Infiltration vs fatigue

justdont
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Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by justdont »

Some people already discussed the ways to integrate WoTC in LW, and one popular idea seems to be "fatigue is not needed, we have infiltration". Well, I'd like to present the opposite idea here - in my opinion, it's the infiltration system that is (mostly) not needed, since fatigue system handles soldier variation problem more nicely.

Infiltration - shortcomings
1) Gamey design. In theory, infiltration should reward player for putting "just the right amount" of effort towards completing any given mission, just the number of soldiers that is enough, just the amount of equipment that's enough, and so on. In practice, it all goes wrong at the point where a player have absolutely no data about future missions. There's no "forecast" so to speak. So it starts to be gamey - either you go read the wiki in details about mission generation, and then apply some of that meta-game knowledge so in certain cases you'll be able to wait for a certain mission to pop up. But even that covers only a minority of cases. And in the rest of cases - it's never prudent (aside from certain edge cases) to take minimal amount of soldiers and equipment into the mission, as one of the most severe long-term setback in LW are wounded and dead soldiers. Mission failure is almost irrelevant compared to loss of MSGT as long as it's not Avenger defense. Secondly, missions are the only way to get XP and levels, and a GSGT sitting in your barracks "because you might be needed on an emergency" is not going to make it to MSGT any time soon.
So in my opinion, the "take only what you'll need" aspect of the infiltration system does not work in reality. Not at all. It's far more prudent to just take what you can, and then abandon infiltrations in case it's really needed.
2) Inflexibility. You can't take just one soldier from one mission and put it into a new one. You can only operate with the entire squads. Furthermore, you aren't given (see #1) any tools to improve on this aspect, all you can do is to infiltrate and then abandon in cases of emergency. It is the also good thing to do, as it doesn't particularly penalize you - apart from failed missions, of course. So the only solution here that you'll be pursuing for the most of the game - is to throw more people at the problem until problem is solved. Indeed, at some point in campaign, you'll be having enough soldiers that inflexibility of squad-based infiltration will start to go away. Simply because you have enough meat for the grinder.
3) Confusing design. It doesn't particularly matter to veteran players, but... try to explain to a new LW player in clear and concise terms why he can't do anything useful with all those multiple mission popups with <2d expiration times. "But the game shows me missions, why I'm just skipping them all?" At a glance, the infiltration system seems to be fond of providing you with mostly edge cases, and not the "real" missions. "Sure, we miiiiiiiiiiiight try that ~30% infil mission if we reeeeeeeeeeealy want, but... eh, no reason to. Next!". The game presents an overwhelming amount of missions that you'll simply never take. And it's not even a matter of choice (such as forced 1-out-of-3 choice in vanilla), you're not really "choosing" whether to do that low infil mission or not - you're simply not doing it.
I once counted, and was pretty appalled in the end - during an entire victorious LW Legend campaign I took five risky low-infil missions (and mostly towards the end of campaign where I wasn't at any great risk), out of a few hundreds presented by the game.
4) Clash with the binary mission rewards system. Well, this one is really simple, and still there even after a few balance passes. The infiltration system doesn't really work well when missions' rewards are binary "loot or no loot". The approach to low infiltration missions changes drastically if there's loot (more enemies - more loot) compared to no loot missions (more enemies - more danger to your soldiers, nothing else). Even Pavonis' own solution to the problem was just brute-forcing players in the "right" direction - less soldiers, more (and more dangerous) enemies, up to the point where risks simply outweigh rewards; and even then a really good player can manage a risky low-infil at the right point of the campaign for a truly massive economical boost, making a single mission almost a literal turning point where a campaign victory... maybe not "assured", but becomes much more close.

So, what does it have to do with WoTC fatigue?
The fatigue system (which is a very close re-implementation of fatigue from LW1) doesn't have all of the above shortcomings. It is very flexible (per-soldier granularity); it leaves you enough emergency options - you can take tired soldiers on missions, but with long-term consequences; it is much simpler to understand; and it won't naturally "clash" with binary rewards system - at best, you'll be trading long-term penalties to your soldiers for some loot right here right now.

