Is this a Bug or a Bad Joke?

[JXJibbles]

Just got this on a mission rated "Very Light":


It was the result of alien reinforcements arriving EVERY TURN for the ENTIRE MISSION. What the heck is going on?

[Tuhalu]

Was it a hacking mission in a region with ADVENT Strength 7 or higher? If so, it was a trap. It's the games way of telling you that trying to fight your way past ADVENT in high strength regions is a bad idea.

[Zyrrashijn]

nuff said.

[hewhoispale]

Just got this on a mission rated "Very Light":


It was the result of alien reinforcements arriving EVERY TURN for the ENTIRE MISSION. What the heck is going on?

Looks like you found the "snare" mission.
If you get a super-easy looking mission in a region with a lot a ADVENT presence, it might be a trap. The reinforcements every turn is a definite sign of that.

[Psieye]

Doesn't it need a faceless to get the snare mission?

[JXJibbles]

Was it a hacking mission in a region with ADVENT Strength 7 or higher? If so, it was a trap. It's the games way of telling you that trying to fight your way past ADVENT in high strength regions is a bad idea.

So in other words, it was a bad joke. I'm really starting to run out of patience for all the bullshit in this mod. I like the new classes, mission types, resistance management, etc., but in-mission it's just a joke. Games are not fun when the devs are trying to annoy you intentionally.

[Zyxpsilon]

Honestly.. this "SNARE" mission trap should be clearly revealed, exposed & named from the very first popup where we opt to infiltrate or **NOT**.

Maybe some people are happy when they get fooled around by such random conditions, but in my case -- i absolutely need to be given a rational choice to just fully IGNORE (or TAKE that risk) them if i so wish.

Right now i can't.

[LordYanaek]

Well, it's not a trap if you are told exactly that it is is it?
I'm not trying to argue whether or not having the snare mission is a good idea or not but if it does exist, it must be hidden. If it's clearly identified as a trap, better to remove it completely.

Note that you can only have one of those every 21-32 days globally so it will never be a common mission.
Anyway, if you want to disable it, i think (i didn't test it but it would make sense) you can do it by commenting those lines in XComLW_Activities.ini
In case someone doesn't know, commenting is done by adding ; at the beginning of each line.
Alternatively changing MinAlert and MinVigilance to 20 or maybe even 30 should prevent it from ever being created as those should never rise that high (especially alert). I would avoid stupid numbers like 2500 because i don't know what's the limit and going past the limit might cause weird behavior.

Code: Select all

[Snare X2LWAlienActivityTemplate]
iPriority=26
RequiredRebelMissionIncome=0
DiscoveryPctChancePerDayPerHundredMissionIncome=85
MinAlert=7
MinVigilance=5
AlertLevelModifier=-1
ForceLevelModifier=1

MissionTree[0] =	(	MissionFamilies[0]="Hack_LW", \\
						Duration_Hours=216, \\
						DurationRand_Hours=72 \\
					)

[hewhoispale]

Honestly.. this "SNARE" mission trap should be clearly revealed, exposed & named from the very first popup where we opt to infiltrate or **NOT**.

Maybe some people are happy when they get fooled around by such random conditions, but in my case -- i absolutely need to be given a rational choice to just fully IGNORE (or TAKE that risk) them if i so wish.

Right now i can't.

You want a mission that's suppose to simulate a trap to be explicitly labeled as a trap? I don't think that's how a trap is supposed to work.

[JXJibbles]

Part of the problem is that it's NEVER labelled as a trap, leading me to believe there was an issue with the game when I saw it. I understand that Pavonis can't really add new voicelines, but somewhere along the line, Akbar needs to say "It's a trap!". Not in advance, so you can avoid it, but after it's been sprung, so you know what the hell is going on.

[LordYanaek]

Adding a line for Bradford might help understand the situation but creating one is impossible due to the cost and unfortunately i don't remember him ever using the word "trap" so even with audio edition the best they could do is give some hint like "multiple transports inbound" (it might be possible to recover that line from the Avenger Defense audio)

[Olin]

Adding a line for Bradford might help understand the situation but creating one is impossible due to the cost and unfortunately i don't remember him ever using the word "trap" so even with audio edition the best they could do is give some hint like "multiple transports inbound" (it might be possible to recover that line from the Avenger Defense audio)

Also there was a line that went something like: "At this point it is advisable that we abort the mission. The objective is not worth it".

[justdont]

The question is - do you REALLY need to be explicitly told that it would be better to retreat? How about using your own judgment? Is it too unreasonable to expect players to be able to figure it out themselves if they should retreat or push through (Snare is doable in certain situations, you know)?

[hairlessOrphan]

I'm not sure "that's how traps work!" is relevant, here. The main issue is really whether or not this is fun. Lots of people like it, but lots of people don't. The reason why you don't see these shenanigans very often in games is not because it's a super clever idea that's very hard to come up with. It's because it tends to not be fun. Often, it comes across as either a broken experience (as per OP) or an obnoxious experience (my personal take).

If we're out of ideas for things that are mostly fun, and we still need more content, then yeah I think we need to dip into the might-be-obnoxious pool. Not sure LW2 is there, yet.

[Saph7]

The lesson you're supposed to draw from this is that doing missions in regions with Strength 7 or higher is not particularly safe.

[Jacke]

I differ from Pavonis in a lot of details about how a mod like LW2 should be, but I find no problem with the Snare Mission. Tricking and ambushing the opponent is a common operation on both sides of an insurgency. With a tactical game within a strategic campaign, aborting the mission should always be under consideration bases upon what the player knows.

