Hiding is useless

[The Boz]

There, I said it.
Hiding has no good effect on the game. There is no combination of events or circumstances that make Hiding an effective option towards anything.
I have had retaliations both in the form of rebel rescue and relay defense happen in regions where everyone was hiding, ADVENT strength was 4-6, and there were (I think) no Faceless (because regions have had a Soldier advisor for over a month). Hiding did not prevent these from happening.
I have had ADVENT strength increase in a region that was fully in hiding, even though I had the Avenger scanning inside it for troop columns or similar opportunities.
I even had a region get infiltrated by Faceless while fully in hiding for a month. Why was he even there?
Furthermore, not only does it not solve *any* problems, but it creates new ones by making you unable to respond to ADVENT movements, unable to produce items or progress tech, and unable to recruit soldiers or haven rebels. And all this while not preventing ANY retaliation, strength growth, or infiltration.
Why is this trap option in the game?

[Rebus]

Ha! The proverbial elephant in the room. I think you must be correct. When a Haven rolled to 5 I put all 11 guys on hiding just to see what happened, only to watch the strength steadily increase. The effect if there is one, must be too miniscule to be worth it over other options, as you suggest. Needs either some tweaking or some explanation as how it works.

[Arcalane]

I am inclined to agree. ADVENT strength was rising to 4-5 in East Africa, so I moved all of my personnel there into hiding under the impression that it might get things under control again.

It has only continued to rise since then. Now, I can attribute at least some of this to the fact that I liberated West Africa, so it makes sense that they might stage forces in the area before mounting an attack to retake the region (but then why not South Africa, the region I have had zero activity in?).

After hitting Strength 6, I have moved my personnel back into intelligence gathering and open operations so that I can hit the incoming troops/etc. and essentially get the regional strength under control. ADVENT is now willingly throwing away resources and openly allowing me to degrade its force strength in the region, further delaying its attempts to retake West Africa.

I mean I'm not complaining about getting to blow up their goons and take their stuff, but it's pretty silly.

[Rebus]

Agreed. I figure it will be something balanced out over the next few updates, which is fine as long as one is aware that it doesn't seem a good choice at present. The basic idea is a good one, adding choice but also uncertainty. I'm really enjoying LW2 - immense amount of work to put all this together. As a "story generator" about your gameplay choices/experiences it is terrific.

[The Boz]

If it ever comes back as a good idea, the Hiding needs to be made into a button, so that you can hide the haven when needed, or resume operations with previous settings intact...
Speaking of, why not turn the rebel jobs in each haven as a fixed 13 slots which you don't have to fiddle around with as you gain or lose rebels in a haven?
Like, set the job slots to a particular "priority pattern", and leave it at that. So if you have, for example, "Recruit, Recruit, Intel, Supply", and only 3 rebels, you will recruit, recruit, and intel, but supply won't be active. And that all the way to 13... the way it is right now is too fiddly.

[Pawnman]

YOu know, I actually do agree with this somewhat! I wouldn't mind one of the devs opinion on this matter on what the intended effect "hiding" is supposed to have on the game.

The way I attempted to use it in my game: In one of my regions I just got access to the Regional Network tower, but the current Advent strength in the region is 6 and I want to lower it a little bit... So I stuck all my rebel's who were on recruit and supply there to Hiding and kept a few there gathering the intel job (like 5 or so) and balanced that out with 6 guys in hiding as to not draw anymore attention. Now in conjunction with this, I'm doing as many missions as possible in neighboring regions as to try and say; "HEY ADVENT!! I'm wrecking your stuff in these regions! Come at ME BRO!!" to attempt to draw them away... But I don't know, is there like a hidden Strength multiplier for when you gain access to the Network tower or something?? Does Advent Know that I know the location of said Network tower?? Basically it's been 3 weeks sense revealing it and now Advent's strength is up to 8 there... Even though I'm doing far more activities else where in the 3 weeks. Should I wait longer to see an effect??

Which brings me to one more follow up question, what is the purpose of the "get Advent's attention" missions... like the destroy monument ("the delayed gatecrasher" I like to call it ) or the Dark VIP missions that have this in objectives?? I thought it'd be to draw Advent away from some regions, but I don't know.

