One of the things that I understand the least (and from reading these forums that I think is generally understood the least) is the strategy level "board game" with Advent gaining and moving around strength which in turn makes missions harder or enable retaliations and such and the player trying to reduce or draw the strength to other regions. I was wondering if someone with a good understanding of these mechanics would mind explaining how they work, and how they play out throughout the game? I think this would be a valuable addition to the forum, possibly something for Long War 201 since the is an important area of the game that that people would benefit from understanding.
Thanks.
Strategy Level "Board Game"
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
Agreed. A full understanding of the mechanics behind it would be nice. Like how to reduce advent strength in a region. My starting region is at strength 10 at the moment so I skipped it's regional HQ in fear and focused on a newer region. But if I could reduce the strength there I would certainly make an effort to return and liberate it sooner.
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
The Ambush ADVENT Troop Column mission is the only way to reduce ADVENT strength actively. The Supply Convoy Ambush allows you to destroy incoming ADVENT strength before it reaches the region.
Each time you successfully complete a mission you add to a hidden value called Vigilance. Monument Demolition adds much more than normal missions. This is how concerned ADVENT is about your actions in the region. If Vigilance is greater than ADVENT strength, they will attempt to transfer legions into that region until the two are balanced. Vigilance on its own decays very slowly, so unless you are making a lot of noise in a neighboring region you will not notice much of a natrual decrease in ADVENT strength. Hacking the network tower brings a lot of heat to the region, so if you skip the HQ, you've probably thrown away the best shot you had at taking it.
The best way I can see to reduce ADVENT strength is to maintain a strong Intel corp in that region, and cherry pick the ambushes and the Dark Events. Don't run every mission, because that will only attract more ADVENT. Even the ambushes will draw more, but so long as you are destroying them, you're making progress. Ultimately you need to liberate the region, as that's the only way to actually win. If you leave the region disputed, ADVENT will win eventually, especially if they wear down the haven with mini-retaliations, and eventually when you are unable to mount an effective offense they will start spamming Dark Events to put an end to you.
Basically, once ADVENT knows you're there, you need to win, ASAP. If you get caught up in a multi-month long contest for control of the region, you lose. Once you see the VIP assassination, you are at the end game for that area. If you're not ready to blitz the tower and the regional HQ, don't take the shot. You're playing right into their hands otherwise.
Each time you successfully complete a mission you add to a hidden value called Vigilance. Monument Demolition adds much more than normal missions. This is how concerned ADVENT is about your actions in the region. If Vigilance is greater than ADVENT strength, they will attempt to transfer legions into that region until the two are balanced. Vigilance on its own decays very slowly, so unless you are making a lot of noise in a neighboring region you will not notice much of a natrual decrease in ADVENT strength. Hacking the network tower brings a lot of heat to the region, so if you skip the HQ, you've probably thrown away the best shot you had at taking it.
The best way I can see to reduce ADVENT strength is to maintain a strong Intel corp in that region, and cherry pick the ambushes and the Dark Events. Don't run every mission, because that will only attract more ADVENT. Even the ambushes will draw more, but so long as you are destroying them, you're making progress. Ultimately you need to liberate the region, as that's the only way to actually win. If you leave the region disputed, ADVENT will win eventually, especially if they wear down the haven with mini-retaliations, and eventually when you are unable to mount an effective offense they will start spamming Dark Events to put an end to you.
Basically, once ADVENT knows you're there, you need to win, ASAP. If you get caught up in a multi-month long contest for control of the region, you lose. Once you see the VIP assassination, you are at the end game for that area. If you're not ready to blitz the tower and the regional HQ, don't take the shot. You're playing right into their hands otherwise.
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
Too long didn't read version is more successful missions you do in a region, the more advent reinforces it. And they reinforce strength from UFOs on a regular basis (with possibility of emergency reinforcement) hidden behind the scenes which is why you can't avoid regions of high advent strength. That's actually all you really need to know about it. The details are fascinating but you don't have much control over it.
There are three scores we need to talk about here to get a basic grip on the world map, "vigilance," "alert" (same thing as advent strength), and "force level."
