How do you get more recruits?

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WanWhiteWolf
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How do you get more recruits?

Post by WanWhiteWolf »

Since in 1.3 stealth is no longer a good strategy, you have to use a full squad (e.g. 5-6 soldiers) per mission. That's fine but there are not enough troops to fight the war.

I am in late June with 5 squads of 5-6 people and I cannot keep up. All my squads are deployed and I have 2 raids, 1 retalation, 1 jailbreak and 1 column that I have no people to send. And I pretty much skip intel missions.

I recruited everyone that I could find. What am I doing wrong?
fowlJ
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by fowlJ »

Do you have rebels in your havens working on the 'Recruit' job? At first, they will mostly find more rebels (2/3 Chance to recruit a new rebel, 1/3 chance to find an XCOM recruit), but once a haven is 'full' (13+ Rebels) that changes to roughly 80:20 in favour of XCOM recruits. Stationing a soldier in a haven as an liaison also increases the rate at which they recruit, higher ranking soldiers having a more profound effect.
Last edited by fowlJ on Sat May 27, 2017 8:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
Saph7
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by Saph7 »

Troop shortages are a much greater pressure in 1.3/1.4 than they were in 1.2. One thing that helps is using squads of 4-5 instead of 5-6 where possible. Having one less soldier makes the mission a bit harder but both cuts the infil time by 20% or so and gives you an extra soldier for the duration. Having one haven dedicated to recruiting also isn't a bad idea - it means you miss out on the intel, but if you don't have enough soldiers to do all your missions anyway . . .
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WanWhiteWolf
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by WanWhiteWolf »

fowlJ wrote:Do you have rebels in your havens working on the 'Recruit' job? At first, they will mostly find more rebels (2/3 Chance to recruit a new rebel, 1/3 chance to find an XCOM recruit), but once a haven is 'full' (13+ Rebels) that changes to roughly 80:20 in favour of XCOM recruits. Stationing a soldier in a haven as an liaison also increases the rate at which they recruit, higher ranking soldiers having a more profound effect.
I have 3 out of 5 stationed. 2 of them are in hiding since they have high STR. But hiding doesn't seem to be overall the best choice. I think it's better to simply let to on supply / recruit and cut the loses on retaliation.

I can't even afford to do AWG, let alone leader upgrades.

I lost 1 soldier and 1 mission so far. Even if I restart the campaign, I don't know what I can do differently. Probably I can rush SPARKS since you don't really have a limit on those. No idea ....
Saph7 wrote:Troop shortages are a much greater pressure in 1.3/1.4 than they were in 1.2. One thing that helps is using squads of 4-5 instead of 5-6 where possible. Having one less soldier makes the mission a bit harder but both cuts the infil time by 20% or so and gives you an extra soldier for the duration. Having one haven dedicated to recruiting also isn't a bad idea - it means you miss out on the intel, but if you don't have enough soldiers to do all your missions anyway . . .
Yes, hence the title ...

You can't really go 4 man squad. That is the stealth setup. A 4 man squad won't deal with many of the 3-pod types (e.g. 1 muton 2 sectoids). You need on average 2 solders / higher than 7 hp mob. Most of the time you kill 2 and lockdown the last. In 4 man you trade shots quite a lot => soldiers in hospital. So you don't really end up running more missions if you go 4 people.

This wasn't an issue in 1.2 since you were going in 2-3 man squads on half of the missions. Now that this have been "fixed", there is no alternative ...

Don't get me wrong, I like the changes but there needs to be a bigger influx of soldiers if you are not going stealth.

At the moment I am boosting all missions so I can get the squad early to do the next mission. And just going datapads research to keep the intel flow. Seems a bit off ....
Saph7
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by Saph7 »

WanWhiteWolf wrote:You can't really go 4 man squad. That is the stealth setup. A 4 man squad won't deal with many of the 3-pod types (e.g. 1 muton 2 sectoids). You need on average 2 solders / higher than 7 hp mob. Most of the time you kill 2 and lockdown the last. In 4 man you trade shots quite a lot => soldiers in hospital. So you don't really end up running more missions if you go 4 people.
I just finished running a 4-man Extremely Light van hack mission in July. Due to some bad luck, all nine enemies activated at once, and my overwatch shots only wounded an advanced officer and a sentry. My team was:

• Officer grenadier (left side build)
• Assault (right side build with some stun perks)
• Specialist (overwatch build)
• Technical (flamer build)

Enemy pods were:

• 1 Muton, 2 Sidewinders
• Advanced Officer, Gunner, Sentry
• Officer, Advanced Gunner, Advanced Trooper

Battle starts with my 4 guys facing their 9.

