LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

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JoINrbs
Long War 2 Crew
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LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by JoINrbs »

Hi all!

I don't feel like many players are really engaging with Strength and Vigilance yet. A lot of people playing a high difficulties are just bypassing the mechanic by running 0% missions to break the strategic layer, and I get the impression that a lot of people at lower difficulties are having trouble getting a good grasp on how it works.

Since beating my 1.0 and 1.1 L/I campaigns I've been focused on 1.2 playing exclusively with two house rules:

1) No missions with <50% infiltration - this prevents breaking of the strategy layer by abusing Supply Raids (see esp. my 1.1 win, where I beat 12 from April to June).
2) No Radio Relays in regions where I haven't beaten the Network Tower mission yet - this forces engagement with liberation chain missions and intel collection missions throughout the game at a far greater rate than I was participating in them in 1.0 and 1.1.

These two rules create much more strategic pressure and make the strategic layer a lot more fun to try to manage. They also approximate what I'm hoping Legend will look more like with future balance changes. I've lost several campaigns to late-November AVATAR completions due to my inability to create vigilance/alert deltas to slow the project or to contact regions with Golden Path missions in them due to the prohibitive intel costs. Each new campaign I've been asking more and more of my tactical game, and have found that I'm able to push my soldiers to limits I didn't previously consider "safe" with moderate reliability and with a surprising ability to bounce back from heavy losses in the starting months of the campaign.

The largest key to learning to be successful under these conditions has been working out how to find regions which are easy to liberate in the midgame and regions which can provide workable missions all the way through lategame. As I type this there are more than 80 legions on the planet, meaning an average of around 6 each for each of the non-liberated regions in the game, and yet I'm still able to create beatable missions in regions with strength 4 or lower quickly enough to keep 1.5 teams of soldiers occupied and progress toward a ~late November victory (with Warden and even some Plasma!) in a campaign where I've never done a 0% supply raid and have only liberated one region.

In order to achieve this I've stuck to a fairly static approach to managing new Havens. Here it is :).

1) Gestation. Recruit up to 8-10 rebels. You should generally go higher the earlier it is in the game, unless you desperately need missions for your soldiers (for example in your first region!). While this is happening any Vigilance in the region which was built up by the resistance in it before you contacted them will be dissipating. If the region happens to be hot for other reasons (like that it's next to a region ADVENT is trying to reinforce a lot) you should put one rebel on intel to make sure you have a good chance at detecting Troop Columns whenever it's at above 4 strength. If it's above a strength value where you're worried about recruit miniretals it's okay to flip to intel a little sooner.

2) Youth. Flip everything to intel. Scan with the Avenger too if you can to bomb extra intel. Go on every mission you see in the region. If you don't have enough soldiers to keep up you should be recruiting in other regions instead of generating intel in them; this is your region right now! With a wide Barracks I'm usually able to keep pace with two of these in the early-game and three later on. One of the biggest things this does is give you a very good chance of detecting supply raids entering the region, because it'll start getting reinforced very often and you'll have 13 rebels on intel in it (assuming you get a jailbreak at some point, which is very likely). Decent chance you'll get a Reinforcing UFO detection too!

3) Middle Age. We're now at a point where the region is being overwhelmed by legions, but don't despair. Hopefully we've created a ton of vigilance here, which will slow Avatar for a good amount of time to come. Also, as legions entire a vigilance-heavy region, we're going to generate a lot of Troop Columns and a lot of Retaliations. RETALIATIONS ARE GOOD. Intel mini-retals are quite easy, keep your rebels still on overwatch to make sure they don't pull anything and move your main team aggressively in the first turns to clear flanks of potential yellow alert pods. Wave defense retals are EXTREMELY easy. Pitched battle retals are deadly for your rebels, but quite safe for your soldiers. Bring your A team to these retals; they're quick response missions and the experience will get them closer to MSGT faster.

4) Old Age. Once the region is up to 8+ strength missions are going to start to look a lot less appealing, and retaliations will probably start sneaking through your A-team (especially as they're going to be busy in newer havens now). What you do exactly with the haven at this point doesn't matter much, its real value is that it has 8+ legions stuck in it and they're terrified of the resistance in it so they're going to be staying there for quite a while. Especially if you were able to uncover the Network Tower, these regions are going to keep legions in them for a very long time or possibly the entire game, and that's going to let you find regions elsewhere which are low strength.

