1.4 Legendary Timers for Missions and Reinforcements
Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2017 4:59 pm
I'm interested in hearing what others think about the hard timers and reinforcement timers, especially on Legendary but also other difficulties.
I've been running a 1.4 Legendary campaign. I can just barely handle Legendary. To manage this, rather than drop down in difficulty, I prefer to mod XCOM to be stronger. Never had any map mods, no changes to ADVENT, and for 1.4 no changes to timers. Most of the toughest of ADVENT I can handle.
Except timers for missions and reinforcements. I think they're just too tight and forcing overly rapid squad movement leading to premature detection. There's barely enough time to fight without risking hard timer failure or excessive reinforcements.
It reminds me of a 1.1 Legendary rescue-VIP-from-jail mission I ran. I had a stealth team of 3 or 4 go in on Extremely Light. It was a huge urban map and 12 turns to complete. I ran the squad as fast as possible. Only saw ADVENT once, a pod off to the right for 1 turn. Avoided them and got to the jail and broke out the VIP and ran for the evac zone. Going as straight as possible on both legs, got out on the second to last turn. Without any fighting with ADVENT. Any firefight would have likely lost the whole team to timer expiration.
Well, it's not quite that tight for time in 1.4 but it's close. For the missions I've done, distances ingress to objective to evac can just be covered with a bit of time to spare. So my squads have to move move move. It's either hard timers or the progression of reinforcements I've got to stay ahead of.
But 1.3/1.4 has smaller and more pods. Which means when running across the map, I'm likely to get discovered before getting to the objective. And objectives often have pods right on top of them. Which makes it harder to keep ahead of the timers and reinforcements. One VIP jailbreak turned into a Benny Hill sequence with the VIP and my squad running as fast as possible to stay ahead of the now every-turn reinforcements. They barely got out.
Again, I've added no maps. I've not changed ADVENT in any way.
I've read a lot of controversy about features like DFA Snipers and timed versus untimed missions. I know getting this balance is hard and Pavonis wants to provide a good challenge. And that needs the pressure of timers and reinforcements for most missions.
But it feels to me the pressure is too high and it's taking all the fun out of the game. Looking at the UFOpaedia LW2 Difficulty page and the Mission Timers section of XComLW_Overhaul.ini , the timers get increase by 2 turns under Veteran and 4 under Rookie. I assume the reinforcement schedules in other missions get similar increases for those difficulties. I'd say the timers under Rookie are closer to what I'd want to face a reasonable challenge.
But otherwise I want to face the Legendary level challenge. I'm rewatching Xwynn's Season 2 video series from the start paying particular attention to his squad prepartions and tactical play to better learn what he does to face these challenges.
But for my own play, I'm adding the mod True Concealment for LW2 back in, adjusted to add about 50% to the timers and reinforcements by having a 50% chance at 100% infiltration to delay every turn. I think I'll enjoy that much more.
I've been running a 1.4 Legendary campaign. I can just barely handle Legendary. To manage this, rather than drop down in difficulty, I prefer to mod XCOM to be stronger. Never had any map mods, no changes to ADVENT, and for 1.4 no changes to timers. Most of the toughest of ADVENT I can handle.
Except timers for missions and reinforcements. I think they're just too tight and forcing overly rapid squad movement leading to premature detection. There's barely enough time to fight without risking hard timer failure or excessive reinforcements.
It reminds me of a 1.1 Legendary rescue-VIP-from-jail mission I ran. I had a stealth team of 3 or 4 go in on Extremely Light. It was a huge urban map and 12 turns to complete. I ran the squad as fast as possible. Only saw ADVENT once, a pod off to the right for 1 turn. Avoided them and got to the jail and broke out the VIP and ran for the evac zone. Going as straight as possible on both legs, got out on the second to last turn. Without any fighting with ADVENT. Any firefight would have likely lost the whole team to timer expiration.
Well, it's not quite that tight for time in 1.4 but it's close. For the missions I've done, distances ingress to objective to evac can just be covered with a bit of time to spare. So my squads have to move move move. It's either hard timers or the progression of reinforcements I've got to stay ahead of.
But 1.3/1.4 has smaller and more pods. Which means when running across the map, I'm likely to get discovered before getting to the objective. And objectives often have pods right on top of them. Which makes it harder to keep ahead of the timers and reinforcements. One VIP jailbreak turned into a Benny Hill sequence with the VIP and my squad running as fast as possible to stay ahead of the now every-turn reinforcements. They barely got out.
Again, I've added no maps. I've not changed ADVENT in any way.
I've read a lot of controversy about features like DFA Snipers and timed versus untimed missions. I know getting this balance is hard and Pavonis wants to provide a good challenge. And that needs the pressure of timers and reinforcements for most missions.
But it feels to me the pressure is too high and it's taking all the fun out of the game. Looking at the UFOpaedia LW2 Difficulty page and the Mission Timers section of XComLW_Overhaul.ini , the timers get increase by 2 turns under Veteran and 4 under Rookie. I assume the reinforcement schedules in other missions get similar increases for those difficulties. I'd say the timers under Rookie are closer to what I'd want to face a reasonable challenge.
But otherwise I want to face the Legendary level challenge. I'm rewatching Xwynn's Season 2 video series from the start paying particular attention to his squad prepartions and tactical play to better learn what he does to face these challenges.
But for my own play, I'm adding the mod True Concealment for LW2 back in, adjusted to add about 50% to the timers and reinforcements by having a 50% chance at 100% infiltration to delay every turn. I think I'll enjoy that much more.