chance to use it yet), and it's greatest (safest) use is as an opener.

I'm not sure why you're saying that as if a good opener isn't the single most important action you can take in an engagement. If half the enemies you engaged are dead and the other half are badly wounded as a result of the ability, it doesn't matter very much how often you can use it.

--

You say that like 45 damage over multiple shots is impressive.

'Multiple shots' is irrelevant. It's the actions you're spending that matter, and pistols are preposterously action-efficient. Like, exploding two or three separate pods with Faceoff is a single action - you can do other things on your turn in addition to that. That skill alone is competitive with a lot of high rank perks (especially in combination with other abilities that can elevate it from 'pretty good' to 'downright broken'), for the cost of as little as 9 days AWC time and a utility slot.

It is disingenuous to lift up pistols while ignoring to power of base solid abilities. Compare it to a well down serial, reaper, rapid fire, chain shot, cyclic fire, area suppression, guardian, sentinel, rapid reaction, or kill zone.
Pistols arent terrible, but lets be very clear they are a best secondary to standard skills.

Pistols do not require anywhere close to the soldier time investment of many of those skills, and are also not mutually exclusive with many of them due to the fact that they do not end the turn.

[Alketi]

Well, yes? First of all, making lots of shots through high cover is inherently better than making few shots through high cover, so it is pretty effective in that regard, but second, I think you're misunderstanding something here: 90% of the reason Faceoff is so ridiculous is the ability to open with it from concealment, especially with Shadowstrike, which applies to all shots made as part of the ability. Cover of any kind is irrelevant, because the enemies aren't active yet, and you're looking at 100% Hit and 100% Crit (or pretty close) against every target. Without that interaction it is a lot less silly.

Nothing was misunderstood. I stated below it's advantages as an opener. How would you balance opening AOE? Should 4-7 pts of grenade damage be the max available, when dealing with 17HP-22HP enemies? Would you always require careful 7-to-9 tile cone AOE positioning?

Snarkily implying that people who have experienced situations in the game that you haven't have done so because they are playing it wrong or using mods to make the game easier is kind of rude at the best of times, and a little silly when one of the people in this discussion is literally a Legend difficulty balance tester for the mod. No, I'm pretty sure JoINrbs is not, in fact, using True Concealment to trivialise ambushes, and I know for a fact he houserules out 0% Supply Raids.

XCOM is one of the few games where people AREN'T playing the same game. If I claim that Nightmare mode on Doom is too easy, then you can be assured that I and everyone else are playing under the same conditions. In XCOM, and LW2 especially, folks are most certainly NOT playing under the same conditions nor the same (more stringent) house rules. Yes, JoINrbs and Xavier are two of the VERY FEW who are playing vanilla, no save scum, no reload, no 0% supply raid, no True Concealment, Legend campaigns. Find me someone else on YouTube who's playing under those conditions. Perfidious Pete is one of the few who attempted unmodded-LW2 Legend and got annihilated, Mal runs True Concealment, Marbozir was ready to quit until he enabled True Concealment, Christopher Odd quit, Beagle quit, NorthernLion quit, EnterElisium failed and quit, some others who are mostly stock have over-run 0% raids and leveled MSGTs while still using laser weapons.

So the point is, when folks show up and start clamoring for nerfs, a disclaimer needs to apply if they've modded the game to be easier than it's been designed, because they're not playing the game the way it's been balanced. Even leaving aside all the mods/hacks/console commands, if someone's abused 0% supply raids then they've outleveled every other player who hasn't and they've gotten Faceoff + all the bonus damage perks LONG before anyone else who is more likely getting those perks when enemies are already 12-22+ HP.

Yes, JoINrbs and Xavier are playing Legend the way it was balanced and they're testing features and they're helping design mechanics. And, presumably they're doing this on their own time. They're invaluable. The challenge for them (in providing feedback) is to also imagine the game from the perspective of a player that doesn't have all the intimate mechanic/insider knowledge that they do.