I do this, more-or-less, with every haven I meet. Because the pace of the strategic layer is variable (consider what happens when an intel DE hits while you're trying to bomb intel in a haven, for example, or when your B-team wipes and all of a sudden you can't really keep up with missions) this formula ends up being extremely flexible and challenging to implement with good success. At some point you have to liberate at least one haven, and liberating more than one is a decent idea if you're struggling to keep Avatar progress low, but keep in mind that your retired 8+ strength havens are actually doing more to generate you missions than a liberated haven ever could by keeping 8 strength off the map (while a liberated haven just kills 4-5 strength (depending on how you count) and then pushes the rest out to the rest of the globe).

I also want to mention the maintenance mechanic. Currently if you end a month with negative income but have no net supply you will not lose any supply; the game can't understand how to make your money go negative. Because of this there is very little reason to generate supply for the first ~half of the campaign; you just won't make enough to meaningfully overcome the amount of maintenance you have to pay before you start generating real income. Playing Havens to efficiently generate missions for you, as explained above, is going to get you a good amount of Supply Raids and Troop Columns, which will make up for not having a monthly income as long as you're aggressively selling everything you aren't currently using on the Black Market.
Goldenmonkey
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by Goldenmonkey »

You know it is a good day, when you open up the pavonis forums and JoINrbs replied to a gazillion topics. :D
That sound like a sound strategy. Fits pretty much the way I am trying at the moment.
One question though. After seeing your "Manipulating Spawn Conditions for Guerrilla Ops" video, I decided to try using my 2nd region to only generate guerilla ops.
Do you think this is advisable?
LordYanaek
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by LordYanaek »

Interesting, thanks for sharing :)

Do you really detect Supply Raids in time often or are you mostly doing Troop Columns during the Youth phase? I've been doing something roughly similar in my finished Commander campaign trying to recruit early then switch to intel and run missions until str was too high but even with all guys on Intel i rarely detected Supply Raids with more than 3days, way too low to infiltrate more than a skeleton squad with no chance to beat the opposition. Of course i could rarely get to 13 rebels quickly as my recruitment started very slowly, curse those faceless, but even in a 12 rebels region my timers on Supply Convoy missions were almost always too short to infiltrate to more than 10-15%

I didn't concentrate on one haven though, i was running missions wherever i saw an opportunity in any contacted haven.
trihero
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by trihero »

Can you please elaborate on why intel retals are easy/good for you?
RETALIATIONS ARE GOOD. Intel mini-retals are quite easy, keep your rebels still on overwatch to make sure they don't pull anything and move your main team aggressively in the first turns to clear flanks of potential yellow alert pods.
I've been watching xwynns legendary ironman play through, and the 4 or so mini-retals on intel he's got have been pretty much disasters, resulting in multiple rebel/adviser deaths and wounds to his main team, even though he does exactly what you propose, sit still with the rebels and move the main team in, and he is a pretty skilled tactician.

Xwynns has commented multiple times he thinks intel mini-retals are overtuned especially when they spawn right on top of the relay, and also in every one of them he wishes he had literally just skipped the mission and taken the consequences because going in he got about the same consequences.

I also failed to understand this point
I also want to mention the maintenance mechanic. Currently if you end a month with negative income but have no net supply you will not lose any supply; the game can't understand how to make your money go negative.
I have certainly "lost supplies" with negative income at the end of the month. In order to avoid this I have to try to spend everything I have. While I agree with your overall message of avoiding supply generation for the first few months, you seem to be saying that negative income doesn't reduce what money you have saved up, but I'm 100% sure it does having lost a lot of money this way. What do you mean, exactly?
Last edited by trihero on Fri Mar 17, 2017 5:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
stefan3iii
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by stefan3iii »

I basically follow this strategy, I did do 3 0% supply raids before I stopped via house rule, realizing how broken that was.

Only other thing I do is that in old age I put everyone on supply, you'll get a lot of supplies and you generate supply retaliations, which are super easy regardless of advent strength.

One complaint about strategy layer currently is that there isn't a lot of reason to actually liberate a region. The supply bonus is minimal, the city invasion mission is good but not enough. The real problem is the really long infiltration time for the advent HQ, I'm much better off just doing 2 ambushes instead, with less risk to my soldiers.
Sporadix
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by Sporadix »

I've been watching xwynns legendary ironman play through, and the 4 or so mini-retals on intel he's got have been pretty much disasters, resulting in multiple rebel/adviser deaths and wounds to his main team, even though he does exactly what you propose, sit still with the rebels and move the main team in, and he is a pretty skilled tactician.