1. Each region has a hidden "vigilance" score which is a reflection about how concerned Advent is about you. Every time you win a mission in a region, vigilance goes up by 1 point. There are some types of missions (supply raids, troop ambush, retaliations) which are modified to additionally give vigilance -1, or in other words if you do those specific missions, the net result is vigilance doesn't go up (this is prevent you getting into an overly vicious cycle of high vigilance retal over and over and over simply from winning retaliations, although you can easily still get into this cycle anyways if advent strength is high enough and you give them enough time to find your haven).
Vigilance is local per region, and naturally fades by 1 point per week. It also goes down by 2 points if you lose/skip a mini-retal mission, and 4 points if you lose/skip a full retaliation.
If the vigilance score (mind you, you can't see this anywhere, you only have a guess based on missions you are doing) > advent strength, then advent will do things to try to reinforce the area, by either transferring advent strength from a neighboring region, or reinforcing from off world (UFO comes to reinforce the region).
If vigilance score <= advent strength, they will do nothing special with respect to transferring reinforcements, but it doesn't imply that they will suddenly leave the region or go down on advent strength. It is a mistake to hope that by hiding rebels in a region that advent strength will go down.
There are other ways to mess with vigilance, one is the sabotage statue mission I don't remember how many points it goes up by, but it raises more vigilance than a normal mission would.
2. Advent strength is a score you can see on the map/haven resistance management screen which is a reflection of how strong their actual presence is. This affects the number of aliens you see on missions in that region, but not the type (aka now matter how high you jack up advent strength, you won't see a sectopod on month 2).
Advent strength can be modified in a number of ways, but I want to say right here before you get your hopes up - you CANNOT win this game by depleting global advent strength. It is impossible, especially on higher difficulties. This is because there are limited ways to reduce it, and they are secretly reinforcing on a regular schedule all the time that exceeds your ability to reduce it. So get the silly idea out of your head. I know this is why you asked the strategy board question to begin with, to see if there is some way to game the system and tame them at advent strength level 1. You can't, sorry. You're going to be facing a lot of hot regions especially on higher difficulties, end of the story.
With that being said, advent strength can go down by
a) you doing supply raids. This means they are transferring in strength from an adjacent region. These are very hard to detect, and please stop complaining it's a bug you don't see them. They are literally very hard to detect: they are are 10 times harder to detect than a lib 1 mission, and have a lower duration than a lib1 mission. It is coded as rare into the game. They are also on a cooldown.
b) troop column ambushes. Not that hard to detect, but they are on a cooldown, they reduce alert level by 1 in the region you do them in.
c) you liberate a region. This destroys up to 5 alert levels in the region, but any excess gets spread to other advent regions (not sure how this is decided, whether randomly or to weakest I dunno)
d) you doing UFO raids, similar to supply raid it's the equivalent of them reinforcing by magic (they have limitless troops offworld, and every so often they send new troops to earth, this is why you can't ever get rid of alert for good)
Advent strength (alert) goes up by
a) them reinforcing from adjacent areas. Thus an area will lose one point, and give that point to its neighbor.
b) regularly schedule UFO (offworld reinforcements). It is possible to catch UFOS in missions (it is a 2 chain misison, with the first being "find a lead" which immediately gives you a UFO raid, these are tough.)
c) emergency UFO reinforcements. These are on a higher cooldown than the regular offworld reinforcements, but if you are really making advent mad and wondering where the strength is coming from, these are an additional source of them
d) certain missions have hidden alert modifiers like lib2 and up, so those missions are acting as +2/+3 strength above what you see in the region
e) I think there's one or two dark events that jack up the alert levels in certain regions, I forget which
3. "force level" is a global, hidden score that goes up every 16 days by 1 point. It governs the type of aliens you can see. I don't think there's any way to stop this from happening, even though in the code it's listed as a UFO bringing it in, I think that's just like...thematic dressing, it's not that you can find a force UFO and kill it.
I'll show a bit of ini code below
[LW_Overhaul.X2LWActivityCooldown_UFO]
; How many DAYS between UFOs that level-up aliens worldwide.
+FORCE_UFO_COOLDOWN_DAYS[0]=16
+FORCE_UFO_COOLDOWN_DAYS[1]=16
+FORCE_UFO_COOLDOWN_DAYS[2]=16
+FORCE_UFO_COOLDOWN_DAYS[3]=16
; How many DAYS between UFOs that increase alert levels in a series of adjacent territories. Pretty big difficulty lever here.
