Solution for 0% column ambush/supply raids.

[saroscycler]

Recovery delays. If a raid/ambush mission is done at 0%, player will have to wait 20 days before receiving corpses and alloys/elerium. Infiltration reduces this delay linearly, 10 days at 100% and 5 at 200%. The delay should also make Smash and Grab missions more important.

Additionally, Scavenger and Collector should also reduce recovery delays.
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For ten kills of one "species" (ADVENT Trooper, Officer, Berseker etc..), one corpse of that species appears on the Black Market. Only kills from evac/no salvage missions are counted. This should provide the player with another way of obtaining corpses.

[Clibanarius]

Actually a really good idea, though I dunno if you can implement a delayed post-mission asset recovery.

[Exquisitor]

Why not just increase their probability of discovery, add in some additional infiltration time, and mandate that they can only be done at 100% infiltration? I think the 0% infiltration supply raids can be quite difficult. So just change the conditions in which they can be done and that will retain their value for materia and reduce their cheese value.

[Antifringe]

Honestly, you could increase the lag time to 60 days and I would still do 0% supply raids without even blinking. They cost zero time, give piles of xp (as in, I had 12 Master Sgts by month four when I was abusing them), and once you master the specific skill of beating them, you can do it more reliably than most normal missions.

I've seen lots of people saying that 0% supply raids are hard, and that people who claim to be able to beat them are liars who are secretly savescumming (this is a real accusation I have seen real people really level). IT's not so much that they are hard, but rather that there is a specific skill to beating them, and once you master it, you can do it every time. Emphasis on specific. The skill of beating large untimed missions has little transferability to the rest of the game, where time pressure totally transforms the game.

Different people have different ways of beating these things, but all of them involve being 100% stationary after your first turn, and only advancing with a concealed scout, ever. My preferred setup is 3-4 sharpshooters protected by an overwatch wall, but other prefer mass gunners and cycling their cooldowns. Whatever works. But rest assured, it's a skill you can learn, those of us doing aren't liars, and you can learn it too with just a little practice. And once you do, the game is completely broken unless you start imposing houserules on yourself.

The crux isn't even the resources that you get from them (although they are considerable), it's more a combination of

1) They cost zero strategic resources. You can do four in a single day if you want to (and I have done this)
2) The rewards, both material and xp, scale down with time invested, meaning that you get the best reward for spending nothing, and the worst reward for spending 200% infiltration, which is backwards.
3) While normal missions also have the problem of xp rewards scaling down with investment, they also have timers that completely block reductively powerful turtle strats. Supply and troop columns are solvable in a way that normal missions aren't. I can't do a 50+ alien relay raid with any kind of reliability. I can totally do supply raids.

1.3 will lower the squad size, which will help. It also removes concealment for less than 100% infiltration, which doesn't deter me at all. Except for the shinobi (who has phantom and is unaffected by the special rule), I don't rely on concealment at all for these missions. The maps are too crowded to do anything but turtle in the starting corner, anyway.

I really don't think these changes are enough, and the backwards scaling issue will always remain until a minimum infiltration level is enforced. I use house rules to restrict my own behavior because I want to have a meaningful strategic layer, not a power fantasy, and once you learn how to beat 0% untimed missions, the power fantasy is the only thing you're going to get unless you willfully choose not to do it.

[fowlJ]

I really don't think these changes are enough, and the backwards scaling issue will always remain until a minimum infiltration level is enforced. I use house rules to restrict my own behavior because I want to have a meaningful strategic layer, not a power fantasy, and once you learn how to beat 0% untimed missions, the power fantasy is the only thing you're going to get unless you willfully choose not to do it.

Another important change you didn't mention is that yellow alert action chance scales with infiltration. If you go in at 0%, you won't just not start concealed, you'll also get shot to pieces by any pod you let patrol into you. (At least, depending on how extremely it scales, I guess).

[Franzy]

Lag won't do. I had a similar idea though: if you attempt these missions underinfiltrated your soldiers will get additional wounds in the end of the battle (lose a percentile of their health proportional to underinfiltration). Basically emulate the battle fatique mechanics from LW1. It could be automatic or chance-based. Lore-wise it can be explained by enemy patrols fire when extracting materiel or something like that.

[Psieye]

Flip infiltration on its head for supply raids: 0% Infiltration = Extremely Light, 100% Infiltration = Swarming.

Scale the loot with how much infiltration you could get in. "We rushed in without any preparation" should mean "we missed the train and only caught the stragglers - most of the loot left already". Have the Strength transfer only be affected if you reached at least 50% infiltration.