But the entire LW2 was balanced around infiltration system!
...yeah, and that's why saying "let's remove it entirely!" is not really practical. It amounts to rebalancing the whole game.
In my opinion, however, there's an option of moving infiltration system out of primary focus. Let fatigue be the primary focus for managing soldiers, growing roster, and choosing people for the mission. Let infiltration system (with all its infil levels, and so on) stay, but only for secondary purposes.

One idea that comes to mind is to move infiltration system into the "haven management" area - let those rebels manage your infiltration efforts, let them acquire some local "infiltration resource" that will be spent to bring more people on missions and make them less "hot". Infiltration times, of course, will be completely or mostly gone in favor of fatigue. This raises the importance of havens (which, to me, still look like underdeveloped feature of LW2) and removes the burden of squad management from player/XCOM. Soldier variance will be covered by fatigue now, plus the core idea of infiltration system plays nicely together with fatigue: the hotter and longer the mission, the more fatigue drain it will incur - so low infil missions attempts will be naturally paid with more fatigue.
cryptc
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by cryptc »

Some interesting points here, especially since although I don't strictly disagree with anything specific you said, I am of the opposite opinion that infiltration is a better system than fatigue (mostly).

Fatigue - shortcomings
1) Uneven distribution. I'll admit to not having played much WotC yet, but I have been watching some streams, and have noticed that the fatigue does tend to distribute unevenly. I'm unsure if this is because some units do more actions and thus gain more fatigue (templars looked like were affected by this), or if it's just a function of units with differing Will somehow (although all vanilla units have same will, even hero units right?).

This isn't quite as big a problem in vanilla, since it's more based on bonded pairs than squads. But if we assume LW2 is keeping the squad system, then fatigue will make for a big headache when the tired timer for each soldier varies wildly.

It's been a long time since I played LW1, but I think fatigue there atleast was rather evenly distributed? and since it didn't rely on squads, it didn't matter as much there either.

2) Unclear mechanics. What exactly gives fatigue in a mission? it seems that just hitting end turn instead of overwatching would not increase fatigue as much. Does this mean it now rewards you for playing less carefully? either rushing in to quickly finish a (untimed) mission, or not overwatching when waiting for enemies to move? Either way I'm a bit worried about how this system might affect missions. Especially longer ones where your fatigue might drop all the way down to zero (like base assaults with lots of enemies and such).

3) Solder on standby. With fatigue, you'd be forced to consider leaving your best unfatigued soldiers just hanging around the base doing nothing, just in case you suddenly have to deal with a dark event with advent, lost and the chosen all on the mission.

Fatigue - advantages
1) Will stat more important? Leaving this here as a counterpoint. Since if fatigue actually manages to make Will less of a dump stat, that would be really interesting.

Infiltration - advantages
1) Strategic choices. You put inflexibility on the infiltration system shortcomings because you can't pull one soldier off a mission and put in a new one. But if we're keeping officers and squads, there's already drawbacks to doing that (not gaining squad cohesion). I also feel that infiltrations actually give a lot of strategic choices when it comes to missions.

I find myself keeping one team that is my best squad (as I assume most do). But the way I use them is that whenever they aren't doing something really important, I'll send them on the absolute lowest garbage-tier missions. Like Get Advent Attention missions where I just go kill some advent and evac without completing mission, low timers where I can check a hack and maybe kill a few Advent before escaping, or just missions with rewards I don't strictly need. Now, whenever something juicy or hard pops up I'll immediately cancel that (training) mission they were infiltrating and send them to an actually strategically important target.

2) Gear strategy. The infiltration system makes it so you have to consider how to equip your squads. While I agree that the "drop a couple of utility items to shave off a couple of hours" is menial and annoying, I do like that I find myself making soldiers that are equipping smg's (especially higher tech ones with good damage), using chameleon armor, excluding grenadiers/technicals on missions, etc to be able to do lower infiltration missions. I find the challenge of managing to make a high damage squad capable of dealing with missions while still not needing lots of infiltration time very interesting. It also means finding interesting AWC perks on soldiers can make them very useful, even perks that normally isn't that great but when you don't want to take high infiltration time soldiers they become very good.
sarge945
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by sarge945 »

In this thread I talk about a hybrid system which uses both Infiltration AND Fatigue simultaneously, as they both have major gameplay implications. How do you feel about having both?