Turn 1: Technical gets up close and flames the gunner and sentry, eliminating both. Assault runs and guns to the flank and kills a Sidewinder with Close & Personal. Grenadier moves to hard cover and nukes the other Sidewinder with an Incendiary. Specialist moves to hard cover and overwatches. 5 enemies left.

Enemy turn 1: Muton shoots, Covering Fire from the Specialist goes off and makes the shot miss. One gunner moves up and overwatches. The wounded officer (flanked by the Assault) runs and gets gunned down by the Specialist's second shot. Other officer flanks my Assault and hits him, but since the Assault has Resilience & Formidable he just loses his ablative without any wounds. Last M2 is too far out of range and has to double move closer. 4 enemies left.

Turn 2: Grenadier nukes the overwatching gunner with a second incendiary. Technical moves up and flames the Muton, setting him on fire. Assault gets in the face of the officer that shot him and introduces him to his shotgun. Specialist reloads and overwatches again. 2 enemies left.

Enemy turn 2: Muton burns. Last M2 moves up but has no good shots and is covered by the Specialist. He overwatches.

Turn 3: Technical shoots the Muton to death. Grenadier shoots a grenade that removes the M2's overwatch, his cover, and half of his health, and it's all over except for cleanup.

The specialist was able to hack the crate in the van on the very last turn due to a Command from the officer, but I had Intervention available in case I'd needed more time. Final count was 9 dead enemies for no wounds on my soldiers. You could say I got lucky in the battle, but you could also say I got very unlucky with the pod layout and composition. Point is, 4 soldiers can absolutely beat even a tough Extremely Light mission. You just have to make sure that everyone is pulling their weight.
Tuhalu
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by Tuhalu »

In 1.3, you can't just do Intel all the time in every non-liberated region and expect to do well.

The number of missions that can appear at once in a single region has increased significantly in 1.3, so you don't have to be searching for missions in every region.

In 1.3, a region is safe from retaliations if no more than 2 rebels are working at a time. So even in super high strength and vigilance regions (7+ advent strength qualifies), you can put 2 rebels to Recruit or Supply safely. A region crushed down to 0 rebels is a useless region.

In moderate strength regions, you can probably afford to do some recruiting or supply gathering while waiting for vigilance and strength to go down. Retaliations in those regions should be survivable, especially if you've gone well above 13 rebels due to recruiting! To me "moderate strength" means 4-6 advent strength, but your definition may vary.

Low strength regions (1-3) are the best place to put everyone on Intel and grow through Jailbreak, Rescue and Escort missions. If you've expanded enough so that it's hard to do every mission in every region, then you might get some value from Recruit and Supply jobs.

Later in the game, when you start getting into quite good gear and soldier levels, you can probably work around these guidelines.

Note: I mention supply jobs because new rookies from the Recruit job cost supplies to put to work and supplies to equip with gear.
trihero
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by trihero »

Nice story, saph.

This talk about using less troops for more efficiency reminds of something I've been ruminating about, in a parallel way:

Is it worth the experience points to try to run very lights instead of extremely lights with 5-6 men? +3 enemies on average is quite a significant increase over extremely light, roughly 1/3rd boost in your experience gain. It also saves on infiltration time if you don't insist on hitting the floor of extremely light all the time. I'm guessing it would be hard to evaluate due to the increased risk of wounds/deaths, but I feel like a skilled commander with a decent team would benefit a lot from a 1/3rd boost in experience gain.
In 1.3, a region is safe from retaliations if no more than 2 rebels are working at a time. So even in super high strength and vigilance regions (7+ advent strength qualifies), you can put 2 rebels to Recruit or Supply safely. A region crushed down to 0 rebels is a useless region.
What do faceless do in terms of retals? Do they lower that threshold 2 even further? Or just increase the rate at which the retal buckets fill?
Tuhalu
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by Tuhalu »

trihero wrote:
In 1.3, a region is safe from retaliations if no more than 2 rebels are working at a time. So even in super high strength and vigilance regions (7+ advent strength qualifies), you can put 2 rebels to Recruit or Supply safely. A region crushed down to 0 rebels is a useless region.
What do faceless do in terms of retals? Do they lower that threshold 2 even further? Or just increase the rate at which the retal buckets fill?
As far as I can tell, 2 rebels working any job removes any chance of any retalation in that region with Faceless having no effect on that.

