Making the war longer

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dstar3k
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Making the war longer

Post by dstar3k »

LW2 is longer in terms of play time, but in terms of game time, it's not, as evidenced by various comments such as 'If you're building plasma weapons, you should already have won the game'.

So why not make a change so that it takes longer in game time, as well... by requiring a certain number of facilities to have been destroyed, or the doom tracker to have been reduced below a certain point?

It might require some rebalancing in terms of TDE rate, but ideally you should be able to reach the top tier of technology without having to deliberately not win the game.
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nick_abbott
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by nick_abbott »

Yes, that would be nice.
Dwarfling
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by Dwarfling »

I don't want the whole campaign to be longer, what I would have REALLY liked though, is to make the mid-game stage where you're at magnetic weapons (but still using some lasers), and you can afford to turn guerrilla ops into combat missions, to be much longer. That's the part of the campaign when I have the most fun. As is it right now, you plow thru mags, get coils, then force goes up and you face enemies you have to multi-hit to kill, and then the legion number spikes sky high and you can't even do non-retal/DE "combat" missions because you can't field enough guys to handle 18-20 enemies at the Elite Muton stage while trying to complete the objective. So you either sneak or not bother at all.

Heck, I'd say the late game is when I'm having the least fun, it feels like a drag, and I have a hard time just getting thru the whole ordeal and not just starting a new campaign and actually having fun guessing what my soldiers will turn out to be and such.

I don't have my hopes up tho, we're at the stage where the devs are mostly looking to balance things and iron bugs out, I doubt they'd redesign things like what I'm describing.
dstar3k
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by dstar3k »

Dwarfling wrote:I don't want the whole campaign to be longer, what I would have REALLY liked though, is to make the mid-game stage where you're at magnetic weapons (but still using some lasers), and you can afford to turn guerrilla ops into combat missions, to be much longer. That's the part of the campaign when I have the most fun. As is it right now, you plow thru mags, get coils, then force goes up and you face enemies you have to multi-hit to kill, and then the legion number spikes sky high and you can't even do non-retal/DE "combat" missions because you can't field enough guys to handle 18-20 enemies at the Elite Muton stage while trying to complete the objective. So you either sneak or not bother at all.

Heck, I'd say the late game is when I'm having the least fun, it feels like a drag, and I have a hard time just getting thru the whole ordeal and not just starting a new campaign and actually having fun guessing what my soldiers will turn out to be and such.

I don't have my hopes up tho, we're at the stage where the devs are mostly looking to balance things and iron bugs out, I doubt they'd redesign things like what I'm describing.
This is why I play with True Concealment. It makes a huge difference in my enjoyment; in most cases, I'd have finished the mission within the time constraints, but not having that pressure lets me enjoy what I'm doing.
KevlinTallfellow
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by KevlinTallfellow »

For me, True Concealment is like having direct control over the last few turns of infiltration. If I can sneak my entire squad around to the objective, well good for me! If I get caught, well now I have time to deal with things properly.
Zyxpsilon
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by Zyxpsilon »

Rationally, the only alternate gameplay structure that would probably meet your "needs" for a different ending pace could very well be my in-coming (MAS) Achievement package called "GOTM" (Game of the Month).

It completely wraps up the challenge(s) into a somewhat compressed schedule where goals are tightly related to precise conditions rather than relative RNG factors or previously known static victory steps via the usual Storyline patterns. I still have to determine how to handle "Liberations & Facilities" bonus points as i feel they'd have to be fully optional rather than relying on old strict --unlocking-- principles.

Take a quick look at its previous XCom2 version (GOTW_eek) here... http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =823461813 for further details.

