Avatar facility missions

[Elder_Basilisk]

In vanilla, the Avatar facility missions were very easy to stealth, plant the x4 and escape without firing a shot. From the mission description, it seems that they're more like the HQ assault in LW2. Is this right? And do you usually need a full 10 man team or can it be done with 5-6 or 7-8?

[trihero]

Best done with 2 stealth shinobis, and it's very easy if they have Conceal.

If you bring a fighting team, you can expect a rough fight because they have infinite reinforcements that wear you down if you try to take it slow, and there's a guaranteed pod of 8 aliens hanging near the objective.

[LordYanaek]

Mission description isn't always accurate. It's just like vanilla plant X-4 and evac. You won't recover any bodies on those missions.

Doing those with a pair of stealth shinobi is an option but you have to be good at avoiding alien pods, they are numerous and they patrol all over the map. I found the most reliable way to do them is to take a sizeable squad with good firepower and 1-2 stealth guys. Engage from higher ground (you are almost guaranteed to have some), call evac immediately and try to sneak a shinobi inside while pods are drawn to the bulk of the squad. Plant the X4 and evac ASAP without trying to finish them all, as trihero said you'll eventually get infinite reinforcements.

[vicguru]

How do you find Avatar facilities in LW2? Do you have to do the first blacksite lab facility mission first? I had to manually change the config file to allow basically unlimited Avatar progress blocks, since I haven't been able to generate missions to go after Avatar facilities. I've liberated like 4 zones but haven't pushed on the lab facility mission yet. I've also taken missions featuring Intel Packages but don't see any reward after the mission that would unmask Avatar facilities. Have yet to build a shadow center since any elerium goes to weapons and armor so far. What am I doing wrong?

[LordYanaek]

How do you find Avatar facilities in LW2?

You need to research a Facility Lead. This costs you a small amount of Intel in addition to the facility lead itself.
Find a Lead missions and Skullmining are your only options for actually gaining those Facility Leads. Note that i still have to see one as a reward for skullmining and got 3 so far from Find a Lead missions (end of december) so they are not really numerous.

I had to manually change the config file to allow basically unlimited Avatar progress blocks <...> What am I doing wrong?

Hard to say without knowing more.

• What difficulty are you playing at?
• How many regions do you have contacted in addition to those liberated?
• What's the in-game date?
• How often are you doing ambush missions?

I'm playing commander and have really no issue with Avatar progress in late December. It's slowed down by >70% in my game and doing Blacksite+Forge dropped it back to about 1/2, two facilities dropped it back to where it was when i first revealed it! (3rd lead revealed a facility with no points at all ). The trick is that each point of global str < global vigilance slows down every point on the doom counter by 10 hours. This can really make a large slowdown. Thus reducing str is a good way to slow down the avatar project (ADVENT is busy reinforcing their troops rather than working on their secret project) Ambush missions and Liberation are how you reduce str. With 4 regions liberated you have reduced their str by 20 which is a good start.

There is no guarantee you'll gain those facility leads, there is no way to tell a facility lead mission from a PoI mission, both appear with an Intel Package reward. The only 100% guaranteed way to reduce Avatar is to take the main objective missions. If the bar is filling and you don't have a Facility Lead it's time to strike one the objectives.

[gimrah]

Soo... that's another mission type that need balancing. Especially after seeing xwynns do exactly that (not that I could).

Should be very very hard/risky to stealth but more viable to fight through - maybe keep the reinforcements but tone down the troops on the ground, so you are incentivised to fight your way through quickly and get out. E.g. have fewer enemies in total but have lots of smaller pods that you'll probably fight several at a time. That would make a nice contrast to supply raids still.

[Jadiel]

There is no guarantee you'll gain those facility leads, there is no way to tell a facility lead mission from a PoI mission, both appear with an Intel Package reward. The only 100% guaranteed way to reduce Avatar is to take the main objective missions. If the bar is filling and you don't have a Facility Lead it's time to strike one the objectives.