I do agree with a lot of your points though. Fatigue seems to be a generally more fun mechanic. I still think Infiltration has it's place, as there is some skill to getting the right infiltration level and making sure you don't squander your limited gear, and it's become such an iconic part of Long War 2 (for better or worse) it would feel kind of strange to remove it.
cryptc
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by cryptc »

sarge945 wrote:In this thread I talk about a hybrid system which uses both Infiltration AND Fatigue simultaneously, as they both have major gameplay implications. How do you feel about having both?
Frankly I think that using both will give the drawbacks of both and the advantages of neither. You'd get squads back with highly variable fatigue among them, meaning basically only the highest roll matters that much.

Not saying it can't be done well, I just can't see a way that it wouldn't just be needlessly complex and having several systems just because they are there.
sarge945
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by sarge945 »

cryptc wrote:
sarge945 wrote:In this thread I talk about a hybrid system which uses both Infiltration AND Fatigue simultaneously, as they both have major gameplay implications. How do you feel about having both?
Frankly I think that using both will give the drawbacks of both and the advantages of neither. You'd get squads back with highly variable fatigue among them, meaning basically only the highest roll matters that much.

Not saying it can't be done well, I just can't see a way that it wouldn't just be needlessly complex and having several systems just because they are there.
My proposed solution gives each soldier the same amount of fatigue equal to the infiltration time (which would be half the current value). So if a mission currently has 8 days worth of infiltration to get to 100%, that would instead take 4 days, and add 4 days worth of rest to each soldier afterwards.

Maybe it could add the worst of both worlds, but I don't see that happening. It would require extensive testing. I think the Pavonis team just needs to play with some ideas and see what works
justdont
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by justdont »

cryptc wrote:...
Fatigue works on a "do actions, get fatigued" basis (as one would naturally expect). So indeed, slow OW creep will leave your soldiers much more fatigued than quick dashes & flank shots. Assuming that you're reckless just enough to not get your people killed, of course. It essentially provides the same basic risk vs reward choice as infiltration system: do risky stuff for more rewards (less downtime in this case), or do safe stuff for less rewards.

And I agree with your 3rd point, although it doesn't seem like a really big problem - same as in LW1, you can afford to sometimes keep a few vet soldiers for emergencies, at least you don't need to keep an entire squad. You "gear strategy" point is very valid as well, although it's unlikely that it'll go away from LW unless we're talking complete redesign (which won't happen at this point).

As for "strategic choices" provided by infiltration system - I can't really agree that a system where you can (and will) easily abandon lots and lots of mission attempts just because something more interesting popped up is really very "strategic". The game provides you with a huge rotating table of missions, and leaves you absolutely free to cherry-pick anything good out of it (because most options aren't even good).
cryptc
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by cryptc »

justdont wrote:
cryptc wrote:...
As for "strategic choices" provided by infiltration system - I can't really agree that a system where you can (and will) easily abandon lots and lots of mission attempts just because something more interesting popped up is really very "strategic". The game provides you with a huge rotating table of missions, and leaves you absolutely free to cherry-pick anything good out of it (because most options aren't even good).
Well, if we look at the case with using fatigue instead of infiltration. If you get a mission with an uninteresting reward, you'd always skip that to keep soldiers unfatigued for a more important mission. Doesn't that make the game more about "guessing" which mission will be the best you get this month? if the next one that pops up is even worse you'll get annoyed you didn't do the last one instead, and you'll consider skipping another mission to keep soldiers fresh.

And if you did do a less important mission, you instead have to risk sending fatigued soldiers on a more important mission.

