Switch AWC+Psi Staff to Engineers or Both?

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Jacke
Posts: 623
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 1:10 am

Switch AWC+Psi Staff to Engineers or Both?

Post by Jacke »

Playing a new 1.4 LW2 Legendary campaign, I'm reading and rereading a lot of the recent posts here and on reddit about LW2 to adjust my strategy.

And now I'm wondering whether it would help switching the AWC and the Psi Lab to use Engineers as staff, or even better allow both Engineers and Scientists to be able to fill those positions.

Alternately, maybe the cost of them at the Black Market needs to be reduced. Or increase the possibility of getting them as recruits or finding more VIP GOps.

From what I've read, which jives with my experience, two things stand out involving Scientists:

- The need for a better faster research strategy: more and earlier Scientists and Basic Research (which counts as a Scientist), earlier and expanded Lab, and keeping the Lab full avoiding diverting staff to the AWC and the Psi Lab, wound recovery and Psi training almost be damned.

- 1.3/1.4 Psi is fun and useful, but the cost and delay from that cost can derail a campaign. And it's hard to keep the Psi Lab staffed with Scientists when they're needed for research, to the point freeing one for the Psi Lab or the AWC really hurts.

Another point is that Engineers are vital early on, but after the Avenger is cleared, they're only needed as Facility staff. Some Engineer staff is vital, but even a fully built-up Avenger needs only 9 Engineers and that buildup can be done over the whole campaign and not having enough will at most just slow excavation and building new Facilities.

Scientists are needed to advance research over the whole campaign. And even though there's only 3 non-research staff positions, 1 in the AWC (to speed healing) and 2 in the Psi Lab (to speed training), when staffed those Scientists contribute nothing to research. And those positions will likely be available in the early and mid game respectively, when putting a Scientist in those positions will impact research.

I can envision the roles in staffing the AWC and Psi Lab as appropriate for either a Scientist or an Engineer. Allow either to fill them would be very cool and allow greater flexibility.
Antifringe
Posts: 226
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2017 9:52 pm

Re: Switch AWC+Psi Staff to Engineers or Both?

Post by Antifringe »

I've been thinking about the engineer problem a bit. What I would like (but will probably not happen) is a more radical change to the Avenger where we get a separate assembly line of some sort that has open ended completion times, based on idle engineers (e.g. the way that research and scientists work). It would make sense to move corpse rendering to this new line, since rendering is otherwise something you almost never do. Maybe ever push datapad decrpytion here.

A more plausible solution would be to just throttle the number of engineers past a certain point. Make them less and less likely to find as you get more and more of them, so they stop choking out the mission rewards.

Barely related, but psionics would work better if training and infiltration could happen simultaneously. That makes no sense narratively, but whatever. Maybe changing the psilab to a cooldown system that instantly grants a skill, but then the tube has to recharge, would work. This doesn't address the disproportionately high cost of psi, but at least your psionic soldiers would level up at a more reasonable rate. They basically start as rookies, and even if you rush them, your baseline soldiers will be SSGT/TSGT already (GSGT/MSGT if you don't rush them). The mechanics that worked in vanilla are inappropriate in a game with the infiltration mechanic.
Last edited by Antifringe on Thu Jul 13, 2017 2:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
wobuffet
Posts: 92
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 3:09 am

Re: Switch AWC+Psi Staff to Engineers or Both?

Post by wobuffet »

Here are some Engineer/Scientist ideas:
  • Boost Haven Advisor bonuses: One easy choice would be to boost the Supply/Intel benefits to staffing Engineers or Scientists, respectively, as Haven Advisors. Currently the bonus is +20%... how about +33% instead? Remember, Retaliations are much rougher with an Engineer or Scientist to rescue rather than a Soldier Advisor who can lead the charge.
  • Add Laboratory slots: Staff up to 2 Engineers in the Laboratory to (1) provide material rebates to research projects, à la LW1 and (2) increase Render projects' Alloy/Elerium rewards. To reduce fiddliness, lock Engineers into these slots permanently.
  • Add Workshop slot: If you staff a Scientist in addition to Engineers in the Workshop, each unemployed Workshop Gremlin generates Supplies at a rate of 1/day.
  • Add GTS slot: Staff an Engineer in the GTS to reduce Officer training times.
  • Add AWC slots: Staff an Engineer in the AWC to (1) reduce Soldier retraining times and (2) make retraining re-randomize AWC perks. Perhaps make this a permanent slot too.
  • Add Proving Ground slots: Staff up to 2 Engineers on salvage duty in the Proving Ground. Each provides (1) a 25% chance to get a 2nd free prototype when completing a project and (2) a 25% chance of being able to salvage any alien/ADVENT corpses used (i.e., whenever you use a corpse for a Proving Ground project, you have some chance to salvage it successfully and get it back afterwards).
  • Add Shadow Chamber slots: Staff a Scientist in the Shadow Chamber to get enemy intel (e.g., "9 enemies detected: Muton Centurion, ...") on all missions. This can be useful if you really need a particular corpse or an Avatar encounter, for example.
  • Throttle Engineer as mission rewards: Throttle the number of engineers past a certain point. Make them less and less likely to find as you get more and more of them, so they stop choking out the mission rewards. (from Antifringe)
Jacke wrote:Another point is that Engineers are vital early on, but after the Avenger is cleared, they're only needed as Facility staff.
Definitely agree with this.
- The need for a better faster research strategy: more and earlier Scientists and Basic Research (which counts as a Scientist), earlier and expanded Lab, and keeping the Lab full avoiding diverting staff to the AWC and the Psi Lab, wound recovery and Psi training almost be damned.
I agree that Basic Research and Basic Engineering are a bit boring and passive right now. What if instead of effectively giving you a free Scientist/Engineer, make things more active: each iteration reduces the Black Market cost of all Scientists/Engineers by some % for the rest of the game? Renamethe projects "Improved (Scientist/Engineer) Recruitment", even.
- 1.3/1.4 Psi is fun and useful, but the cost and delay from that cost can derail a campaign. And it's hard to keep the Psi Lab staffed with Scientists when they're needed for research, to the point freeing one for the Psi Lab or the AWC really hurts.
...
And even though there's only 3 non-research staff positions, 1 in the AWC (to speed healing) and 2 in the Psi Lab (to speed training), when staffed those Scientists contribute nothing to research. And those positions will likely be available in the early and mid game respectively, when putting a Scientist in those positions will impact research.
These, I don't see as problems. Tough strategic choices are part and parcel of the design goals for LW2!
Last edited by wobuffet on Wed Jul 19, 2017 7:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
RookieAutopsy
Posts: 80
Joined: Sat May 13, 2017 9:35 am