[deaconivory]

Hiding is far from useless.

1) Hiding is a key tactic in mid/late game regions where you've not liberated yet and Advent is really strong. You put your rebels on hiding and it drops the advent missions in that region to almost nothing. The occasional hiding rebel can be all that you need to prevent a massive Advent retaliation.

2) If you've had an unsuccessful retaliation and are down to only a couple of rebels in a haven put 1 on recruiting and the rest of the survivors on hiding. You can rebuild without as much danger of another retaliation taking even more rebels.

3) A great strategy is to "Get Advents Attention" to a region and then immediately put everyone in that region on hiding, you've reduced the strength of the neighboring region (super helpful if you are preparing an Tower or HQ assault), and are less likely to lose your rebels to an Advent attack.

4) Putting rebels in outlying regions on hiding will allow you to focus your energy on your core regions without fear that you'll be stretched thin trying to keep a handle on Advent in every region. You can get to them later. Mixing in supplies/intel here and there will keep a trickle of resources coming in.

5) Finally, it is really helpful in core regions when you are attempting to reach the Blacksite but don't want to put up radios in every region, you can chain together regions that are mostly hiding and not have to worry too much about Advent force levels pulling your forces away from the Golden Path missions.

[The Boz]

Literally none of the things you've stated are true.
They're *stated* as true in the game. But it just is not so.

1. I can't say it *doesn't* reduce mission generation (but it appears to me it does not). It definitly makes you not *see* missions generated, thus giving you the illusion of there being fewer missions there, while actually screwing you over.

2. EVEN IF TRUE (and nothing so far makes think so), recruiting from as many as possible is much faster and safer than "buying time". You are against the clock in this game. Buying time that doesn't slow down the enemy, just makes him ignore a particular place, does not work.

3. I'm yet to see this in game. Sounds great on paper, but just does not work as advertized. Also, *NOT* hiding will stretch out ADVENT forces *MORE*.

4. What's more likely to get stretched thin, your infinite Skyranger fuel supply and picky mission selection, or ADVENT's pure Strength number?
Hint: When the ADVENT strength is low, you get to send fewer people, or even rookies, thus stretching you out even less.

5. Nothing I've seen so far makes me think this is so. If Hiding *does* have an actual effect, it is miniscule.

[Pawnman]

@Deaconivory
All of this sounds great on paper!! But it's just that it doesn't seem to be happening this way. Did you read my example?? I discovered the Network tower 3 weeks ago (campaign time of course) and the Advent strength was 6 then, Set a great deal of my guys to hiding and a few more on intel (I believe Intel's not supposed to attract attention as long as you're not doing any missions, am I wrong??) And I'm doing missions left & right in 2 neighboring regions to try and attract Advent out of the Network towers region! But the strength has gone up to 8! sense then in 3 weeks... Do I need to put more on Hiding?? right now I have 5 on intel and 6 on hiding. Should Set all to hiding?? Or will I see an effect pretty soon if I continue to do more missions in said neighboring regions??

Again, it sounds great on paper and exactly how I expect it to behave. Just isn't happening yet and 3 weeks feels like a long time at this point. I don't know, give more time?? anything you see I can do differently?? (from above example)

[Valaska]

Yeah I've had... 6/10 in New Australia hiding and force strength at a steady 8.

[JLtheking]

From what I recall on my on-and-off browsing of the code, advent allocates and diverts advent strength based on a hidden "vigilance" value in each haven. Vigilance is increased per successful mission. Some types of missions increase it more than others (especially get advent's attention missions, or of course the network tower)

Vigilance only goes away naturally on its own, and not by other means. It does not get reduced any faster by hiding.

So when you have a region with a shit ton of vigilance, advent will pour in troops into that region, regardless of whatever you do after the fact. If you generate vigilance of equal or greater magnitude in another region, only then will advent's priorities shift in any way.