+ALERT_UFO_COOLDOWN_DAYS[0]=14
+ALERT_UFO_COOLDOWN_DAYS[1]=12
+ALERT_UFO_COOLDOWN_DAYS[2]=10
+ALERT_UFO_COOLDOWN_DAYS[3]=8
So you see, force ufos just represent a steady increase in quality of aliens over time, and the alert/strength ufos are secretly bringing up the advent strength in multiple territories without you knowing about it for the most part (although again, you CAN raid alert ufos with enough intel, it's just hard and they are happening all the time).
To add a little bit more wrench in all of this, pavonis actually coded in a little bit of randomness in areas you haven't contacted
; Repression works only in uncontacted regions; it is simulating the Resistance without XCOM's assistance. It rolls several d100s once the cooldown is over.
REPRESSION_REGIONAL_COOLDOWN_HOURS_MIN=336
REPRESSION_REGIONAL_COOLDOWN_HOURS_MAX=504
REPRESSION_ADVENT_LOSS_CHANCE=2 ; -1 Alert, +1 Vig
REPRESSION_RECRUIT_REBEL_CHANCE=15 ; +1 rebel
REPRESSION_VIGILANCE_INCREASE_CHANCE=25 ; +1 vig
REPRESSION_REBEL_LOST_CHANCE=10 ; -1 nonfaceless rebel, min of 1
REPRESSION_CLONES_RELEASED_CHANCE=0 ; +1 alert
REPRESSION_2ND_REBEL_LOST_CHANCE=10 ; -1 nonfaceless rebel, min of 1
I don't really care to guess at the details here but the point is advent strength/vigilance is fluctuating in non-contacted regions according to some simulated rules.
4. Although not directly related to the above 3 scores, you should know that advent has some direct counterattacks to your activities called "retaliations." There are "mini-retaliations" and regular "retaliations." These are annoying missions that offer no reward except to not lose your ability to do rebel jobs in that region. (well some minor experience/loot). They trigger based on how many active rebels you have in a haven. Unfortunately even though I have done some code diving and found some hard numbers for the limits, people have reported that they can still get retaliated while below the limit. This may have to do with faceless secretly lowering the limit, or other factors I can't get at just by looking at ini files. The variable they have in the ini file for "mini-retals" is 6 working rebels on a particular job, so theoretically you can use say 5 intel rebels and not get miniretals, although there is player experience to the contrary. Maybe the true limit depends on faceless. The variable they have in the ini files for the regular retals is 5 working rebels of any type.
Having read the journal of a guy who beat ironman/legendary LW2, he kept his working rebels at 4 supplies for most regions, hid the rest, and never got any retals in those regions. So maybe 4 working rebels is what to shoot for if you hate retaliations.
At the end of the day I don't think it's worth studying "the board game" because there simply isn't much you can do about it. Your decisions boil down to can you handle advent strength in a given region, if not, then do missions elsewhere. You expand when you can afford it, but not willy-nilly: you try to get to the avatar objectives. If you are offered the chance to do raids/troop ambushes you take them as you are able. It's a pretty simple decision making process. Knowing about the AI reinforcing doesn't do you much good in this game, because you don't have much ability to react to it. Your decisions are either do I take this mission or not.
As a fun note, if you liberate 16/16 regions, advent invades all 16 regions simultaneously, which drives home the point that you shouldn't be trying to game the alert/chessboard aspect. You should be aiming to get just enough men well enough equipped to zip in and close down the avatar project. If you read the comments of this player who did legend/ironman LW2, you can see his success doesn't have much if anything to do with the chessboard; he only lilberates 1 region the entire game, and keeps 4 rebels on supplies in most regions to avoid annoying retaliation missions.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/ ... n_writeup/
You will see that he only liberates 1 region in the entire game, and the only way he "plays chess" is to put 4 rebels on supplies rest hide in most regions in order to avoid retaliations. He skips tons of missions, is only able to afford gear to equip one team well, and he aims to end the avatar project instead of liberating many regions/toy with advent strength.
There are three scores we need to talk about here to get a basic grip on the world map, "vigilance," "alert" (same thing as advent strength), and "force level."
1. Each region has a hidden "vigilance" score which is a reflection about how concerned Advent is about you. Every time you win a mission in a region, vigilance goes up by 1 point. There are some types of missions (supply raids, troop ambush, retaliations) which are modified to additionally give vigilance -1, or in other words if you do those specific missions, the net result is vigilance doesn't go up (this is prevent you getting into an overly vicious cycle of high vigilance retal over and over and over simply from winning retaliations, although you can easily still get into this cycle anyways if advent strength is high enough and you give them enough time to find your haven).
