guerrilla ops in 1.3

[aklos]

I've heard that 1.3 aims to change guerrilla ops missions by distributing the enemy forces into smaller pods on the map. The intended effect, I believe, is that full stealth will be difficult to achieve and you'll need to plan on punching your way through a patrol or two.

Does anyone have an idea how this might not cascade into pulling the whole map? The noise and yellow alert mechanics seem to guarantee that everything will converge on your location within a couple of turns. Plus, if the enemy forces are more spread out, any attempt to flank or manage positioning will be even more likely than today to result in pulling another pod.

I predict that cover destruction, long ranged kills, and fighting retreats (no shotguns or swords) will become necessary. The corresponding attrition and wounds could be rather intense.

I'm also unsure how we'll finance equipment for our small squads in addition to the large squads, but maybe smash and grab will help.

How do folks expect (hope) this will play out?

[DonCrabio]

I hope this additional pods will be distributed across the map, so we have to pull 1-2 at a time for total of 4-5 enemies at once.

I currently play without any stealth missions and as result have 5 active 5-man squads. This put some pressure on my supplies, but I got much more loot to sell on BM. Additional loot tactic from GTS helps a lot.

[Jadiel]

I've heard that 1.3 aims to change guerrilla ops missions by distributing the enemy forces into smaller pods on the map. The intended effect, I believe, is that full stealth will be difficult to achieve and you'll need to plan on punching your way through a patrol or two.

Does anyone have an idea how this might not cascade into pulling the whole map? The noise and yellow alert mechanics seem to guarantee that everything will converge on your location within a couple of turns. Plus, if the enemy forces are more spread out, any attempt to flank or manage positioning will be even more likely than today to result in pulling another pod.

I predict that cover destruction, long ranged kills, and fighting retreats (no shotguns or swords) will become necessary. The corresponding attrition and wounds could be rather intense.

I'm also unsure how we'll finance equipment for our small squads in addition to the large squads, but maybe smash and grab will help.

How do folks expect (hope) this will play out?

My experience with 1.2 has been that if you can kill every member of the pod you break concealment on, it's pretty easy to get away from any follow-up pods. It can actually help you, because other pods rush towards where the fight was, and you can sometimes slip past them, making finishing your objective and getting out is easier.

The risk with taking small combat pods in 1.2 is that you don't kill everything, and get caught in a prolonged firefight (2-3 turns). If this happens, additional pods will almost always arrive, which bogs things down even further, and really pushes mission timers to the wire.

If pods are smaller, I would expect to see more of the former scenario (kill everything in one turn and get away), and less of the latter, which is exactly what you want.

[LordYanaek]

The risk with taking small combat pods in 1.2 is that you don't kill everything, and get caught in a prolonged firefight (2-3 turns). If this happens, additional pods will almost always arrive, which bogs things down even further, and really pushes mission timers to the wire.

This.
A couple of turns is a pretty long time if you kill everything in one turn. It's a short time if you don't. The biggest risk was often to run out of time on timed evac missions because when fighting 5 vs a 4 enemies pod, it's not unlikely to be unable to finish the pod fast enough before you have some of the stronger perks and weapons as some enemies can't be killed in one shot and you'll eventually miss some shots.

I expect fights will be more dynamic with less prolonged entrenched fights. Alpha strike and quickly dispatching enemies will be more important so i don't think shotguns and swords will be less useful. Scouting will be important of course to avoid pulling more pods than you can fight.

I'm also unsure how we'll finance equipment for our small squads in addition to the large squads, but maybe smash and grab will help.

SnG should be there to help. I'm not sure mag rush will be as viable thought as mag is more expansive to field in large numbers. You also won't be able to equip everyone with Predator armor as soon as the research is done. Obviously we'll have to adapt but hopefully there will be other strategic re balancing to reduce the requirement to rush through missions and techs and we'll have more time to equip our soldiers. That might just be wishful thinking but the free Radio Tower with liberation chain makes me think a greater emphasis will be put on liberation, thus a longer game overall.

[darkerevent]

I expect fights will be more dynamic with less prolonged entrenched fights. Alpha strike and quickly dispatching enemies will be more important so i don't think shotguns and swords will be less useful. Scouting will be important of course to avoid pulling more pods than you can fight.

Agreed. My expectation is that this patch will be the glory days of the Assault class, and of shotgun EV overwatchers (ranger or specialist). So much glorious rushdown!

[LordYanaek]

Agreed. My expectation is that this patch will be the glory days of the Assault class, and of shotgun EV overwatchers (ranger or specialist). So much glorious rushdown!

Tip : Don't forget your OW PCS! It's painful to run to a good flank with your shotgun overwatcher and loose the shot to a lone drone coming out of the FoW

[darkerevent]

Tip : Don't forget your OW PCS! It's painful to run to a good flank with your shotgun overwatcher and loose the shot to a lone drone coming out of the FoW

Indeed, I feel your pain. I did some experimenting with shotgun EV near the end of my 1.2 campaign and noticed that issue right away. An aim control PCS will definitely be nice to pick up for use with it.

[DonCrabio]

Assaults have most kills per mission in my current campaign, they shine in small GOPS missions.

My current setup for guerilla missions:

1. Specialist - officer/support/hacking
2. Shinobi - sword spec, scouting and slicing after last pod activated
3. Assault - main damage dealer, responsible for actual killing things
4. Technical - flamethrower ambushes, crowd control
5. Grenadier - damage/sapper spec, leveling the battlefield

Probably Technical and Grenadier will be less viable in 1.3, just take 3 assaults and kill all things in one turn.

[aklos]

Here's hoping!

Personally I'm wary that the increased pod density (necessary to make stealth harder) will also create higher probabilities of uncontrolled pod activations. For example, let's say that the distance between pods in v1.2 is 30 tiles, which is large enough to sneak through. Let's say that in order to really make stealth less viable, the distance needs to shrink to 15 tiles. That could mean pods regularly exist on the periphery of the fog of war, where you a) aren't in position to alphastrike and b) dare not close range to kill.

Will it play out this way? Dunno. Maybe there's a middle ground where LW2 can be balanced around the twin assumptions that stealth is disincentivized and small engagements can remain limited. Or maybe it will have to be balanced around making running engagements survivable. If neither of those work out, we may end up falling back into the ambush-advance-clear strategy from vanilla.

I'm rather curious to find out.

[LordYanaek]

Well, obviously we'll have to wait and see but my understanding is that Pavonis don't want to make stealth missions impossible but slightly harder and small squad fights more reasonable (thus increased timers) so both approaches are equally valid. Under this assumption the spreading of pods shouldn't change fighting a lot (if at all).
As i see it, you might have to fight 2 pods at once for the same amount of enemies as a single 1.2 pod but sneaking past both of them will be twice as hard.