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Can anyone provide % rough estimates for mission XP vs kill XP? Trying to figure out if wet work is worth picking up in the early game.

Kills are now worth 100% of a kill (lol) point and Wet Work doubles that to 2x. Each MissionXP is at a 5.8x multiplier, so a mission with 9 enemies and a squad of 3 would get each squad member 17.4 kills worth of exp base. It's probably worth taking now, at least. Before it was 33% by a second 33%, meaning you only got 2/3rds of a kill point per kill. The vast majority of actual experience should still be coming from MissionXP, not kills, though.

edit: I think there's still some classes that aren't at a 5.8x multiplier on mission experience, like the Specialist. But 5.8 is applicable to most of the classes.

Clibanarius wrote:Kills are now worth 100% of a kill (lol) point and Wet Work doubles that to 2x. Each MissionXP is at a 5.8x multiplier, so a mission with 9 enemies and a squad of 3 would get each squad member 17.4 kills worth of exp base. It's probably worth taking now, at least. Before it was 33% by a second 33%, meaning you only got 2/3rds of a kill point per kill. The vast majority of actual experience should still be coming from MissionXP, not kills, though.

edit: I think there's still some classes that aren't at a 5.8x multiplier on mission experience, like the Specialist. But 5.8 is applicable to most of the classes.

Ok so to confirm my understanding, if I bring 3 or more soldiers to a mission with 10 enemies, the total XP I get is:
58 mission XP
+10 kill XP
Total: 68 XP

If I had Wet Work, I'd get 20 kill XP, and would earn 78 XP instead, a roughly 13% increase in XP. If I killed 10 extra reinforcements in the mission, Wet Work would be boosting me from 78 XP to 98 XP, a roughly 25% increase.

I'd say it's more worth it the harder you push 0% missions. Less so if you don't. Also makes it a lot more worthwhile to stick around and farm RNFs. Considering it makes RNF xp double, makes them a lot more worthwhile.

I say it's worth it. But not worth it enough to go GTS first.

Nobody is pushing 0% missions. They're deadly with the yellow alert reaction fire.

Clibanarius wrote:Nobody is pushing 0% missions. They're deadly with the yellow alert reaction fire.

They don't get yellow alert when you activate.

Good point, though I remain skeptical.

Clibanarius wrote:Nobody is pushing 0% missions. They're deadly with the yellow alert reaction fire.

JoINRbs is trying it for scientific purposes. Results so far are mixed.

So it doesn't make a huge difference but then it's also quite cheap.

In terms of early GTS projects, Vulture is the one to prioritise IMO. 150 supplies is quite a lot early game. But you'll probably pick up that much in extra loot in about 5 missions, assuming average BM sale value of say 15 supplies per item, and an average 2 extra items per mission. So it should pay for itself within a month and everything after that is pure profit.

So after learning more about how this works, I've now been intentionally farming RNFs at the end of each GOP. I'd say I easily get 10 RNF kills each mission before I have to bug out. I could easily see this going up later in the game when my soldiers get stronger.

Conclusions:
1) Farming RNFs is zero risk. Getting 10 kills is worth about 15% of an Extremely Light mission in XP.
2) If you also take wet work, you're getting about 30% of an Extremely Light mission for 10 RNF kills.
3) In general, taking Wet Work is going to increase your XP rate by 15-25% overall, even more if you go crazy farming RNFs, and is almost certainly worth taking as soon as you can.

stefan3iii wrote:So after learning more about how this works, I've now been intentionally farming RNFs at the end of each GOP. I'd say I easily get 10 RNF kills each mission before I have to bug out. I could easily see this going up later in the game when my soldiers get stronger.

Conclusions:
1) Farming RNFs is zero risk. Getting 10 kills is worth about 15% of an Extremely Light mission in XP.
2) If you also take wet work, you're getting about 30% of an Extremely Light mission for 10 RNF kills.
3) In general, taking Wet Work is going to increase your XP rate by 15-25% overall, even more if you go crazy farming RNFs, and is almost certainly worth taking as soon as you can.