Vigilance is local per region, and naturally fades by 1 point per week. It also goes down by 2 points if you lose/skip a mini-retal mission, and 4 points if you lose/skip a full retaliation.
If the vigilance score (mind you, you can't see this anywhere, you only have a guess based on missions you are doing) > advent strength, then advent will do things to try to reinforce the area, by either transferring advent strength from a neighboring region, or reinforcing from off world (UFO comes to reinforce the region).
If vigilance score <= advent strength, they will do nothing special with respect to transferring reinforcements, but it doesn't imply that they will suddenly leave the region or go down on advent strength. It is a mistake to hope that by hiding rebels in a region that advent strength will go down.
There are other ways to mess with vigilance, one is the sabotage statue mission I don't remember how many points it goes up by, but it raises more vigilance than a normal mission would.
2. Advent strength is a score you can see on the map/haven resistance management screen which is a reflection of how strong their actual presence is. This affects the number of aliens you see on missions in that region, but not the type (aka now matter how high you jack up advent strength, you won't see a sectopod on month 2).
Advent strength can be modified in a number of ways, but I want to say right here before you get your hopes up - you CANNOT win this game by depleting global advent strength. It is impossible, especially on higher difficulties. This is because there are limited ways to reduce it, and they are secretly reinforcing on a regular schedule all the time that exceeds your ability to reduce it. So get the silly idea out of your head. I know this is why you asked the strategy board question to begin with, to see if there is some way to game the system and tame them at advent strength level 1. You can't, sorry. You're going to be facing a lot of hot regions especially on higher difficulties, end of the story.
With that being said, advent strength can go down by
a) you doing supply raids. This means they are transferring in strength from an adjacent region. These are very hard to detect, and please stop complaining it's a bug you don't see them. They are literally very hard to detect: they are are 10 times harder to detect than a lib 1 mission, and have a lower duration than a lib1 mission. It is coded as rare into the game. They are also on a cooldown.
b) troop column ambushes. Not that hard to detect, but they are on a cooldown, they reduce alert level by 1 in the region you do them in.
c) you liberate a region. This destroys up to 5 alert levels in the region, but any excess gets spread to other advent regions (not sure how this is decided, whether randomly or to weakest I dunno)
d) you doing UFO raids, similar to supply raid it's the equivalent of them reinforcing by magic (they have limitless troops offworld, and every so often they send new troops to earth, this is why you can't ever get rid of alert for good)
Advent strength (alert) goes up by
a) them reinforcing from adjacent areas. Thus an area will lose one point, and give that point to its neighbor.
b) regularly schedule UFO (offworld reinforcements). It is possible to catch UFOS in missions (it is a 2 chain misison, with the first being "find a lead" which immediately gives you a UFO raid, these are tough.)
c) emergency UFO reinforcements. These are on a higher cooldown than the regular offworld reinforcements, but if you are really making advent mad and wondering where the strength is coming from, these are an additional source of them
d) certain missions have hidden alert modifiers like lib2 and up, so those missions are acting as +2/+3 strength above what you see in the region
e) I think there's one or two dark events that jack up the alert levels in certain regions, I forget which
3. "force level" is a global, hidden score that goes up every 16 days by 1 point. It governs the type of aliens you can see. I don't think there's any way to stop this from happening, even though in the code it's listed as a UFO bringing it in, I think that's just like...thematic dressing, it's not that you can find a force UFO and kill it.
I'll show a bit of ini code below
[LW_Overhaul.X2LWActivityCooldown_UFO]
; How many DAYS between UFOs that level-up aliens worldwide.
+FORCE_UFO_COOLDOWN_DAYS[0]=16
+FORCE_UFO_COOLDOWN_DAYS[1]=16
+FORCE_UFO_COOLDOWN_DAYS[2]=16
+FORCE_UFO_COOLDOWN_DAYS[3]=16
; How many DAYS between UFOs that increase alert levels in a series of adjacent territories. Pretty big difficulty lever here.