Not saying this won't work, I'm just not seeing this as an improvement when playing the game. It gives more agency to randomness of missions and less to your choices. You can't cancel a fatigue the way you can cancel an infiltration after all.
justdont
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by justdont »

Well, as I mentioned in the first point, some kind of "mission forecast" will be great to have (even researchable and/or improvable with research). LW1 worked by meta-gaming knowledge - go read the wiki and you'll have some ideas about how many missions may happen in a month (especially early months) and what will they be. LW2 doesn't work that way - there's much more uncertainty in the whole process even though you can predict some missions using meta-game knowledge as well. So I feel that the current system can be redesigned without much structural changes to offer some advance knowledge, maybe cryptic and/or not entirely accurate. Instead of generating a mission with a fairly long timer to accommodate detection & infiltration times, the game can generate a (invisible) mission with a fairly long timer and then offer the player some information about what's going to happen. This will add some informed choices into the process of mission selection, rather than "just guess and hope" if we go by pure fatigue or "just try and abandon" if we go by pure infiltration.
cryptc
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by cryptc »

Hmm... yeah I could see that working nicely... it would be very different from how LW2 plays currently, but instant missions with forecasts of future missions could be interesting. Not sure I'd prefer it over todays system, but it does sound workable.

Hopefully whatever Pavonis decides to do they will put a lot more thought into it and make sure it's balanced and plays well :)
Psieye
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Psieye »

justdont wrote:The approach to low infiltration missions changes drastically if there's loot (more enemies - more loot) compared to no loot missions (more enemies - more danger to your soldiers, nothing else).
Disagreed: even 'no corpse' missions offer EXP and mission rewards. Intel, Facility Leads, Scientists, Liberation chains - they come in much faster if you regularly do low-infiltration missions (with minimal wounds). With 1.5 letting MSGTs share mission EXP, all the more reason to power level snipers to MSGT by June from low-infiltration missions.

The problem with a fatigue-only-no-infiltration system is that gear doesn't suffer fatigue. If you only ever have to manage 1 squad, you could conceivably get away with building e.g. just one Mag Cannon and still keep up with the tech curve on every mission. The current infiltration system is also breakable if you spam low-infiltration missions - your soldiers may rotate a lot but your gear is always ready to go. I could see a system where even gear had 'fatigue' ("maintenance needed") but I don't see how a suitable UI for that to be made with just the mod tools. I could also see a 'durability' system where gear that gets overused breaks and needs repair time to be usable again - but the UI is still the stumbling block.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
cryptc
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by cryptc »

Good point, LW1 had equipment repair to try solve that issue.
justdont
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by justdont »

Psieye wrote:Disagreed: even 'no corpse' missions offer EXP and mission rewards. Intel, Facility Leads, Scientists, Liberation chains - they come in much faster if you regularly do low-infiltration missions (with minimal wounds). With 1.5 letting MSGTs share mission EXP, all the more reason to power level snipers to MSGT by June from low-infiltration missions.
Well, yeah, and I can't really say that your statement, while entirely true, describes a "good" aspect of LW2.
It heavily depends on difficulty level, but still in every campaign there's likely a point where you start to out-tech and out-level (even if slightly) aliens, and it is this point where low-infiltration missions starts to play a bigger role. Again exactly how much is "low" depends on difficulty and the state of campaign, but generally there's a point where you can consider 70-80% infil to be not that risky. Then you start to gain more XP and more loot (from the "loot" missions), and the snowball grows. Then a 50% infil stops being that dangerous, then 30-40 ones...

Suddenly a risk vs reward system turns into a snowball launcher, because low infil naturally gives you a lot more rewards (XP, potential loot, but most importantly - less downtime, as low infil naturally suggests shorter infiltration times). So as long as you can properly manage the risks, you can continually get away with increased rewards at a faster rate, thus further increasing the gap between your power level and that of aliens, thus giving you ways to manage even greater risks, and so on.

Granted, LW2 is such a game where aliens can snowball to victory too (via uncontrolled facilities & low vigilance), but in general, snowballing isn't a very fun approach to balance - it quickly gets boring to be "even more powerful" when you already were quite powerful in the first place (similarly, it's not very fun to play the campaign knowing that avatar progress already got out of control).