Also note that Xavier doesn't even use pistols, at least from what I've seen, and I don't recall him saying that it's a house-rule because they're so broken.

But, after all this, maybe Shadowstrike/Faceoff is still a big problem facing LW2 balance. So, give us a max damage that's acceptable from an AOE opener? We don't want to be able to kill more than one enemy from a single person from stealth, right? Maybe CC then? But some here are also claiming that Sting grenades are "broken". So, too much CC, too much damage. So, before every enemy scampers to high-cover, how would you design the opening engagement?

[chrisb]

So, before every enemy scampers to high-cover, how would you design the opening engagement?

Remove squad concealment and make everything ITT by default.

[Alketi]

So, before every enemy scampers to high-cover, how would you design the opening engagement?

Remove squad concealment and make everything ITT by default.

Well, that would certainly make small squad stealth missions more interesting.

[chrisb]

So, before every enemy scampers to high-cover, how would you design the opening engagement?

Remove squad concealment and make everything ITT by default.

Well, that would certainly make small squad stealth missions more interesting.

Might have an impact on the 'volume' on reddit as well.

[DerAva]

Yes, JoINrbs and Xavier are two of the VERY FEW who are playing vanilla, no save scum, no reload, no 0% supply raid, no True Concealment, Legend campaigns. Find me someone else on YouTube who's playing under those conditions. Perfidious Pete is one of the few who attempted unmodded-LW2 Legend and got annihilated, Mal runs True Concealment, Marbozir was ready to quit until he enabled True Concealment, Christopher Odd quit, Beagle quit, NorthernLion quit, EnterElisium failed and quit, some others who are mostly stock have over-run 0% raids and leveled MSGTs while still using laser weapons.

I wouldn't really call a campaign with Red Fog "Vanilla", but I completely agree that this shows how difficult the balancing can be and how hard it is to quantify player feedback when making balance decisions. Also "Guilty as charged" in regards to 0% supply raids.

[darkerevent]

Also note that Xavier doesn't even use pistols, at least from what I've seen, and I don't recall him saying that it's a house-rule because they're so broken.

Xavier has said at times in his videos that he is testing out certain things in a deliberate fashion, even though they are probably suboptimal. For instance, a few weeks back in his legend campaign series on YouTube, he mentioned that he would be running some midrange-sized GOps squads to gather testing data and give feedback to the devs, even though he anticipated that running them that way (instead of stealthing them) was a dangerous idea. He was correct in his expectation, and he had some bad times and close calls because of it that illustrated what's wrong with midrange GOps.

In general, he seems to be putting some consideration into simulating the experience of a player who isn't actively doing everything in their power to break the game, and he favors the "good, yet fun and interesting" option over the "optimal yet boring" option at times. He also never ran a 0% supply raid until very late in the campaign when he got very tired of being poor and was on the verge of losing the campaign to Doom.

With all of that in mind, I definitely wouldn't take his lack of using Faceoff as a sign that it's balanced.

[Goldenmonkey]

I think with the right tweeks to amo for pistols, they could easily be balanced. Personally, I would love to see a higher damage on pistols, but also a short weapon range and either low amo or a x-shots maximum per round. Multiple pistol classes would be cool, too. Well, I guess there is mods for that... (any suggestions?)
Or, leave the faceoff with a lot of shots (like in cowboy movies, where the shooter slaps the top of the pistol to fire multiple shots rapidly) but give an increasing aim penalty with each shot.
Last but not least, a gunslinger class needs to be a thing, or an option for the shinobi. Double pistols pew pew pew pew pew.