+ALERT_UFO_COOLDOWN_DAYS[0]=14
+ALERT_UFO_COOLDOWN_DAYS[1]=12
+ALERT_UFO_COOLDOWN_DAYS[2]=10
+ALERT_UFO_COOLDOWN_DAYS[3]=8
So you see, force ufos just represent a steady increase in quality of aliens over time, and the alert/strength ufos are secretly bringing up the advent strength in multiple territories without you knowing about it for the most part (although again, you CAN raid alert ufos with enough intel, it's just hard and they are happening all the time).
To add a little bit more wrench in all of this, pavonis actually coded in a little bit of randomness in areas you haven't contacted
; Repression works only in uncontacted regions; it is simulating the Resistance without XCOM's assistance. It rolls several d100s once the cooldown is over.
REPRESSION_REGIONAL_COOLDOWN_HOURS_MIN=336
REPRESSION_REGIONAL_COOLDOWN_HOURS_MAX=504
REPRESSION_ADVENT_LOSS_CHANCE=2 ; -1 Alert, +1 Vig
REPRESSION_RECRUIT_REBEL_CHANCE=15 ; +1 rebel
REPRESSION_VIGILANCE_INCREASE_CHANCE=25 ; +1 vig
REPRESSION_REBEL_LOST_CHANCE=10 ; -1 nonfaceless rebel, min of 1
REPRESSION_CLONES_RELEASED_CHANCE=0 ; +1 alert
REPRESSION_2ND_REBEL_LOST_CHANCE=10 ; -1 nonfaceless rebel, min of 1
I don't really care to guess at the details here but the point is advent strength/vigilance is fluctuating in non-contacted regions according to some simulated rules.
4. Although not directly related to the above 3 scores, you should know that advent has some direct counterattacks to your activities called "retaliations." There are "mini-retaliations" and regular "retaliations." These are annoying missions that offer no reward except to not lose your ability to do rebel jobs in that region. (well some minor experience/loot). They trigger based on how many active rebels you have in a haven. Unfortunately even though I have done some code diving and found some hard numbers for the limits, people have reported that they can still get retaliated while below the limit. This may have to do with faceless secretly lowering the limit, or other factors I can't get at just by looking at ini files. The variable they have in the ini file for "mini-retals" is 6 working rebels on a particular job, so theoretically you can use say 5 intel rebels and not get miniretals, although there is player experience to the contrary. Maybe the true limit depends on faceless. The variable they have in the ini files for the regular retals is 5 working rebels of any type.
Having read the journal of a guy who beat ironman/legendary LW2, he kept his working rebels at 4 supplies for most regions, hid the rest, and never got any retals in those regions. So maybe 4 working rebels is what to shoot for if you hate retaliations.
At the end of the day I don't think it's worth studying "the board game" because there simply isn't much you can do about it. Your decisions boil down to can you handle advent strength in a given region, if not, then do missions elsewhere. You expand when you can afford it, but not willy-nilly: you try to get to the avatar objectives. If you are offered the chance to do raids/troop ambushes you take them as you are able. It's a pretty simple decision making process. Knowing about the AI reinforcing doesn't do you much good in this game, because you don't have much ability to react to it. Your decisions are either do I take this mission or not.
As a fun note, if you liberate 16/16 regions, advent invades all 16 regions simultaneously, which drives home the point that you shouldn't be trying to game the alert/chessboard aspect. You should be aiming to get just enough men well enough equipped to zip in and close down the avatar project. If you read the comments of this player who did legend/ironman LW2, you can see his success doesn't have much if anything to do with the chessboard; he only lilberates 1 region the entire game, and keeps 4 rebels on supplies in most regions to avoid annoying retaliation missions.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/ ... n_writeup/
You will see that he only liberates 1 region in the entire game, and the only way he "plays chess" is to put 4 rebels on supplies rest hide in most regions in order to avoid retaliations. He skips tons of missions, is only able to afford gear to equip one team well, and he aims to end the avatar project instead of liberating many regions/toy with advent strength.
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
Alert levels? You mean just plain Alert right? Kind of confusing between Alert and Force Levels.trihero wrote: c) you liberate a region. This destroys up to 5 alert levels in the region, but any excess gets spread to other advent regions (not sure how this is decided, whether randomly or to weakest I dunno)
I think it's more readable to use Advent Strength throughout as it is understandable as troops on the ground. Just mention Alert at the start as what it is called in the inis/code.
Otherwise, excellent writeup.
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
I mentioned early in the writeup that alert level = advent strength level, it's referred to both ways in the code.
