Where am I going off-track?

sadh
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Where am I going off-track?

Post by sadh »

It's August 1, and another LW2 Veteran campaign is about to come to an unceremonious end. I was sailing along until July, feeling pretty good about things, and then hit a wall. Two squad-wipes in the past 5 missions (and a few soldier losses on the 3 successful ones) have left me with a team of inexperienced, under-geared soldiers with little chance to turn the tide.

I don't understand how people are winning on Legend. I feel like I'm a pretty good player, not great, but not an idiot. I was able to easily beat Classic/Ironman regularly in X:EU/EW (but never Impossible). I've beaten X2 vanilla on Veteran a couple times and was on my way to a victory on Commander before abandoning to play LW2. I usually go out of my way to avoid reading/using other people's strategies, because it lessens the sense of accomplishment for winning. Anyone can follow instructions, the joy in winning comes from beating it on your own.

Unfortunately, I'm at a point now where I don't think I can. So I was hoping if I shared the state of my current campaign and general strategy, perhaps someone could point out something I'm doing wrong.

As of August 1 ...

I control 4 territories (I haven't built Resistance Comms yet, but got the 4th territory as a mission reward). I focus on a single territory at a time, with most/all resistance personnel on Intel. Other regions focus on Supply w/Engineer adviser or Recruiting w/ Soldier adviser, with a max of 6 personnel working in a region at any time (rest in Hiding). I worked my home territory up to Advent Strength 4 and then lost an Intel Retal mission, so I switched to an adjacent territory as my primary. I have now raised it it to Advent Strength 3.

Despite numerous mission victories with the "Find A Lead" reward, I still have not completed the task. I'm unable to see the Avatar project. Global Advent Strength is 46 and Global Resistance Threat is Low.

I have 4 Scientists . I have researched all main story techs up to and including the Advent Officer Autopsy. I have researched Lasers and Combat Armor, but elected to forego Magnetic Weapons and Mobile Armor for the time being.

I have 4 Engineers. At peak before recent losses, I had build 2 or 3 each of laser rifle/sniper/cannon/smg/shotgun/pistol and 3 or 4 suits of Predator Armor. I've built a small number of items in the Proving Ground. I have cleared 7 rooms in the Avenger and built (in this order): GTS, Proving Ground, Power Relay and just recently, the AWC. I'm eligible to build the Shadow Chamber, but can't afford it. I have 66 Alloys, 45 Elerium, 49 Intel and 70 Supplies. Have I, perhaps, built out the Avenger too rapidly and should have instead invested in better gear to fully equip my team?

At peak, I had about 25 soldiers equally distributed between the 8 classes. I played and won the Shen's Last Gift mission, and have 1 SPARK. I have 2 main squads of and a team of reserves/haven advisers. I only take missions with infiltration times of 7.5 days or longer, and usually bring as many soldiers as I can while still being able to infiltrate at least 100%. I have never entered a mission with than 100% infiltration. I have been striving to have my 2 squads at equal strength rather than an A-Team and B-Team. I have trained 5 or 6 Officers and begun to train soldiers in the AWC. Is it a mistake to have 2 "good" squads instead of 1 "great" and 1 "ok"?

On the tactical layer, I try to use a Shinobi to scout ahead on every mission, and prefer to keep him/her concealed until near the end. I always have a DFA Sniper with a scope on a roof in the back. I almost always take a high-mobility EXO-suit equipped Assault with a laser sight, and try to bring at least two among these three: Gunner w/ expanded mag & auto-loader, high-aim Tech and damage-spec Grenadier. I'll take hack-spec Specialist if I think I'll need to hack from range. The rest are generally whoever's available.

I try to play smart. I always stay in cover, take the high ground when I can find it, stay close enough together to be of assistance to one another in emergencies but spread out enough to get into flanking position whenever possible. I use my soldier's abilities to their advantage and very rarely take low-percentage shots. I flashbang and suppress like mad, destroy enemy cover and try to bait pods into my overwatch trap.