[Autoclave]

I think with the right tweeks to amo for pistols, they could easily be balanced. Personally, I would love to see a higher damage on pistols, but also a short weapon range and either low amo or a x-shots maximum per round. Multiple pistol classes would be cool, too. Well, I guess there is mods for that... (any suggestions?)
Or, leave the faceoff with a lot of shots (like in cowboy movies, where the shooter slaps the top of the pistol to fire multiple shots rapidly) but give an increasing aim penalty with each shot.
Last but not least, a gunslinger class needs to be a thing, or an option for the shinobi. Double pistols pew pew pew pew pew.

An ability should be nerfed once it makes other abilities or opening moves infererior. In this context I cannot see faceoff nerfed with the current state of serial and chain lightning

[Goldenmonkey]

An ability should be nerfed once it makes other abilities or opening moves infererior.

I disagree. Or at least, that is not the only reason for a change. An ability should be nerfed if it is so powerful, it throws the balance of the game off.
That being said, I don't think faceoff desperately needs a nerf, but shooting 10+ enemies in one turn seems kinda stupid. I think a change would make it more enjoyable, not necessarily weaker

[LordYanaek]

Im going to kindly disagree. they are at best ok alternatives to most classes regular skills.

my goto response to that is https://clips.twitch.tv/NastyGiftedLlamaANELE

the faceoff where i run to the bathroom and back before it finishes animating is pretty solid too: https://youtu.be/yo3ZP7qnZS0?t=6m15s

sure and how do they turn out the other 99.99% of the time.

I would rather guess it's more like 95% of the time than 99.99.
The trick though is that during those 95% of the time when you don't need faceoff and it doesn't give you a huge power spike, you don't really need anything else either because you have the engagement under control. But for those 5% of the time when it proves valuable, it's really valuable and can change the outcome of the engagement. For this reason alone it's worth training Pistol perks until you have some soldiers with faceoff, just in case they can save your squad.

However we are not talking about one single pistol perk. Quickdraw turns any soldier into a semi-ranger the turns they don't need to move. Lightning Hands gives you a free attack and i won't complain it's lower damage because it's still some damage in addition to normal damage. Fan Fire is a very strong single target attack for soldiers who lack chain shot or rapid fire. A lot of those can be useful pretty often. Faceoff is just the tip of the iceberg but there is much more to Pistol than just faceoff.

RE : Nerf Faceoff discussion. I havn't used it enough to have a real point of view but don't forget it's still quite situational to have a perfect faceoff ambush so if it works great when you have the perfect conditions, well, good for you but it doesn't mean it's globally overpowered.

[stefan3iii]

Im going to kindly disagree. they are at best ok alternatives to most classes regular skills.

my goto response to that is https://clips.twitch.tv/NastyGiftedLlamaANELE

the faceoff where i run to the bathroom and back before it finishes animating is pretty solid too: https://youtu.be/yo3ZP7qnZS0?t=6m15s

sure and how do they turn out the other 99.99% of the time.

Really effectively? Pistols perks are extremely strong, takes a lot of soldier time to train them all but they have some pretty amazing interactions with Run and Gun and Shadowstrike. Even without those, they'd just be really strong perks.

[TheCiroth]

I run 0 supply raids both on Commander and Legend (Because I don't detect them in time, even running 13 on intel and the Avenger there), yet my shinobis always go into the tank until they get faceoff because a shadow strike Shinobi is just so powerful. I've started to look at training Assaults as well fully down the tree. Most of my techs and shinobis finish the pistol tree just to add more to them. A free shot and then rocket? sure! Do quick burn, firestorm then faceoff everything still alive? Well not much is alive then. I think pistols need more love yes. The rest of the AWC is mostly pointless, more so if you don't play with perks being shown

[LordYanaek]

I run 0 supply raids both on Commander and Legend (Because I don't detect them in time, even running 13 on intel and the Avenger there), yet my shinobis always go into the tank until they get faceoff because a shadow strike Shinobi is just so powerful.

Not sure why you make it sound like a contradiction. The more high density missions you run (0% supply raids and ambushes being the most obvious examples), the better Faceoff becomes. It's perfectly logical if you're doing 0% missions you get a lot out of Faceoff but i think it's useful even out of those missions.