A giga-ride with sweet (but complex) timing decisions where playing smart is heavily enhanced yet, still far beyond whatever wacky grindy stuff we're mostly used to even with LW2! :lol:
Jacke
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by Jacke »

KevlinTallfellow wrote:For me, True Concealment is like having direct control over the last few turns of infiltration. If I can sneak my entire squad around to the objective, well good for me! If I get caught, well now I have time to deal with things properly.
This. It makes no sense beyond artificial pressure on the player to have a deadline counting down from game start. If ADVENT doesn't know you're coming, why would there be such a short deadline. I find my battles don't last that much longer than the deadline, but sometimes they do.
LordYanaek
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by LordYanaek »

Jacke wrote: This. It makes no sense beyond artificial pressure on the player to have a deadline counting down from game start. If ADVENT doesn't know you're coming, why would there be such a short deadline. I find my battles don't last that much longer than the deadline, but sometimes they do.
It certainly makes sense on some missions.

If ADVENT doesn't know you are coming (i would argue it means at least 100% infiltration) there is no reason to turn on the Self Destruct on chests in Item Recovery missions. OTOH it makes sense that the transmission from the relay will eventually complete whether they know you are coming or not. Similarly, there is no reason for them to shut down their network when they don't know you are going to hack one of their workstations, but it makes sense when you are rushing to use a resistance terminal while they probably already detected the security breach.

I really wish Pavonis would integrate True Concealment for some missions in order to make GOps more diverse. You might have true concealment on Hack ADVENT computer missions but you must enter a well guarded ADVENT building (+1 or +2 Alert Level and one pod is guaranteed to guard the objective area) and once they know you are there, they will act quickly. When you simply have to hack a resistance computer you are facing a smaller opposition (normal Alert Level of randomly patrolling forces) but since ADVENT have detected (but not located) the security breach, you have a limited time to act even if they don't know you are there.

True Concealment have options that can be used to affect only some missions but it won't change the number of enemies, that would require additional editing of LW2 files and i don't even know how to set a pod to guard duty :?

Changing some missions this way could help add diversity and address some complains i've read recently. It would also create missions better suited to more combat oriented squads and others perfectly suitable for small pure stealth squads.
Jacke
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by Jacke »

LordYanaek wrote:I really wish Pavonis would integrate True Concealment for some missions in order to make GOps more diverse.
I agree with you that LW2 could benefit from getting away from timers running at mission start, as is done with True Concealment. Currently, some missions on some maps barely have enough time and I think it would be very frustrating to players to lose missions and troops to an arbitrary deadline.

I've dealt with turn limits in a lot of games, but most of them give a better justification for it than XCOM 2. I think XCOM 2 and LW2 are vastly improved with True Concealment. And in many cases escalating reinforcements are a better escalating limit that fits in with fighting most of the missions. Having a timer run only after breaking concealment feels better too.

Related to this, Beaglerush's latest video has him explaining not carrying on with LW2 or any XCOM 2 videos/streams as he's not enjoying playing them (he's switching to LW1/XCOM and other games). His problem is more with LW2 not dealing with what he thinks are the problems with XCOM 2, partly around the timers associated with the missions. He hopes other mods announced but not yet released will mod XCOM 2 to a game he will enjoy sometime in the future.

However, I think Pavonis might be worried about having too many different mission types, especially if they are very similar. There's already a learning curve to some of them which at some points of a campaign threaten major disruption due to casualties, to the point of the campaign being lost. (This is really on my mind as I watch Xwynns, a much better player than I, struggle in his latest videos on his LW2 campaign with the Psi Gate mission going bad.)
bbd127
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by bbd127 »

Would it make sense to have 2 separate timers on time sensitive missions ?

My idea is, since we're already infiltrating and starting concealed most of the time, to have an X amount of turns to lurk in concealment, check out the layout and patrol routes, plot our path, and then Y amount of turns once the concealment is broken to complete the objective and evac.
The X amount of turns would be a fixed amount based on the mission type and the squad would automatically be taken out of concealment when those turns run out, Advent realizing you're there, so you can't lurk around forever. Because you can't stay unnoticed forever, right ?