Despite all this, I just can't seem to handle it when Berserkers and Archer Mecs show up, retals start to occur and enemy pods get larger. I love this game and mod so much (obviously -- since I keep playing despise *losing* most campaigns!), it would just be great to be able to win. Would appreciate any advice or recommendations.
stefan3iii
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by stefan3iii »

Don't see anything obviously wrong with your strategic play, except maybe I would suggest using Mag Weapons by now. Did you research stiletto rounds? Those are also really strong, and available early.

There is a difficulty spike around mid August, where suddenly you're fighting a lot of m3 advent and centurions. May have to cool it a bit and take easier missions than normal until you have coil guns.
DerAva
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by DerAva »

sadh wrote: I only take missions with infiltration times of 7.5 days or longer, and usually bring as many soldiers as I can while still being able to infiltrate at least 100%.
This one seems weird to me. 7.5 days as the threshold probably means you are skipping a lot of missions, which in turn means that your soldiers are not seeing as much action as they should and you are not getting all the levelups On top of that you might be missing out on some rewards and it's probably also the reason you haven't liberated a region yet.
Halafu
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by Halafu »

How is the crowd control with your set up? Might want to replace the damage grenadiers with support ones. I find them to be a must.
gimrah
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by gimrah »

Guessing somewhat but it sounds like you're not doing enough missions.

You should be doing every mission you reasonably can. Pretty much every soldier should be out on missions most of the time. When you get a retal and you have to go pull people out of a GOp, you're doing it right.

Without that you don't get the resources, you don't get the xp, and you just fall behind.

In my current Commander campaign in August I have about 50 soldiers, most between SGT and GSGT, with a just a couple lower. I have a mix of mag and laser, predator for most soldiers (bearing mind around 6 are in some kind of training at any one time), 4 exo suits, psi has been up for a while. In early GOps I would send 5 good soldiers or 6 less good soldiers. I go 4 on a hack if it's important. (I've only done one full stealth and was very lucky not to lose both soldiers.)

In my last campaign however, I was much more picky about missions. I tried to send 6 or 7. I thought I was doing ok. My first HQ late August was rough but then I didn't play it optimally. And then I found myself in September regularly encountering M3s still on lasers, not enough predator and soldiers who were SSGTs and below. I started getting attrition in ex light GOps with 6 soldiers and called time on it soon after.

As well as xp and spending resources, all those soldier rewards and valuable intel package rewards really add up.

I recommend researching comms early and expanding aggressively. By May/June you want to be active in 3 or 4 regions. Liberating your first region in July feels about right. Regions will eventually get too hot for GOps (strength >4 say) and you need to be able to move on.
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8wayz
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by 8wayz »

It seems there are a few points where you can improve considerably :

- Taking missions with less than 7,5 days infiltration time. Be aware that the first liberation mission is almost always Free VIP and has a fairly low infiltration time (around 4-5 days). So it is possible that you have been consciously avoiding any liberation mission because you are too cautious.

You can use Intel to boost your infiltration, as well as do some missions with just a squad of 4-5 soldiers. There is really no need to bring full squads on every mission - less soldiers will allow you to take more missions as well.

- Your staff. At the start of April on Commander I had 28-30 soldiers. I was recruiting like there will be no tomorrow, even buying soldiers from the Black Market. Having 25 soldiers at max is just inviting disaster to strike - once you have a bad mission and take some causalities (either dead or injured for a month +), you will struggle.

You need to up you recruiting and have at least 1 agent per region devoted just to that. Since I tend to almost always assign soldiers as Haven advisors, having more soldiers is of tantamount importance.

Same goes for Engineers and Scientists - use the Black Market to make up for any bad RNG and take on any mission that gives you new recruits, no matter the Infiltration time. Once I took an Extract VIP mission with a single rookie armed with a SMG. Was extremely lucky and managed to sneak past the pods and rescue an engineer. To give you a point of reference, at the beginning of April I had 3 engineers and 2 scientists (both recruited from the Black Market).

