Feedback about Liberation

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trihero
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Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 7:01 am

Feedback about Liberation

Post by trihero »

In 1.3, there is more encourage to liberate regions (you reduce the doom count by one). There are still a couple things I think that are worth thinking about/discussing

1) The Liberation modifier for golden path missions doesn't really seem worth chasing. The modifier is 8 days on Rooke, I think 10 on Legend? Assuming extremely generously that it takes 5 days to detect and finish a lib mission (not accounting for ramp up time to recruit enough rebels to get intel, etc), and that you can have this happen consecutively without any wounds/delays, it takes

lib1 + lib2 + lib3 + network tower + HQ = 25 days to lilberate a region. And I'll just repeat that is ridiculously generous.

If you regard the golden path missions as just something to tick off or simply as a reduction to the avatar counter, in terms of time and possible wounds it seems to make sense to just send in a team without bothering to do any liberating. Why spend 25+ days to knock 10 days off the golden path?

Furthermore, it is generally fairly difficult to do liberation missions in those regions to begin with, since they start off with significantly higher advent strength, like 6 or 7.

It seems like there is not enough reason to pursue liberation for the sake of knocking time off the golden path infiltration, and even if you are looking to liberate a region simply for the resources rather than the golden path bonus, even that prevents you from wanting to liberate golden path regions since they are stacked with naturally high strength.

Maybe adjust the liberation modifier to make it worth it, at least once in a while, for golden path? I don't think that you should be forced to liberate before doing golden path but the liberation modifier just seems like an oddity to me that never makes sense to pursue.

2) Perhaps, liberating a region should provide a permanent delay to the avatar counter rather than/or in conjunction with the reduction of one pip.

What I've noticed is, if you liberate a region, all the vigilance disappears from that region. That means all the missions you did to raise vigilance in order to provide the delay on the counter actually goes away when you liberate a region. This means liberating a region actually causes the avatar counter to go up faster, and it could be by quite a substantial amount if you say went from 70% global threat down to 0% after you liberated a region. Yes the current reduction of an avatar pip is nice, but I think a permanent slowdown makes more sense to counteract the "loss of vigiliance" effect.

It makes sense at least to me if you liberate a region that it causes a permanent "sore eye" for advent, the exact number is up for careful deliberation, but it should raise the global threat level by a permanent amount.
DaviBones
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Re: Feedback about Liberation

Post by DaviBones »

1) Ten days is a lot more significant when you take into account the huge infiltration times for the golden path missions. Think of it this way: would you rather have your A-team out infiltrating for 25 days straight, or three consecutive infiltrations of 10 days? What if you get a hunter UFO on day 5? You might say "I would have my B-team." Well, what if the campaign isn't going very well, and your B-team isn't well outfitted/trained due to lack of resources or soldier deaths? A bunch of short infiltrations would perhaps be better, so that you can get your A-team back quickly if you need to.

Then again, I'm probably the last person who should be weighing in because I don't really care for the story so I never do the Golden Path missions :lol:


2) I agree. There is serious dissonance with the way vigilance works upon liberation; The entire point of the Vigilance mechanic is that as XCOM becomes more threatening, ADVENT diverts more resources away from the avatar project and towards fighting XCOM... Yet, when you liberate a region, they suddenly see XCOM as less of a threat. There should be no situation in which Global Vigilance goes down after liberation. Perhaps the remaining vigilance should be spread to adjacent, non-liberated regions. This would make invasions more of a threat too, which are a mission type I have never played over the course of 2 full campaigns.
MacroNova
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Re: Feedback about Liberation

Post by MacroNova »

I will do Liberation 1 and 2 in a region if the mission looks good (Very Light or Extremely Light, decent infiltration time, decent rewards, and I have a squad available). It's when Liberation 3 comes around that I start to doubt whether it's a good idea. Because as I understand it, exposing the network tower causes strength to rush to the region, right?
justdont
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Re: Feedback about Liberation

Post by justdont »

DaviBones wrote:1) Ten days is a lot more significant when you take into account the huge infiltration times for the golden path missions. Think of it this way: would you rather have your A-team out infiltrating for 25 days straight, or three consecutive infiltrations of 10 days? What if you get a hunter UFO on day 5? You might say "I would have my B-team."
Unless you play LW2 on Rookie (and in this case the whole issue doesn't matter much because you can win either way), by the time of getting to golden path missions, you're likely to have at least 4 "A-teams" (to the varying degree of A-ness), and the same amount of B-teams. LW2 is not really winnable on higher difficulties if you pool too much training and equipment into a single team.
SoSmooth
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Re: Feedback about Liberation

