Pavonis Interactive Forums

Whats the real reason we cant have 10 on the battle ground and only up to 8 and 10 on certain missions??? Did i miss where to read the info about this, cause i never had a problem with it at all when this first came out.
If there is a way to change that let me know cause its weird not playing like I use to, havnt touched the game since the crashes it causes with the camera be put in the ground after a mission or two, with or with out the LW2 mod on. Like now almost all the mods I took off before hand now work even better than before with LW2

Part of the nerf to 0% supply raids.

Bugger I miss big squad size

Can someone explain (or post a link to an explanation) for what "0% supply raids" are? I've seen it crop up a couple of times and I feel like I'm missing out.

Sounds like starting a mission with 0% infiltration on a supply raid...?

Content Consumer wrote:Can someone explain (or post a link to an explanation) for what "0% supply raids" are? I've seen it crop up a couple of times and I feel like I'm missing out.

Sounds like starting a mission with 0% infiltration on a supply raid...?

Well, yeah, exactly - Supply Raids are a mission where you collect corpses, and under-infiltrating increases the number of enemies on the mission, which increases the number of corpses that you get. So, for a little while, it was a somewhat common strategy to just load out a squad of 10 soldiers and drop right into the mission as soon as it pops up, bring home like 36-ish extra corpses compared to doing the mission normally, and basically destroying the game's economy.

The devs never intended for that to be possible (Supply Raids are supposed to be among the most difficult missions in the game, and a meaningful amount of them being allowed to complete is integral to the aliens remaining relevant at a strategic level), so a variety of nerfs were made to 0% missions in general and to Supply Raids in particular to make it less viable.

fowlJ wrote:

Content Consumer wrote:Can someone explain (or post a link to an explanation) for what "0% supply raids" are? I've seen it crop up a couple of times and I feel like I'm missing out.

Sounds like starting a mission with 0% infiltration on a supply raid...?

Well, yeah, exactly - Supply Raids are a mission where you collect corpses, and under-infiltrating increases the number of enemies on the mission, which increases the number of corpses that you get. So, for a little while, it was a somewhat common strategy to just load out a squad of 10 soldiers and drop right into the mission as soon as it pops up, bring home like 36-ish extra corpses compared to doing the mission normally, and basically destroying the game's economy.

The devs never intended for that to be possible (Supply Raids are supposed to be among the most difficult missions in the game, and a meaningful amount of them being allowed to complete is integral to the aliens remaining relevant at a strategic level), so a variety of nerfs were made to 0% missions in general and to Supply Raids in particular to make it less viable.

You know, _now that it's too late, dammit_, I just had a thought which would have fixed the entire issue without affecting people who didn't abuse Supply Raids in the slightest.

Every time you complete a Supply Raid at 0% infiltration there's a certain percentage chance that Advent starts outfitting their soldiers with a self-destruct, say 10%, with the amount decreasing linearly as you get closer to 100% infiltration. This value accumulates, and is applied to every corpse on the mission; if the corpse has a self-destruct, you don't get it when the mission is over. It caps at 75% for not getting corpses, but still accumulates; if you ever reach 100%, then each corpse has a (value-75% chance) of _exploding_ if there are only XCOM units within the explosion radius... and destroying any corpses you would otherwise get within that radius, in addition to damaging XCOM units.

Every time you infiltrate a supply raid _above_ 100%, _and win_, the reciprocal amount is deducted from the counter; that is, if you reach 200% infiltration, you subtract as much as a 0% raid would have added.

So the more you abuse the supply raids, the less you can get from them. OTOH, if you _stop_ abusing the raids, eventually Advent gets sloppy again.

Man, I wish I'd thought of this a couple of months ago.

fowlJ wrote:

Content Consumer wrote:Can someone explain (or post a link to an explanation) for what "0% supply raids" are? I've seen it crop up a couple of times and I feel like I'm missing out.

Sounds like starting a mission with 0% infiltration on a supply raid...?

Well, yeah, exactly - Supply Raids are a mission where you collect corpses, and under-infiltrating increases the number of enemies on the mission, which increases the number of corpses that you get. So, for a little while, it was a somewhat common strategy to just load out a squad of 10 soldiers and drop right into the mission as soon as it pops up, bring home like 36-ish extra corpses compared to doing the mission normally, and basically destroying the game's economy.

The devs never intended for that to be possible (Supply Raids are supposed to be among the most difficult missions in the game, and a meaningful amount of them being allowed to complete is integral to the aliens remaining relevant at a strategic level), so a variety of nerfs were made to 0% missions in general and to Supply Raids in particular to make it less viable.

Whoof... supply missions are already tough for me (cue the "get gud" posts), I can't imagine trying one at 0% with 10 soldiers.

They weren't that hard really, you camped the edge of the map, pulled enemies with Sharpshooters, then mass controlled with flashbangs and area suppression while you picked them apart. Sometimes things went to hell when several pods activated at the same time, but most of the time, very doable, specially because if you came with EXO because the AI tends to group up when cover is scarce. Specially when done early game: you'd get so far ahead in tech just from the income that it made the game easier than it should have been.

The main benefit was not the bounty of corpses (though that was a huge help to be sure) it was the soldier xp. After 2 or 3 supply raids they got exponentially easier because of your suddenly high ranking soldiers. You could potentially have a squad full of MSGTs in like... August.

While your idea is pretty original, dstar3k, it would not have stopped people from doing them because it would not stop the soldiers from getting truckloads of xp for it.

DaviBones wrote:The main benefit was not the bounty of corpses (though that was a huge help to be sure) it was the soldier xp. After 2 or 3 supply raids they got exponentially easier because of your suddenly high ranking soldiers. You could potentially have a squad full of MSGTs in like... August.

In my Veteran campaign, "squad full of MSGTs" was achieved in June. 8-man GOps rake in soldier EXP like crazy. If they only abused 0% supply raids/troop columns and no other mission to powerlevel, they had an over-emphasised fear of reinforcements.