Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

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admo
Posts: 39
Joined: Fri Jan 20, 2017 11:46 pm

Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

Post by admo »

Currently you find Advent spies by assigning a soldier liaison. You can only determine you have a spy problem by noticing an unknown cause of supply loss on the monthly report. How do people figure out which region the spy is in? As it seems now the only way to determine a region is 100% devoid of spies is to:
  • Stop recruiting resistance personnel.
  • Stop contacting new regions.
  • Sus out all the spies, which could take many months!
  • Confirm no more spies exist on the monthly report
What this ends up meaning is I can only use engineers and scientists once I've gone through that procedure. This process seems untenable without some luck.
trihero
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Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 7:01 am

Re: Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

Post by trihero »

I agree, I think ultimately the only correct choice is to station a soldier adviser indefinitely. Otherwise it's too hard to keep track of (you'd really have to have some paper and pencil or spreadsheet system and check it outside the game often).

I stationed an officer soldier in my original haven since the first month, and 9 months later I am still finding faceless there!

But I think in the end, you really should just always station a soldier in all havens for all times because of:

1) possible retaliation missions. You don't want your pants down when these occur, and there's no real way of knowing when one might come, even in liberated regions

2) finding faceless missions is actually a good thing. They are fairly easy (it seems to me there are 2 or 3 pods, they don't seem to increase in strength over time or at least do so very very slowly which is good because a newly contacted region with 4 recruits and 1 soldier isn't going to have a good time hunting them) and give you corpses.

3) you don't want to stop recruiting. You want to max out haven pop to get the most of it, and you might even want extras to cushion losses, and you want more recruits in your pool. Since you don't want to stop recruiting, you have to put up with the possibility of faceless, but like point 2) suggests, this is not a bad thing as long as you have an officer to pop the missions.

4) soldier advisers passively recruit, which helps 3), and also naturally protects against incoming faceless recruits. The system feeds into itself.

The game gives you many options which you will never use (like rendering corpses, or using scientist/engineer advisers, attacking at 0% infiltration), it takes some testing to find out stuff you should never do.

Just remind yourself to equip the haven soldier appropriately and update from time to time; they have to be unassigned from the haven in order to give them new equipment which is essentially instantaneous but don't forget to do so before a mission occurs.
admo
Posts: 39
Joined: Fri Jan 20, 2017 11:46 pm

Re: Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

Post by admo »

It seems like the best way to earn supplies would be to eliminate the faceless, they are costing me 50 each! But then I realized I'm already doing everything I can to eliminate them. I don't believe any of the missions reward supplies so my only way to build buildings and use the black market is paying the faceless tax, clearing the rooms with engineers isn't returning enough for me to start construction.
GavinRuneblade
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Re: Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

Post by GavinRuneblade »

There are missions that award supplies, but they require a bunch of guys on intel to spot.

I've been told to sell corpses, weapon mods and pcs in the black market too. I don't get a lot of any of those, but I get some.
admo
Posts: 39
Joined: Fri Jan 20, 2017 11:46 pm

Re: Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

Post by admo »

GavinRuneblade wrote:There are missions that award supplies, but they require a bunch of guys on intel to spot.

I've been told to sell corpses, weapon mods and pcs in the black market too. I don't get a lot of any of those, but I get some.
Selling corpses and not rending them seems like a bad idea. Upcoming patch notes say they are converting the faceless to sabotage a % of supplies earned instead of a flat 50. Should help a bunch in the early game until I can rank up a liaison.
trihero
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Re: Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

Post by trihero »

Is rendering worth it? 3 days to render 1 corpse. If you get 2 alloys out of it, that's $4 from the black market if you sell the alloys (and $5 if you sell the corpse directly...). Unless you need the actual mats themselves I don't get rendering, too slow for inefficient money.
Crushing Doom
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Re: Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

Post by Crushing Doom »

trihero wrote:Is rendering worth it? 3 days to render 1 corpse. If you get 2 alloys out of it, that's $4 from the black market if you sell the alloys (and $5 if you sell the corpse directly...). Unless you need the actual mats themselves I don't get rendering, too slow for inefficient money.
Render only takes 1 day once you have a few scientist.

I don't think it's supposed to be 'efficient'. It's there for getting resources that rng has prevented you from getting. Extremely useful for researching/building things at choice times.
LeaderEnemyBoss
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Re: Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

Post by LeaderEnemyBoss »

I think rendering corpses is for when you need just that little bit of extra alloy to finally start your laser weapons research (happened to me).
Jesterofgames7732
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Re: Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

Post by Jesterofgames7732 »

trihero wrote:Is rendering worth it? 3 days to render 1 corpse. If you get 2 alloys out of it, that's $4 from the black market if you sell the alloys (and $5 if you sell the corpse directly...). Unless you need the actual mats themselves I don't get rendering, too slow for inefficient money.
rendering corpses doesn't seem to be for money but for resources
it seems to be an alternate way to get alloy's and elerium

but if you want to sell what you render you could alway's farm faceless corpses from a ton of faceless infiltration missions and render those

2 elerium core's every time you render them that's 40 supply's as opposed to the 8 supplys you would get for sealing them
mattprice516
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

Post by mattprice516 »

Once I liberate a region and Recruit up to 13 rebels I generally station an engineer. If I see losses, put a soldier there for a month and repeat.

