A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Saph7
Long War 2 Crew
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A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by Saph7 »

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!
Clibanarius
Posts: 205
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Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by Clibanarius »

I believe I shall have fun playing 1.3! Here's hoping that happens over this weekend!
stefan3iii
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Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by stefan3iii »

Thanks for the informative post.

One question:
Facilities are still theoretically stealthable, but the +3 evac timer means that you’ll need a good plan and a lot of luck.
Does this mean if you don't evac a facility, you fail the mission? I'm pretty sure you could stealth-suicide the mission before, has that changed?
Wigpeeler
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Joined: Tue May 09, 2017 11:45 am

Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by Wigpeeler »

Sigh. Reinforcements are my least favourite aspect of the game, for all the reasons that have been expounded on before. Will see how it goes but this sounds more frustrating than fun.
bingo12345
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Joined: Fri Jan 20, 2017 8:13 am

Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by bingo12345 »

stefan3iii wrote:Thanks for the informative post.

One question:
Facilities are still theoretically stealthable, but the +3 evac timer means that you’ll need a good plan and a lot of luck.
Does this mean if you don't evac a facility, you fail the mission? I'm pretty sure you could stealth-suicide the mission before, has that changed?
Death is one of EVAC from life.
Clibanarius
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Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by Clibanarius »

Wigpeeler wrote:Sigh. Reinforcements are my least favourite aspect of the game, for all the reasons that have been expounded on before. Will see how it goes but this sounds more frustrating than fun.
I have absolutely no doubt that you can edit the reinforcement bucket ticker in the ini files in 1.3, just like you can now.
Wigpeeler
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Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by Wigpeeler »

Clibanarius wrote:I have absolutely no doubt that you can edit the reinforcement bucket ticker in the ini files in 1.3, just like you can now.
Undoubtedly. It just gets harder to rebalance the rest (difficulty, mobility incentives, etc) when reinforcements are becoming more central to the design.
Saph7
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by Saph7 »

stefan3iii wrote:Does this mean if you don't evac a facility, you fail the mission? I'm pretty sure you could stealth-suicide the mission before, has that changed?
The actual mechanics of facilities haven't changed, there's just a longer wait for evac. The pod schedules have been altered, though – more solo drones, etc.
Daergar
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Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by Daergar »

An excellent post, Saph, much gratitude.
Vandal81
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Joined: Sat Feb 18, 2017 8:44 am

Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by Vandal81 »

Soooo,am i starting a new longwar 1.3 campaigne later today?(rookie does a barrel roll)
Iam more excited for 1.3 then when longwar2 came out(almost)
Jadiel
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Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by Jadiel »

I'm sad to see that 'Destroy the Monument' missions didn't get a mention. Are they still in their never-do-these state, or are they worth doing now?

Also, you mentioned Neutralise VIP missions, but didn't talk about suiciding them. With Oscar Mike getting buffed, suicide Assaults/Shinobis will have insane ranges to run in and kill the VIP - has anything changed to make this harder?
Clibanarius
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Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2017 1:33 am

Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by Clibanarius »

Jadiel wrote:I'm sad to see that 'Destroy the Monument' missions didn't get a mention. Are they still in their never-do-these state, or are they worth doing now?

Also, you mentioned Neutralise VIP missions, but didn't talk about suiciding them. With Oscar Mike getting buffed, suicide Assaults/Shinobis will have insane ranges to run in and kill the VIP - has anything changed to make this harder?
They get a mention in the patch note. Propaganda missions now don't spawn until month 3 or something like that. Meaning no longer do they take up valuable potential mission slots in a region.
kiksu
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Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by kiksu »

Thx a lot, the only question remains "When?"
nmkaplan
Posts: 207
Joined: Thu Jan 26, 2017 5:14 pm

Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by nmkaplan »