- Squad management. You need a lot more than 2 squads, I currently use 4 and am training soldiers for 2 more. A standard squad in my opinion should consist of 5 soldiers, on dangerous missions you can simply combine two squads.

I would like to stress one more time that smaller squads should allow you to take on more missions - both because you will need less time to infiltrate them and also because you will have more squads to send on missions. Ideally at the start of May you should have at least 30 operational soldiers.

Also, you should enter missions with less than 100% after careful consideration if the squad can handle it. More missions mean more experience, as well as rewards.

And last but not least, I have noticed that often times when one claims that they consider themselves a good or very good player, it is often a case of too much self-esteem. I have yet to see a Legendary player (even ones playing on Ironman) consider themselves good.

Do not let your opinion of yourself keep you from improving.
sadh
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by sadh »

stefan3iii wrote:Don't see anything obviously wrong with your strategic play, except maybe I would suggest using Mag Weapons by now. Did you research stiletto rounds? Those are also really strong, and available early.

There is a difficulty spike around mid August, where suddenly you're fighting a lot of m3 advent and centurions. May have to cool it a bit and take easier missions than normal until you have coil guns.
I became eligible to research Laser and Magnetic weapons at nearly the same time. I settled on laser first and was going to try to skip Mag weapons, if possible. Maybe a bad idea.

No stiletto rounds either. Armor-piercing only, which I usually give to the Sniper. I'll give a look next campaign.
sadh
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by sadh »

gimrah wrote:Guessing somewhat but it sounds like you're not doing enough missions.

...

In my last campaign however, I was much more picky about missions. I tried to send 6 or 7. I thought I was doing ok. My first HQ late August was rough but then I didn't play it optimally. And then I found myself in September regularly encountering M3s still on lasers, not enough predator and soldiers who were SSGTs and below. I started getting attrition in ex light GOps with 6 soldiers and called time on it soon after.

...
That's pretty much been my exact experience.

Seems clear from this thread that I'm being too selective and letting too many missions go by. As of August 1, I had only a half-dozen soldiers at Sergeant or beyond, most were still Lance Corporals. Smaller squads, more missions next time.
sadh
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by sadh »

8wayz wrote:
And last but not least, I have noticed that often times when one claims that they consider themselves a good or very good player, it is often a case of too much self-esteem. I have yet to see a Legendary player (even ones playing on Ironman) consider themselves good.

Do not let your opinion of yourself keep you from improving.
I hope my comments didn't come across as braggadocio, as that's the furthest thing from my intent! I just wanted to level-set so people knew I don't play like my 11-year old son does, dashing to low-cover in the FOW to reveal two pods, and then griping how "this game is too hard!" . And perhaps "good" was excessive. I think Classic/Commander Ironman victories is probably a at the far edge of what Joe Average player could do, so I'll back off to "average+".

Regarding you other comments, all are well-received and in line with what others on the thread are saying. I will take all of them to heart in my campaign, which begins in about 2 minutes ...

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, much appreciated.
Daergar
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by Daergar »

Just to chime in; doing as many missions as possible while expending Intel, using suppressors and chameleon suits in order to bring as many people as possible and still hit either 101% or a break-point for fewer aliens is the key in my book.

More missions means more experience, more loot, more progress, riling up advent and liberating regions and so on and so forth.

To me, nothing is as important as being able to field as many msgts as possible. Even under-geared, not much can cope with a 4-5 man squad that can obliterate dozens of aliens with their bare hands and a steely gaze.

What I'd recommend as well are a lot of quality of life mods, in case you are not using them. Literally all of the ones that let you see advent strength on the global map, infiltration percentages in the squad deployment screen, alerts on the tactical map for when aliens spot you and or break concealment.