[chrisb]

I run 0 supply raids both on Commander and Legend (Because I don't detect them in time, even running 13 on intel and the Avenger there)

Your not 'supposed' to detect them in time. They are designed so that you should almost never see one that is doable in a campaign. They are similar to UFOs in this regard. You are however supposed to do troop columns. Doing both means you are removing too much strength from the strategy layer. You could have 50 rebels you'd still almost never detect them 'in time'. That's why you almost always see them with < 2 days left and at least 50% of the time you dont detect them at all.

[Jacke]

XCOM is one of the few games where people AREN'T playing the same game. If I claim that Nightmare mode on Doom is too easy, then you can be assured that I and everyone else are playing under the same conditions. In XCOM, and LW2 especially, folks are most certainly NOT playing under the same conditions nor the same (more stringent) house rules. Yes, JoINrbs and Xavier are two of the VERY FEW who are playing vanilla, no save scum, no reload, no 0% supply raid, no True Concealment, Legend campaigns. Find me someone else on YouTube who's playing under those conditions. Perfidious Pete is one of the few who attempted unmodded-LW2 Legend and got annihilated, Mal runs True Concealment, Marbozir was ready to quit until he enabled True Concealment, Christopher Odd quit, Beagle quit, NorthernLion quit, EnterElisium failed and quit, some others who are mostly stock have over-run 0% raids and leveled MSGTs while still using laser weapons.

I think that's one of the most damning things about the current meta about LW2 Legendary unmodded (as in gameplay mods): only the playtesters are playing it. I could never play Doom on Nightmare back in the day or most similar games (eg. Duke Nukem 3D) on similar settings. But I can just manage to some degree top difficulty XCOM 2. But top difficulty LW2 just doesn't feel right. With so many YouTubers/streamers there should be some who would just like the challenge. But I think a factor has to be the whole nature of Long War: it's one thing to struggle mightily for the 20-30 hours needed for most games, but for 100's of hours that's just too much.

How many here have even finished a LW2 campaign? My campaign is stalled mid-May waiting for 1.3 as I've just not willing to beat my head against retaliation missions as they seem guaranteed to derail me, especially Intel retal. Even with the preceding mission, they show up at such short notice I just can't win them without massive casualties and not even a win necessarily. Don't know if this is going to change with 1.3, but I'd rather take on figuring out what to do when other changes have taken place, rather than have to solve this one twice.

[chrisb]

I really don't understand how people have so much trouble with intel raids. In any campaign I've run I basically considered them free xp farm. To the point that I was using them to power level the squads. I don't actually remember ever taking more than a couple of small wounds on the advisor, which was the expected outcome since I set him up to soak damage. I hardly remember taking a scratch on any of the main squad, let alone coming close to losing anyone. Most of them are over in 3 or 4 turns and the ayys are lucky if they even fire a shot.

The bonus is, once you do it in that region, you have a clear 2-3 weeks before another shows up. They have a regional cooldown. So after one pops I throw a Sci in there, farm the troop column, then wait for the next retal. I basically bait them in.

AFAIK there's no changes I've heard of to retals. It seems like the biggest focus is balancing the GOPs and maybe some class balance.

[Dwarfling]

I really don't understand how people have so much trouble with intel raids. In any campaign I've run I basically considered them free xp farm. To the point that I was using them to power level the squads. I don't actually remember ever taking more than a couple of small wounds on the advisor, which was the expected outcome since I set him up to soak damage. I hardly remember taking a scratch on any of the main squad, let alone coming close to losing anyone. Most of them are over in 3 or 4 turns and the ayys are lucky if they even fire a shot.

The bonus is, once you do it in that region, you have a clear 2-3 weeks before another shows up. They have a regional cooldown. So after one pops I throw a Sci in there, farm the troop column, then wait for the next retal. I basically bait them in.