Each job needs 3 rebels working on it before that region is valid for the applicable miniretalation (this ensures you will get 3 rebels appearing in the miniretal!).

As far as retaliations go, Faceless just increase the chance of a rebel working a job being detected in that haven. Each rebel detected adds 1 to the retaliation bucket. Note: Liberated regions do not contribute to the retaliation buckets, so Faceless in liberated regions cannot increase the rate of retaliations.

There are some details I'm missing. There's a lot of bits of code and configs interacting.
gimrah
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by gimrah »

4 man is feasible for basic hack missions. Otherwise I go 5 good soldiers or 6 if low level or it's more than extremely light.

Hopefully you get rookies from jailbreaks. You'll get soldiers from rescues. Occasionally rookies or soldiers come from PoIs.

I don't have maby rebels in recruit because the miniretals are hellish.
trihero
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by trihero »

Tuhalu wrote:
trihero wrote:
In 1.3, a region is safe from retaliations if no more than 2 rebels are working at a time. So even in super high strength and vigilance regions (7+ advent strength qualifies), you can put 2 rebels to Recruit or Supply safely. A region crushed down to 0 rebels is a useless region.
What do faceless do in terms of retals? Do they lower that threshold 2 even further? Or just increase the rate at which the retal buckets fill?
As far as I can tell, 2 rebels working any job removes any chance of any retalation in that region with Faceless having no effect on that.

Each job needs 3 rebels working on it before that region is valid for the applicable miniretalation (this ensures you will get 3 rebels appearing in the miniretal!).

As far as retaliations go, Faceless just increase the chance of a rebel working a job being detected in that haven. Each rebel detected adds 1 to the retaliation bucket. Note: Liberated regions do not contribute to the retaliation buckets, so Faceless in liberated regions cannot increase the rate of retaliations.

There are some details I'm missing. There's a lot of bits of code and configs interacting.
My understanding of your post is that 2 rebels working on one job will avoid mini-retals, but how about full retals? Is there always a chance to get a full retal if you have 2 total rebels working? Is the threshold different for full retals?
Tuhalu
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by Tuhalu »

trihero wrote:My understanding of your post is that 2 rebels working on one job will avoid mini-retals, but how about full retals? Is there always a chance to get a full retal if you have 2 total rebels working? Is the threshold different for full retals?
If there are at least 3 guys working in a haven (any combination of jobs), you can get a full retaliation. If there are at least 3 guys working on any given job, you can get that retalation. It's a hard limit to ensure you will always have the minimum 3 rebels on the retaliation.
trihero
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by trihero »

Thanks. What is the minimum alert (adv strength) required for miniretals/retals? 4 or 5? I thought I saw both numbers running around here but I haven't been keeping track.
Tuhalu
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by Tuhalu »

To start the activity that leads to a retaliation you need:

Intel: 3 alert, 2 vigilance
Supply: 4 alert, 1 vigilance
Recruit: 4 alert, 2 vigilance
Major: 4 alert, 4 vigilance

As a side note, I notice that a Snare mission now requires 8 alert and 6 vigilance. It used to be 7 and 7.
Manifest
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by Manifest »

Tuhalu wrote:To start the activity that leads to a retaliation you need:

Intel: 3 alert, 2 vigilance
Supply: 4 alert, 1 vigilance
Recruit: 4 alert, 2 vigilance
Major: 4 alert, 4 vigilance

As a side note, I notice that a Snare mission now requires 8 alert and 6 vigilance. It used to be 7 and 7.
Alert/Strength is quantity, and Force Level is enemy tech, so what is vigilance again and how is it observed, accumulated or avoided?
trihero
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by trihero »

