Retaliations

[DerAva]

The current trend seems to be to not assign haven advisors and then simply skip the mini retaliation missions, write off the lost rebels and replace them with the next jailbreak. It doesn't seem worth it to risk 9 soldiers on a recruitment retal only to save 4 rebels.

[Dwarfling]

The current trend seems to be to not assign haven advisors and then simply skip the mini retaliation missions, write off the lost rebels and replace them with the next jailbreak. It doesn't seem worth it to risk 9 soldiers on a recruitment retal only to save 4 rebels.

It really depends on which retaliation you're getting. So far the one with the biggest risk of a wipe is the Recruiters Raid, where not only you have to fight to the evac, you have to wait further turns (4) after you evac the recruiters for Firebrand to come back for you, quite likely against RNFs every turn because it's a large map. I just try to avoid this one entirely by not recruiting in high strenght regions (well, 2 rebels on recruit).

Then after that comes Haven Defense, which comes with scaling pods every turn, usually in different directions, but you only need to hold your ground and kill/control the most dangerous aliens while you run around picking as many rebels as you can.

Terror... Well, Terror is deadly for your rebels. You can take it slow and risk losing more rebels, but unless you make a serious mistake like a dashing activation your squad will be fine.

Intel raid is mostly only dangerous for your rebels and advisor, and you can retreat the advisor. The squad you send is only really at risk if you drop without a Shinobi and get yellow alert'd from a flank.

I haven't triggered Supply raid yet because I only get supply from liberated regions. Heard it's still easy.

Anyways, it's still quick experience, and with the possibility of loot. I don't shy away from Intel raids, I just accept that I can lose some of those rebels. In fact, my last mission was an intel raid, and my rebels were up against a Berserker, a MEC, 2 snakes and a some variant of trooper. Lost 1 (micro missiles), coulda been 3 if I hadn't finished quick before 2 other rebels were killed by poison.

[caseywills]

Another thing would be to allow 8 soldiers for the defence. Does anyone know if this can be done via .ini?

Hey I think you can bring 8. I accidentally only took 6 (I think the robojumber mod centers the 6 slots and I didn't see the 2 empties), but then did the defense with 8. I am playing on iron man and it wasn't easy, but not excessively hard. First few pods usually drop near evac.

[chrisb]

Another thing would be to allow 8 soldiers for the defence. Does anyone know if this can be done via .ini?

Hey I think you can bring 8. I accidentally only took 6 (I think the robojumber mod centers the 6 slots and I didn't see the 2 empties), but then did the defense with 8. I am playing on iron man and it wasn't easy, but not excessively hard. First few pods usually drop near evac.

That's correct, all raid and retal missions allow 8 soldiers with no infiltration. It's one of the reasons that learning how to handle these missions can provide an incredible boost to experience for soldiers. In most of my campaigns I typically go out of my way to spawn as many of them as possible. They're not easy, but if you have the squad available to handle them, they can really snowball your barracks.

[Psieye]

Personally, and I assume most people, would want to build up a haven. Keep on making it stronger. Keeping on having it destroyed, without anything we can do about it just isn't fun.

This boils down to a mismatch in expected vs actual play experience, or rather: "which vectors of fun will I get from this game?"

I recall back before XCOM2 vanilla was released, one of the Firaxis designers saying "XCOM is not a power fantasy - it's not about putting a boot on alien face, it's about struggling under and ultimately overcoming a vastly superior adversary". That was the design intent, but mechanically it turned out skilled players could get a power fantasy out of playing XCOM. Still, the limited options in vanilla's strategic layer made it hard to see the game as anything more than just a series of tactical puzzles.

Long War 2 brings actual depth to the strategic layer but keeps the design motto of "the aliens are supposed to be unbeatably superior to you, any sense of overpowering them is an illusion born from alien complacency". The concept of growing havens and liberating regions is new and smells of the traditional "fun from growing things" vector. But the design intent goes against you simply growing forever: the story is supposed to be "when the aliens get serious, the only way to defeat them is by hitting their Achilles heel: the Avatar project".

What this means is that there's thirst for a different mod to take Long War 2 in a different narrative direction. A true, "power fantasy" direction where the risks of haven shrinkage is mitigable just like the risks of soldiers dying. As in, keeping a haven active and constantly growing as opposed to "if everyone is hiding, there will be no risk of retals".

The dev cost of making such a "re-makeover" mod would be very high, considering the game would revolve around "liberate all the regions" instead of "stop the Avatar project". Because the 'lategame' of such a narrative direction would require switching from "we are ragtag rebels striking from stealth" to "we are a conspicuous liberation army waging large-scale war".

[DonCrabio]

I'm changed my strategy about Intel retaliations. If region have 4+ Advent strength I remove adviser, put 4 rebels on intel job and hide everybody else. This is good enough to get decent timers on Troop Columns, Supply Raids and Dark Events and I don't care about other mission types here.