PS: You couldn't really snowball over aliens in LW1 (at best only temporarily, and they were always able to close any gap), and it was a pretty good thing.
Dong101
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Dong101 »

But..but if you are out tech and out level the aliens than you almost certainly going to win the game. The only reason you not yet roll over the aliens at this point is you are delibrately delay the golden paths to play more missions. Hence I do not think this is a problem. After all one should entitled to enjoy all his/her hard work. ;)
cryptc
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by cryptc »

I think XCom2 has always been about snowballing, and it always had a "victory lap" at the end where you know you've won the game and is just going through the motions... the trick is to keep that victory lap down to max 10 missions.
Psieye
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Psieye »

justdont wrote:
Psieye wrote:Disagreed: even 'no corpse' missions offer EXP and mission rewards. Intel, Facility Leads, Scientists, Liberation chains - they come in much faster if you regularly do low-infiltration missions (with minimal wounds). With 1.5 letting MSGTs share mission EXP, all the more reason to power level snipers to MSGT by June from low-infiltration missions.
Well, yeah, and I can't really say that your statement, while entirely true, describes a "good" aspect of LW2.
Hence why I said... drat I didn't say it in this thread. It's getting confusing how many threads are spawning to discuss overlapping WotC topics. But yes, I've stated in other threads that fatigue is good for capping low-infiltration farming (because larger fights jack up the fatigue). Infiltration is good for forcing you to buy multiple copies of bleeding edge equipment.

The way I see it, the two systems should be used together - balanced such that 5-man V.Light missions aren't impacted by fatigue if you 100% infiltrate them. You can send tired troops to start infiltrating and provided they've recovered their will by the time the mission starts, they suffer no penalty. A typical V.Light GOp should give just enough fatigue to be fully recovered from by the time the next V.Light GOp infiltration is complete. Fatigue then becomes relevant for retals, HQs and low-infiltration missions (e.g. Swarming Troop Column). HQ infiltration times could be tuned down to factor in the fatigue that sets in afterwards and retal-fatigue becomes a reason to want to prevent them or have contingencies. Maybe Covert Actions could help out with countering retals if you don't want to deal with retal-fatigue.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
TheDarkZero
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by TheDarkZero »

I prefer the new fatigue mechanic over the infiltration for 3 reasons:

1. Its way more intuitive.
2. It alleviates somewhat the tedium of gear micromanaging.
3. Te most important point is how it interacts whit will and finally makes will a real stat in this game, now the extra will pcs can be used on key soldiers to allow them to got on more mission without tiring super fast, and the sectoid and priests enemies who are mostly a joke at the start of the mission wen your will is full become godly monsters easily mind controlling half your squad if they are the last pod you encounter in a large map whit lots of enemies.
dccrux
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by dccrux »

I like the fatigue mechanic fine. It worked well in LW1 and it works in WotC too.

But infiltration pulled me into LW2 in ways that the base game did not - the infiltration stuff made me feel like my squad was a guerrilla group, not a full military force. I would miss it if infiltration went away, for just this reason.

My $0.02 is to keep both - maybe kick up the starting number of rookies? Maybe reduce the times of both? Maybe halve the fatigue time for missions with infiltration? I'm not sure how the play-ability balance would work best, but the infiltration, at least for me, feels like a crucial part of my engagement with LW2.
UberWaffe
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by UberWaffe »

Using posts from this thread and this other thread I would suggest the following:

tl;dr
Either pay 'time' up front with infiltration, or suffer fatigue afterwards. User's choice.
Fatigue suffered is determined by mission type & region's advent strength, not number of actions during mission.
Infiltration level no longers affects enemy activity / numbers, is determined solely by mission type and region advent strength.

Additional feature: Allow positive SITREPS to be added by doing additional infiltration.
Start with concealment, faster Evac flare, etc. all become SITREP bonusses that requires extra infiltration.


