Facility Leads?

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stefan3iii
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Facility Leads?

Post by stefan3iii »

I'm probably going to lose my L/I campaign in Nov/Dec due to avatar. I've done the blacksite, but I haven't found a single facility lead the whole game, and I have been skulljacking at every opportunity. I find this a little strange, because in 1.2 I was drowning in facility leads, and could do them at my leisure.

Does anyone know the mechanics for getting leads? What triggers the ability to find leads? Do you need to complete the blacksite or something else?
Omeletteville
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Re: Facility Leads?

Post by Omeletteville »

All of mine have come from simple "Find a Lead" missions- doesn't seem to matter what territory they're in. 1.4, Veteran difficulty

Currently they have 4 Avatar facilities and I have leads for all 4 of them. At least I think i do... I've been procrastinating on spending the intel to actually research them.
Tuhalu
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Re: Facility Leads?

Post by Tuhalu »

As soon as you reveal the Avatar project you can find Facility Leads. They can be awarded from any mission with only an Intel reward. These missions can also reward Liberation 1 and the location of a UFO.
stefan3iii
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Re: Facility Leads?

Post by stefan3iii »

Tuhalu wrote:As soon as you reveal the Avatar project you can find Facility Leads. They can be awarded from any mission with only an Intel reward. These missions can also reward Liberation 1 and the location of a UFO.
Hmm ok that's probably my mistake then, I need to prioritize those missions. I think in 1.2 I had a lot more opportunities to skulljack because I was doing a supply retal every week it seemed, and I also was doing a lot of stealth missions, which is probably why I had so many.
LordYanaek
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Re: Facility Leads?

Post by LordYanaek »

Tuhalu wrote:As soon as you reveal the Avatar project you can find Facility Leads. They can be awarded from any mission with only an Intel reward. These missions can also reward Liberation 1 and the location of a UFO.
I don't think this is true.

I'm 99% sure that facility leads come from Hack and Rescue Scientist missions with an Intel Package reward. The later is often overlooked, especially once you have enough scientists as they can be pretty difficult with short timers. They are more frequent in regions with a facility, which you can learn when you get the red message telling you that a point was added to the doom clock (if it zooms on the fortress, the point is created at the fortress, otherwise you get a message "facility in region xxxx").
Last edited by LordYanaek on Tue Jun 20, 2017 7:08 am, edited 2 times in total.
stefan3iii
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Re: Facility Leads?

Post by stefan3iii »

Ha somebody please tell me which one is real, my campaign depends on it!
Dwarfling
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Re: Facility Leads?

Post by Dwarfling »

Pretty sure they come from any Intel package mission. Sometimes you get a POI, sometimes it's a Facility lead.

The facility might not pop on a region you have contacted, and the infiltration times are golden-path harsh. Didn't try suiciding it, but the map has loooots of solo drones. Not super-difficult tho, if you have a good team. Bring AoE damage and control abilities. Also you can find yourself against an 8-team of MECs, so mind that, and Gatekeepers and Sectopods are common possibilities around the objective. My RNF timer never went yellow, but I did bring a 9-man quick-response team to the two facility missions I did.
Antifringe
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Re: Facility Leads?

Post by Antifringe »

Facility Leads come from the ProtectResearch activity, which is an activity that only starts spawning after AVATAR is revealed. It will generate either a Hack Workstation, Recover Item, Rescue VIP, or Extract VIP mission type. The mission will always have the "Find a Lead" descriptor, but I don't remember if it lists an Intel Package in the reward field or not. My guess is no, because "Intel Package" ends up translating into "Point of Interest," which you don't get from this activity type.

ProtectResearch has a priority of 50, which puts it in the same league as other activities (most have 55, a tiny difference). It also gets a x1.5 detection bonus if it spawns in the same region as an active facility.

I don't know if it is a General Operation or if it is its own thing, like Propaganda. Either way, it's not a rare activity. The problem is that it is slightly hard to detect. The intel threshold is 120, which is high, but in line with the liberation chain missions (liberation is 110, 135, and 160 for Lib1, Lib2 and Lib3). Detection chance is 17%, which is low, but above average duration (about a day longer than most mission types).

It won't spawn in regions with either strength or vigilance above 10, so that can sometimes help you narrow down which regions to scan in.
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
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Re: Facility Leads?

Post by chrisb »

Antifringe wrote:Facility Leads come from the ProtectResearch activity, which is an activity that only starts spawning after AVATAR is revealed. It will generate either a Hack Workstation, Recover Item, Rescue VIP, or Extract VIP mission type. The mission will always have the "Find a Lead" descriptor, but I don't remember if it lists an Intel Package in the reward field or not. My guess is no, because "Intel Package" ends up translating into "Point of Interest," which you don't get from this activity type.

ProtectResearch has a priority of 50, which puts it in the same league as other activities (most have 55, a tiny difference). It also gets a x1.5 detection bonus if it spawns in the same region as an active facility.

