Luck in the Early Game

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oesis
Posts: 38
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 11:36 pm

Luck in the Early Game

Post by oesis »

I feel like the early game may be to swayed to much by luck. To me this is most felt by missions offered, faceless created and found, and soldiers 1 shot.
To get into each specifically.

For missions, I feel like you can have a huge swing in how many missions you are actually offered that are doable/spawned. It doesn't matter how good you play if only a few missions spawn after 2 months. I just feel like a run can be effectually ended, if you get really unlucky and 2 few missions spawn.

For faceless, I'm not 100% sure if you are guaranteed to have one spawn in your starting base, but I believe it isn't. If it isn't guaranteed its a huge difference in the effectiveness of your intel, and something you can't control or see. As well with the faceless hunting missions sometimes you get it insanely early, whereas other time it take 4 months to get one. But clearly out the faceless early game can make a huge difference and isn't something you can really control early.

Lastly soldiers getting 1 shot. This you can control, but I feel like you have the least control early game. In my experience the #1 source of 1 shots early game come from advent gunners. They deal 4-7 damage when some of your soldiers have 5 hp including plating. So they can kill your units with 1 non crit shot, from gatecrasher on. Anytime a gunner shoots from a yellow move there is a decent chance of one of your soldiers dying. This means the outcome from the roll's from an early game gunners shot, can have massive impacts on the rest of your campaign.

To get back to the generally concept of early game luck. If a player gets really bad luck early game, they will just restart until they get good luck, or good enough luck that they think a game is winnable. If a game relies on luck heavily in the late game, people will generally complain until it's removed since, losing a game due to a dice roll isn't usually considered fun. This results in early game luck being "hidden" since once it hit's a critical point of things going wrong people just restart, rather than experiencing it. As well I feel this can result in a game being balanced with above avenge starts in mind, because in practice, the majority of long game runs will be runs with above average early game luck. After all no one is going to restart a campaign because it starts off to well.

I'm not trying to say Long War is to hard. However my question is what level of luck should be acceptable in the early game, and does LW 2 currently have to much?
Rikokrates
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Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 4:00 pm

Re: Luck in the Early Game

Post by Rikokrates »

I can agree on luck being an important factor with starting the game, especially on where advent strength is distributed around the globe and mission pops, though I guess this is one of the reasons the game is so challenging and it forces you to adapt your strategies, some games though might not be winnable. I've been very fortunate in my current campaign so my glass is half full.

As for losing soldiers, that can be controlled to some extent. For example, you can equip low health soldiers with nano vests (+2 hp), you can train them as none front line troops, you can also pick who you take on missions so if you have a tough mission you can avoid taking low hp troopers.

There again there will still be unlucky shots and stuff but it is a strategy game so troop placement and exposure to enemy fire is something that should be tactically considered. Also despite having low health they might have some other things which offset that like high defense which might mean the enemy prioritise other targets first.

Lastly, I guess you could always alter the files yourself to set the default health of a soldier to one of your choice.

Yellow alerts though! :x Hate them.
stefan3iii
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Re: Luck in the Early Game

Post by stefan3iii »

Soldier deaths are probably the smallest luck issue, a single unlucky death isn't a huge deal, or even a few. Definitely prioritize gunners, they should never get to shoot if you can help it.

Mission spawns though, seem to swing a campaign quite a bit. In my current campaign, my early jailbreaks were really bad, so my havens grew really slowly. On top of that I had a RIDICULOUS number of faceless in my home region, and so I couldn't generate haven supplies until July. Even skipping lasers I've had no money to do anything.

On the other hand my previous campaign I was getting 500 supplies a drop in May. To me this randomness is part of what makes Xcom interesting, mitigating risk and compensating for circumstance is fun. If there was no randomness you'd be playing a puzzle game.
Psieye
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Re: Luck in the Early Game

Post by Psieye »

While your overall point is valid, the specific examples you mention are weak. If you allow a gunner to shoot at anyone who doesn't have 65 Def (cover + aid protocol or smoke or hunker or you've disorientated the gunner) then that's a tactical mistake you could have prevented. Even the chance of a yellow alert gunner showing up to flank you can be reduced by scouting and positioning. We players are human so we make mistakes but there really shouldn't (given player attention) be that many instances of a gunner getting a good shot off in the earlygame.