As far as I know, very few of these "reduce difficulty", they simply save you the headache of camera panning to view alien markers and doing a lot of 75% boosting math in your head.
Tuhalu
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by Tuhalu »

sadh wrote:I hope my comments didn't come across as braggadocio, as that's the furthest thing from my intent! I just wanted to level-set so people knew I don't play like my 11-year old son does, dashing to low-cover in the FOW to reveal two pods, and then griping how "this game is too hard!" . And perhaps "good" was excessive. I think Classic/Commander Ironman victories is probably a at the far edge of what Joe Average player could do, so I'll back off to "average+".
To be clear, Long War 2 at Rookie difficulty is meant to be more difficult than XCOM2 vanilla at Impossible Difficulty. Part of that is due to the tactical game where enemies are smarter, tougher and more dangerous.

In the vanilla game, the strategy layer is difficult to lose. The Avatar Project can beat you if you lose enough critical missions, but that's mostly it. In LW2, you can make yourself lose the strategy layer in so many ways. Learning all those ways takes campaign experience. There may be one or two special snowflakes who have never lost a campaign in LW2, but those are few and far between. On Legend and Commander, I doubt there are any.

I won the vanilla game on Impossible without too much difficulty. Veteran LW2 made me restart 3 times before I figured out how to win. Moving up to Commander for v1.3, I've already restarted once. Partially due to the added difficulty, partially due to the many changes in 1.3 and partially due to making a misplay in tech research.

In short, losing the game a few times, especially when going into it blind, is an absolutely normal experience in LW2.
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8wayz
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by 8wayz »

Hey sadh, no worries! Your comment was fine, there was no misplaced bravado in it.

I just wanted to point out that you should not rest on your laurels and think you are doing fine. Long War 1 and 2 in general are fairly unforgiving, so you should aim to be at least a week in preparations ahead of the curve of your current game.

Also, I do not know if you have noticed the thread, but there are some players trying to expirement with Wet Work + ambushing reinforcements. The idea is to help you level up your soldiers a lot faster.

It is a simple one really - any alien or Advent unit gives you kill xp, including reinforcements. Wet Work doubles the kill xp you get. So if you stay at the end of a mission and eliminate a couple of waves of reinforcements, with some extra time devoted you might get a couple of promotions each mission.

It is a bit gamey but if you think you need more soldiers with at least sergeant rank, feel free to try it out.
chrisb
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by chrisb »

8wayz wrote:Hey sadh, no worries! Your comment was fine, there was no misplaced bravado in it.

I just wanted to point out that you should not rest on your laurels and think you are doing fine. Long War 1 and 2 in general are fairly unforgiving, so you should aim to be at least a week in preparations ahead of the curve of your current game.

Also, I do not know if you have noticed the thread, but there are some players trying to expirement with Wet Work + ambushing reinforcements. The idea is to help you level up your soldiers a lot faster.

It is a simple one really - any alien or Advent unit gives you kill xp, including reinforcements. Wet Work doubles the kill xp you get. So if you stay at the end of a mission and eliminate a couple of waves of reinforcements, with some extra time devoted you might get a couple of promotions each mission.

It is a bit gamey but if you think you need more soldiers with at least sergeant rank, feel free to try it out.
Don't get too used to this, in 1.5 kill xp will be capped to the same number used for mission xp. If you get a mission schedule with 10 enemies, kill xp will stop after the squad's 10th kill.
Franzy
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by Franzy »

chrisb wrote: Don't get too used to this, in 1.5 kill xp will be capped to the same number used for mission xp. If you get a mission schedule with 10 enemies, kill xp will stop after the squad's 10th kill.
What about missions where there are no aliens on the first turn? Supply convoy, Haven defense etc? 0 exp for everyone?
chrisb
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by chrisb »

Franzy wrote:
chrisb wrote: Don't get too used to this, in 1.5 kill xp will be capped to the same number used for mission xp. If you get a mission schedule with 10 enemies, kill xp will stop after the squad's 10th kill.
What about missions where there are no aliens on the first turn? Supply convoy, Haven defense etc? 0 exp for everyone?
Those already give 8 + Region Alert for mission xp, and kill xp will be capped the same.
Antifringe
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by Antifringe »

I play on Commander, so the experience is a bit different, but I feel I've got a good grasp of the strategic layer and I can see where you might be having some problems.