Full description:
Thinking / Assumptions:
  • Time is like a currency in XCOM, in that you are racing the AVATAR project.
  • Infiltration is like up-front payment.
  • Up-front 'locks' in equipment in addition to soldiers.
  • Fatigue is like after-the-fact debt payment.
  • Debt is more expensive than up-front, and failing to do the time results in bad things (phobias).
  • Fatigued soldiers taken on missions results in penalties to aim and mobility, and heavy penalties to will.
  • Phobias chances to trigger panic is based on will. Lower will = higher chance
Suggestion:
Allow the user to pick whether to do a proper infiltration (well planned and prepared) for a mission to avoid suffering fatigue after a mission.
The user has to pick up front how much infiltration to do when picking the mission and planning the squad, gaining the picked benefit (start concealed, lower or no fatigue, etc.).
The mission cannot launch if it would take longer to infiltrate than there is time left.
Once the squad reaches the picked level of infiltration level the mission can be started.
Infiltration would no longer decrease enemy activity, which is purely determined by the mission type and the ADVENT strength in the region.
I would rather leave it up to the new covert actions / missions to get ADVENT troops to move around or decrease ADVENT region strength. (i.e. making missions in an region easier is a strategic effort, rather than a purely infiltration thing.)

Fatigue suffered by soldiers is not determined by number of actions taken in a mission, but determined 'up front' by what type of mission it is, ADVENT strength in the region, and mission modifiers (i.e. infiltration, SITREPs, etc.)
So all soldiers in the squad should suffer roughly the same amount of fatigue from the mission (or nearly none at all if proper infiltration was done)

Choices on infiltration would be something like...
  • Blind charge: 0% infiltration needed, no fatigue reduction, no concealment
  • Quick prep: 50% infiltration needed, small fatigue reduction, no concealment
  • Well prepared: 100% infiltration needed, decent fatigue reduction, start concealed
  • Careful preparation: 150% infiltration needed, good fatigue reduction, start concealed, reduced detection range
  • Cloak and Dagger: 200% infiltration needed, fatigue not suffered, start concealed, reduced detection range
Additional suggestion / more work feature:
This is probably a lot more work, so split out from the main idea above. But is included since I believe it will allow LW2 to cater to a wider range of play styles.
Instead of simply picking a predefined level of infiltration that gives a predefined bonusses (fatigue reduction, concealment, etc.) you get to mix and match SITREPs / bonusses and build your own 'infiltration' focus.
Each SITREP / bonus you pick has a +X% infiltration attached to it, meaning it increases the amount of % infiltration required (i.e. time) it takes before the mission can launch.
But the mission then launches with that SITREP applied for that mission.
You can never have a infiltration of more than 200%, so you can't just infinitely stack bonusses (it would make it take ridiculously long anyway).

Stealthy Examples:
  • Careful preparation: +50% infiltration. Halves fatigue suffered.
  • Well supplied: Requires careful preparation. +25% infiltration. Costs 1 supply per soldier. Eliminates fatigue.
  • Cloak and Dagger: +50% infiltration. Start concealed.
  • Contingency plans: +50% infiltration. -2 on evac timer. Can only be picked in missions where you do not have a fixed evac.
  • Jamming devices: +50% infiltration. Slows rate of advent reinforcements. Can only be picked on missions where ADVENT get infinite scaling reinforcements.
  • Diversionary tactics: +50% infiltration. Requires at least 5 haven rebels on Intel job in region. Reduces ADVENT presence in mission by 1 step. (Example: Light becomes very light)
  • Information warfare: +25% infiltration. Reveals location of a pod at start of mission. 1 Turn, small radius.
  • Plant hidden cameras: +50% infiltration. Three random locaitons on the map are permanently revealed. No time-out, 3x medium radius, random locations.
Combat Examples:
  • Rebel strike: Requires at least 6 rebels in Haven in the region. +50% infiltration. 3 random rebels from the Haven join the mission. (Risk: If one of the randomly chosen rebels is a Faceless, it will turn on you.)
  • Rebel charge: Requires Rebel strike. Requires at least 10 rebels in Haven in the region. +50% infiltration. Another 2 rebels join in the attack.
  • Movement analysis: Requires at least 5 rebels in region on intel job. Requires alien encryption technology. +25% infiltration. Squad gains +5 aim for duration of mission.
  • In depth analysis: Requires at least 7 rebels in region on intel job. Requires Movement analysis. +25% infiltration. Bonus increases to +10 aim.
  • Terrain analysis: +50% infiltration. Squad gains +10 defense while in cover for duration of mission.
So the choice is basically left up to the user how to play, allowing them to go in stealthy or guns blazing.
This also further incentivises players to willingly pick the drawback (equipment 'locked in' to a mission while infiltrating) instead of just dealing with fatigue, but still allows for quick no infiltration missions.
Icarus
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Icarus »