Your mission-spawn argument was on quantity. That's more to do with strategy layer policies than luck. Staggering mission spawn timings, avenger scan, judicious use of Intel boosting mean you will get enough missions to do. Are they GOOD missions to do? Now that's a valid argument but it means you adapt your strategy, builds and tactics to match each specific campaign's circumstances. I understand you may not want to adopt a more 'boring and passive' doctrine to cope with bad starting mission quality. But there's a difference between saying a campaign is "unwinnable because of starter luck" and "not fun because of starter luck".
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
oesis
Posts: 38
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Re: Luck in the Early Game

Post by oesis »

@stefan311 While losing 1 soldier doesn't lose a campaign, it can cause things to snowball very quickly. Especially early game when soldier will is low, and you could have multiple panics. A single yellow alert, hit into kill could be the difference between succeeding a mission with no wounds and failing it with multiple deaths. In a sense the whole rest of your campaign would be significantly effected by a single roll.

@psieye Generally there is only so much you can do early game on the strategy layer. I mean I go 100% intel + scanning every game usually. I just know personally I've gotten really unlucky and only had like 4/5 doable mission 2 months in and felt like my run was pretty much over cause I had no supplies or leveled soldiers. As well, you don't necessarily have the intel to boost early game since you spend all of it getting 2nd haven.

Out of curiosity, do most people play through the majority of every run they start, committing to a full run through attempt after gatecrasher. Or do they play several short campaigns to "loss", until they get one they feel will take them to water world and play it through. I feel like its the 2nd one but I could definitely be wrong.
Psieye
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Re: Luck in the Early Game

Post by Psieye »

oesis wrote: @psieye Generally there is only so much you can do early game on the strategy layer. I mean I go 100% intel + scanning every game usually. I just know personally I've gotten really unlucky and only had like 4/5 doable mission 2 months in and felt like my run was pretty much over cause I had no supplies or leveled soldiers. As well, you don't necessarily have the intel to boost early game since you spend all of it getting 2nd haven.

Out of curiosity, do most people play through the majority of every run they start, committing to a full run through attempt after gatecrasher. Or do they play several short campaigns to "loss", until they get one they feel will take them to water world and play it through. I feel like its the 2nd one but I could definitely be wrong.
I don't get much playtime due to RL. The reasons I've restarted my LW2 campaigns were:
- Realised I was too far behind on science (several of my bad decisions on the strategy layer)
- 1.3 came out
- Realised I was too far behind on science (an experimental psi-before-lasers rush that I don't believe was worth it)

Those restarts happened around June~August. They weren't down to bad luck, they were down to bad strategic decisions like not using intel to secure Scientist reward missions or chasing red herring research paths. I've personally never felt bad luck fucked up my March-May play that I have to restart. I have had rough starts where I lost many soldiers in the first post-Gatecrasher missions. I shrugged them off.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
Icarus
Posts: 151
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Re: Luck in the Early Game

Post by Icarus »

oesis wrote:Out of curiosity, do most people play through the majority of every run they start, committing to a full run through attempt after gatecrasher. Or do they play several short campaigns to "loss", until they get one they feel will take them to water world and play it through. I feel like its the 2nd one but I could definitely be wrong.
I start the game and complete the first mission, over and over again, until I have one where the soldier stat and power coil distribution looks interesting. From then on I generally stick to the playthrough for as long as possible or until realizing I did some general thing decidedly suboptimally.
Dwarfling
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Re: Luck in the Early Game