This is a super useful post, and i appreciate it! Thanks for all your hard work. I'm very much looking forward to checking all of this out!
Antifringe
Posts: 226
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Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by Antifringe »

kiksu wrote:Thx a lot, the only question remains "When?"
Thousands of years ago, when LW2 1.2 was still young, the ancient Mayans used their now-forgotten arts to predict the coming of 1.3. Archaeologists have only recently deciphered their prophecies. The Mayans foretold that 1.3 would come to pass when

1) A request from the heavens for translation has been made, and the mortals below fulfill it.
2) This must happen twice.
3) The translation thread must mysteriously disappear from the forums without comment
4) Official testers begin posting playguides for transitioning 1.2 to 1.3

All of these events have come to pass. Set your affairs in order, leave behind no regrets, for the time is nigh.
Zyxpsilon
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Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by Zyxpsilon »

But-but-but... what if even the Mayans were caught up in a major Biotic void rift (No thanks to RealityMachina's latest mod) from which Pavonis devs also experienced terrible side-effects?

We'd be all doomed to expect an update soon.. yet nothing in this world would ever be able to resist the apocalyptic storm of Unreal-Engine code damages that trickles down away from JohnnyLump's PC??

Judgment day is near, people. Count your blessings, leave your sins behind, re-supply your Nukes-Aftermath-Bunker & stay tuned for more important updates to this global threat news.

:lol:
deaconivory
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by deaconivory »

How to Migrate Your LW2 Version 1.2 Campaign to 1.3: http://www.pavonisinteractive.com/phpBB ... 392#p42392
User avatar
steecazzi
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Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by steecazzi »

It seems promising but you have to diversify your missions (which are always the same) and improve heavily on A.I.
Per terra e per mare
Dlareh
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Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by Dlareh »

Last edited by Dlareh on Sat May 13, 2017 7:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Excitement continues to build as city centers across the globe prepare for the latest incarnation of Groundhog Day.
Clibanarius
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Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by Clibanarius »

steecazzi wrote:It seems promising but you have to diversify your missions (which are always the same) and improve heavily on A.I.
Shut up.
Autoclave
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Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by Autoclave »

Any news about the #1 most *censored* thing in LW2: the pod that spawns near the rebels on datatap mini retals? This is just one huge middlefinger to the players.
Clibanarius
Posts: 205
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2017 1:33 am

Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by Clibanarius »

At least Xwynns has been railing against those. I imagine we'll be seeing a removal of the turn-0 pod activation near your rebel friends in the intel mini-retals at some point.
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
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Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by chrisb »

Clibanarius wrote:
steecazzi wrote:It seems promising but you have to diversify your missions (which are always the same) and improve heavily on A.I.
Shut up.
Please don't feed the trolls, it makes you look bad and only makes them more likely to continue. There is an option in your account settings to ignore people. If you look under Friend & Foe, making someone a Foe is this forum software's name for an ignore list, it will temp hide all of their posts if you can't stand reading them.
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
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Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by chrisb »

Clibanarius wrote:At least Xwynns has been railing against those. I imagine we'll be seeing a removal of the turn-0 pod activation near your rebel friends in the intel mini-retals at some point.
Perhaps, but I wouldn't count on it too much. They might be able to reduce the occurrence of it, but eliminating it altogether would require having more control over spawning which I'm not sure they have. The game engine allows you to set certain parameters that it will then use to decide where to spawn things, but those parameters have no notion of what the actual map is. So if the rebel data tap ends up within LOS of a map edge, then you have the chance of pods spawning with LOS of the data tap. Not much PI can do about that AFAIK.
Clibanarius
Posts: 205
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Re: A Guide for LW2 Players Moving from 1.2 to 1.3

Post by Clibanarius »

Ohhh, I know, and I really should. I just get frustrated because it's always new accounts that're pulling this shit as of late. It's hard because the eagerness for 1.3 gets to all of us, but people posting crap threads repeatedly or making dumb posts in legitimately helpful threads, like this one.
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