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Antifringe
- Posts: 226
- Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2017 9:52 pm
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
Thanks for the writeup! Do you know anything about how Dark Events are spawned? Are all DE represented as a mission that is (theoretically, at least) detectable on the map, do do some DEs just happen no matter what? Are spawnable DEs restricted to areas where you've made contact (kind of how in LW1, the very dangerous alien research missions only ever happened in regions you had a satellite in)?
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
Dark events have a delay before they can even begin; in legend you have 1 measly month before they start showing up. I don't know exactly how the aliens decide to research them, my guess is they have a pool of possible researches based on where you are in the game and they randomly choose some, but it is best to think about it like the aliens are doing research; they start the research, you have some time to detect it, if you don't reach them in time then the dark event goes off.Antifringe wrote:Thanks for the writeup! Do you know anything about how Dark Events are spawned? Are all DE represented as a mission that is (theoretically, at least) detectable on the map, do do some DEs just happen no matter what? Are spawnable DEs restricted to areas where you've made contact (kind of how in LW1, the very dangerous alien research missions only ever happened in regions you had a satellite in)?
One thing that bears reminding over and over is that some dark events now are actually permanent, BUT they only affect a low% of the aliens in question. So stop with the freaking out already when you see something like formidable (66% explosion reduction), it only affects 20% of like 2 types of advent soldiers. The vast majority of your explosives are still 100% effective. If they get the "lethal" upgrade (+2 damage) it affects less than 10% of the aliens.
Yes all DE are represented as a mission on the map, but there's zero restrictions on which region they show up in (well maybe there is some weight that goes towards putting them in regions you have, but I don't know the details, all I do know is that a developer straight out said they can show up in non-contacted regions).
You should regard dark events exactly like advent strength - at the end of the day, you can't stop them from going off no matter how hard you try (one obvious reason is they can show up in uncontacted zones), it's a little bit like vanilla where you can only stop a couple but the rest get through. It's simply the aliens slowly getting better tech, just like you are. You can occasionally mess with it/manage it if you have enough intel gathering in enough regions. I think the aliens have the opportunity to restart a particular research at a later time if you stopped one, like if you managed to stop formidable they will try again, I think. They have very generous timers (it is not uncommon to detect the with over 10 days left) and spawn relatively more often than most other mission types.
You might find it interesting to read this legend/ironman player's most recent writeup of his second win; he thought dark events were low impact on his ability to win compared to other aspects of the game, except it shifted his strategy slightly towards non-aim based abilities.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/ ... n_debrief/
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BookofAeons
- Posts: 14
- Joined: Tue Jan 17, 2017 7:48 pm
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
DE missions can be run in contacted regions, or regions adjacent to contacted regions. Expanding will make it more likely a player can detect these missions.trihero wrote:Yes all DE are represented as a mission on the map, but there's zero restrictions on which region they show up in (well maybe there is some weight that goes towards putting them in regions you have, but I don't know the details, all I do know is that a developer straight out said they can show up in non-contacted regions).
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Antifringe
- Posts: 226
- Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2017 9:52 pm
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
Thanks, that helps. For the record, I'm not one the people that freaks when a DE spawns. I get that it's a bit like the leader/navigator upgrades from LW1. I just wanted to know if spamming contacts as part of a long term strategy to reduce DEs has any merit. It sounds like the answer is "no".
DEs are called COINResearch and COINOps in XComLWActivities.ini I know this to be true because I can use the LWSpawnActivity console command, and when I enter either COINOps or COINResearch, a new item gets added to my list of pending DEs. Maybe that will help you find more details about how it all works.
EDIT: Ninja'ed by BookofAeons. So I guess the answer is "a little bit"
DEs are called COINResearch and COINOps in XComLWActivities.ini I know this to be true because I can use the LWSpawnActivity console command, and when I enter either COINOps or COINResearch, a new item gets added to my list of pending DEs. Maybe that will help you find more details about how it all works.
EDIT: Ninja'ed by BookofAeons. So I guess the answer is "a little bit"
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
I won't be able to find any more details; I basically know by now what I can find in the inis (a bunch of variables), but I don't know how to view the functions that process those variables. I'm aware they're nicknamed COIN (counter insurgency ops) in the ini files. All that's relevant is they are missions the map and they have generous spawn timers, I mean what else do you want to know? It's very common to have 10+ DEs active at the same time especially on higher difficulties as the permanent ones pile up.