As others have said, you need to be doing more missions per month. 15-20 isn't completely out there. I like to run with 4 of each class (I take a fifth Shinobi and Specialist), so I have a +33% population advantage right there. I don't really do an A-Team, I try to keep everyone busy all the time, and as a result, everyone ends up at about the same xp level. I do distribute gear in a more lopsided fashion however (i.e. I don't try to buy stuff for everyone, and I don't bother with equipment juggling, which I just can't stand doing).

Definitely, definitely start taking missions with shorter timers, especially in regions where strength is 5 or less. I spend Intel on infiltration all the time, and eventually end up with more than I know what to do with. Most missions are okay with 4-5 days if you spend the Intel and you are okay with a 5 man team. Untimed missions, like supply convoys, will commonly get launched even at 3 days, and I just accept the underinfiltration (I still spend Intel, I just accept that I won't hit 100%).

Don't just spend Intel on missions that were found late, either. I also spend Intel to quickly finish a mission that is otherwise infiltrating just fine if I suddenly need those soldiers to exploit an opportunity. More missions = more intel and more chances at getting hack bonuses, so you rarely end up starving yourself out.

I only do the Supply job in special situations. The new Smash and Grab has really changed how I approach the economy. Most regions just run full Intel (with spurts of full Recruit mixed in at key moments). Things get kind of complex when determining when to run Intel and when to back off.

So, I play with the mod that lets you see Vigilance. This has a pretty big impact on my strategy, but you can follow my advice without using the mod, you'll just have less certainty about the current game state. There are several "categories" of regions that I use different strategies for:

Strength Under 4, Vigilance under 12 You get lots of these at the start, and many of your new regions will be like this. Missions are easy, and you get access to the high quality alien activities (ProtectData, HighValuePrisoner, Logistics, and Jailbreak). Always, always run full intel on these and scan with the Avenger when possible. These are your best regions.

Climb the liberation chain in these regions, even if you don't actually want to liberate. Lib1 is not great (a below average data raid with no POI and slightly elevated force), but it gives you access to Lib2, and clearing it also makes UFOs slightly easier to identify. Lib2 is a guaranteed VIP. Consider skipping it if you draw a soldier VIP. Lib chain missions always respawn and reroll if they expire, so you aren't missing anything. Lib3 is a 50/50 chance of getting the VIP mission with the +1 contact. I always skip the Relay version of Lib3 unless I'm in a hurry for liberation (which I never am), because the +1 contact is so good. Towers should be done if strength is still low because it now gives you a free tower building.

Don't do Propaganda missions. They add +4 to the local Vigilance and will quickly cut you off from the "plum" missions.

Do Recruit runs when the local mission pool is tapped out and you know it will take more than 2 days for you to complete the missions already queued. Try to keep soldier advisors posted so you can get the free recruit income, but never skip a mission if you could do it by pulling advisors.

Strength Under 4, Vigilance over 12 This happens more often than you might think. In fact, your starting regions will look like this after the second month, if you're doing things right. At 13+ Vigilance, most of the GOPs dry up. Logistics is the only one you can get anymore. Now, Smash and Grabs are good, especially in low strength regions, but it's only one mission. Like most GOPs, it has a 14-19 day cooldown, and there's now nothing else left in the GOP pool to pick up the slack. Since strength is low, you don't have access to Troop Columns either.

At this point, you want to focus more on Recruiting, but there's some nuance to it. I generally run full Intel if I know that there's a Smash and Grab still in the pool, or if there is a Liberation mission still out there. I switch to full recruit when neither of these are true anymore. If I have already done an S&G recently, and if the liberation mission is one I don't like (Lib2 Soldier VIP or Lib3 Relay) I will also switch to Recruit.