What hiding does do, is prevent retaliations. Any form of activity with 4 or more rebels doing (supply/recruit/Intel), will have a chance of generating a disrupt the activity mission by advent, higher chance per rebel performing the job. This mission has a higher chance of attempting to happen the higher advent strength/vigilance is on this region.

So as Deaconivory mentioned, hiding PREVENTS these form of retaliatory missions from happening, freeing up your roster to perform other, higher priority missions. But does NOT divert advent strength away from the region. That is dictated by vigilance, and vigilance is not reduced in any other way except by time.

If you are trying to spam missions in a region whilst hoping to keep advent strength low in that region, just focus on Intel and destroy advent strength when they come in by doing troop columns. That will only increase vigilance higher and higher, and is also unsustainable, but helps with what you usually will want to do until that region is liberated.

After that though, you'll get the retaliation

[The Boz]

Any form of activity with 4 or more rebels doing (supply/recruit/Intel), will have a chance of generating a disrupt the activity mission by advent, higher chance per rebel performing the job.

So... Hiding maxes out its usefulness at limiting your rebels to only work in batches of 3? If I have 3 rebs on Recruit, 3 on Intel, and 3 on Supply, these disruption missions shouldn't appear at all?
Also, is there a delay to the mission "decision" and generation? Because I have had disruption missions such as defend the relay pop up while an entire region was hiding...

[RXTXK]

If there is a cut off at 4 does that mean that a Haven with 3 supply, 3 intel, 3 recruit is functionally equivalent to a haven with everyone hiding?

Therefore hiding is useful at the margin but not for everyone on the haven.

Wish I knew this 3 game months ago when I put everyone into hiding at when the region hit strength 8.

[mmCion]

yes and no.

Hiding can seem useless (seemed to me at the beginning) because the text implies that ADVENT strength will go down. I've had regions with ALL rebels hiding for months, and on just 1 region did it go down 1, the rest went up to 5, 6, 7, or even 8.

So then i figured out that there are many more mechanics that go into ADVENT strength.
-As time passes overall ADVENT strength increases worlwide
-ADVENT can increase strength in a region by diverting resources from other regions

Regarding Hiding, although not as useful as I wanted it to be, it CAN be useful.
-When your troops are stretched thin. When rebels are working on Intel, Recruiting, or Supply, and ADVENT strength is high enough, ADVENT will attack that action, which spawns missions (defend recruiters, defend data tap, defend supplies). IF those missions are lost, you lose that action for a while AND rebels. If you hide them, then you are free from having to go on those missions.

just an example how this game has so many layers and mechanics that are under the hood....that makes me look forward to a finished Wiki

[Pawnman]

From what I recall on my on-and-off browsing of the code, advent allocates and diverts advent strength based on a hidden "vigilance" value in each haven. Vigilance is increased per successful mission. Some types of missions increase it more than others (especially get advent's attention missions, or of course the network tower)

Vigilance only goes away naturally on its own, and not by other means. It does not get reduced any faster by hiding.

So when you have a region with a shit ton of vigilance, advent will pour in troops into that region, regardless of whatever you do after the fact. If you generate vigilance of equal or greater magnitude in another region, only then will advent's priorities shift in any way.

Ok, That makes a lot of sense! Thank you for the thorough explanation. Damn! Guess that means I need to find a couple of troop columns / supple raid missions if I want an easier network tower mission / HQ.

One little question, when you say "Vigilance only goes away naturally on its own" do you mean to say that I could theoretically wait and not do any missions in my network tower region and start doing missions in neighboring regions and eventually Advent will start to divert it's strength elsewhere?? (If you've read my above post, I've waited 3 weeks already and strngth has only gone up) I say "theoretically" because I probably won't, I really want a 2nd region liberated so I can get more supplies. Welp! Advent strength:8 network tower... Let's see what you've got?? *gulps*

because the text implies that ADVENT strength will go down.

Yea, that's how I interpreted the archives tutorial text as well. But, now I know

[JLtheking]

Any form of activity with 4 or more rebels doing (supply/recruit/Intel), will have a chance of generating a disrupt the activity mission by advent, higher chance per rebel performing the job.