I don't know if it is a General Operation or if it is its own thing, like Propaganda. Either way, it's not a rare activity. The problem is that it is slightly hard to detect. The intel threshold is 120, which is high, but in line with the liberation chain missions (liberation is 110, 135, and 160 for Lib1, Lib2 and Lib3). Detection chance is 17%, which is low, but above average duration (about a day longer than most mission types).

It won't spawn in regions with either strength or vigilance above 10, so that can sometimes help you narrow down which regions to scan in.
It will say Intel Package. The reward given is a Reward_FacilityLead, which is given the Intel Package loc.
LordYanaek
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Re: Facility Leads?

Post by LordYanaek »

OK, i double checked XComLW_Activities.ini and it can indeed be a recover item.
Antifringe wrote: I don't know if it is a General Operation or if it is its own thing, like Propaganda. Either way, it's not a rare activity. The problem is that it is slightly hard to detect. The intel threshold is 120, which is high, but in line with the liberation chain missions (liberation is 110, 135, and 160 for Lib1, Lib2 and Lib3). Detection chance is 17%, which is low, but above average duration (about a day longer than most mission types)
It's longer than liberation but the same duration as most common missions (regular hacks, political prisoners, high value prisoner, propaganda ...) while being twice as hard to detect as a regular hack, as hard as high value prisoner (but with twice as big required intel bucket) so i wouldn't say it's slightly hard to detect. It's probably one of the hardest missions to detect, even harder than EmergencyOffWorldReinforcements (UFO). The duration is longer than the UFO, however with the harder detection you probably won't notice.

Not sure where i read it was more likely in regions with facilities but i'm sure i didn't find it myself, however i couldn't find a line about this n the ini so maybe it was changed or maybe it was never true. :?

EDIT : OK, found it, it was actually in the code and not the ini. The activity isn't more likely to occur in regions with a facility but it's more likely to be detected in a region with a facility. Detection chance is multiplied by 1.5, (you get 50% detection bonus).
Also, it doesn't appear to be a GOp as it doesn't have a <Template.ActivityCategory = 'GeneralOps';> line so it's probably it's own category and can appear in addition to other missions.

Finally, it have those conditions :
  • Limited to 1/region │ 2/world
  • Region must be contacted (it won't appear in non contacted regions)
  • Avatar must be revealed
  • Alert(strength)│Vigilance of maximum 10 as mentioned before
  • You must have less leads in stock (including those currently researched) than the number of facilities in the world (can't stockpile leads for future facilities)
stefan3iii wrote:Ha somebody please tell me which one is real, my campaign depends on it!
I think you have all the information but as it's pretty hard to detect, you might have to look for other ways to slow down their progress. Do you have any region you could liberate reasonably fast? Taking an HQ also removes one "pip" from the doom clock.
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DrBeast
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Re: Facility Leads?

Post by DrBeast »

If all else fails and you desperately need to find Facility Leads, there's always this mod
Let the Beast inside you free!
stefan3iii
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Re: Facility Leads?

Post by stefan3iii »

I've been taking two specialists per mission to try to skullmine a facility lead, I'm like 90% certain you can find leads from skullmining, that's what I remember anyway. Does anyone know if there is a certain kind of enemy you need to skull mine? Ex maybe only officers have facility leads?
LordYanaek
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Re: Facility Leads?

Post by LordYanaek »

I also remember reading this but i never got a facility lead from skullmining so i'm not sure it's even possible.
stefan3iii
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Re: Facility Leads?

Post by stefan3iii »

Well I lost :)

A summary of my campaign along with random balance ramblings:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/ ... atar_loss/
LordYanaek
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Re: Facility Leads?

Post by LordYanaek »

Sorry to hear that. I still hope i'll be able to win my own (Commander) campaign despite being very slow to research early as i still have space on the doom clock. The difference between our games (apart from the difficulty) is that i have been able to remove 5 more pips than you by taking down 1 facility and liberating 3 more regions (all of Asia, my starting continent is free now). Liberation is very strong in 1.3/1.4

Keep in mind there is still a bug with facilities construction that (if i understand correctly) causes AVATAR to grow faster than it should in the late game.