Tuhalu wrote:To start the activity that leads to a retaliation you need:

Intel: 3 alert, 2 vigilance
Supply: 4 alert, 1 vigilance
Recruit: 4 alert, 2 vigilance
Major: 4 alert, 4 vigilance

As a side note, I notice that a Snare mission now requires 8 alert and 6 vigilance. It used to be 7 and 7.
Thanks very helpful. Disappointingly it's very gamey as before having to know the exact cutoffs to maximize your operations.
Zarnak
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by Zarnak »

The Black Market usually offers a trickle of new soldiers for a price...
Psieye
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by Psieye »

Tuhalu wrote: If there are at least 3 guys working in a haven (any combination of jobs), you can get a full retaliation. If there are at least 3 guys working on any given job, you can get that retalation. It's a hard limit to ensure you will always have the minimum 3 rebels on the retaliation.
Wait, does that mean rebels in hiding won't appear in a retaliation? As in, if I have 10 rebels in a region but 6 are in hiding when a retaliation triggers, only 4 rebels will be on the map?
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
hewhoispale
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by hewhoispale »

Manifest wrote:
Tuhalu wrote:To start the activity that leads to a retaliation you need:

Intel: 3 alert, 2 vigilance
Supply: 4 alert, 1 vigilance
Recruit: 4 alert, 2 vigilance
Major: 4 alert, 4 vigilance

As a side note, I notice that a Snare mission now requires 8 alert and 6 vigilance. It used to be 7 and 7.
Alert/Strength is quantity, and Force Level is enemy tech, so what is vigilance again and how is it observed, accumulated or avoided?
Vigilance is meant to be an "invisible" metric to help the game simulate ADVENT's priorities. It roughly represents how threatening XCOM is in the region. There's a mod that shows it if you feel it necessary.
It increases by successfully completing operations, each mission increases it by 1 point in the region. The "Get ADVENT attention" missions generate an additional 3 vigilance. If a region's vigilance is higher than the alert/strength, ADVENT will attempt to move strength to that region until they are equal.
It will slowly decay over time, roughly 1 point per week. It will decay faster if most of the rebels in the region's haven are hiding and slower if it is full of working rebels.
trihero
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by trihero »

Psieye wrote:
Tuhalu wrote: If there are at least 3 guys working in a haven (any combination of jobs), you can get a full retaliation. If there are at least 3 guys working on any given job, you can get that retalation. It's a hard limit to ensure you will always have the minimum 3 rebels on the retaliation.
Wait, does that mean rebels in hiding won't appear in a retaliation? As in, if I have 10 rebels in a region but 6 are in hiding when a retaliation triggers, only 4 rebels will be on the map?
I can only answer part of your question; if you know a retaliation is coming ahead of time (i.e. you see "Protect the datatap" mission), it is actually too late to hide since the retal is considered to be launched. Even if you switch everyone to hiding, you will see all your rebels on the retal mission.
MacroNova
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by MacroNova »

Zarnak wrote:The Black Market usually offers a trickle of new soldiers for a price...
THIS! lol how has no one mentioned this before now as an answer to a troop shortage post? Is it almost certainly worth the supplies to grab the one or two guys from the black market each month. The price rises over time but so do their ranks.

And then, yeah, you can definitely run 4-man missions with the new pod sizes. This will do double duty in assisting with troop shortages. Think about one 6 man squad that takes 6 days to infiltrate a mission. That's 36 soldier days. Now think about a 4 man squad that takes 4 days to infiltrate. 16 soldier days, about half the time. You can run twice the missions if you are willing to infiltrate smaller squads for shorter periods of time.
Daergar
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Re: How do you get more recruits?

Post by Daergar »

Just a random tip; don't forget to boost infiltration. I tend to do this very often, easily done when you're shown the percentages after boosting while equipping the squad (forget if that's from a mod or not, saves me from doing math).

This is great in two was, you can sometimes 3-man a mission detected just two days before it expires (suppressors, chameleon vest) or truly micro-manage 4/5 guys' equipment to let a 5/6th join them on the mission without going below 100%.

tl;dr Boost and micro squads; more missions easier.
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