A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3
Posted: Fri May 12, 2017 9:33 pm
Hey all, I’m Saph, one of the playtesters for Long War 2. This post is intended to give players an idea of what to expect in terms of gameplay when moving to the new version.
This is NOT a beginner’s guide – if you’ve never played LW2 before, I highly recommend checking out DeaconIvory’s tips and observations compendium. Rather, this guide is intended for players who’ve played at least one full campaign of 1.2 and are looking for a heads-up on stuff that they need to know before jumping into the new patch.
There are a ton of changes in 1.3, but most are relatively minor. For instance, Poison and Disorient have had their hit penalty reduced from -25 to -20, but this won’t actually make any difference to how you play the game – you’ll just see debuffed shots hit marginally more often. However, some of the changes do have a significant effect on tactical and strategic decision-making, and these are the ones I’ve tried to cover in this guide.
This guide is based on my experiences playing on Commander and Legend difficulty. The game will be a bit more forgiving if you play on Rookie or Veteran.
Classes
Nearly all of the basic classes have seen some changes to their perk trees. In most cases they still play pretty much the same way, but a few class builds now work differently.
Rangers: Right-side overwatch Ranger builds are more effective early, due to gaining Ever Vigilant at LCPL. Overwatch Rangers work surprisingly well for early-game timed missions.
Shinobis: Stealth Shinobis are weaker, Sword Shinobis are stronger. Spamming stealth Shinobis through the GTS in the early game is not recommended.
Specialists: Specialists now have two main builds – the overwatch spec that goes down the centre column, and the hacker/medic that mixes perks from the left and right. If you’re going with the OW perks you probably want all of them, since Sentinel, Cool under Pressure, Covering Fire, and Ever Vigilant all synergise strongly. Other than that, Specialists fill the same role as they did before.
Sharpshooters: Snap Shot snipers are actually decent now. They’re better than Death from Above or Rapid Targeting snipers on timed missions, though worse on untimed ones.
Psi Ops: Much stronger than they used to be. Psis can now consistently use two abilities per turn, meaning they greatly benefit from being placed in a location where they don’t have to move.
Soldier Experience
The old bug affecting soldier progression has been fixed, meaning that your new soldiers (whether from the Black Market or your barracks) will level up a lot more slowly than you’re accustomed to. If you want to keep training up soldiers through the mid game, it’s highly recommended that you get at least a couple of officers with the new ‘Trial by Fire’ ability. It will make levelling recruits and Psi Ops a much less painful process.
Strategy Layer
In 1.2 it was possible to largely ignore the Advent Strength in a region, since most of the missions you were doing were stealth ops (which bypassed combat entirely) and the rest were no-timer corpse retrievals (where an extra point of Advent Strength just meant a few extra enemies to bring home). This is no longer the case in 1.3 – if you haven’t been paying attention to the Strength rating of the regions you’re doing missions in, start now!
As a general rule, you should try to do as many as possible of your timed missions in regions of strength 1, 2, or 3. This will minimise not only the number of enemies you have to shoot your way past but also the quantity of reinforcements that will get dropped on your head. Timed missions in regions of strength 4-5 are significantly more dangerous, and anything at Strength 6+ is very dangerous. You won’t always have the luxury of being able to avoid timed missions in these areas, but be aware that by accepting them you’re taking a risk.
Liberation is also something to pay more attention to in 1.3. Radio Relays scale up in cost much faster than in 1.2, but if you do a Network Tower, you get a relay in that region for free. So if you don’t want to bankrupt yourself expanding, do those Lib chains! Fully liberating a region also knocks off a point of doom from the Avatar Project, buying you that much more time.
Tactical Layer
Stealth is generally harder now. Detection ranges are a bit bigger, covertness bonuses are a bit smaller, pods are smaller but more numerous (expect to see a lot more solo drones), and most importantly of all, the infiltration bonuses for very small squads have been greatly reduced. The infil time for a 1-man squad is now very similar to the infil time for a 4-man squad.
All of this doesn’t mean that stealth missions in 1.3 are impossible; they’re still doable, and may occasionally even be the best option (mainly if you don’t have the ability to fight a mission for whatever reason). However, as a general rule, you’ll get better returns from 4-6 man combat squads than from 1-3 man stealth squads.
Reinforcements
As soon as you start your first timed mission in 1.3, one of the first changes you’ll notice is a green ‘Reinforcements’ message flashing at the top of the screen. That means that the reinforcement bar is filling up. When it reaches halfway, the message turns yellow. When it fills up completely, the message turns red, you’ll get a reinforcement drop, and the process starts all over again.
Reinforcements can drop even if your squad is concealed! The rate will be slower, but if you wait long enough, it’ll happen. This is another reason that stealth ops are riskier than they used to be – you can’t wait around forever in concealment any more.