[cryptc]

How about saying that column ambush and supply raids are something you can't plan for, you just get an opening to do it immediately. So there's no infiltration, and it has to be done immediately or not at all, and it could be balanced according to that (maybe give it similar troops to a 100% infiltrated one currently)

[Zyrrashijn]

Nice idea, Psieye, but that would need a full ingame documentation, as it thwarts game mechanics to work in the opposite direction of everything else.

[LordYanaek]

I don't think the devs are willing to completely change how troop/supply ambushes work (at least not yet) because most of the suggestions in this thread and more were already proposed some time ago in a lengthy discussion thread.

I also suggested some drastic changes back then as i didn't feel like it would be possible to balance them correctly in their current implementation but now i'd rather suggest we wait and see how they actually play in 1.3 (we haven't even seen a stream of a 1.3 supply convoy). If really it appears it's impossible to balance them with their current implementation, then it will be time to suggest larger changes.

[Jacke]

I think all missions need a minimal infiltration time. As well, there should be a fatigue system similar to LW1's to reduce the ability to continuously use soldiers until they're rested. Grimy's Moral Mod does this to some degree.

[Psieye]

we wait and see how they actually play in 1.3

Aye, agreed. But newer forum members wanted a conversation so we partake in dialogue. At least I hope the others aren't expecting the devs to be considering these suggestions right now.

[LordYanaek]

I think all missions need a minimal infiltration time. As well, there should be a fatigue system similar to LW1's to reduce the ability to continuously use soldiers until they're rested. Grimy's Moral Mod does this to some degree.

Actually fatigue and infiltration is probably too much as it would keep your guys out for a very long time but fatigue could be used to help balance 0% if it appears it's still too good in 1.3

If you get fatigue when you run a mission at 0% (or possibly below some threshold like 50%) and have to wait after the mission before fielding your troops again, it would remove one of the big advantages and possible abuse. Thematically it could be explained by the necessity to rush into position. This way running a mission at 0% would still be an option that you might consider when you don't have any other choice but not something you could abuse to chain missions with a single squad. You would always have some delay (before or after the mission) preventing you from re-using the same squad over and over but those delays wouldn't add to huge amounts as you would get one or the other but not both.
One of the big issues with fundamental changes like this however is the requirement to rewrite a large part of the documentation (in addition to some code changes).

Aye, agreed. But newer forum members wanted a conversation so we partake in dialogue. At least I hope the others aren't expecting the devs to be considering these suggestions right now.

Well, obviously we need something to do while waiting for 1.3

[Psieye]

If you get fatigue when you run a mission at 0% (or possibly below some threshold like 50%) and have to wait after the mission before fielding your troops again, it would remove one of the big advantages and possible abuse. Thematically it could be explained by the necessity to rush into position. This way running a mission at 0% would still be an option that you might consider when you don't have any other choice but not something you could abuse to chain missions with a single squad. You would always have some delay (before or after the mission) preventing you from re-using the same squad over and over but those delays wouldn't add to huge amounts as you would get one or the other but not both.

Don't call it fatigue, call it exfiltration. "You just charged in when Advent were fully alert. Your squad can't safely get back to you while they shake off all the pursuers that weren't on the tactical map."

Ah wait, that'd mean Skyranger would also have to be out of action for that entire exfiltration duration. Might be the sort of downside necessary to stop 0% abuse. If we ignore the dev/doc cost to make such a big change.

[Jacke]

Exfiltration shouldn't take a lot of time. It's the Sky Ranger going to a known LZ to pick up the squad and then disengage from ADVENT and shake any tracking prior to returning to the Avenger.

I think a fatigue system would greatly aid LW2. I think it should apply to all missions as the squads doing the missions have to rest up afterwards. As well, infiltration should have a minimum time, because XCOM even when fully developed is much weaker than ADVENT and they have to take time here to avoid revealing the location of the Avenger as well as the target of the current mission. Infiltration times to given percentage ratings could be reduced to compensate for the fatigue time to keep the times a squad is unavailable for other activities at the desired levels.

[MacroNova]

If we can enforce 100% infiltration on HQ Assaults and golden path missions, we should be able to enforce 50% infiltration on Supply Raids and Troop columns.

I don't like the idea of adding fatigue. It makes quick response missions like retaliations too harsh.

[Antifringe]

If we can enforce 100% infiltration on HQ Assaults and golden path missions, we should be able to enforce 50% infiltration on Supply Raids and Troop columns.

I don't like the idea of adding fatigue. It makes quick response missions like retaliations too harsh.

It's harder than it sounds. Those missions have infinite duration. Having a mission with both a minimum infiltration time AND finite duration is difficult in terms of presentation and UI. Remember, from a coding perspective, few things are harder than UI.

[Phenotype]

I'm interested what house rules do people use for these? Must infiltrate to 50%/100% ?