AFAIK there's no changes I've heard of to retals. It seems like the biggest focus is balancing the GOPs and maybe some class balance.

Because it's a crap shoot. Last intel raid I did had my rebels facing two pods on opposing sides of a house: 2 Codex + Muton Elite; 4 trooper pod. Codex pod activated as soon as I moved one of my guys to a cover that he no longer could use, and the trooper pod came the turn after from behind them. Meanwhile the main squad was fighting sneks two screens away.

Maybe I shouldn't have instigated it on a STR6 (or was it 7? I needed exp) region, but goddamn.

[Jacke]

I really don't understand how people have so much trouble with intel raids. In any campaign I've run I basically considered them free xp farm.

Well, I've seen xwynns struggle with them and he's a better player than I. I just tried to run the Data Leak mission to prevent one. But I only had 4 hours so it was effectively 0% and found it impossible even with a 10-soldier squad of my best troops. And getting campaign-killing casualties to boot.

So I was facing backing up at least to cancel the Data Leak mission or even go back a few hours more and not launch it. And either give up on the Intel Retal or try to run it. But that was over 2 weeks ago because I just don't want to run another mission and get kicked in the teeth again.

[ndessell]

I really don't understand how people have so much trouble with intel raids. In any campaign I've run I basically considered them free xp farm. To the point that I was using them to power level the squads. I don't actually remember ever taking more than a couple of small wounds on the advisor, which was the expected outcome since I set him up to soak damage. I hardly remember taking a scratch on any of the main squad, let alone coming close to losing anyone. Most of them are over in 3 or 4 turns and the ayys are lucky if they even fire a shot.

The bonus is, once you do it in that region, you have a clear 2-3 weeks before another shows up. They have a regional cooldown. So after one pops I throw a Sci in there, farm the troop column, then wait for the next retal. I basically bait them in.

AFAIK there's no changes I've heard of to retals. It seems like the biggest focus is balancing the GOPs and maybe some class balance.

Because it's a crap shoot. Last intel raid I did had my rebels facing two pods on opposing sides of a house: 2 Codex + Muton Elite; 4 trooper pod. Codex pod activated as soon as I moved one of my guys to a cover that he no longer could use, and the trooper pod came the turn after from behind them. Meanwhile the main squad was fighting sneks two screens away.

Maybe I shouldn't have instigated it on a STR6 (or was it 7? I needed exp) region, but goddamn.

there is your mistake, anything about 5 is basically a dead region. That's a problem with Lw2 haveing 75% of the in campaign difficulty scaling being pointless to difficult.

[chrisb]

I really don't understand how people have so much trouble with intel raids. In any campaign I've run I basically considered them free xp farm.

Well, I've seen xwynns struggle with them and he's a better player than I. I just tried to run the Data Leak mission to prevent one. But I only had 4 hours so it was effectively 0% and found it impossible even with a 10-soldier squad of my best troops. And getting campaign-killing casualties to boot.

So I was facing backing up at least to cancel the Data Leak mission or even go back a few hours more and not launch it. And either give up on the Intel Retal or try to run it. But that was over 2 weeks ago because I just don't want to run another mission and get kicked in the teeth again.

Yes, Xwynns is a very good player, and I learned from his 'mistakes'. He seems to greatly neglect his haven advisors, most of them are very undergeared and underleveled. So I took the opposite approach and made very good haven advisors. The idea is when an intel raid happens I use the advisors from the other havens as part of the haven defense team. This keeps them leveled up as they are always going on 4-5 intel raids per month if not more some months. Eventually I have 5 such people, 1 is the relay guard the others join whoever my top guys in the barracks are. The advisors are all tanky assaults, technicals and rangers and all carry the best shotgun I have atm. They are usually the first I upgrade when new tech arrives.