Post by SoSmooth »

I agree that some additional reward would be nice. I think that removing a permanent dark event would be nice. Perhaps liberation could even give a percent chance to remove a dark event. The event could return to available pool.
stefan3iii
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Re: Feedback about Liberation

Post by stefan3iii »

justdont wrote:
DaviBones wrote:1) Ten days is a lot more significant when you take into account the huge infiltration times for the golden path missions. Think of it this way: would you rather have your A-team out infiltrating for 25 days straight, or three consecutive infiltrations of 10 days? What if you get a hunter UFO on day 5? You might say "I would have my B-team."
Unless you play LW2 on Rookie (and in this case the whole issue doesn't matter much because you can win either way), by the time of getting to golden path missions, you're likely to have at least 4 "A-teams" (to the varying degree of A-ness), and the same amount of B-teams. LW2 is not really winnable on higher difficulties if you pool too much training and equipment into a single team.
I play L/I, I would expect to have something like 12-20 GSGT or MSGT around the end of a campaign, that's like 1.5 to 2.5 A teams. The L/I streamers I've watched seem to end up the same.

Regardless the lib bonus to golden path infiltration is mostly irrelevant, don't think that's the reason you're supposed to do it. Also, you should probably only send 8 soldiers to the golden path missions, the difference in total soldier time is just immense:
8 x 10 days = 80 days of soldier time
10 x 25 days = 250 days of soldier time
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8wayz
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Re: Feedback about Liberation

Post by 8wayz »

Not to point the obvious, but the liberation of a region currently gives you one free Radio Tower (in the same region), as well as some pretty hefty loot and corpses from the final assault. Add to that the removal of a pip and it is actually a pretty tasty proposition.

The Vigilance removal is there to counter-balance all the rewards you get. After liberation you will need to immediately focus your efforts elsewhere to make up for the lowered global Vigilance.

I find it a pretty good way to set the pace for the campaign, instead of just liberating a few regions and then just sit back and pick your missions.
justdont
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Re: Feedback about Liberation

Post by justdont »

8wayz wrote:Not to point the obvious, but the liberation of a region currently gives you one free Radio Tower (in the same region), as well as some pretty hefty loot and corpses from the final assault. Add to that the removal of a pip and it is actually a pretty tasty proposition.
This is why liberating regions to get economic bonuses is perfectly fine. I don't think anyone in this thread said that liberation in general is useless.
mattprice516
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: Feedback about Liberation

Post by mattprice516 »

Are y'all aware that liberating a region adds 3 vigilance to adjacent regions and 1 vigilance to all other regions in the world?
Jacke
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Re: Feedback about Liberation

Post by Jacke »

trihero wrote:What I've noticed is, if you liberate a region, all the vigilance disappears from that region. That means all the missions you did to raise vigilance in order to provide the delay on the counter actually goes away when you liberate a region. This means liberating a region actually causes the avatar counter to go up faster, and it could be by quite a substantial amount if you say went from 70% global threat down to 0% after you liberated a region. Yes the current reduction of an avatar pip is nice, but I think a permanent slowdown makes more sense to counteract the "loss of vigiliance" effect.

It makes sense at least to me if you liberate a region that it causes a permanent "sore eye" for advent, the exact number is up for careful deliberation, but it should raise the global threat level by a permanent amount.
Perhaps like any ADVENT strength that's not killed by the Liberation, outstanding Vigilance should be distributed to surrounding ADVENT controlled zones. If this is too much, perhaps only a fraction of the Vigilance be redistributed.
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8wayz
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Re: Feedback about Liberation

Post by 8wayz »

@ matt price - that is not evident at all, though personal experience does seem to collaborate it to a degree. We really could use some way to distinguish Vigilance levels in a region and if they go up or down.

Vigilance is still nebulous for all intents and purposes.
Zyxpsilon
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Re: Feedback about Liberation

Post by Zyxpsilon »

The newest "Get_A_Free_Radio_Relay" feature completely redefined how i approach my Liberation(s) cycle plans.

