Value of stealth?

[SouthpawHare]

I hear a lot of people talking about doing stealth missions often, and that doing whole missions within concealment is pretty strong in the meta-game. I never do this, due to bad experiences in earlier, failed campaigns in which the stealth squad always had no choice of revealing themselves and then subsequently had no chance in combat. On my current, thus-far successful campaign (just finished first liberation), I only use brute-force, combat-heavy power squads that can fight their way through and that I feel confident in their safety, and it seems to work.

I have not found stealth as a primary mission tactic to be useful, or at least safe and reliable. From the sound of it, though, this is not typical. Am I missing something?

As a side note, I've noticed that most people consider shinobi to be a strong class, but for their stealth abilities. I also consider them strong, but for their pure murder abilities.

[trihero]

Sometimes seeing is believing, watch xwynns legendary ironman playthrough on youtube. He does his fair share of stealth missions and even though he doesn't win them all, he shows you how to do them properly.

[stefan3iii]

I made a guide for stealth, and posted it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/ ... lth_guide/

Short answer, yeah it's really OP. Once you know how to do it, you can succeed on most of them, and the cost of failure is low.

[Jacke]

I don't what difficulty you're playing SouthpawHare, but on Legendary, there are some missions you will find out about with only 1 to 3 days left before they expire. You will never infiltrate a fighting squad in time without facing a lot of Aliens who you will never be able to fight through within the time limit, if at all. But a small 1 to 3 soldier squad led by a Shinobi or 2 can stealth or mostly stealth them. Passing up those missions means passing up their rewards and slowing the development of XCOM.

[Dwarfling]

Well if I had 6 days to infiltrate I'd go with a fighting squad and duke it out for loot but since half of the missions seem to pop with 4 days, which usually means 3, maybe 4 soldiers, you gotta do at least part of the mission from stealth (until you reach objective), otherwise between the 3+ pods and the reinforcements you run out of time.

[SouthpawHare]

I don't what difficulty you're playing SouthpawHare, but on Legendary, there are some missions you will find out about with only 1 to 3 days left before they expire. You will never infiltrate a fighting squad in time without facing a lot of Aliens who you will never be able to fight through within the time limit, if at all. But a small 1 to 3 soldier squad led by a Shinobi or 2 can stealth or mostly stealth them. Passing up those missions means passing up their rewards and slowing the development of XCOM.

I am playing on Veteran, and I simply skip all missions that are too low for non-stealth strategies. In fact, I kind of thought that this was the expectation that the game sets up - that you will skip a lot of missions that are too difficult to fight. I accept that this isn't as rewarding as doing stealth missions, but so far it's seemed like enough, at least.

[trihero]

It's safe and reliable, check out xwynns videos and then ask questions if we can help further.

[SouthpawHare]

It's safe and reliable, check out xwynns videos and then ask questions if we can help further.

Well, here's a big one: What is the penalty for killing a Dark VIP compared to taking it alive? I know in the vanilla game, you lost all of the Intel reward, which here is potentially the entire reward. As such, I figured that it would never be worthwhile to do such a mission unless you're going to "do it right". However, if the penalty is different or non-existent, that might change my mind.

[nightwyrm]

It's safe and reliable, check out xwynns videos and then ask questions if we can help further.

Well, here's a big one: What is the penalty for killing a Dark VIP compared to taking it alive? I know in the vanilla game, you lost all of the Intel reward, which here is potentially the entire reward. As such, I figured that it would never be worthwhile to do such a mission unless you're going to "do it right". However, if the penalty is different or non-existent, that might change my mind.

You still lose the Intel reward. But for Lib3 missions you get to unlock Lib4, which makes it still worthwhile.

[burns]

Stealth missions can be successfully done by a team of 1-3 soldiers, necessary in the order of shinobi, specialist, flash grenadier.
Keep these soldiers together under the purpose of doing important rescues. The shinobi gets trained for a few officer ranks to get at least two commands. The flash grenadier can be incredibly helpful when his grenades stun entire pods that come running for the objective, cell, EZ. So try to move him close to the evac. Then, the actual heist ist done by the shinobi and the specialist.
On higher difficulties you can't wait too long for missions with long infiltration times because Advent strength will rise too fast and make the towers a suicide commando.

[Jadiel]

It's safe and reliable, check out xwynns videos and then ask questions if we can help further.

Well, here's a big one: What is the penalty for killing a Dark VIP compared to taking it alive? I know in the vanilla game, you lost all of the Intel reward, which here is potentially the entire reward. As such, I figured that it would never be worthwhile to do such a mission unless you're going to "do it right". However, if the penalty is different or non-existent, that might change my mind.

You still lose the Intel reward. But for Lib3 missions you get to unlock Lib4, which makes it still worthwhile.

You still get the intel reward. The bonus for bringing the VIP in alive on Lib3 is usually an additional Resistance Contact.

[SouthpawHare]

I don't what difficulty you're playing SouthpawHare, but on Legendary, there are some missions you will find out about with only 1 to 3 days left before they expire. You will never infiltrate a fighting squad in time without facing a lot of Aliens who you will never be able to fight through within the time limit, if at all. But a small 1 to 3 soldier squad led by a Shinobi or 2 can stealth or mostly stealth them. Passing up those missions means passing up their rewards and slowing the development of XCOM.

The one mod that I'm playing with that makes things easier is the True Concealment mod, which prevents mission timers from starting until concealment is first broken. It obviously changes the balance of the timer significantly, but the break of immersion without it was too great for me, even more so in LW2 with the infiltration system. I just can't not ask myself, "why would ADVENT just happen to start the detonation timer on that box or whatnot at the exact minute my troops arrive, even though they've been secretly infiltrating for days now?"

I have indeed played on massive maps that would have been literally impossible to fight through in 14 turns without that benefit, so I can confirm that I'm cheating a little bit compared to raw LW2. But I definitely enjoy playing this way.

[Jacke]

The one mod that I'm playing with that makes things easier is the True Concealment mod, which prevents mission timers from starting until concealment is first broken. It obviously changes the balance of the timer significantly, but the break of immersion without it was too great for me, even more so in LW2 with the infiltration system. I just can't not ask myself, "why would ADVENT just happen to start the detonation timer on that box or whatnot at the exact minute my troops arrive, even though they've been secretly infiltrating for days now?"

I have indeed played on massive maps that would have been literally impossible to fight through in 14 turns without that benefit, so I can confirm that I'm cheating a little bit compared to raw LW2. But I definitely enjoy playing this way.

For similar reasons, I've been playing with True Concealment as well. Prior to using it, I strongly remember a jailbreak mission in which my 3 soldiers (low rank Shinobi, Specialist, Gunner) barely saw ADVENT off to the right for a couple of turns. But on a stock map (I have no map-pack mods) I had to run every turn as fast as possible to the jail and then to the evac to get out on the 11th turn. I tried adjusting the turn counters by adding first 4 and then 2 turns, but it was just so gamey to have this arbitrary countdown going without justification. I usually finish a game between a few turns less to a few turns more than the standard turn limits.

It's not quite the same as a standard Legendary LW2 campaign, but I think it's damn close and I enjoy it more. Besides, I play with Grimy's Morale Mod and that's already looking like things are going to be tougher but in a reasonable way, not an arbitrary way.

In a real insurgency, missions and stealth is more like what happens with True Concealment. You're not racing to beat a clock, you're sneaking in, getting the mission done against weak forces, then disengaging and getting out to avoid overwhelming enemy response. Considering LW2 already has eventual massive reinforcements, most missions could do without a timer completely.