[Severian]

I would rather just remove infiltration from column ambush and supply raids entirely. Narratively, it makes sense that you wouldn't have time to infiltrate them. You are exploiting an Advent weakness that your intel has uncovered, but that weakness has to be acted on immediately or it is gone. With no infiltration, the balance problems go away.

[Psieye]

remove infiltration from column ambush and supply raids entirely

Now there's an elegant solution.

[Jacke]

I don't like the idea of adding fatigue. It makes quick response missions like retaliations too harsh.

I like the fatigue that Grimy's Moral Mod does: Will reduction. Being shot at causes Will reduction on both ADVENT and XCOM. Will gets low enough, the soldier breaks and panics for a while. There's also Will reduction from the mission itself. Will is recovered by promotion (get all back), rest, and spending time in the Bar on R&R (limited number of slots, later can be increased). You can send out XCOM soldiers with reduced Will but with increased risk of them panicking.

As Grimy mentions, it's bring in a bit of Darkest Dungeon into XCOM 2. I tried it out and it worked with LW2 if it was added before starting a new game (otherwise the Bar mod doesn't work). May have to be adjusted, likely slowing down the Will recovery.

I would rather just remove infiltration from column ambush and supply raids entirely. Narratively, it makes sense that you wouldn't have time to infiltrate them. You are exploiting an Advent weakness that your intel has uncovered, but that weakness has to be acted on immediately or it is gone. With no infiltration, the balance problems go away.

There should always be infiltration. XCOM has to get into a position where ADVENT is weak and supplies are present. And not just fly in with the Sky Ranger, which will be seen. (I'm assuming with evac that when soldiers in an evac zone evac, the Sky Ranger quickly flies in and then out again. ADVENT will know it's there but can't stop it. But if that happened on insertion, XCOM wouldn't have concealment and ADVENT will soon have heavy reinforcements.)

However, the infiltration percentage could take less time for column ambushes and supply raids. But still it should have a minimum infiltration.

[MacroNova]

If we can enforce 100% infiltration on HQ Assaults and golden path missions, we should be able to enforce 50% infiltration on Supply Raids and Troop columns.

I don't like the idea of adding fatigue. It makes quick response missions like retaliations too harsh.

It's harder than it sounds. Those missions have infinite duration. Having a mission with both a minimum infiltration time AND finite duration is difficult in terms of presentation and UI. Remember, from a coding perspective, few things are harder than UI.

The new infiltration % indicators in 1.3 (on the squad loadout screen) plus the existing UI for mandatory 100% missions should suffice. I actually wanted to put something in my post about the UI, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized all the pieces were already there. Am I missing something?

[xwynns]

Those infiltration % indicators are from a mod.

On Legend a 0% supply raid is a 138% chance for yellow alert shots (going down by 5% for each enemy that takes one in a turn). I once activated 16 enemies and watched nearly every single one of them take a reaction shot.

All of those aren't huge issues, but there are also extremely tough command pods that show up at effective higher alerts (which you'd see at a 0% attempt). I've wiped every 0% supply raid I've tried in 1.3, but I also wasn't specifically gearing up and focusing on them. So maybe they are doable if you specifically focus on them, which is a lot better balance wise than always having 0% be the best strat.

[Thrombozyt]

How about adjusting the force level for under-infiltration? It would be reasonable, that immediately following an incident the elite is sent to investigate being later replaced by the regular guys as the shock troops move on.

Giving a 0% supply raid a +4 modifier on force level would lead to an exponential scaling of difficulty (as both numbers and quality of opponents increase). Chances of being overwhelmed are much higher when you cannot clear each pod in 1 round due to HP being just too high. With a flat bonus, it would hurt the most in the initial stages preventing XCOM from ever jumping massively ahead of the curve in the first place.

[Tuhalu]

How about adjusting the force level for under-infiltration? It would be reasonable, that immediately following an incident the elite is sent to investigate being later replaced by the regular guys as the shock troops move on.

Giving a 0% supply raid a +4 modifier on force level would lead to an exponential scaling of difficulty (as both numbers and quality of opponents increase). Chances of being overwhelmed are much higher when you cannot clear each pod in 1 round due to HP being just too high. With a flat bonus, it would hurt the most in the initial stages preventing XCOM from ever jumping massively ahead of the curve in the first place.

The goal of making 0% supply raids difficult is to improve the risk/reward ratio. To get a great reward, you have to do something very, very risky.

In XCOM2 and LW2, a lot of researches and proving grounds projects require certain alien corpses to do. If you can just do a 0% mission to unlock those technologies early, then you can get powerful technologies months early if you are good enough to do it. This makes the next 0% mission (and all other missions) even easier.

The result is that while you are increasing the risk of doing those missions, you are also increasing the reward in a gamebreaking way. This would make 0% raids even more desirable and make a great divide between those that can break the game (and thus make it more boring for themselves) and those that can't.