The mathematics behind the requisite Missions might seem a bit or heavily "Off-cycle" for some people.. but these concerns are certainly related to what our dear PI design team thought good balance should be. I'm willing & able to tackle whatever they need to throw at my "Strategic" mindset -- high & low.

Although the storyline GoldenPath trio (BlackSite + PsiGate + TheForge) really had far too much Infiltration times. This is one of the very first INI edits i made to bring back the XC2 feeling of campaign progress. Since they mostly always (need to) happen during mid/late game.. the inherent other missions pace still occuring behind the scenes are somewhat interfering with that three steps obligation to win.

Sooooo XComLW_InfiltrationSettings.INI file got those new hourly float-values from me & my silly opinions;

Code: Select all

+InfiltrationTime_BlackSite[0]=48f   ;192f
+InfiltrationTime_BlackSite[1]=72f   ;240f
+InfiltrationTime_BlackSite[2]=96f   ;288f
+InfiltrationTime_BlackSite[3]=120f  ;288f

+InfiltrationTime_Forge[0]=48f   ;192f
+InfiltrationTime_Forge[1]=72f   ;240f
+InfiltrationTime_Forge[2]=96f   ;288f
+InfiltrationTime_Forge[3]=120f  ;288f

+InfiltrationTime_PsiGate[0]=48f   ;192f
+InfiltrationTime_PsiGate[1]=72f   ;240f
+InfiltrationTime_PsiGate[2]=96f   ;288f
+InfiltrationTime_PsiGate[3]=120f  ;288f
Effectively creating a rational sense of gameplay trajectories towards Winning.. less long - so to speak, IMHO.

PS; Note that v1.3 shaved off R48 (was 240 -- now is 192, etc) .. V72.. C72.. L96.. hours from each of the v1.2 amounts. You can blame me for mentionning that fact to them in the past! ;)

But my point still goes like this; IF anyone feels certain Ruleset aspects are too off by a reasonable chunk -- they can just alter a few (or more) INI settings.. thanks to PI staff for giving us that important "adjustments" power, btw.
bilfdoffle
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: Feedback about Liberation

Post by bilfdoffle »

8wayz wrote:@ matt price - that is not evident at all, though personal experience does seem to collaborate it to a degree. We really could use some way to distinguish Vigilance levels in a region and if they go up or down.

Vigilance is still nebulous for all intents and purposes.
That's not entirely true - you're given an overall ratio of alert to vigilance, which you should be able to observe not particularly changing after a HQ assault (which it would if you just wiped out 20 vigilance from the world).

If you really wanna see vigilance, there's a mod for that.
jkure2
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Re: Feedback about Liberation

Post by jkure2 »

Quick tangential question, is it ever worth leaving a network tower or HQ mission exposed because the increased vigilance slows the avatar project?
mattprice516
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: Feedback about Liberation

Post by mattprice516 »

jkure2 wrote:Quick tangential question, is it ever worth leaving a network tower or HQ mission exposed because the increased vigilance slows the avatar project?
Not in general, because liberating a region adds 3 vigilance to adjacent regions and 1 vigilance to all other regions.
deducter
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Re: Feedback about Liberation

Post by deducter »

What exactly is the effect on vigilance if you complete lib3 but do not take on the network tower? Does exposing this mission say give a flat +1 vig a week? Does it add say 5 vig but this will decrease with time?
mattprice516
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: Feedback about Liberation

Post by mattprice516 »

There's some Vig gain from completing Lib 3 (I don't remember how much) but no sort of ongoing effect that I know of.
Zarnak
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Re: Feedback about Liberation

Post by Zarnak »

When you are looking at the final liberation - will advent strength only go up in that region? I just had a squad wipe that ended my campaign trying to liberate the first region - Advent strength 5. My squad of 8 was still corporal level so I probably pushed it way too early. I'm probably trying to go too 'wide' rather then 'tall' with my soldiers but can Advent strength be manipulated by hiding once a region is in the end game?
jkure2
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Re: Feedback about Liberation

Post by jkure2 »

mattprice516 wrote:
jkure2 wrote:Quick tangential question, is it ever worth leaving a network tower or HQ mission exposed because the increased vigilance slows the avatar project?
Not in general, because liberating a region adds 3 vigilance to adjacent regions and 1 vigilance to all other regions.
Thanks!!
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