How many intel havens/cherry-picking mission strategy?

[Icarus]

I tend to put just as many havens on intel that I can field almost every mission they throw at me, with preference to running intel on 4+ strength havens for noticing retaliations. The rest of the havens get recruit (if not fully staffed) or supplies (if fully staffed). Because i find the idea of using intel job to find missions and then not running them kind of wasteful.

But on the other hand I could run more intel havens and then cherry-pick the nice missions out, like jailbreaks or finding certain leads etc. This would also run a higher chance to finding the dark event locations.

So, what do you people do/think? How do you run intel, and how do you pick missions depending on that strategy?

[burns]

Run Intel everywhere. No need for the recruit job because I find jail breaks. No need for supply job because I detect a sufficient amount of ambushes and supply raids.
A lot of missions pass by but I try to run as many missions as somewhat possible in the first months. Therefore I can never have enough Intel.
From the very start I scan for missions until every soldier is infiltrating, then in between the chain missions I expand. New regions will be fully set to Intel. Wait for jail breaks and everything very light or below. Intel surplus is used to boost missions with the most important reward or if I want soldiers back for more missions sooner.

[Icarus]

Huh. Maybe switch to recruit for a month on new regions after I got a jailbreak and free the VIP? Because those missions will be on cooldown.

Jailbreak is a nice boost, but not getting it on a new intel region is kinda painful. I had a 4 rebel intel haven staying at 4 people for 2 months, and once I had to move the Avenger away from the region there wasn't anything coming out of it anymore. Is this really viable despite the risks?

[Tuhalu]

I really don't think going "full intel" with just 4 guys in a region is a very good strategy in all cases. It's good if you have 3 active regions or less. In additional regions, or regions where advent strength has gone too high to achieve good results in missions, you should put up to 5 rebels on recruit (avoiding recruit retaliations) and any extra can go towards Intel. In that way, you can generate a good group of rebels without trying to spread your soldiers into every jailbreak on the map.

It's probably worth noting that there are modifiers that make low Intel seem better than it really is in the early game. At very low force levels, you actually get a flat percentage increase to your chance to detect any mission. This modifier goes away after about the first month on all but Rookie difficulty though.

[Icarus]

I guess 4 guys would be okay as long as the Avenger is helping. But I digressed, sorry. This thread was supposed to be about how much sense it makes to put more havens on intel than you can do missions for, in order to cherry pick the most interesting missions.

[chrisb]

There's lots of general advice about what to do or how, but the reality is it comes down to understanding your situation and knowing what configurations bring the most value at the time. Going all intel all the time works ok, but there are many situations where it is not optimal. I think the most obvious is when the region has four or fewer rebels in it. Even with the avenger scanning it's not going to produce great missions that you'll be able to infiltrate with a reasonable time.

For a new region with low strength, I typically go flat recruit for a month with a soldier that is high rank. There's some math to work out here to min-max a bit but overall anything SGT+ will suffice. Your also hoping to weed out faceless so the officer ranks can help here as well. Once I get to 7-8 and I have the avenger free, I'll send it to scan and add a scientist. Fish for jailbreaks to get more rebels, once the mission hits, go straight back to recruit and put the soldier back in. Once the mission is done, let the recruiting get it up to 11-12. No need to go all the way to 13 as you'll probably get another jailbreak after the cooldown anyway.

Outside of the first 3 havens, this is my general strategy. But I don't follow it religiously. There's plenty of reasons to want to go intel earlier. Strength can be a big factor. You may need to lay low in a region and try to pull strength away. You can at least fish for jailbreaks every 3ish weeks if you can keep vigilance down.

[LordYanaek]

Another benefit of running recruit for at least a few weeks in a new region is that it will allow the (unknown and random) vigilance generated by the Repression activity to cool down.

That activity simulates fights between ADVENT and the Resistance and will randomly add or remove vigilance, alert (strength) and rebels. Thus there is no way to know exactly what level of vigilance a new region has but since it's unlikely to be higher than 3-4 (maybe late in the campaign if the RNG acted funny) recruiting for one month almost guarantees you're down to 1 again since vigilance decays at a rate of 1/week. This way once you start actually doing missions you'll have more time to get "interesting" missions like Jailbreaks and VIP rescue.

[Icarus]

Huh, okay. Now I'm a little torn between trying to farm a Jailbreak/VIP first (assuming I have reason to believe the current vigilance is valid for that) or going straight to recruiting. The reason I'm still thinking about the first way is that, recruiting afterwards, Jailbreak/VIP can cooldown along with dissipating the vigilance. The recruitment period would do double duty.

[Antifringe]

It depends on the overall situation. If you already have several active regions and are getting plenty of missions, definitely go all recruit. As both you and LordYanaek have noted, this gives time for vigilance to cook off on the new region, which unlocks some of the more lucrative missions.

If your barracks still aren't being saturated with missions, the decision is more complex. 2-4 rebels won't be enough to get good missions reliably, but it will get at least some good stuff if it's also being supported by the Avenger. It comes down to just how available your Avenger is and how badly you need more missions.

[Icarus]

Alright, thanks.

Does anyone know how many intel personnel I would require to reliably spot Dark Events happening in the region (and super reinforcement UFOs, if that's feasable)? Because that seems like something worthwhile to be on the lookout for.

[stefan3iii]

You should have as many rebels on intel as missions your roster can handle. Priority should go to 4+ strength regions to detect Ambush Troop Column missions. For the first 2 months at least you'll probably be 100% intel in all 3 regions.

If all your soldiers/equipment is exhausted all the time, and you're skipping missions, then consider reducing intel. On the other hand if you have soldiers idling all the time, then you need more intel.

For supply/recruit, it's up to you. Usually early game the immediate supplies are more beneficial than a long term pay off with recruit. Around mid game you'll probably have a couple of really high strength regions (ie your starting regions) with 13 rebels in them. I usually switch those to supply, and then recruit elsewhere so I can later generate good missions in other regions when needed.

Also note, don't switch anything to supply until you can significantly overcome the building maintenance costs. Having like 6 rebels on supply is pointless, because the supplies will just be lost anyways.