So... Hiding maxes out its usefulness at limiting your rebels to only work in batches of 3? If I have 3 rebs on Recruit, 3 on Intel, and 3 on Supply, these disruption missions shouldn't appear at all?
Also, is there a delay to the mission "decision" and generation? Because I have had disruption missions such as defend the relay pop up while an entire region was hiding...

I saw the number '4' when browsing through the config files for this particular function. I believe it was the variable dictating minimum number of rebels on a particular job needed in order to roll the chance for a possible disruption mission. So yes, if you wish to avoid, keep it at max 3. And higher numbers do increase the chance that a disruption spawns, so there is still granularity in this decision.

Regarding Hiding, although not as useful as I wanted it to be, it CAN be useful.
-When your troops are stretched thin. When rebels are working on Intel, Recruiting, or Supply, and ADVENT strength is high enough, ADVENT will attack that action, which spawns missions (defend recruiters, defend data tap, defend supplies). IF those missions are lost, you lose that action for a while AND rebels. If you hide them, then you are free from having to go on those missions.

This is exactly what I was talking about. 'Hiding' is essentially not doing things that could provoke a disruption/retaliation from advent. Remember that vigilance increases per successful mission you do. So by hiding, you let the vigilance go down naturally in a hot region. Advent will move out if and only if the vigilance in some other region is greater than the vigilance is in the region it is currently in. So you need a combination of vigilance generating missions in some other region, combined with hiding in the currently hot region, to get the desired effect of getting the advent strength down.

Advent strength also increases globally at regular intervals, so letting advent move around the map allows you to generate troop column missions which lets you destroy advent strength, keeping mission difficulties down.

Be warned though, that making a region with a LOT of vigilance will generate a "superemergency" UFO to increase advent force level and strength in the particular region. Even though, if I'm not wrong, you can detect and counter this, you still want to avoid this as they'll just keep coming unless you reduce the region vigilance, so the optimal strategy is to force Advent to literally move around the map by generating noise in different regions, one at a time and always in different regions, to give the previous one the opportunity to cool off (hiding helps to reduce disruption missions here).

[JLtheking]

One little question, when you say "Vigilance only goes away naturally on its own" do you mean to say that I could theoretically wait and not do any missions in my network tower region and start doing missions in neighboring regions and eventually Advent will start to divert it's strength elsewhere?? (If you've read my above post, I've waited 3 weeks already and strngth has only gone up) I say "theoretically" because I probably won't, I really want a 2nd region liberated so I can get more supplies. Welp! Advent strength:8 network tower... Let's see what you've got?? *gulps*

I just made a post that you should definitely read as it explains a little more as to what you are asking.

The reason why even though you set all your rebels to hiding in that hot region, and doing missions elsewhere, that advent strength is still skyrocketing, is because the vigilance is already super high (because of the network tower mission, I presume). Vigilance takes a damn long to go down IIRC. For example, if this region has like a vigilance of 15, but your other regions only have a vigilance of 2-4, the entire world's worth of Advent is still going to be pouring into the vigilance 15 region, on and on and on until maybe that region's vigilance naturally goes down to about 8 and you made a lot of noise in another region until about 10. Only THEN will advent strength leave that vigilance 8 region, into the vigilance 10 region. The greater the difference, the faster troops are pulled out, IIRC.

I guess the biggest distinction between what most players think is happening and what really is happening is the inclusion of this hidden "vigilance" stat that every region has. Generating Advent's attention does not automatically force troops out of one region into another. It only increases that region's vigilance. Advent's troop distribution and moving around is then based on that vigilance level.

Also, you do not detect troop columns automatically. Troop columns / supply raids happen only when advent strength is being transferred from one region to another. So my guess is that in your campaign, when you set all your rebels to 'hiding' after completing the network tower, was a terrible idea. If you had set all your rebels to 'intel' instead, you would have been able to detect the advent strength storming in as troop columns and had the opportunity to destroy them, temporarily keeping the advent strength in that region low as much as possible until you finished infiltrating the advent HQ mission. Oh well Of course, you can always just do what I said and draw advent out of it.