Some answers to your reddit post (i prefer to discuss on real forums)
  • Stealth I have a dedicated stealth squad with 1 shinobi officer and 2 specialists, doing it again i would add a second shinobi. Shinobi is pure saboteur (key perks Shadowstep, Ghoswalker and Cover), specialist is pure hacker (could take field surgeon). Equipment is basic but best gremlin and skulljack on specialist and Emergency Life Support! I deploy one specialist/mission and don't care about exposing him/her to enemy fire to hack an objective. If he gets shot down i have 6 turns for evac to pop and evac him with my still concealed shinobi. Good gremlin is important to haywire those solo drones, trojan is enough to bring the early drones down (and even late game drones currently because of a bug but it will be fixed). I alternate between specialists when one finally gets wounded (sometimes i can hide in a corner and wait for evac). I don't stealth VIP missions except some assassinations which i do with a regular squad as 2 of those have a snapshot sniper.
  • Grenades Tend to agree with you. Related, i love shredder gun on a needle grenadier as it doesn't destroy loot/corpses.
  • Ammo Partially agree. Stiletto is really great because it's so much easier to get compared to needle/flechette. I like venom on Covering Fire builds as the poison effect will stack with the CF for a big debuff if it procs. They work on enough enemies that they are still very useful (thought more of a niche than stiletto). The same is true for AP, they stay useful the entire game but are more of a niche. Talon isn't so much about +1 damage than +10 crit chance. It's useful to get those 100% crit on crit build (and now that kubikiri finally works, a crit sniper is really strong).
  • Gunners I don't find them weak early but they are not a main shooting class, they are a support class capable of doing large damage sometimes but also capable of doing plenty other things. (Area) Supression is a squaddie perk and one of the gunners strongest abilities so i find them very useful from the start but in the right situation (prolonged fights). They are an untimed mission class even more than sharpshooters.
  • Specialists Yep, haywire is really useful now. Specialists can make a real difference. I've won missions thanks to hacked drones i wouldn't have won (and maybe wiped) without.
  • AWC I don't think delaying it that long is really a good idea. The AWC doesn't need a scientist to train soldiers, only to heal you faster. Some AWC perks are really useful and i like Quick Learning officers which means i want the AWC before i start training high level officer perks (2nd Lt to start building up Esprit de Corps is fast, but further training can put your soldiers out of missions for a long time without QL).
Psieye
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Re: Facility Leads?

Post by Psieye »

LordYanaek wrote: [*]AWC I don't think delaying it that long is really a good idea. The AWC doesn't need a scientist to train soldiers, only to heal you faster. Some AWC perks are really useful and i like Quick Learning officers which means i want the AWC before i start training high level officer perks (2nd Lt to start building up Esprit de Corps is fast, but further training can put your soldiers out of missions for a long time without QL).[/list]
This is the question I'll be facing soon in my new (Veteran, non-Ironman, no gameplay mods this time) campaign (barely 5 missions in). I like AWC perks, I'd build it and not put a scientist in it just to get perks out faster. But I'm not sure if this is another shiny trap like Psi-before-Laser was. Proving Grounds needs a strong research team to give it projects to do - one (aborted) campaign I got it out early and it had nothing to do after Alloy Plating and Hazmat Vest (research was really behind).

Playing while dog-tired is not good for my rookies. I already have 2 dead and a 3rd saved from bleeding out because of needlessly aggressive positioning. Ok, it makes for cool tactical variation when a now-3-man squad finishes a jailbreak with the snapshot sniper hacking with no ammo in his gun.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
stefan3iii
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Re: Facility Leads?

Post by stefan3iii »

Psieye wrote:
LordYanaek wrote: [*]AWC I don't think delaying it that long is really a good idea. The AWC doesn't need a scientist to train soldiers, only to heal you faster. Some AWC perks are really useful and i like Quick Learning officers which means i want the AWC before i start training high level officer perks (2nd Lt to start building up Esprit de Corps is fast, but further training can put your soldiers out of missions for a long time without QL).[/list]
This is the question I'll be facing soon in my new (Veteran, non-Ironman, no gameplay mods this time) campaign (barely 5 missions in). I like AWC perks, I'd build it and not put a scientist in it just to get perks out faster. But I'm not sure if this is another shiny trap like Psi-before-Laser was. Proving Grounds needs a strong research team to give it projects to do - one (aborted) campaign I got it out early and it had nothing to do after Alloy Plating and Hazmat Vest (research was really behind).

Playing while dog-tired is not good for my rookies. I already have 2 dead and a 3rd saved from bleeding out because of needlessly aggressive positioning. Ok, it makes for cool tactical variation when a now-3-man squad finishes a jailbreak with the snapshot sniper hacking with no ammo in his gun.
It's ok if proving ground sits idle, alloy plates and incendiaries are all you need to make it worth it.
Psieye
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Re: Facility Leads?

Post by Psieye »

stefan3iii wrote: It's ok if proving ground sits idle, alloy plates and incendiaries are all you need to make it worth it.
That was the problem in that campaign: I was so far behind research and corpses I couldn't do incendiaries for maybe 1~2 months of proving grounds idle time? Maybe it was closer, but it's been a long time so my memory is fuzzy.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
stefan3iii
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Re: Facility Leads?

Post by stefan3iii »

Psieye wrote:
stefan3iii wrote: It's ok if proving ground sits idle, alloy plates and incendiaries are all you need to make it worth it.
That was the problem in that campaign: I was so far behind research and corpses I couldn't do incendiaries for maybe 1~2 months of proving grounds idle time? Maybe it was closer, but it's been a long time so my memory is fuzzy.
Yeah, need to make sure you get an officer corpse in gatecrasher, and then in your first ambush/supply raid. Officers corpses are really important to keep.

Stiletto rounds are also really good, and you'll have faceless coming in as soon as you start getting rendezvous.
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