Well if you read book of aeon's answer, it sounds like yes if you want to slow down DEs as much as possible then you expand as much as possible. I also said as much when I said "put people on intel in lots of regions." I don't think however it's really going to help you all that much, especially if you read that legend player's diary. He puts DEs way down on his list of things that make the game hard. Apparently the thing that made his late game hard was the story-line missions having a huge infiltration time and finding the right time to do them.I just wanted to know if spamming contacts as part of a long term strategy to reduce DEs has any merit. It sounds like the answer is "no".
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
I think COINResearch is a permanent DE and COINOps is a temporary one. There also seem to be differences in the in-game mission descriptions for the two when you get an option to intercept a DE, although I don't recall the words used right now.Antifringe wrote:DEs are called COINResearch and COINOps in XComLWActivities.ini I know this to be true because I can use the LWSpawnActivity console command, and when I enter either COINOps or COINResearch, a new item gets added to my list of pending DEs. Maybe that will help you find more details about how it all works.
Doing the liberation missions should make a huge difference there: Facility, Blacksite, Forge and Psigate are all listed as affected by liberation progress. Even just doing Lib1 in a region will cut 30% off your infiltration time for those, and a fully-liberated region gets a 90% reduction.trihero wrote:I don't think however it's really going to help you all that much, especially if you read that legend player's diary. He puts DEs way down on his list of things that make the game hard. Apparently the thing that made his late game hard was the story-line missions having a huge infiltration time and finding the right time to do them.
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
It helps definitely but not in the manner you describe. There is an infiltration penalty of 10 days (on rookie, not sure what it is on legend) for those avatar sites, and the % reduction is on the penalty, not your total infiltration time. So the 90% cuts the penalty to 1 day.Doing the liberation missions should make a huge difference there: Facility, Blacksite, Forge and Psigate are all listed as affected by liberation progress. Even just doing Lib1 in a region will cut 30% off your infiltration time for those, and a fully-liberated region gets a 90% reduction.
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
Interesting video about manipulating/understanding guerrilla ops missions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76Px0bIe6cQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76Px0bIe6cQ
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
Oops. I think perhaps I've not been handling this very well.Devon_v wrote:Ultimately you need to liberate the region, as that's the only way to actually win. If you leave the region disputed, ADVENT will win eventually, especially if they wear down the haven with mini-retaliations, and eventually when you are unable to mount an effective offense they will start spamming Dark Events to put an end to you.
Basically, once ADVENT knows you're there, you need to win, ASAP. If you get caught up in a multi-month long contest for control of the region, you lose. Once you see the VIP assassination, you are at the end game for that area. If you're not ready to blitz the tower and the regional HQ, don't take the shot. You're playing right into their hands otherwise.
I've been sitting on 2 network towers for about 2-3 months. Well, now 1 tower and one HQ. Can't spare the men now as I have to hit the blacksite before it's game over.
Seemed like a good idea to heal up my main 2 squads and run some lighter missions mainly with the back ups while moving towards the blacksite. Not realising that this affected dark events I pulled all my people off intel in those regions to concentrate on supplies.
So is it normal to have clocked up about 8 tactical dark events by mid October? Or is that just shockingly terrible? I'd assumed they were kind of the LW2 equivalent of alien research in LW1.
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
Based on more experience it seems that locating the network tower doesn't tip ADVENT off, only running the mission and hacking it does. So it's the HQ assault that it isn't wise to delay. It also seems to depend on how many regions you're actively working. If you're only doing things in one or two ADVENT will dump a ton of strength into the region and it won't go anywhere. That's when they start pumping out the Dark Events.Dagless wrote:Oops. I think perhaps I've not been handling this very well.Devon_v wrote:Ultimately you need to liberate the region, as that's the only way to actually win. If you leave the region disputed, ADVENT will win eventually, especially if they wear down the haven with mini-retaliations, and eventually when you are unable to mount an effective offense they will start spamming Dark Events to put an end to you.
Basically, once ADVENT knows you're there, you need to win, ASAP. If you get caught up in a multi-month long contest for control of the region, you lose. Once you see the VIP assassination, you are at the end game for that area. If you're not ready to blitz the tower and the regional HQ, don't take the shot. You're playing right into their hands otherwise.
