Farming troop columns?(rants included)

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chaosxxxxx
Posts: 35
Joined: Tue Jul 12, 2016 7:13 pm

Farming troop columns?(rants included)

Post by chaosxxxxx »

TL:DR version:How can you force spawn/farm troop column in lw2?

After comfortably finishing a veteran campaign,i decided it would be a good idea to put on my big boy pants,and start a commander campaign.
However,things were very very grim... :oops:
i starved for supplies continuously for months,and managed to get 1 troop column and 1 supply raid before august.
That's right,2 enemy material missions in 5 months(excluding smash and grabs)...
As a result i had 2 mag rifles,3 laser rifles,3 laser cannons,1 laser shotgun and 2 laser snipers at late july,and not even a single muton/mec/stun lancer corpse/fire grenade.
Yes,you will inevitably ask,why i did not do any liberation missions.
Thing is,in this 5 months, not a single lib 2 spawned with more than 96 hours of infil. time(all rebels on intel), in any freaking region.
So,even with boosting,progressing through that path was not an option for me.
Almost 60% of every mission i did was gop missions;some smash and grabs,and only 3 rescue rebel mission,which granted me a whopping 4 rebels in total in 6 regions+a fuck ton of useless rookies.
So,obviously when i finally found a 4 days supply raid,i jumped at it,boosted it,took my best squad of ssgts with the best gear i could sum up,and faced 3 pods(2 pods of 8,1 pod of 6) consisting of multiple berserkers,centurions and m2 mecs; and i knew my campaign was over.No amount of save scumming was gonna save me this time.
So,i started again,this time boosted both lib2 and 3,unlocked network tower,and will attack it+hq in 5 more days with all laser weps(its mid april btw).
However,as vigilance in the region inevitably spiked i thought it would be a good idea to put a scientist as a brief adviser on temporary duty to detect forthcoming troop columns. Things did not work out that way.i did get a supply raid with a whopping 12 hours infil time,which boosted strength from 3 to 4.
So, questions...
1. Is it likely that a troop column will spawn any time soon?Should i remove my scientist?(i am aware that it is extremely ill advised early game,i will remove him very soon anyway)
I think i read somewhere that troop columns require a min strength of 4.

Some additional info for you.
current region is str:4,alert:7
adjacent regions have strength 1 and 2
the str 1 region is alert 5(just did a get attention mission there)
2. will troop columns only spawn when troops are moved from a high strnegth region to a low strength region(like from str 8 to str 3)? OR can it happen either way?

TIA...
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WanWhiteWolf
Posts: 138
Joined: Tue May 16, 2017 10:09 pm

Re: Farming troop columns?(rants included)

Post by WanWhiteWolf »

Troop columns require STR 4.

On supply raid you remove STR from the the incomming region (and prevent the STR on the region you detect it).Troop column removes the STR in the region it is detected.

Usually I scan for them on STR 4-STR5 region with 8+ rebels. Above STR 6 I prefer to go on supply since mini retal on intel is more painfull than mini retal on supply and above STR6 you want to avoid missions anyway.

You don't really need troop columns. I mean ...if you do 2 in a campaign should be enough.I think most people on legend don't do any supply raids at all. The fact that you pay intel for some corpses is a bad tradeoff - and that is ignoring the mission difficulty.

Besides a few trooper corpses you don't need anything else before August. You "shouldn't" spend time on any of the Autopsies anyway. So why bother acquiring corpses? Smash and Grab, loot and HQ is your main income the first 6 months. That's all you need to equip weapons and a few armors.
Psieye
Posts: 829
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:27 am

Re: Farming troop columns?(rants included)

Post by Psieye »

chaosxxxxx wrote: Thing is,in this 5 months, not a single lib 2 spawned with more than 96 hours of infil. time(all rebels on intel), in any freaking region.
So,even with boosting,progressing through that path was not an option for me.
See my AAR thread. I know I'm unorthodox but I consider 2 days to be plenty time for Lib 2 in May/June if I've built up my barracks to do 8-man GOps. If I don't make bad mistakes, I don't even take wounds while underinfiltrating. It's also why I was confused with people having trouble with facility leads - the missions awarding them cannot be detected with a large time remaining.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
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8wayz
Posts: 340
Joined: Sat Jan 16, 2016 3:59 pm

Re: Farming troop columns?(rants included)

Post by 8wayz »

The next troop column will be at least after 14 days of in-game time. By then you should have liberated the region, so just remove the scientist.

Research is so crucial in the early game that I do not think you will ever need to put a scientist in a region.

Remember that a region can be reinforced via a UFO landing, which are a lot harder to detect. So even if the adjacent regions are low strength the region can and it will be reinforced.

As pointed out, troop columns and supply raids are nice but you really do not need to do them. Once you finish Lib 3 you should be ready to liberate a region within 2 weeks (5-7 days infiltration for Lib 4 and 7-8 days boosted infiltration for LIB 5 with 8 soldiers).

Once the Network tower has been discovered Advent starts to heavily reinforce the region. Yet, when you liberate it they lose 5 strength and the rest gets redistributed to the neighbouring regions.

So in essence, if you can liberate the region in two weeks, you will drop global Advent strength a lot faster than doing troop columns or supply raids.
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