Post by Dwarfling »

oesis wrote:Out of curiosity, do most people play through the majority of every run they start, committing to a full run through attempt after gatecrasher. Or do they play several short campaigns to "loss", until they get one they feel will take them to water world and play it through. I feel like its the 2nd one but I could definitely be wrong.
Well, I quickly re-do Gatecrasher until it comes perfect or near-perfect. Say, all loot, one wounded, or all healthy but lost a some loot. It's a relatively quick mission anyways, just beagle-maneuver first big pod, sit on OW for the 2nd, flash-rush once everything is activated. I don't mind class distribution anymore, but I recently reduced the ranges of NCE to (-5/+5)def, (-7/+7)aim, (-5/+5)psi and (-1/+2)mob, so I don't get 13mob or -10def soldiers anymore, but neither I get 75aim or 18mob or +28psi soldiers. I think that's fair. Was really tired of 13mob soldiers and -10def grenadiers. I dealt with it on my last campaigns, but now I'm just... Tired.

I also consider a restart if I'm up to the 2nd VIP rescue and it comes with a crappy timer too. I can boost the first rescue if it comes with like 4d, tough luck, I delay the 2nd region contact, but a 2nd one is just unnaceptable. I mean, it's not like the campaign is a failure, but I'd rather save myself the trouble. There's so much that can go wrong in the tactical layer already to then have to deal with bad mission RNG in the strategy layer. Maybe on my next campaigns down the road I'll go with a crippled start, but right now I don't have the time nor patience.
Steve-O
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Joined: Fri Feb 24, 2017 8:00 pm

Re: Luck in the Early Game

Post by Steve-O »

oesis wrote: @psieye Generally there is only so much you can do early game on the strategy layer. I mean I go 100% intel + scanning every game usually. I just know personally I've gotten really unlucky and only had like 4/5 doable mission 2 months in and felt like my run was pretty much over cause I had no supplies or leveled soldiers. As well, you don't necessarily have the intel to boost early game since you spend all of it getting 2nd haven.
I'm sort of curious what you mean by "doable missions." Why can't so many mission be "done"? Understanding why you feel this is the case might help us point to solutions that will help you improve your game.

Are these missions not doable because the expiration timers are too short (so you can't infiltrate to 100%)? Are they not doable because your soldiers get torn to ribbons on the tactical layer? Why exactly do you feel they can't be done?

I've been playing Long War 2 right off the bat (never played vanilla XCOM2) and I'm consistently able to "do" 99% of the missions that spawn during a campaign. The only really HARD ones in my experience are the supply train / troop movement missions, and those are hardly very common. RNG rarely impacts the quality OR quantity of missions available for me to do, in my experience. It might affect what strategy I employ, but it never forces me to restart or otherwise makes the campaign unplayable.

Soldiers die, for sure. Especially in the early game, your troops are vulnerable to the aliens' superior tech. That's a hallmark of the XCOM franchise, IMO. but you should be able to keep the death count to an acceptable level with good tactics.
oesis wrote: Out of curiosity, do most people play through the majority of every run they start, committing to a full run through attempt after gatecrasher. Or do they play several short campaigns to "loss", until they get one they feel will take them to water world and play it through. I feel like its the 2nd one but I could definitely be wrong.
I commit to every campaign I start. I've never backed out or restarted due to poor RNG.

I HAVE restarted, many times, due to new patches coming out for LW2 (I play slowly because I have to juggle playing XCOM with caring for my infant daughter, so I usually only get a couple of missions in per day) or because I've decided to add/remove certain other mods that I feel necessitate starting over to properly handle. As such, I haven't actually FINISHED the campaign yet at all (the furthest I've gotten is completing the Blacksite, once) but none of my restarts have been because the campaign was "too difficult" to continue.

(in my current campaign I'm about 3 months in and yet to see a single suppressor drop as loot, which is annoying. It means I can't stealth as much as I'd like to. So RNG is there, for sure, but it's not crippling.)
llll BlackFlag
Posts: 62
Joined: Mon May 29, 2017 4:12 pm

Re: Luck in the Early Game

Post by llll BlackFlag »

Dwarfling wrote:
I recently reduced the ranges of NCE to (-5/+5)def, (-7/+7)aim, (-5/+5)psi and (-1/+2)mob
Is this an ini edit? Would you mind posting a quick how to? This seems like a happy medium for me as well.