With fatigue I'd feel more reactive - when I need soldiers, I'd look on who is available at the time instead of planning ahead (can't really plan on how muchbI'm going to use each soldier). Infiltration, on the other hand, forces me to plan ahead, and provides me with the numbers I need to do so.

Apart from this: I'd rather not get penalized for using the soldiers I brought, thank you very much.
justdont
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by justdont »

Icarus wrote:Infiltration, on the other hand, forces me to plan ahead, and provides me with the numbers I need to do so.
Yeah, I initially thought so too. Then reality happened:
1) Most of the time I have no idea when an emergency (or a better mission opportunity) is going to hit - and it is outright not possible to have an idea, even if you study the wiki, get lots of LW experience, and so on;
2) The game freely allows you to cancel lots and lots of your infiltration attempts, you're only not getting potential rewards from a cancelled mission.
3) Most of the "planning" annoyances of infiltration system can be simply workarounded by having more (and even more) people.

And so after a while I realized that my entire "planning ahead" can be expressed in 2 sentences applicable to any LW2 campaign:
1) I need to have as many soldiers as possible as experienced as possible;
2) In any situation where an emergency is remotely likely (e.g. pretty much all the time except right after it just happened) my "emergency response team" (usually team A but not always) must be in a mission that's cancellable without a second thought.

And that's all the "planning" I need. Minutiae details such as which team goes where - don't really need any planning ahead as long as you follow #2 by sticking one good team into a mission that's not terribly important and can be freely cancelled.
Psieye
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Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Psieye »

justdont wrote: 1) I need to have as many soldiers as possible as experienced as possible;
2) In any situation where an emergency is remotely likely (e.g. pretty much all the time except right after it just happened) my "emergency response team" (usually team A but not always) must be in a mission that's cancellable without a second thought.

And that's all the "planning" I need.
3) How many regions should be on full-intel to spawn missions?
4) How many copies of bleeding edge equipment should be made?

The infiltration system brings a lot of headaches, but it brings more to the table than you give it credit for. Some of which you may not care for or 'need'.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
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justdont
Posts: 113
Joined: Wed Feb 15, 2017 2:36 pm

Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by justdont »

Psieye wrote: 3) How many regions should be on full-intel to spawn missions?
4) How many copies of bleeding edge equipment should be made?

The infiltration system brings a lot of headaches, but it brings more to the table than you give it credit for. Some of which you may not care for or 'need'.
Yeah, but it's not squad planning. Multiple equipment copies were discussed before (and there are various different approaches to that, such as breakable equipment as in LW1), and #3 is a general management problem that's only very lightly related to soldiers.

PS: Remember that I'm not advocating for infiltration removal - I think it's far too late for that, as it will require rebalancing the entire LW2. However, several specific aspects of current infiltration system can be changed in favor of different solutions (fatigue for soldiers' variety, breakable equipment to smooth equipment power level surges, etc).
Synx
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Sep 08, 2017 10:25 am

Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Synx »

I never really like Infiltration as it felt really 'forced' to get players to use multiple squats, as especially thematic wise, infiltration just doesn't make sense; You are a guerrilla warfare faction, and guerrilla warfare is all about hit and run missions. Discover an opportunity and act fast before it passes. Infiltration is exactly the opposite, and only makes some sense on the base assault missions. Fatigue on the other hand fits theme wise; Soldiers get tired from missions, make sense.

From a gameplay standpoint, but does roughly the same thing. The only part they both differentiate from each other, is how the system effects priority missions and what sacrifice you have to take. With infiltratiion you often have to cancel a mission to start the priority mission, losing the rewards of the first mission. Fatigue allows you to send a squad just coming back from a mission, to the priority mission, with the negative effect that they will require recovery for several weeks afterwards.