I've been doing the same a little bit. But it's quite dull and not enormously beneficial so I've mostly stopped. Also it skews your soldier stats so that you can't see who has lots of kills due to awesomeness and who has just been farming rnfs.

stefan3iii wrote:So after learning more about how this works, I've now been intentionally farming RNFs at the end of each GOP. I'd say I easily get 10 RNF kills each mission before I have to bug out. I could easily see this going up later in the game when my soldiers get stronger.

Conclusions:
1) Farming RNFs is zero risk. Getting 10 kills is worth about 15% of an Extremely Light mission in XP.
2) If you also take wet work, you're getting about 30% of an Extremely Light mission for 10 RNF kills.
3) In general, taking Wet Work is going to increase your XP rate by 15-25% overall, even more if you go crazy farming RNFs, and is almost certainly worth taking as soon as you can.

I thought reinforcements don't give xp, for exactly this reason.

moroniccinamun wrote:I thought reinforcements don't give xp, for exactly this reason.

They don't give mission xp, which is the lion's share of the total xp, but they definitely give kill xp.

Antifringe wrote:

moroniccinamun wrote:I thought reinforcements don't give xp, for exactly this reason.

They don't give mission xp, which is the lion's share of the total xp, but they definitely give kill xp.

They probably shouldn't give mission xp. It's definitely a bit of 5 minute tedium to collect your RNF XP at the end of each mission. Might have to house rule this, but first I'm going to push it to find out how broken it is . I'm like 80% sure it's possible to have a squad later in the game that can farm infinite RNFs until everyone has leveled.

stefan3iii wrote:They probably shouldn't give mission xp. It's definitely a bit of 5 minute tedium to collect your RNF XP at the end of each mission. Might have to house rule this, but first I'm going to push it to find out how broken it is . I'm like 80% sure it's possible to have a squad later in the game that can farm infinite RNFs until everyone has leveled.

Infinite RNFs? Max squad size is 8 on almost all missions now. RNFs can go up to 12 enemies per turn. There is no combination of classes that can farm that number of high level enemies indefinitely.

Tuhalu wrote:

stefan3iii wrote:They probably shouldn't give mission xp. It's definitely a bit of 5 minute tedium to collect your RNF XP at the end of each mission. Might have to house rule this, but first I'm going to push it to find out how broken it is . I'm like 80% sure it's possible to have a squad later in the game that can farm infinite RNFs until everyone has leveled.

Infinite RNFs? Max squad size is 8 on almost all missions now. RNFs can go up to 12 enemies per turn. There is no combination of classes that can farm that number of high level enemies indefinitely.

Well I bet some combination of traverse fire + rapid fire gunners, hit and run assaults, hit and run/rapid fire shinobis, and rangers could do it. Though it'd be kind of pointless since half those builds are already MSGT . Didn't realize it goes up to 12 reinforcements now.

My personal preference would be that xp be based on the baseline (eg 100% infiltration) amount of aliens, and nothing else. No kill xp, no bonus xp for underinfiltrating, no loss of xp for over infiltrating. Makes things way less game-y. Probably is the province of mods, though.

Antifringe wrote:My personal preference would be that xp be based on the baseline (eg 100% infiltration) amount of aliens, and nothing else. No kill xp, no bonus xp for underinfiltrating, no loss of xp for over infiltrating. Makes things way less gem-y. Probably is the province of mods, though.

Yeah I like that idea a lot. It's rather strange that it's sometimes a good idea to not infiltrate a mission fully just to increase XP.

stefan3iii wrote:

Antifringe wrote:My personal preference would be that xp be based on the baseline (eg 100% infiltration) amount of aliens, and nothing else. No kill xp, no bonus xp for underinfiltrating, no loss of xp for over infiltrating. Makes things way less gem-y. Probably is the province of mods, though.

Yeah I like that idea a lot. It's rather strange that it's sometimes a good idea to not infiltrate a mission fully just to increase XP.