Scientist advisers are for your super active regions where you're looking for liberation missions (which are very hard to find) or just lots of regular missions with good time remaining (like supple raids and the like).

You cannot render for profit unless something is in demand. Cores sell for ~20 and render for 8x2=16. Corpses sell for 5 or more and render for less than that.

If you're on a month with alloys or elerium in demand though you can render for profit a bit. My labs generally have better things to be doing though.
jztemple
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Re: Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

Post by jztemple »

mattprice516 wrote:Once I liberate a region and Recruit up to 13 rebels I generally station an engineer. If I see losses, put a soldier there for a month and repeat.
Is there any pop-up notification of losses or do you just have to keep a list of numbers of recruits per region?
mattprice516
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

Post by mattprice516 »

Sorry, I meant losses of supplies at the end of the month. Rebels won't die.. without you knowing about it and having a chance to stop it, at least.
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Devon_v
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Re: Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

Post by Devon_v »

For what its worth, every time you root out a Faceless, there's a chance the new guy you recruit to fill the slot in the haven will be a Faceless. It's hard to be certain that there aren't any.
trihero
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Re: Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

Post by trihero »

^ what he said

Both the easiest and best strategy is to always station an officer soldier in a haven

#1 reason has nothing to do with faceless, it has to do with retaliation missions, the soldier will show up to help on that when those occur (and you have no advance warning except hunches based on advent strength level). You might think you're clever with your engineer on 13 rebel liberated regions then whoops retalation and mannn I wish I had that extra soldier to help defend against this retarded attack.

#2 is faceless missions are GOOD for you. Not only do they combat the curse of the faceless thieves, but the mission itself rewards you corpses and loot and is pretty darn easy even as time goes on. Combat curse + gain loot? Why the hell not.
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Devon_v
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Re: Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

Post by Devon_v »

trihero wrote:#1 reason has nothing to do with faceless, it has to do with retaliation missions, the soldier will show up to help on that when those occur (and you have no advance warning except hunches based on advent strength level). You might think you're clever with your engineer on 13 rebel liberated regions then whoops retalation and mannn I wish I had that extra soldier to help defend against this retarded attack.
Pretty sure it's possible to see retaliations coming, but you need a lot of intel and a little luck. I believe you can hit them before they hit the haven, but the infiltration times are REALLY short.
jztemple
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Re: Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

Post by jztemple »

trihero wrote:#2 is faceless missions are GOOD for you. Not only do they combat the curse of the faceless thieves, but the mission itself rewards you corpses and loot and is pretty darn easy even as time goes on. Combat curse + gain loot? Why the hell not.
Just for folks who haven't experienced it, in my "fighting the Faceless Infiltrator" missions where my soldiers is joined by rebel recruits, my rebels couldn't pick up loot. Only my soldier could. I guess because they aren't going back to the ship?
mattprice516
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

Post by mattprice516 »

jztemple wrote:
trihero wrote:#2 is faceless missions are GOOD for you. Not only do they combat the curse of the faceless thieves, but the mission itself rewards you corpses and loot and is pretty darn easy even as time goes on. Combat curse + gain loot? Why the hell not.
Just for folks who haven't experienced it, in my "fighting the Faceless Infiltrator" missions where my soldiers is joined by rebel recruits, my rebels couldn't pick up loot. Only my soldier could. I guess because they aren't going back to the ship?
That'll be fixed in patch 1.1.
jztemple
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Joined: Sat Jan 21, 2017 3:13 am

Re: Strategies for determining which regions contain spies

Post by jztemple »

mattprice516 wrote:
jztemple wrote:
trihero wrote:#2 is faceless missions are GOOD for you. Not only do they combat the curse of the faceless thieves, but the mission itself rewards you corpses and loot and is pretty darn easy even as time goes on. Combat curse + gain loot? Why the hell not.
Just for folks who haven't experienced it, in my "fighting the Faceless Infiltrator" missions where my soldiers is joined by rebel recruits, my rebels couldn't pick up loot. Only my soldier could. I guess because they aren't going back to the ship?
That'll be fixed in patch 1.1.
Great, it is making me not want to send sharpshooters as advisors because they can't reach the loot in time.
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