Stealth missions in LW 1.3

[8wayz]

I decided to start a new campaign last night to test some Quality of Life mods in preparation for version 1.3. I picked Commander difficulty.

The first mission I go on is a Standard Stealth one, where you need to hack a cache. I get a pretty good breakdown of the mission's specifics on the Geoscape and tell myself that wasn't in 1.2. Then I go on the mission and see an EVAC timer of 4 turns (at 100% infiltration) !

I immediately exit the game and check the mods - lo and behold, Long War has been updated to 1.3!

The question that came to my mind was - are you able to still simply go stealthy on those missions, without firing a shot? That EVAC timer even at 200% seems it will be around 2 turns, so you can actually stay and wait for it, but will need to go in with one Shinobi and throw the flare on the other side of the map with your covering team. Then you make a mad dash for the extraction point and hope nobody hits you.

Is that the only viable way to do Stealth missions currently?

[Thrair]

My experience in 1.3 has been that Stealthing is still viable, but much harder. It requires more perk investment as the game goes on and is a LOT less reliable. That last bit is the key takeaway from my experience.

Sometimes I send in a guy or two for a stealth attempt, but find the patrols and the map just don't make it possible. When that happens, I simply abort and jot it up as "was worth a shot". Also, solo-stealthing is less viable in many cases. A Shinobi-Specialist pair is essential past early-game or very lucky patrol/los sightlines.

So... you can do it if you need to, but it's not something you'll do reliably all the time. Given you're only having one or two guys eating the infiltration to attempt a mission you otherwise wouldn't even attempt, that seems a fair trade-off.

[MacroNova]

I really think stealth is going to be almost impossible in 1.3, especially early game, and something you're not going to want to try unless you absolutely have to. The problem is the infiltration time. It takes just as long to infiltrate one or two guys as it does 4 guys. And for stealth missions you really need to overinfiltrate to get the evac timer down. So do you really want to tie up two valuable soldiers for 8 days on a mission they might not even be able to do, assuming the mission expiration timer is that long in the first place? Or would you rather tie up five guys for ~5 days where they have a much better chance for success?

[gimrah]

You could think about semi-stealth approaches. Get to the objective but expect to fight at least one pod between going loud and evaccing.

There's hardly any difference between 2 and 4 soldiers so you may as well take at least 4. I did a hack with 4 soldiers but ended up killing everything in the end (ex light). No doubt there are cleverer approaches but I just hope there's a good visual approach to the objective, use gotcha again to position the evac at the closest to me I can get LoS for a hack. So I'd probably fight at least some stuff to get to that position.

[deaconivory]

I really think stealth is going to be almost impossible in 1.3, especially early game, and something you're not going to want to try unless you absolutely have to. The problem is the infiltration time. It takes just as long to infiltrate one or two guys as it does 4 guys. And for stealth missions you really need to overinfiltrate to get the evac timer down. So do you really want to tie up two valuable soldiers for 8 days on a mission they might not even be able to do, assuming the mission expiration timer is that long in the first place? Or would you rather tie up five guys for ~5 days where they have a much better chance for success?

It will depend on your difficulty level and the Advent Strength in the region, but I successfully stealthed 4 early game missions this campaign, 2 without firing a shot, and 2 with fighting at least one pod on my way to the Evac. They are not the go to that they were in 1.2, however I think that you'll find it to be much more fun if you do choose to do one, as long as you are not doing it in a High Advent Strength region, and you do not dilly-dally along the way because the reinf are going to come hot and heavy if you go too slow.