Generally my rule of thumb for whether I'm bothered by something (or find it "gamey") is if it's narratively dissonant. In this case, I don't find that narratively dissonant - it makes sense that if you're part of a squad that successfully completes a very difficult mission you will get more out of the experience than completing a run-of-the-mill mission. What stops the player from doing ALL missions with low infiltration should be the risk (wounds, mission failure, KIAs) in doing so IMO. Not any sort of weird unintuitive (and honestly pretty gamey) penalty to XP for doing a more difficult mission.

Just my $0.02.

mattprice516 wrote:Generally my rule of thumb for whether I'm bothered by something (or find it "gamey") is if it's narratively dissonant. In this case, I don't find that narratively dissonant - it makes sense that if you're part of a squad that successfully completes a very difficult mission you will get more out of the experience than completing a run-of-the-mill mission. What stops the player from doing ALL missions with low infiltration should be the risk (wounds, mission failure, KIAs) in doing so IMO. Not any sort of weird unintuitive (and honestly pretty gamey) penalty to XP for doing a more difficult mission.

Just my $0.02.

My take on it is that the infiltration is part of the mission, and slipping into enemy territory is part of soldiering. So I consider the mission to be "equally challenging" for the soldiers regardless of infiltration because they either 1) worked hard and did the mission correctly 2) did a slipshod rush job and then had to make up for their bad technique. You still get more xp for doing missions that have a higher baseline difficulty, which makes more sense to me.

Mechanically, there is the advantage that xp is predictable and can be balanced around. Abusing low percent missions can result in absurd results, like master sargents on month four. You can't balance around something like that, and victory ends up being about gaming the xp system rather than anything that feels like real strategy.

Antifringe wrote: Abusing low percent missions can result in absurd results, like master sargents on month four. You can't balance around something like that, and victory ends up being about gaming the xp system rather than anything that feels like real strategy.

If that's the case something will obviously have to be done. But I've yet to see someone actually do it. Can't always make balance changes based on theorycrafting, gotta see that there's an actual real problem.

IIRC JoINrbs has been experimenting with doing tons of 0% missions, and while he's had slightly more XP than others at the same point in their campaigns, it hasn't been ludicrously drastic. He's also taken a lot more wounds, which raises the question of A) if it's actually a better strategy in the long run and B) if anyone but the absolute best of players can make it pay off.

So while I'm agreeing with you that there's the potential for there to be an exploitable mechanic there, I'm not convinced that it's actually a real problem. Yet.

(all of the above is my own opinion, do keep in mind that I'm not the one who makes balancing decisions, just a playtester )

If you have a low strength region where you can do extra missions with 5 guys, then you're using roughly 30 man-days for these missions. This is two medium or one grave wound, so each such set of wounds is kind of like losing a mission. Of course, there's other factors at play, e.g. you need to have a decent 5-man squad to attempt the mission so you can have 2 soldiers resting on wounds with all the rest of your soldiers on missions. Even taking that into account and halving the "wound malus", it'd take 2-5 wounds to miss a mission. A single extremely light mission is worth ~60? kills, so you'd have to kill 12+ extra aliens on average for each wound just to match the XP, not to mention the strategic benefits of doing the extra missions(let's say that's matched by extra loot and rebels on supply/recruit). It sounds very unlikely even theoretically.

I suppose the best legendary players who have mastery over the tactical layer could probably run slightly under 100% infiltration consistently, getting an extra leg up via more loot and kill xp without really incurring a lot of wounds. For the rest of us plebs, it's 100%+ or bust

I purchased Wet Works and just started the RNF farming in my current V/I campaign. I am consistently getting 9-12 more kills permission (about doubling total kills in ELight or VLight missions as others have stated) before buggin' out. My first two missions where I farmed RNFs I had a soldier promoted during each mission while farming...very small initial sampling but kind of got my attention that it can accelerate leveling appreciably. Sure, it can get a bit monotonous, but I've actually had some fun in trying to kill all the landed baddies in one turn and still get guys on over-watch for the next landing (hint: bring more grenades early game, you don't get any points for bringing home unused grenades!).

This thread is a couple week's old, so wanted to circle back with anyone that may have been doing this for a much longer portion of the campaign...is this too gamey and becomes unbalanced?