Steve-O wrote:
I've been playing Long War 2 right off the bat (never played vanilla XCOM2) and I'm consistently able to "do" 99% of the missions that spawn during a campaign. The only really HARD ones in my experience are the supply train / troop movement missions, and those are hardly very common. RNG rarely impacts the quality OR quantity of missions available for me to do, in my experience. It might affect what strategy I employ, but it never forces me to restart or otherwise makes the campaign unplayable.
What difficulty do you play on? LW2 was built so that you aren't supposed to be able to do every mission, in contrast to vanilla where you get punished for not completing every mission. Even top players like Xwynns aren't able to complete 99% of missions on legend.
wardensc2
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Re: Luck in the Early Game

Post by wardensc2 »

I'm a save-scum, I often think luck is on my side. But I was wrong, if you dont have a good strategy on global map and the good research priority even luck can't help you on end game period.
oesis
Posts: 38
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Re: Luck in the Early Game

Post by oesis »

@Steve-0 To me a doable mission is one that is reducible to extremely light with 5 soldiers. I have successfully done missions with 4, but it is much riskier, and depends soldiers you have. As well I rarely intentionally stealth missions, so I don't go in with less than that. As well, I'm not trying to complain about the game difficulty, LW is supposed to be hard, and I don't mind losing. I'm just curious if luck is more prevalent in the early game in a way that is overlooked in balancing. Also Like you I've never beaten the game.

@Dwarfling This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. The outcome of gatecrasher can have a large impact on the rest of the game, having no wounds no deaths, is very different than taking a death and 2 wounds. I usually play gatecrasher several times myself before getting a run going. It's essentially save scumming, except you restart the campaign instead of loading a save file.

Lastly I play on impossible.
Steve-O
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Re: Luck in the Early Game

Post by Steve-O »

llll BlackFlag wrote: What difficulty do you play on? LW2 was built so that you aren't supposed to be able to do every mission, in contrast to vanilla where you get punished for not completing every mission. Even top players like Xwynns aren't able to complete 99% of missions on legend.
I'm currently playing on Rookie. so that probably does account for some of the differences in my experiences vs others, especially for oesis since he's apparently playing on Impossible (Legendary in LW2? I don't have all the names memorized.) That said, if you're playing on anything other than Rookie and you think the game is just "too hard," my first suggestion would be to lower the difficulty and try again.

I had a similar experience with XCOM1. The first campaign I tried to play, I played on "Normal" (the second difficulty setting in vanilla XCOM1) and I got my ass kicked. Shocked at such a rapid loss, I moved down to "Rookie" (the lowest setting) and played through the campaign. After beating the game on Rookie, I was able to go up to Normal and win easily. Then I moved up to Classic. By the time I found LW1, I was routinely beating the game on Classic without losing any countries. LW1 put me back down to the bottom ;)

There's no shame in playing on lower difficulties if you find the higher ones too difficult, and it would probably help to better inform you of whether or not there's actually a problem with difficulty balancing if you tried it on easier settings first and worked your way up. That way, you can say with authority "yeah, there's an unreasonable jump from here to there" instead of just "I play on the hardest setting and it's really hard."
llll BlackFlag
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Re: Luck in the Early Game

Post by llll BlackFlag »

Steve-O wrote:
I'm currently playing on Rookie. so that probably does account for some of the differences in my experiences vs others, especially for oesis since he's apparently playing on Impossible (Legendary in LW2? I don't have all the names memorized.) That said, if you're playing on anything other than Rookie and you think the game is just "too hard," my first suggestion would be to lower the difficulty and try again.

There's no shame in playing on lower difficulties if you find the higher ones too difficult, and it would probably help to better inform you of whether or not there's actually a problem with difficulty balancing if you tried it on easier settings first and worked your way up. That way, you can say with authority "yeah, there's an unreasonable jump from here to there" instead of just "I play on the hardest setting and it's really hard."
I didn't mean to comment on the balance of the game, the difficulty is pretty spot on in my opinion. I only meant that it is not feasible on higher difficulties to complete 99% of missions that spawn as not even the best players are able to, and long war was designed with that intention. Still, thanks for the feedback.
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