I would like to say that all of my advice here regarding this topic has been guesswork. I'm not a dev but I am extrapolating this reasoning out based on the vague hints and strategic advice the Legend testers have posted (and they do it in a layman fashion whereas i am approaching using a technical one), with what I can see from a quick glance a week ago at the config/source files. I may be wrong, but it should be good advice.

[BookofAeons]

For example, if this region has like a vigilance of 15, but your other regions only have a vigilance of 2-4, the entire world's worth of Advent is still going to be pouring into the vigilance 15 region, on and on and on until maybe that region's vigilance naturally goes down to about 8 and you made a lot of noise in another region until about 10. Only THEN will advent strength leave that vigilance 8 region, into the vigilance 10 region.

How certain are you of this? When it was explained to me, I got the impression if regional vigilance was higher than the current strength, Advent would reinforce that region until strength and vigilance were equal. If strength was greater than vigilance, they would happily pull the excess out if there was a deficit nearby.

[JLtheking]

That may be how it works, I was just making a logical deduction based on what I saw. It's how I would have done it.

If that is the case, then it means causing distractions makes even less of an impact as advent will not pull troops out faster than you lose vigilance.

[xwynns]

If there is a cut off at 4 does that mean that a Haven with 3 supply, 3 intel, 3 recruit is functionally equivalent to a haven with everyone hiding?

No, because there are two classes of retaliation. The first is mini retals based on having too many working one job, the next is full haven retals based on having too many working any jobs. I think the minimums are 4 and 6 respectively (I could be wrong) but those minimums go down with more faceless in the region.

This also means that immediately after a retal+mini retal you could go very loud for a couple weeks without fear, but then advent would be right back on your trail.

[3dahs]

Do Haven advisors build advent strength or build vigilance?

What if everyone else is in hiding? Will Advisors still be building advent strength or building vigilance? So if I'm trying to keep a low profile should I also remove the advisor if everyone is in hiding?

Will Advisors still be looking for spies if everyone is in hiding? If they are able to find spies, is intel tied into them finding the mission to kill the spies?

[JLtheking]

Do Haven advisors build advent strength or build vigilance?

What if everyone else is in hiding? Will Advisors still be building advent strength or building vigilance? So if I'm trying to keep a low profile should I also remove the advisor if everyone is in hiding?

Will Advisors still be looking for spies if everyone is in hiding? If they are able to find spies, is intel tied into them finding the mission to kill the spies?

Advisors do not contribute or have anything to do with advent strength and/or vigilance, to my knowledge. Yes, I think they still discover faceless irregardless of what your rebels are doing. Basically,

More missions => more vigilance
More vigilance => more advent strength
More advent strength => harder missions.

Vigilance is interesting because it introduces a time lag between when you generate it during missions and when advent will reinforce the region. It also allows you to predictably gather Intel to counter them if you want to. Great job by PI on this idea.

[nightwyrm]

So my question about the whole "stay quiet in high AS regions, make noise in other regions to draw attention" strategy this: Won't Advent just draw legions from non-contacted regions?

Say I want to reduce AS in South Africa and do a bunch of "get attention" missions in Brazil. Does the increase in AS in Brazil come mainly from my contacted regions or from non-contacted neighboring regions in Mexico or North America. Coz it seems really pointless to do those missions if all it does is increase my AS in Brazil but does nothing to reduce AS in my other contacted regions.

[Sporadix]

The addition of Tactical Dark Events throws another wrench into all of this. I have no idea how the strategic AI works, but it seems to like spamming these in their highest strength regions (with some in regions you haven't contacted). Letting Advent pile these up is probably a very easy way to lose a campaign, so it's hard to justify hiding rebels in hot regions when you NEED to detect them and stop them from happening.

[Doglywolf]

I guess it time for someone to make a Mod to "Show Vigilance" that would help understand things so much better and also help decide if we should do missions in a certain region or not. Give us the option to weigh our choices because im SOOOO boned right now.

Im about to do the blacksite mission , the gatemission and an "advent facility mission" that all happened to spawn in the same region which is now force 9.