Also data leaks are not intel raids. Those are called Counterinsurgency internally. It's a DestroyObject that is so-so to detect but only has a 6-8 day timer. Unless you are going full intel you will not detect these in time. With full intel you at least have a chance, but this means at least 10+ intel with some rebels ranked up. If you get these on short timers, just let them go, all they do is spawn the full retal, which is often not that hard depending on whether you get defend or terror of course. This is also why I like to go full intel since detecting and solo/duo the destroy relay is possible if you get it with 4ish days and can boost it. Having suppressors and camo really helps to push this to 200%. But only if you catch it in time. Otherwise just let it pass, the retal will be easier than a 0% destroy relay almost all the time. I haven't actually had many of them since they either haven't spawned or I catch the relay with good time because of the 15+ RebelLevels i typically have putting out.

[chrisb]

I really don't understand how people have so much trouble with intel raids. In any campaign I've run I basically considered them free xp farm. To the point that I was using them to power level the squads. I don't actually remember ever taking more than a couple of small wounds on the advisor, which was the expected outcome since I set him up to soak damage. I hardly remember taking a scratch on any of the main squad, let alone coming close to losing anyone. Most of them are over in 3 or 4 turns and the ayys are lucky if they even fire a shot.

The bonus is, once you do it in that region, you have a clear 2-3 weeks before another shows up. They have a regional cooldown. So after one pops I throw a Sci in there, farm the troop column, then wait for the next retal. I basically bait them in.

AFAIK there's no changes I've heard of to retals. It seems like the biggest focus is balancing the GOPs and maybe some class balance.

Because it's a crap shoot. Last intel raid I did had my rebels facing two pods on opposing sides of a house: 2 Codex + Muton Elite; 4 trooper pod. Codex pod activated as soon as I moved one of my guys to a cover that he no longer could use, and the trooper pod came the turn after from behind them. Meanwhile the main squad was fighting sneks two screens away.

Maybe I shouldn't have instigated it on a STR6 (or was it 7? I needed exp) region, but goddamn.

As was said, once you starting getting to 6+ things do get more risky especially at higher Force since the schedules start to include harder aliens. This is why I like to combine my intel raid farming with troop column farming and don't do other missions. This causes vigilance in the region to drop since I'm only doing 2-3 missions per month. You can still get unlucky and have a SuperUFO land 2 strength in the region, at which point just put like 3-4 on recruit and try to bleed off the strength to somewhere else.

Most of this strat only works April to maybe August. It's still somewhat managable after that but only if the region is 3-5 strength, which on higher difficulties becomes uncommon. After that I mostly just try to finish the game.

Also if I were in a situation where I had 2 pods on the relay, I would try as best I could to get the rebels and advisor out. Toss the evac with your main squad to get that ticking from turn 1. If I can't hold the relay, abandon if possible and try to merge with the main squad, supress/control until the evac comes and GTFO. If your late in the game, it's not such a big deal since losing a region then is not that big of a blow. Even if I lose the rebels I'll try to save the advisor so I can put him somewhere else. I put a lot of time and resources into my advisors so I'll sacrifice the rebels to save him so he can guard somewhere else. But typically I avoid this by simply hiding rebels in these regions and just trying to pickup troop columns and counter DE missions if possible.

[Jacke]

Part of the problem is I'm not sure which missions are being referred to with these names, especially as notification in the Geoscape can be confusing. As well, I didn't realise some missions if skipped can have different missions come about. I thought Data Leak/Destroy Enemy Relay only led to Intel Raid, not a Full Retaliation.

I find a lot of these have a steep learning curve. I see xwynns makes simple mistakes like not upgrading the gear of his Haven Advisors nor seeing they get any experience, at least to Cpl/2Lt. But he has a much better understanding of many other facets of the game and avoids problems and usually knows what type of mission is being referred to and how he should react to it. While without that knowledge players can easily suffer a campaign-ending disaster. That's rather irritating, especially as it comes down to strategic save-scumming or losing a campaign of tens of hours and many months.