Pavonis Interactive Forums

So there's the Enemy Activity from Extremely Light to Swarming, and then there's Readiness from Vulnerable to Fortified.

In the archives, both values are described as reflecting the number of enemies you will face, but there's no information regarding how these two values differ in their affect on the number of enemies faced. I've noticed that often when I'm right at 100% infiltration Enemy Activity has dropped to the baseline or best value but the enemy Readiness is listed as Normal. If I let it get a few more percent this drops to Vulnerable, so that's what I've been trying to achieve before launching a mission. But how do these two differ, what does it mean?

I checked the wiki too and couldn't find anything about Readiness.

Readiness is just Infiltration percentage written out. If you have less than 100% you will face more enemies. If you have more (125%, 150%, and 200% are the intended break points) you will face less. The only thing that actually matters is the reported force level on the left.

Higher infiltration percentages will however reduce the evac delay and reduce enemy detection range.

In other words: readiness is essentially meaningless/redundant, since it's entirely derived from the infiltration %. If you know the infiltration %, you know everything you need to about enemy strength. They could remove readiness from the description and you would lose 0 information.

The problem is us mortals don't have the exact values/formulas for enemy pod size (infiltration schedule), and there is also another interaction with advent strength level which we don't have the exact values/formulas for. Furthermore it depends on the type of mission (i.e. headquarter missions ALWAYS have at least two 8 man pods, but this is clearly not true of other mission types) It would be great if someone could code dig those out. And they are adding/changing the infiltration schedule in 1.1 anways so even if you knew what it was now you'd have to learn it again in 1.1

Then why do the Enemy Activity displays and the Readiness displays change at different times? As I noted above at 100% infiltration Readiness is almost never showing Vulnerable yet.

If these are displaying the same value, which one is correct and which is mistaken?

dodger wrote:Then why do the Enemy Activity displays and the Readiness displays change at different times? As I noted above at 100% infiltration Readiness is almost never showing Vulnerable yet.

If these are displaying the same value, which one is correct and which is mistaken?

Readiness level is purely a function of what infiltration you're at. Every time you hit 100% infiltration readiness will always read normal, this tells you nothing about troop number/strength.

Enemy activity is a better gauge of how many troops you will see, because it incorporates mission type, infiltration, and advent strength. For instance a HQ mission will always read swarming, which is accurate cuz ur gonna say 40+ troops, but readiness is worthless because it will simply say normal if you're at 100% and vulnerable at 200%.

If you're at 100% infiltration and it says very light, this is very different than 100% infiltration with swarming. However again, if you're at 100% infiltration you will always see "normal" readiness.

If you want a very detailed answer, the enemy troop counts change at every 10% infiltration up to 100%, then every 25% after that (patch 1.1 will add even more breakpoints to make this harder to figure out). But "readiness" only changes at certain breakpoints I don't know what it is, but it's certianly not every 10% infiltration. Thus it's possible when you change infiltratino by 10% to see enemy activity change, but not readiness.

tldr: readiness is useless, and if it were deleted from the display you would still have all the information you need to know

Readiness is *not* useless. Infiltration breakpoints are fuzzy; you can get the benefits of the next infiltration level at any point prior to the hard breakpoints everyone is passing around. A change in readiness indicates precisely when the benefits kick in.

The thing to remember is that the "Current Activity" is the final word as far as the number of enemies on the mission. Advent strength in the region, the type of mission, and the readiness level (which is a number behind the scenes that's converted to a word) all contribute to determining what that Current Activity will be when you launch.