I recruit until I hit 15 rebels (the extra two are a hedge against the inevitable faceless spies), and then go back to full Intel. At this point, I'm not trying to catch GOPs anymore (Smash and Grab is the only one possible). Instead I am looking to catch the lucky supply convoy or UFO. You don't need to catch many at all in order to more than break even with running supply, and that's before taking into account the strategic benefits of destroying ADVENT strength. You will also be getting a Smash and Grab roughly once a month, and with a very high timer (Logistics has a 65% base detection rate and a threshold of 90 Intel. 13 rebels will hit that threshold in less than 2 days, and detection gets rerolled every 6 hours).

Catching even a few UFOs megabones ADVENT, and I commonly catch one every other month (globally, not per region). It's amazing.

The key to this strategy is that Vigilance is extremely high, but strength is still low, so ADVENT prioritizes sending supply convoys and reinforcement UFOs (Reinforcing UFOs are actually attracted to hot spots, it's the force UFOs that try to avoid danger).

Strength higher than 3, but not too high (subjective), Vigilance under 13

Another great configuration. Missions are harder, but the valuable Troop Column mission has been added to the pool. Consider managing your Vigilance in these regions. Troop Columns stop appearing when Vigilance hits 16, so if you pull a mission that isn't that great, consider skipping it, since it will end up displacing a Troop Column later on. Don't let your soldiers go idle, though.

Strength higher than 3, but not too high (subjective), Vigilance between 12 and 15

Yet another great configuration. Logistics and Troop Columns are now the only possible GOPs, and you will draw one of each every month until you either run Vigilance too high or Strength too low. It helps that those two mission types are easy to detect, too.

Strength very high (subjective), Vigilance 16 or higher. Time to pack it in and stop running Intel. You probably couldn't do any of the missions that you pulled, anyway. Switch to Supply. If you managed to spike Vigilance a lot, this region will still be quite valuable as a "storage unit" for ADVENT strength.

Strength very high (subjective), Vigilance 15 or lower. Split your rebels between Supply and Intel. You're hoping to snag the occasional Troop Column. You will also pull a few Smash and Grabs, but skip those, they will be too hard. Troop Columns are untimed, so they're always viable if you find them with enough time left.

BTW, this is all on the local scale. As you start to contact more and more regions, you have to start thinking globally. Running Intel is great until you saturate your barracks. I find that 3 low-Vigilance regions is usually enough. I still run full Intel on the low-strength high-vigilance regions no matter what, because UFOs and convoys are great, but if I have more than 3 low-vig areas, the rest usually get regulated to recruit or supply. This also lets you rotate regions to help manage vigilance burn-off and maintain regions in the sweet spot a little bit longer.
Last edited by Antifringe on Mon Jun 05, 2017 12:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
DerAva
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by DerAva »

chrisb wrote:
Don't get too used to this, in 1.5 kill xp will be capped to the same number used for mission xp. If you get a mission schedule with 10 enemies, kill xp will stop after the squad's 10th kill.
I understand that farming reinforcements shouldn't be encouraged, but at the same time this really punishes if a mission takes a turn for the worse. Due to bad luck you get delayed, maybe suffer some injuries and have to fight through reinforcements to get out, and then you don't even get a consolidation prize for hanging on.
This also makes an already extremely punishing dark event, Rapid Response, even worse. And I'm not sure how many of the reinforcements that you get on something like the Recruitment Raid will be intended RNFs that grant XP, and how many will just be additional work with no reward. And that mission was already extremely low on the risk<->reward payoff.
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8wayz
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by 8wayz »

While I do not resort to ambushing reinforcements, as I have plenty of missions as it is on my hands, removing kill XP altogether is kind of a double-edged blade.

A better alternative is to find a way to may the drop point different for each group, as that is the main issue - players can fairly easily set up an ambush and annihilate reinforcements pod after a pod.
Alketi
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by Alketi »

I have no problem with removing reinforcement XP, which I think is a good way to eliminate the farming problem. It'll mean there's an incentive to get out of a mission as quickly as possible and to not stand on the evac flare spamming overwatch for 5 - 10 turns, which felt completely broken.