Reinforcements become more frequent at higher Advent Strength and at higher game difficulty, and especially with both. If you run a mission in a Strength 5+ region on Legend, expect to get flooded with reinforcements VERY fast. Throw that evac flare early!
Missions
Several mission types now require different tactics than they did in 1.2.
Jailbreak, Rescue/Extract VIP, Neutralise Enemy VIP
WAKE UP! These missions now work VERY differently! When you start the mission, you’ll see what looks like an enormous timer for you to complete the mission – 20, 22, maybe even 24 turns. Don’t be fooled! That timer is the hard timer, but it will very rarely be relevant. What you should be worrying about is that green ‘Reinforcements’ message flashing at the top of your screen. You'll be drowning in reinforcement drops long before the timer gets down to 0, so don’t hang around!
Trying to do stealth VIP extracts with solo Shinobis is usually a bad idea in 1.3. Pods are more numerous, reinforcements will be dropping, and Oscar Mike/Command doesn’t work on civilians anymore. Expect to have to fight your way out of these ones.
Troop Column, Supply Raid
These are now both slightly harder to detect and slightly less rewarding. Your primary economy missions are now Smash & Grabs (see below).
Running 0% Supply Raids in 1.3 is not recommended. Max squad size has been reduced to 8, under-infiltrating gives aliens an increased chance of yellow alert actions, higher-strength Supply Raids have a nasty command pod, and starting the mission with less than 100% infiltration causes you to start without concealment.
Smash & Grab
The new mission type for 1.3, these are going to be your primary source of alloys and elerium and a major source of supplies. Unlike other timed missions, the reinforcements won’t start dropping until the timer runs out, but once it does they’ll be dropping every turn. S&Gs are moderately difficult, harder than Troop Columns but easier than Supply Raids. As with Extracts, you start these missions without concealment, meaning that a scout with the Phantom ability is useful.
Success in Smash and Grabs is a matter of balancing how fast you go. You need to go slowly enough that you’ll only pull one pod at a time and can defeat them individually, but not so slowly that you run out the clock. With practice you’ll get a feel for this.
Protect Data (Hack missions), Destroy Relay
These are pretty much the same as 1.2, except that reinforcements are more of a factor.
Golden Path Missions
Blacksite and Forge now require you to evac from your spawn point, making them impossible to fully stealth. It’s possible to grab the objective and run all the way back across the map without fighting any of the pods, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Facilities are still theoretically stealthable, but the +3 evac timer means that you’ll need a good plan and a lot of luck. Psigate, the final Network Tower, and Waterworld are unchanged.
That about covers all the major stuff. Have fun playing 1.3!
This is NOT a beginner’s guide – if you’ve never played LW2 before, I highly recommend checking out DeaconIvory’s tips and observations compendium. Rather, this guide is intended for players who’ve played at least one full campaign of 1.2 and are looking for a heads-up on stuff that they need to know before jumping into the new patch.
There are a ton of changes in 1.3, but most are relatively minor. For instance, Poison and Disorient have had their hit penalty reduced from -25 to -20, but this won’t actually make any difference to how you play the game – you’ll just see debuffed shots hit marginally more often. However, some of the changes do have a significant effect on tactical and strategic decision-making, and these are the ones I’ve tried to cover in this guide.
This guide is based on my experiences playing on Commander and Legend difficulty. The game will be a bit more forgiving if you play on Rookie or Veteran.
Classes
Nearly all of the basic classes have seen some changes to their perk trees. In most cases they still play pretty much the same way, but a few class builds now work differently.
Rangers: Right-side overwatch Ranger builds are more effective early, due to gaining Ever Vigilant at LCPL. Overwatch Rangers work surprisingly well for early-game timed missions.
Shinobis: Stealth Shinobis are weaker, Sword Shinobis are stronger. Spamming stealth Shinobis through the GTS in the early game is not recommended.
Specialists: Specialists now have two main builds – the overwatch spec that goes down the centre column, and the hacker/medic that mixes perks from the left and right. If you’re going with the OW perks you probably want all of them, since Sentinel, Cool under Pressure, Covering Fire, and Ever Vigilant all synergise strongly. Other than that, Specialists fill the same role as they did before.
Sharpshooters: Snap Shot snipers are actually decent now. They’re better than Death from Above or Rapid Targeting snipers on timed missions, though worse on untimed ones.
Psi Ops: Much stronger than they used to be. Psis can now consistently use two abilities per turn, meaning they greatly benefit from being placed in a location where they don’t have to move.
Soldier Experience
The old bug affecting soldier progression has been fixed, meaning that your new soldiers (whether from the Black Market or your barracks) will level up a lot more slowly than you’re accustomed to. If you want to keep training up soldiers through the mid game, it’s highly recommended that you get at least a couple of officers with the new ‘Trial by Fire’ ability. It will make levelling recruits and Psi Ops a much less painful process.