The one thing that Infiltration does better is equipment management. With infiltration you need to chose what equipment which squad will take with them, while with Fatigue, every squat will roughly use the same equipment, as you don't have several active squads going on a mission.

From these standpoints I think a combination of the two system would be the best, as both of them have a disadvantage solved by the other system. Fatigue proves the solution for Infiltrations priority mission issue (and what to do with Supply raid missions to a lesser extend), while Infiltration solves the lack of equipment management from the fatigue system.

My suggestion for the whole fatigue/Infiltration system, would be to use fatigue as the main one, with infiltration/preparation (The difference between those two is that preparation can be cancelled, while infiltration cannot) as a secondary system.

Fatigue; Basic system. How much fatigue depends on turns taken. Tired/fatigued soldiers have lower will, and should be more vulnerable to panics and psionic effects. After reaching a certain threshold they will become shaken, and require several weeks of rest to recover (It's WoTC fatigue system). Every missions gives fatigue.

Preparation; System for base/facility assault missions (Missions that doesn't have a timer before they disappear). This system works the same as the current LW2 infiltration system, it's just worded differently (as you aren't really infiltration the facility). Time spend preparing is considering as resting time for the soldiers participating (so you don't get double negative effects). Preperations can be cancelled, but you lose the progress and have to start over.

Infiltration; System for covert ops missions (the missions from the new factions and the resistance ring). These are a new type of missions where you work together with the new factions. Together with them you infiltrate a high value target, to acquire specific and often unique rewards. While in WoTC these missions are just done by sending soldiers on covert op missions and waiting a couple days, these infiltration missions are actual missions and need to be played. One interesting way for these missions to feel unique, is that some resistance faction soldiers join on these missions. You for example send a small squad of 4 members to a missions, and 2 reapers will join you (with random selected builds). Infiltration cannot be cancelled, and time spend infiltrating is considered rest time for soldiers participating.

This together would require you to run at least 4 squats; 2 for the normal missions and 2 smaller ones for the infiltrating missions. In reality you most likely need around 5/6 squads and an handful reserves, for the longer preparation/infiltration timers and to help with wounded/deaths.

For equipment management you will most likely need less overal equipment then in LW2, but still enough to gear at least 3 squads at the same time. The management could get increased by allowing multiple covert ops missions to run at the same time, or to give equipment durability.
Last edited by Synx on Fri Sep 08, 2017 6:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Louis Cyphre
Posts: 5
Joined: Sat Jul 23, 2016 9:46 pm

Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by Louis Cyphre »

Infiltration reducing enemy numbers is a thing I really dislike about LW2. It doesn't make sense on multiple levels.

As others have said, completely removing infiltration is very unlikely to happen because it forces you to deploy multiple squads at once, which fatigue alone can't accomplish.
So I'm hoping for slightly easier system where you know enemy numbers in advance and sending more people just increases infiltration duration. Spending intel in advance would of course reduce infiltration time.
JulianSkies
Posts: 301
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2017 12:17 am

Re: Infiltration vs fatigue

Post by JulianSkies »

Louis Cyphre wrote:Infiltration reducing enemy numbers is a thing I really dislike about LW2. It doesn't make sense on multiple levels.

As others have said, completely removing infiltration is very unlikely to happen because it forces you to deploy multiple squads at once, which fatigue alone can't accomplish.
So I'm hoping for slightly easier system where you know enemy numbers in advance and sending more people just increases infiltration duration. Spending intel in advance would of course reduce infiltration time.
Well, the way it works with Infiltration is that it's basically Fatigue but added in the other end, pre-combat rather than post-combat.
Honestly I think that if they do wish to maintain the Fatigue system then the best way is to shave off a few days from all base Infiltration times and put them as base Fatigue, this way you have your soldiers out for around the same amount of time, but split between before and after the battle with a chance of fielding tired units if something really of importance shows up.
Plus this also cuts down a bit on the Psieye-grade cheesing (not like it's easy or unfun cheese, heavens know I can't pull it off myself) as no matter how small an infiltration percentage you go for you always lose your soldiers for a minimum amount of time.
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