I've been sitting on 2 network towers for about 2-3 months. Well, now 1 tower and one HQ. Can't spare the men now as I have to hit the blacksite before it's game over.
Seemed like a good idea to heal up my main 2 squads and run some lighter missions mainly with the back ups while moving towards the blacksite. Not realising that this affected dark events I pulled all my people off intel in those regions to concentrate on supplies.
So is it normal to have clocked up about 8 tactical dark events by mid October? Or is that just shockingly terrible? I'd assumed they were kind of the LW2 equivalent of alien research in LW1.
The Dark Events themselves are a cross between alien research and a penalty for failing to stop them. The aliens do reinforce ADVENT with better troops as time goes by regardless, and not all of the DEs are horrible, but some of them are just unpleasant to deal with.
In my current campaign I contacted two adjacent regions ASAP, and running ops in all three has seriously prevented ADVENT from concentrating forces against me. I also haven't touched any of the towers yet, so there's been no major Vigilance spike. I figure so long as I'm expanding my reach and getting research done it doesn't matter if I know what the doom counter is at.
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
You have to plan alot for those story missions.
I thought I was doing fairly well in my campaign and I check to launch the infiltration for the FORGE mission and I get 41 days for a 10 man.
Fortunately it drops to 27 days for 9 man and 18 days for 8 so I guess I am only sending 8 as there is no way I can afford to idle 41 days for the doom counter...
Retrospectively I should have done some liberation missions in that zone... I guess you learn as you go.
So theoretically you want to have done some liberation in those regions and be bringing 8 man is my guess ( against 37 enemies if I trust the shadow chamber).
I thought I was doing fairly well in my campaign and I check to launch the infiltration for the FORGE mission and I get 41 days for a 10 man.
Fortunately it drops to 27 days for 9 man and 18 days for 8 so I guess I am only sending 8 as there is no way I can afford to idle 41 days for the doom counter...
Retrospectively I should have done some liberation missions in that zone... I guess you learn as you go.
So theoretically you want to have done some liberation in those regions and be bringing 8 man is my guess ( against 37 enemies if I trust the shadow chamber).
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
While I do expand as fast as I can early on, I also think it's important to try pretty hard to liberate one region early. You have to anyways to beat the game, it only gets riskier and harder the longer you wait (not only is advent getting more strength, but they start to be able to retaliate your regions which pulls your forces thin), and the steady flow of income that one region really piles up over the course of many months.
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CasualGamer
- Posts: 33
- Joined: Wed Feb 15, 2017 8:51 am
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
I have a question about this board game level.
Is it worth contacting all regions around your first liberated haven, or do you contact in a bee-line towards the blacksight?
The thinking with the former is that it will (may) make it harder for an invasion of your haven to happen because advent will have to move troops out of an area where your mission activity probably makes them want more not less troops.
Obviously going straight towards the blacksight opens the golden path ASAP.
A second question, is it worth doing the destroy a monument missions to pull in reinforcements allowing me to scan for a lucrative raid mission (troops or supply)? Otherwise are the raise awareness missions best just skipped?
Is it worth contacting all regions around your first liberated haven, or do you contact in a bee-line towards the blacksight?
The thinking with the former is that it will (may) make it harder for an invasion of your haven to happen because advent will have to move troops out of an area where your mission activity probably makes them want more not less troops.
Obviously going straight towards the blacksight opens the golden path ASAP.
A second question, is it worth doing the destroy a monument missions to pull in reinforcements allowing me to scan for a lucrative raid mission (troops or supply)? Otherwise are the raise awareness missions best just skipped?
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LordYanaek
- Posts: 940
- Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:34 pm
Re: Strategy Level "Board Game"
That's actually what i did, not for the reason you explain but because it allows me to monitor their strength and reduce it in the surrounding regions. An invasion requires an adjacent region with 7 or 8 str so as long as you can supply/troop raid the neighboring regions to str <=6, your liberated region is safe and i don't want to keep 8 guys on intel in that region to detect the invasion. Supplies and recruits (you can get scientists and engineers in liberated regions and they are added directly to your staff) is what i want to do there.CasualGamer wrote: Is it worth contacting all regions around your first liberated haven, or do you contact in a bee-line towards the blacksight?
I always skip the "draw attention" missions but i guess they can be useful when you have lots of regions and want to draw their attention away from one of them (you do the missions in an adjacent region) but you need to have that mission show when and where you need it, and they never did for me.