Strategy Layer
In 1.2 it was possible to largely ignore the Advent Strength in a region, since most of the missions you were doing were stealth ops (which bypassed combat entirely) and the rest were no-timer corpse retrievals (where an extra point of Advent Strength just meant a few extra enemies to bring home). This is no longer the case in 1.3 – if you haven’t been paying attention to the Strength rating of the regions you’re doing missions in, start now!
As a general rule, you should try to do as many as possible of your timed missions in regions of strength 1, 2, or 3. This will minimise not only the number of enemies you have to shoot your way past but also the quantity of reinforcements that will get dropped on your head. Timed missions in regions of strength 4-5 are significantly more dangerous, and anything at Strength 6+ is very dangerous. You won’t always have the luxury of being able to avoid timed missions in these areas, but be aware that by accepting them you’re taking a risk.
Liberation is also something to pay more attention to in 1.3. Radio Relays scale up in cost much faster than in 1.2, but if you do a Network Tower, you get a relay in that region for free. So if you don’t want to bankrupt yourself expanding, do those Lib chains! Fully liberating a region also knocks off a point of doom from the Avatar Project, buying you that much more time.
Tactical Layer
Stealth is generally harder now. Detection ranges are a bit bigger, covertness bonuses are a bit smaller, pods are smaller but more numerous (expect to see a lot more solo drones), and most importantly of all, the infiltration bonuses for very small squads have been greatly reduced. The infil time for a 1-man squad is now very similar to the infil time for a 4-man squad.
All of this doesn’t mean that stealth missions in 1.3 are impossible; they’re still doable, and may occasionally even be the best option (mainly if you don’t have the ability to fight a mission for whatever reason). However, as a general rule, you’ll get better returns from 4-6 man combat squads than from 1-3 man stealth squads.
Reinforcements
As soon as you start your first timed mission in 1.3, one of the first changes you’ll notice is a green ‘Reinforcements’ message flashing at the top of the screen. That means that the reinforcement bar is filling up. When it reaches halfway, the message turns yellow. When it fills up completely, the message turns red, you’ll get a reinforcement drop, and the process starts all over again.
Reinforcements can drop even if your squad is concealed! The rate will be slower, but if you wait long enough, it’ll happen. This is another reason that stealth ops are riskier than they used to be – you can’t wait around forever in concealment any more.
Reinforcements become more frequent at higher Advent Strength and at higher game difficulty, and especially with both. If you run a mission in a Strength 5+ region on Legend, expect to get flooded with reinforcements VERY fast. Throw that evac flare early!
Missions
Several mission types now require different tactics than they did in 1.2.
Jailbreak, Rescue/Extract VIP, Neutralise Enemy VIP
WAKE UP! These missions now work VERY differently! When you start the mission, you’ll see what looks like an enormous timer for you to complete the mission – 20, 22, maybe even 24 turns. Don’t be fooled! That timer is the hard timer, but it will very rarely be relevant. What you should be worrying about is that green ‘Reinforcements’ message flashing at the top of your screen. You'll be drowning in reinforcement drops long before the timer gets down to 0, so don’t hang around!
Trying to do stealth VIP extracts with solo Shinobis is usually a bad idea in 1.3. Pods are more numerous, reinforcements will be dropping, and Oscar Mike/Command doesn’t work on civilians anymore. Expect to have to fight your way out of these ones.
Troop Column, Supply Raid
These are now both slightly harder to detect and slightly less rewarding. Your primary economy missions are now Smash & Grabs (see below).
Running 0% Supply Raids in 1.3 is not recommended. Max squad size has been reduced to 8, under-infiltrating gives aliens an increased chance of yellow alert actions, higher-strength Supply Raids have a nasty command pod, and starting the mission with less than 100% infiltration causes you to start without concealment.
Smash & Grab
The new mission type for 1.3, these are going to be your primary source of alloys and elerium and a major source of supplies. Unlike other timed missions, the reinforcements won’t start dropping until the timer runs out, but once it does they’ll be dropping every turn. S&Gs are moderately difficult, harder than Troop Columns but easier than Supply Raids. As with Extracts, you start these missions without concealment, meaning that a scout with the Phantom ability is useful.
Success in Smash and Grabs is a matter of balancing how fast you go. You need to go slowly enough that you’ll only pull one pod at a time and can defeat them individually, but not so slowly that you run out the clock. With practice you’ll get a feel for this.
Protect Data (Hack missions), Destroy Relay
These are pretty much the same as 1.2, except that reinforcements are more of a factor.
Golden Path Missions
Blacksite and Forge now require you to evac from your spawn point, making them impossible to fully stealth. It’s possible to grab the objective and run all the way back across the map without fighting any of the pods, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Facilities are still theoretically stealthable, but the +3 evac timer means that you’ll need a good plan and a lot of luck. Psigate, the final Network Tower, and Waterworld are unchanged.
That about covers all the major stuff. Have fun playing 1.3!