It's awkward with the current UI to tell the player what should should be obvious if you judged it as a mission in the real world: It's a trap! Perhaps the mission type in the post-battle mission screen should be changed to all caps "TRAP".

[Manifest]

I guess Long War has those new intro banners for certain missions (Rendezvous and the like), so when you first encounter a second set of consecutive reinforcements that guarantees that it's a snare a banner could pop up saying something like: "Advent's response appears to be more aggressive than normal, these reinforcements will likely not stop et cetera et cetera." Without giving away anything else, or recommending a course of action.

That way it'll only confirm to you that it's not a bug, or that it's not a typical mission. Otherwise a new player could be confused about consecutive reinforcements being normal.

But this seems heavy-handed for LW where the design philosophy appears to be "Try to force the player to fail at first, so they learn from their failures." rather than "tell them about every mechanic." So I dunno. I guess the question is if it would be more fun if the player was told or not, but is LW2 even meant to be more fun?

[KevlinTallfellow]

After the first reinforcement drop, you might think, "Well that's unexpected, but we can deal with it.".

When the reinforcements keep coming on the very next turn after the first drop, you should probably be thinking, "Okay, that's a bit much, maybe we should just leave before it gets worse. Somebody toss out that evac flare.".

When the reinforcements keep coming, turn after turn after turn, you should absolutely be thinking, "Get out of there, guys! Get to the evac! GO GO GO!".

[Jacke]

When the reinforcements keep coming, turn after turn after turn, you should absolutely be thinking, "Get out of there, guys! Get to the evac! GO GO GO!".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9-Te-DPbSE

[Dlareh]

My general snide take is that this is Long War, not Long Walk In The Park

I understand that having some unbeatable missions (whether it's these trap/snares, or ones that are detected and pop up with little time to infiltrate) can be frustrating for new players, but that's why this is a mod for enthusiasts and not something you picked off the shelf at $FAVORITE_STORE

I would also agree though that having some immersive commentary on the unexpected strength of Advent's response would help clear things up and make the situation less exasperating

[hairlessOrphan]

The lesson you're supposed to draw from this is that doing missions in regions with Strength 7 or higher is not particularly safe.

... and ...

When the reinforcements keep coming, turn after turn after turn, you should absolutely be thinking, "Get out of there, guys! Get to the evac! GO GO GO!".

Yeah, that's not actually what happened, at least for me.

What happened was the reinforcements dropped in and went into overwatch. I had several people out of position on evac, so I had to shoot the baddies to clear it. Of course, the people in position to shoot were now out of position for evac, so the rest of the team had to setup for the next reinforcement pod instead of setting up for evac.

Repeat x5 or 6 turns, before I could finally inch everyone into place so that they could evac next turn. My final enemy count was also in the 50's. It was Flawless, though. Keep that in mind, if we're talking about "lessons learned." It was Flawless.

On paper, it sounds like a fun twist. But in practice, at least for me, it just felt like a gimmick that didn't work. It wasn't fun, it was just obnoxious. It also totally didn't teach me that S7 regions are dangerous. In combination with all other other missions I'd been running in the region, it taught me that S7 is ok if I bring the right squad, and once in a while it's just going to be obnoxious.

[JulianSkies]

Doesn't the one part of the UI that everyone ignores, the objectives, actually changes when it's a Snare?

[Zyxpsilon]

You want a mission that's suppose to simulate a trap to be explicitly labeled as a trap? I don't think that's how a trap is supposed to work.

Nope.. i want to have the choice to **Detect** if any of the SNARE missions have just been triggered & ready for the usual Infiltration decisions we always must take -- beforehand. I know (and understand) exactly what the purpose of a tactical TRAP is.. got nothing against or for it either way.

It's only simple courtesy from a DESIGN/CONCEPT gameplay standpoint that a rational IGNORE/SKIP button should exist for that very specific event. Between deterministic ruleset & RNG factors.. there's a huge gap of "Wasting time trying to escape hopeless conditions" & "Being able to tackle a somewhat predictable scaling challenge through enjoyable experiences" for everyone.

FUN doesn't even compute in my reasoning here.. it's all in the philosophical manner that LongWar should or must require to inflict mystery or much higher difficulty settings with a coding gambit beyond player's skills.

I can deal with repetitive "Re-Inforcements" systems (in fact.. i ENJOY it a lot) since they add suspense & a twist of tactical decisions we would react with -- but not when the game engine decides it's time to wipe-out a whole squad ON PURPOSE.

Sorry, can't expand any further.

[Zyxpsilon]

Doesn't the one part of the UI that everyone ignores, the objectives, actually changes when it's a Snare?

It doesn't.. and that's why it really should. For --Snares-- only.

[LordYanaek]

The question is - do you REALLY need to be explicitly told that it would be better to retreat? How about using your own judgment? Is it too unreasonable to expect players to be able to figure it out themselves if they should retreat or push through (Snare is doable in certain situations, you know)?

Obviously it doesn't really work. The design was good (as long as you want a trap mission) but the fact that some players think it's a bug shows that in practice it doesn't work for everyone (and frankly, a bug is as good an explanation as anything else when you don't know you might run into a trap) so having something to clearly inform the player that something isn't working as expected, but it's working as intended would help clarify the situation.
A little Bradford nagging wouldn't hurt
The difficulty is to actually get those lines (and maybe code the trigger, i don't know exactly how that part works).