This came to me mostly because I'm using true concealment and it feels like it reduces the difficulty a lot simply because I'm able to run a ton of stealth missions with small squads. These missions were my bread an butter because I levelled up a lot of snipers this way and then did a ton of supply raids and troop columns at 0% infiltration with squads made of one shinobi (for spotting), one specialist, 5+ snipers and one or two gunners as my line of defense if someone manages to get into visual range of the snipers. This in turn gave me a ton of economy since the black market was highly interested in advent trooper corpses and the rest of the game was more or less a cakewalk. Most of those supply raids and troop columns noone from the squad took a single wound, which seemed unreal considering there were 40+ enemies on the board.

Keep in mind that this is a 1.2 playthrough, but still, I feel like true concealment would do the same in 1.3, it would just be more cumbersome and time consuming to do those stealth missions with the mod enabled.

I don't feel I have enough experience with the mod to estimate the viability of such a system since this is just my first LW2 campaign, so what do the more experienced among you think about this ?
stefan3iii
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by stefan3iii »

I really don't like the idea of true concealment as standard LW2, it means that I'm encouraged to spend an infinity amount of time stealthing to the objective or setting up the perfect ambush. The only limit is my patience, and it's already bad enough on timerless missions.

I was watching JolNrbs stream and I've noticed that mission timers are significantly more generous in 1.3 which should help for those who hate timers. Also the reinforcement timer now starts ticking immediately, before you even break stealth, which is an amazingly good change. It means now that I'm going to break stealth on the first good ambush opportunity, probably on the first pod I reach, and then have enough time to fight my way to the objective without sprinting every turn.
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johnnylump
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by johnnylump »

Glad somebody noticed that. The timer increases are a significant change, it gives you a more freedom to engage in a firefight for a few turns and still beat the objective. The reinf timer only starts ticking at the start on missions with a fixed evac. On others it's upon an alien going into red alert like always.
wizard1200
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by wizard1200 »

johnnylump wrote:Glad somebody noticed that. The timer increases are a significant change, it gives you a more freedom to engage in a firefight for a few turns and still beat the objective. The reinf timer only starts ticking at the start on missions with a fixed evac. On others it's upon an alien going into red alert like always.
That is great, because it makes slower moving classes like snipers and gunners more useful.
Flapdrol
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by Flapdrol »

I can only hope that the reinf timer will run a lot slower when it starts on turn 1.

How does it decide where to drop when you are in concealment?
By dropping near the place where you were last turn?
DonCrabio
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by DonCrabio »

johnnylump wrote: ... The reinf timer only starts ticking at the start on missions with a fixed evac ...
I'm not sure I understand this right. You want promote small squad missions by dropping reinforcements even before start of actual fighting?
Tuhalu
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by Tuhalu »

DonCrabio wrote:
johnnylump wrote: ... The reinf timer only starts ticking at the start on missions with a fixed evac ...
I'm not sure I understand this right. You want promote small squad missions by dropping reinforcements even before start of actual fighting?
Currently, it's pretty easy to avoid getting reinforcements at all on fixed evac missions. As long as the schedule for reinforcements is toned down in the same way the rest of the guerilla op is (less numbers per pod), then it should be fine.
DonCrabio
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by DonCrabio »

Tuhalu wrote:Currently, it's pretty easy to avoid getting reinforcements at all on fixed evac missions. As long as the schedule for reinforcements is toned down in the same way the rest of the guerilla op is (less numbers per pod), then it should be fine.
Well, this is the point of guerilla ops, strike fast and hard and get out before enemy can react, no? Anyway, we'll see how it plays. I'm little worried about game being balanced around tactical geniuses, who beating game on legendary difficulty while trying weird builds and tactics. I'm not what good, game really challenging for me on veteran/non ironman.
Tuhalu
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by Tuhalu »

DonCrabio wrote: Well, this is the point of guerilla ops, strike fast and hard and get out before enemy can react, no? Anyway, we'll see how it plays. I'm little worried about game being balanced around tactical geniuses, who beating game on legendary difficulty while trying weird builds and tactics. I'm not what good, game really challenging for me on veteran/non ironman.
I've only beaten LW2 on veteran myself (saving harder challenges for 1.3). As long as you bring enough troops for the fight, most of the no-evac missions can be smashed through with plenty of time left on the clock right now. With extra time and smaller pods it should actually be easier on all difficulties.
Kyrsoh
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by Kyrsoh »

MAKING THE WAR LONGER: I posted my suggestion earlier in a different topic but I think it is more relevant here. I suggest a new "game mod" within the Long War 2 - it is an awesome work and I think it has all the tools to make "LIBERATION GREAT AGAIN".