There are a couple of indicators that you might have a Facility Lead mission. They only spawn in regions where vigilance is less than 10. They are always Scientist (Extract or Rescue) or Hack (Recover or Hack) missions, so you can't get them from any other mission type. They're more likely to spawn in a region where there is a facility. They used to have slightly different mission text also, but I think this might have been fixed in the most recent patch.

[LordYanaek]

E.g. have fewer enemies in total but have lots of smaller pods that you'll probably fight several at a time. That would make a nice contrast to supply raids still.

But it already works this way!
There is already a lot of smaller pods in Facilities. Most pods are 3-4 guys. There is one big pod patrolling the area near the objective but plenty of small pods all over the map.
Reducing the amount of enemies would just make it easier to stealth because there would be less pods unless every pod is just a 1 guy pod.

Short of removing stealth completely it will never be possible to prevent it from being (ab)used on some missions by stealth masters. I don't think facilities are that easy to stealth, definitely possible but not easy because of the large amount of pods. Having a fighting team to reduce the amount of wandering pods definitely helps me get the shinobi inside by stealth and i really think it makes a lot of sense, the attack is actually a big diversion while the stealth guy goes planting the X-4.

The only sensible way i can think of to make pure stealth harder would be to prevent detection radius from dropping below it's 100% infiltration value on "high security missions" like facilities, blacksite or forge. Maybe even lock infiltration to 100% max (don't reduce the amount of enemies either). This would definitely make sense but might not be enough to prevent stealth masters from "stealthing" them

[Jadiel]

There are lots of sensible ways to make stealth harder. Increase Enemy spotting radius by e.g. 20%. Nerf Ghostwalker considerably. Remove Conceal from the game, or at least shift it to MSGT. Reduce the stealth bonus given by SMGs (the mobility alone is plenty enough reason to take them). Any or all of those will make stealth missions a lot less viable.

[Elder_Basilisk]

I completed the blacksite mission with a 3man stealth team. Got in, threw the flare, reconcealed, planted the x4, tried skullmining one of the enemies then commanded my 3rd ninja to get back to the evacuate zone in the evacuate turn.

As for improving stealth gameplay on these missions, I think that it might be improved by adding a door hack or something similar. After all, why are these super secret facilities just running around with unlocked doors anyway? Doing that would not make stealth impossible-l, but it would make it more interesting. You would have to hack the door or blow up a wall/the door with a shaped charge before getting in and out. That's a potentially fun element to have in the game-especially if you made the door like towers where a successful hack doesn't break conceal. That would give a few interesting decisions in the planning stage-pack a shaped charge or a skulljacking+hacking PC's, or pack both to keep your options open-and it would add decisions in gameplay too which would hopefully make the stealth game a little deeper than it is at the moment.

Either way, I think adding interest and elements to the stealth game is a better plan than just making it harder by (for example) nerfing ghostwalker.

[LordYanaek]

There are lots of sensible ways to make stealth harder. Increase Enemy spotting radius by e.g. 20%.

This would make non-stealth missions considerably harder because the stealth part to find a good position for a correct opener would be way harder. Look at xwynns latest mission, a bad move where his shinobi scout got revealed almost resulted in a squadwipe and he lost 3 soldiers. In the end i suspect it would make 200% infiltration even more important and thus very small (usually full stealth) squad more dominant.

Nerf Ghostwalker considerably.

This one could be an option but with it's longish cooldown, nerfing it could easily make it useless.

Remove Conceal from the game, or at least shift it to MSGT.

Once again you'd be hitting small team non-stealth missions (where you need all the firepower you have at one point) more than pure stealth because conceal is the only reason a shinobi can help during a tough fight.

Reduce the stealth bonus given by SMGs (the mobility alone is plenty enough reason to take them).

That might be an option.

Either way, I think adding interest and elements to the stealth game is a better plan than just making it harder by (for example) nerfing ghostwalker.

I totally agree on that part, but having avatar facilities and blacksite/forge stay on high alert no matter how long you infiltrate would also make a lot of sense.