The issue I'm having in 1.3 is the balance of finding troop columns vs the risk of incurring haven or intel retaliations. If a region gets too hot (AS > 4), I'll put 2 on Intel, 2 on recruit, and leave the rest hiding, and as a result i'm not finding any troop columns which means in August I still can't build upgraded swords as I've only gotten one Stun Lancer corpse. Is everyone else just eating these retaliations in the hope of finding a troop column with enough time left?
Franzy
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by Franzy »

If I understood correctly, they do not remove exp from RNFs, you just can't farm more xp than base xp from the mission.
Antifringe
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by Antifringe »

Alketi wrote:The issue I'm having in 1.3 is the balance of finding troop columns vs the risk of incurring haven or intel retaliations. If a region gets too hot (AS > 4), I'll put 2 on Intel, 2 on recruit, and leave the rest hiding, and as a result i'm not finding any troop columns which means in August I still can't build upgraded swords as I've only gotten one Stun Lancer corpse. Is everyone else just eating these retaliations in the hope of finding a troop column with enough time left?
Yes :p

Retals aren't even that bad. They take zero time in the strategic layer and still grant full experience, which is actually pretty good. Sometimes you lose rebels, but if you were just going to have those rebels hide, you may as well never have had them in the first place. And as you noted, playing cautiously and avoiding retals has left you in a weak position in the strategy layer.
Dwarfling
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by Dwarfling »

Alketi wrote:Is everyone else just eating these retaliations in the hope of finding a troop column with enough time left?
Pretty much. At Strenght 4 and perhaps 5, retaliations are still on the easy side. For your soldiers. Before October. Your rebels tho, well, they're pretty much expendable resources and should assume some (or most, if you get hit with Terror) won't make it. It's just the way it is on this patch if you want to get access to bodies other than the few from Rendezvous. It helps a lot to have a good composition for these missions: you need a team that can do a TON of damage in 4 or so turns, because you're looking at a ~5 turn mission. Think more about Grenadiers, Assaults, SPARKs and EXO suits and less about Rifle Rangers, DFA Sharpshooters, Suppression Gunners and overwatch shenanigans. If you can wipe the first pod as soon as you activate it (with tons of explosives, and of course, incendiaries), then engage the next pod on the following turn, you win.
sadh
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Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by sadh »

Excellent and informative posts, everyone. I appreciate all the feedback. Very excited to try these out in a new campaign.

I was unaware the LW2 was supposed to be more difficult than Vanilla Legend. I hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew playing on Veteran, but I'll give it a go.
stefan3iii
Posts: 319
Joined: Wed Feb 01, 2017 3:49 am

Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by stefan3iii »

chrisb wrote: Don't get too used to this, in 1.5 kill xp will be capped to the same number used for mission xp. If you get a mission schedule with 10 enemies, kill xp will stop after the squad's 10th kill.
This is an excellent change, thank you, getting tired of farming reinforcements.
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WanWhiteWolf
Posts: 138
Joined: Tue May 16, 2017 10:09 pm

Re: Where am I going off-track?

Post by WanWhiteWolf »

I think you need way more soldiers.

On end August I am on 7 squads of 5-6 people. All of them are busy; max 1 team is on standby. I control 7 regions, one liberated and preparing for a second one.

Point is, you need to recruit heavily on the first months. I bought all soldiers from black market and have 2 on recruit for every region. I lost a few soldiers but it doesn't matter that much.

If you put it on retrospective, a full team will cost you around 400 supplies (soldiers + gear). They will pay for themselves after 3 missions. As long as you are able to generate missions, you should try to get more soldiers.

As reference, on October I am on 8 teams:

2 "A" teams of 6 people with best gear / perks
1 "B" team of heavy explosive
4 "C" teams build for fast missions (e.g. rescue VIP)
1 "D" team for low-rank training

The "C" teams are for smash and grab / rescue VIP missions. 50% of the time I don't kill all aliens. I fight first pod as fast as possible. Grenade / burn the second and simply out-run the third. They are usually 1-2 tiers behind in weapons. Sometimes you will fail the objective / not pick up all the boxes on a smash and grab but overall you are gaining an advantage.
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