If Intel raid occurs I try my best to prevent rebels casualties, but priorities is like "avoid deaths and wounds" > "save rebels" > "save datatap". So far I was able to successfully defend 3 datataps without soldiers and rebels deaths.

I had one Supply retaliation, it was just shooting range with nice moving targets. Too easy.

Still don't get any Recruitment retaliations, maybe because I do not do any recruiting in regions with 3+ Advent strength.

P.S. I'm playing on Veteran, can't remember exact game date, but there is Archon's and Chryssalid's in my missions already.

[Rikokrates]

I just had my start region attacked, it was advent strength 10, needless to say I didn't even bother defending. All my rebels 16 or so were killed. My advisor however.....was still in his advisor slot right as rain! I guess he found a good rock to hide under.

[Saph7]

It is okay for things to be challenging. But we need to be awarded for defeating a challenge. And the way that retaliations work is that we are never awarded for success, we are punished for it. Personally, and I assume most people, would want to build up a haven. Keep on making it stronger. Keeping on having it destroyed, without anything we can do about it just isn't fun.

I have to ask . . . are you guys actually keeping track of how many rebels you're losing in these retaliations? Because in my current 1.4 campaign I've been keeping records, and I've had an average of about 1 retaliation per three-week period. I've done pretty well in them and haven't lost too many rebels, but even if I hadn't been, it wouldn't be hard to absorb the losses. Given that I'm up to 9 havens by now, I could be losing half a haven every retaliation and on a strategic scale I'd barely notice. So I suspect that over time players will notice that 1.4 retals aren't actually hurting them very much.

Invasion missions, on the other hand, are hard. But then they're supposed to be, given that you're effectively fighting Advent in a full-scale battle. Even then, though, they're pretty rare. I've yet to play more than one Invasion per campaign – in every campaign I've played I've done more HQ Assaults than Invasions, meaning that I'm liberating regions faster than Advent can invade them. So, again, I could lose every single invasion mission and still come out ahead. It's also worth noting that Advent generally won't invade a region until quite some time has passed, meaning that by the time they get around to assaulting you, you'll already have farmed a ton of supplies from the place. If it's already late game, them invading you is kind of a case of locking the stable door after the horse is gone.

It's worth bearing in mind that LW2 is very different from 4X games like Civilisation – you aren't tied to fixed bases. In Civilisation, losing your capital city generally means you've lost the game. In LW2, losing your best haven just means a slight drop in income. And it's pretty rare to lose a haven entirely – about the only way you can do it is to get every single rebel in a region killed in an invasion or retal, and even then, you can build it back up with a soldier advisor if you're patient enough. A lost haven is not the end of the world – in fact, if you've in late game (which you probably are if you're facing Invasions) then a lost haven is almost irrelevant, because it doesn't meaningfully impact your ability to win the game. What matters by lategame is research, accumulated resources, and most of all, Golden Path progression.

[ClodRaker]

LW2 has the potential to be the most enjoyable and thorough XCOM experience in the franchise, but I have to agree that the current implementation of Retaliation missions is extremely lacking and unbalanced. I can either expect a walk in the park (e.g. Rendezvous, "Haven Defense" style evac), or heavy personnel/soldier casualties. I'm not entirely certain what needs to be done, but I would argue one starting point would be to give the "leveled up" personnel autonomy in the rougher missions. It's a bit odd that the guy/gal who helped a soldier hunt down and butcher several advent soldiers and faceless on two prior missions with an assault rifle and grenades is suddenly so helpless in the face of an attack that he/she doesn't even have the presence of mind to take cover in the face of an enemy attack. Alternatively, the "hiding" option could be changed to something along the lines of vigilance/guard duty, so that the personnel in question would be prepared with equipment in hand for an attack.

^I also have to respectfully disagree with the above post regarding the risk of personnel loss. Even if I rush at break-neck speed to engage the enemy on the pre-deployed advent (i.e. vanilla "Terror" style) missions, I can expect to lose anywhere from 3-5 personnel. If I'm lucky I MIGHT get a jailbreak mission to replace three of them -- but one of those three has good odds to be faceless, and as often as not that mission may not come up for a month or more for that region. Assuming a decent number of personnel remain in the region, recruitment is a very reasonable way to recoup the lost numbers, but if the remaining numbers are small it becomes a VERY painful process, even with a highly trained officer assisting the task.

(For reference, I'm play LW2 on C/I with no other mods.)

[Saph7]

^I also have to respectfully disagree with the above post regarding the risk of personnel loss. Even if I rush at break-neck speed to engage the enemy on the pre-deployed advent (i.e. vanilla "Terror" style) missions, I can expect to lose anywhere from 3-5 personnel.

Not all the retals you'll have to deal with are terror missions. My current campaign's in July and I think I've fought one terror retal, one Haven Defence, and a bunch of intel raids. In the one terror retal, I think I lost around 3-5 rebels. That's really not a very big deal in the larger scheme of things.