A Long War campaign aimed at liberating the planet could be awesome, I think. I can imagine a new campaign line where the Avatar project is just a measurement of the alien Force Level, not the base story of the game.

The objectives/setup for this campaign:

- The main objective is to liberate ALL Regions of the World,
- You have to protect your Regions from Advent counterattacks,
- You have to obtain alien technology to create shields and anti-air (space) weapons to fend off UFOs,
- The Avatar project's standing dictates the Force Level of the campaign (not just the ingame date), so you can decrease it with facility raids and so on,
- Dark Events are linked to facilities, so you can remove them,
- You have to convince civilians to work for you in liberated Regions (there can be a media war/propaganda contest) between XCOM and Advent, so you have to complete propaganda missions, watch your fire to not kill civilians during action and so on,
- You have to provide land-air plasma cannons, missile systems and intelligence against airborne raids and clear up UFO and troop transport crash sites.

I think this theme can fit into the Long War concept and most of its elements are already included in the mod now. This could be an absolutly new way to play this game - maybe an alternate campaign with hard decisions. You could choose your victory conditions at the start of the game:
Long War 2 - victory via destroying the Avatar project and the master plan of the Elders
Long War 2 - victory via liberation of Earth and fending off the alien invaders

With a few new mechanics and mission types this can be a great change of pace for the future. I have game plans for this kind of campaign with correct descriptions of the mechanics and detailed ideas of the propaganda issues. There is no need to create air (space) battles, no need to rethink the haven system or the liberation chain: Long War 2 has all tools to create this new-themed campaign.

What's your thoughts about this idea?
LordYanaek
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by LordYanaek »

stefan3iii wrote:I really don't like the idea of true concealment as standard LW2, it means that I'm encouraged to spend an infinity amount of time stealthing to the objective or setting up the perfect ambush. The only limit is my patience, and it's already bad enough on timerless missions.
Like i said, i would like it on a few selected missions where it would make sense for the sake of variety.
Currently many GoP missions are more or less all clones of each other. Adding diversity in our approaches would probably be a good thing.
Those missions might eventually have 2 different timers. A main (short) timer to complete the objective that starts when you break concealment and a long timer that will eventually force the main timer if you are really taking too long. The difficulty would be to clearly explain to the players that they have a long, but not unlimited time to get into position.
That being said, "patience timer" is also a valid one :lol:
DonCrabio wrote:
johnnylump wrote: ... The reinf timer only starts ticking at the start on missions with a fixed evac ...
I'm not sure I understand this right. You want promote small squad missions by dropping reinforcements even before start of actual fighting?
This is probably to make pure stealth runs harder on those missions.
We'll have to see how it plays. I sure hope stealth stays a viable option but it was a bit too dominant in 1.2.
Kyrsoh wrote:MAKING THE WAR LONGER: I posted my suggestion earlier in a different topic but I think it is more relevant here. I suggest a new "game mod" within the Long War 2 - it is an awesome work and I think it has all the tools to make "LIBERATION GREAT AGAIN".
<...>
What's your thoughts about this idea?
Wait and see but i suspect they are trying to promote liberation as part of the normal flow of a campaign and that's why we'll get free Radio Towers after taking network tower.

As for a totally different campaign, well, that's a lot of work and probably best left to a mod-mod but it might be an interesting one.
chrisb
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by chrisb »

DonCrabio wrote:
johnnylump wrote: ... The reinf timer only starts ticking at the start on missions with a fixed evac ...
I'm not sure I understand this right. You want promote small squad missions by dropping reinforcements even before start of actual fighting?
It's not that there is reinforcements dropping at the beginning. Reinforcements work off an increasing value that starts at 0. When it reaches 1 you will see the red reinforcements warning in the top left of the UI signalling the drop next turn. In 1.2 this value starts increasing the moment you break concealment. The number of turns it takes to reach 1 is mostly dependent on the difficulty setting.