Re: Switch AWC+Psi Staff to Engineers or Both?

Post by RookieAutopsy »

Engineers are vital early and then become useless later on in the Avenger, but you then stuff them into Liberated regions. However I still have 3 idle engineers with nothing I can do with them in my current campaign.

It would be nice if Engineers had some kind of passive effect when not assigned, like Scientists do (ie the standard research speed they add). Maybe a speed up of rendering jobs?
Exquisitor
Posts: 53
Joined: Wed May 10, 2017 4:50 pm

Re: Switch AWC+Psi Staff to Engineers or Both?

Post by Exquisitor »

Antifringe wrote:Barely related, but psionics would work better if training and infiltration could happen simultaneously.
An alternative to this would be to allow them to level up two different ways, either with tube training as in vanilla or via experience point gain as in LW2.
zechstyr
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Feb 28, 2017 5:19 pm

Re: Switch AWC+Psi Staff to Engineers or Both?

Post by zechstyr »

Regarding engineers, I'd like to see more slots open up in the Defense Matrix. Either add more turrets or start upgrading them to those bonkers Heavy Turrets you see sometimes.
Yenreb
Posts: 15
Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2017 1:16 am

Re: Switch AWC+Psi Staff to Engineers or Both?

Post by Yenreb »

What if you could assign engineers (beyond an advisor) as additional Haven personnel? Or retrain an engineer into a rookie at the GTS or AWC?

(For symmetry, in principle, you should be able to do this with a scientist too. It's a testament to their differing value that you never would.)

Also it might be nice if you could train Haven personnel into rookies and vice versa.
Steelflame
Posts: 72
Joined: Thu Jul 27, 2017 10:35 pm

Re: Switch AWC+Psi Staff to Engineers or Both?

Post by Steelflame »

Yenreb wrote:Also it might be nice if you could train Haven personnel into rookies and vice versa.
That would be so lovely at times. You know those personnel who just have godlike stats sometimes that you wish you could have...

My record was a haven personnel who had 8 base HP, 70 base aim, and 16 mobility base with a rifle.
Last edited by Steelflame on Tue Aug 01, 2017 9:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Steve-O
Posts: 124
Joined: Fri Feb 24, 2017 8:00 pm

Re: Switch AWC+Psi Staff to Engineers or Both?

Post by Steve-O »

Steelflame wrote: My record was a haven personnel who had 8 base HP, 70 base aim, and 16 f***ing mobility base with a rifle.
Careful with the language, please. This is intended to be a family-friendly forum.
Zork
Posts: 151
Joined: Wed Jul 26, 2017 3:58 pm

Re: Switch AWC+Psi Staff to Engineers or Both?

Post by Zork »

Later game you could be overloaded of engineers but during first phase you don't need that any single utility is requiring a permanent engineer.

In my smiling opinion, it's more a matter of TOC and not be able to bear not anything is at its right place, so an unoccupied engineer is a suffering. The rookies the game continue send me again and again are for me a much bigger problem, as in late phases they are are totally pointless.

Anyway if I would vote it's for having unused engineers automatically affected to the Proving Ground. As there's an infinite research improving the Proving Ground, the game certainly has already the math to manage it, one more engineer is like one more research already done.
NOT a tactical/strategy expert player, playing LW2 at Easy. Rather old so I appreciate not be bothered by excessive familiarity, I'm not your friend and will never be. Refuse to learn English well so don't attempt learn it to me, thank you. :-)
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