[Frei_Ninjesus]

It's a bit odd that the guy/gal who helped a soldier hunt down and butcher several advent soldiers and faceless on two prior missions with an assault rifle and grenades is suddenly so helpless in the face of an attack that he/she doesn't even have the presence of mind to take cover in the face of an enemy attack.

The thought occurred to me as well. It'd be awesome both from a tactical perspective (can always use another guy with a flashbang) as well as an immersive one. It feels nice to see the guys you've been babysitting in rendesvs levelling up and fending for themselves (i.e. datataps)

[DerAva]

Just to add some datapoints from my ongoing L/I campaign:

April 26th: Datatap, 2 Rebels lost, 1 Soldier lightly injured
May 20th: Haven Defense, 4 Rebels lost, no injuries
June 7th: Datatap, 0 Rebels lost, 2 Soldiers gravely injured
June 20th: Haven Retaliation, 3 Rebels lost, 2 Soldiers wounded

Spoiler: show

July 7th: Recruitment Raid: 1 Rebel lost, 1 Soldier gravely wounded, 1 Soldier lightly wounded

So, in retrospect and on paper that doesn't look too bad, during the mission itself it just feels super risky and you start to question whether or not it's worth to risk your best squad to save 4 rebels. As others have mentioned: the risk<->reward relation seems off for these. How about a boost to the job you just defended?

And while we're talking about the reward: does "unhindered operations" just mean that you will not get another raid in this region for a while, or does it actually mean that this activity in this specific region can not be discovered for [time] and won't fill the mini-retal bucket?

[Psieye]

In the one terror retal, I think I lost around 3-5 rebels. That's really not a very big deal in the larger scheme of things.

It's a paradigm shift a lot of players haven't made yet: "losing some guys isn't the end of the game". RPGs and such have trained players to treat every loss as personal failure because many games are balanced around taking no losses. New XCOM players need to adapt to "it's ok to have soldier deaths, if a single death is the end of your campaign then you'd lost long ago". New LW2 players need to further adapt to "if taking losses in a haven kills your campaign, you'd lost long before the retaliation even spawned".

[Sir_Dr_D]

I wish retaliations had more of the feel of longwar1 base attacks. There you had blue shirt security guards, who were level 1 rookies essentially, who help defend against the attack. They are outmatched. Likely you will lose them. But it is fun to try to keep them alive. And any that you did manage to keep alive, you get the fun reward of getting them added to the XCOM roster.

With retaliations
- if in the mission you can save all the rebels, it means the mission is too easy, and they become tedious.
- if you lose rebels, it means you need to replace them in the haven, and that is tedious to. You never get to actually level up any of the rebels as they keep getting killed.

That's why I want to see most of the resistance fighters you are rescuing to be just be random people (henchmen to one of the haven leaders) Then you can have intense missions where it is just meant to be hard to save most of them. But you would feel great satisfaction for any that you do save. Then we can have the feeling of the longwar1 blueshirts. Actually haven leaders though in the combat should be better equipped, and have the same survival chance as any of your soldiers.

[stefan3iii]

I've done several retals now, in mid august, L/I. I haven't found the difficulty too bad, the worst was a Moderate-Heavy intel retal on an oddly small map, where the entire map activated (22 enemies) on turn 2, and took like 5 yellow alert shots against my squad, surrounded on a rooftop.

I've done 1 full retal with prespawned pods, lost 5 out of 13.
2 mini haven defense, all 9 evacced in each case.
3 supply retals, these were a cake walk.
2 intel retals, 1 rebel lost.
2 recruit retals, 0 rebels lost.

So I've lost 6 total haven members to retals. The retals aren't bad as long as you kill fast, you have 8 soldiers so you're much stronger than you would be on most missions.

[vicguru]

In the new haven defense with the increasing levels of rnf pods, I found a decent way to handle them. Select 2 shinobis or your fastest guys to tag the rebels. deploy your 6 other soldiers within one full run to the LZ in kinda of a circle around the LZ. With the new mechanic, the rnfs will spawn around the midpoint of your 6 soldiers, making it relatively easy to dispatch the early mobs without having to use crowd control. You do have to tag as many rebels about 2 turns before the dropship comes so that your soldiers can evac at most 2 turns after LZ activation.

[stefan3iii]

In the new haven defense with the increasing levels of rnf pods, I found a decent way to handle them. Select 2 shinobis or your fastest guys to tag the rebels. deploy your 6 other soldiers within one full run to the LZ in kinda of a circle around the LZ. With the new mechanic, the rnfs will spawn around the midpoint of your 6 soldiers, making it relatively easy to dispatch the early mobs without having to use crowd control. You do have to tag as many rebels about 2 turns before the dropship comes so that your soldiers can evac at most 2 turns after LZ activation.

This is what I've been doing. Sparks work well as well, with overdrive. When chasing reinforcement spawns, Assaults/Shinobis/Sharpshooters are great, as they're most often able to get in range to do damage.