In 1.3, fixed evac missions will change this by having this timer start at the very beginning. You will see the RNF UI from the beginning as well only it is green to start with. When the internal value reaches 0.5 it turns yellow then red at 1. The number of turns it takes to hit 1 depends on difficulty on some RNG, but seems to be in the range of 6-10 turns. The number of units in the RNF drop is smaller, instead of getting 4 it might only be 2, but it was mentioned somewhere that this was based on the Strength of the region.

For evac with flare ops, it still works the same, RNFs start counting from when you break concealment. What this will mean is that you'll be able to get close to the objective, open fire on what's close, drop your evac right away and likely be able to get the hack in and fight until the evac shows up before RNFs actually drop.

You also have to take into context that you are likely to see more 2-3 enemy pods on these missions instead of 3-5. This means your 4-6 man squad will have a much easier time downing pods on your turn. Combine that with the combat buffs to Shinobi making them more viable. Looking forward to bringing my a Shinobi with a shotgun instead of that dinky pea shooter.
LordYanaek
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by LordYanaek »

chrisb wrote: In 1.3, fixed evac missions will change this by having this timer start at the very beginning. You will see the RNF UI from the beginning as well only it is green to start with. When the internal value reaches 0.5 it turns yellow then red at 1. The number of turns it takes to hit 1 depends on difficulty on some RNG, but seems to be in the range of 6-10 turns. The number of units in the RNF drop is smaller, instead of getting 4 it might only be 2, but it was mentioned somewhere that this was based on the Strength of the region.
The timer mostly depends on Alert Level (strength) for the mission (usually the same as the region str except on liberation missions). The effect of difficulty is only for Rookie and Veteran (no difference between Commander and Legend) but i don't know exactly what it means (i would guess it's a multiplier but i'm not sure from ini digging alone). It won't go as high as 10 turns (under 1.2 values) except maybe on Rookie and can definitely be less than 6 turns.

What i could gather is there.
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by chrisb »

LordYanaek wrote:
chrisb wrote: In 1.3, fixed evac missions will change this by having this timer start at the very beginning. You will see the RNF UI from the beginning as well only it is green to start with. When the internal value reaches 0.5 it turns yellow then red at 1. The number of turns it takes to hit 1 depends on difficulty on some RNG, but seems to be in the range of 6-10 turns. The number of units in the RNF drop is smaller, instead of getting 4 it might only be 2, but it was mentioned somewhere that this was based on the Strength of the region.
The timer mostly depends on Alert Level (strength) for the mission (usually the same as the region str except on liberation missions). The effect of difficulty is only for Rookie and Veteran (no difference between Commander and Legend) but i don't know exactly what it means (i would guess it's a multiplier but i'm not sure from ini digging alone). It won't go as high as 10 turns (under 1.2 values) except maybe on Rookie and can definitely be less than 6 turns.

What i could gather is there.
I'd imagine the numbers are being tuned because of it being used in this way. Before RNF timers were only for when you broke conceal, but now that they are from mission start they would likely need to be changed so we'll need to wait for the 1.3 configs to see what's what.
sentinel
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by sentinel »

Kyrsoh wrote:MAKING THE WAR LONGER: I posted my suggestion earlier in a different topic but I think it is more relevant here. I suggest a new "game mod" within the Long War 2 - it is an awesome work and I think it has all the tools to make "LIBERATION GREAT AGAIN".
Avatar project and the master plan of the Elders
Long War 2 - victory via liberation of Earth and fending off the alien invasion

What's your thoughts about this idea?
Nice to have alternative play styles.
Sounds like a big project though
Thrombozyt
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Re: Making the war longer

Post by Thrombozyt »

I have started working on a mod that has more achievable goals in mind...

http://www.pavonisinteractive.com/phpBB ... 18&t=25714
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