Xwynns has commented multiple times he thinks intel mini-retals are overtuned especially when they spawn right on top of the relay, and also in every one of them he wishes he had literally just skipped the mission and taken the consequences because going in he got about the same consequences.
In my experience the biggest thing that leads to trouble on these missions is ROBOTS. If you get these on your rebel group on Turn 1, your mission is often already over. They're immune to flashbangs, have an explosive ability that ignores smoke, and their armor protects them very well against low-tier weapons fire. I think one of Xavier's videos illustrate this pretty well; your rebels simply aren't equipped to deal with a MEC3 that just RUNS at them.
I have certainly "lost supplies" with negative income at the end of the month. In order to avoid this I have to try to spend everything I have. While I agree with your overall message of avoiding supply generation for the first few months, you seem to be saying that negative income doesn't reduce what money you have saved up, but I'm 100% sure it does having lost a lot of money this way. What do you mean, exactly?
He's just saying if you spend all of your money, you don't lose any money. So in the early game, spend it all between supply drops. Pull your engineers out of excavate with 1 day remaining. Stuff like that.
trihero
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by trihero »

No, he never said to spend all your money. Purely based on what he said if you have negative income, you don't lose money, but you do if you have some stored up (not just "no net income"), hence why you have to spend all your money before the supply drop if you don't want to get dinged.
nightwyrm
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by nightwyrm »

Sporadix wrote:
In my experience the biggest thing that leads to trouble on these missions is ROBOTS. If you get these on your rebel group on Turn 1, your mission is often already over. They're immune to flashbangs, have an explosive ability that ignores smoke, and their armor protects them very well against low-tier weapons fire. I think one of Xavier's videos illustrate this pretty well; your rebels simply aren't equipped to deal with a MEC3 that just RUNS at them.
I got lucky one time when my advisor was a Gunner. He was able to continually suppress a MEC until the rest of my squad arrived. The MEC took shots at the datatap but at least it wasn't grenading everyone. So maybe one counter in the lategame is to always have an advisor who can suppress.
mattprice516
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by mattprice516 »

trihero wrote:No, he never said to spend all your money. Purely based on what he said if you have negative income, you don't lose money, but you do if you have some stored up (not just "no net income"), hence why you have to spend all your money before the supply drop if you don't want to get dinged.
If you have negative income but no net supply (in your bank), you will not lose money. That's what he was saying, and it's also what you're saying. You're both correct.
JoINrbs
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by JoINrbs »

trihero wrote:Can you please elaborate on why intel retals are easy/good for you?

I've been watching xwynns legendary ironman play through, and the 4 or so mini-retals on intel he's got have been pretty much disasters, resulting in multiple rebel/adviser deaths and wounds to his main team, even though he does exactly what you propose, sit still with the rebels and move the main team in, and he is a pretty skilled tactician.

Xwynns has commented multiple times he thinks intel mini-retals are overtuned especially when they spawn right on top of the relay, and also in every one of them he wishes he had literally just skipped the mission and taken the consequences because going in he got about the same consequences
X and I have very bizarrely different opinions about how difficult these and regular sweep retals are. I don't really know why. I've played an awful lot more than four of them since 1.0 and they have been generally easy. Some of it might be me focusing more on a strong A team and less on tertiary soldiers and experimental builds.
Antifringe
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by Antifringe »

Thanks for the breakdown. The strategic layer is probably the least understood part of the game. I wish the mechanics were more transparent, but the reality of modding is that the UI is never going to do everything we wished it could.

A little tidbit that I think most people don't know: When you liberate a region, you lose all Vigilance in that region, but all adjacent regions gain +3 and all other regions everywhere gain +1. This almost always ends up as a large net gain in vigilance, especially when you factor in the legions that die during the revolt. Whether the vigilance spike is worth losing your ADVENT containment zone is a strategic choice that every player must make themselves.

EDIT: I thought I'd throw in a bit more about ADVENT strength and where it comes from.

When I first started LW2, I was afraid to spike vigilance, because I thought I was creating new ADVENT strength. It doesn't really work that way.

The most common way that regions gain strength is through the ReinforceActivity action. This transfers a legion between two adjacent regions. It does NOT create a legion out of thin air. If your intel rebels detect the activity, you generate a Supply Raid mission, and winning that mission destroys the legion. So whether you kill the convoy or not, the supplying region will always lose a legion, and the receiving region may or may not gain a legion, depending on what the player does.

Completely new legions are created by UFO events. To my knowledge, this is the only mechanism by which ADVENT can gain overall strength.

The first and most common one is the EmergencyOffworldReinforcements activity. In spite of the name, it happens regularly (narratively, ADVENT goes into crisis mode the moment the commander is freed). Depending one the difficulty, this activity will happen every 14/12/10/8 days. If it's not intercepted (and it probably won't be, they're hard to detect) then two adjacent regions each gain a single legion. Intercepting it prevents the legions from being created, generates a lot of vigilance, and is very damaging to ADVENT in general.

The second method is the SuperEmergencyOffworldReinforcements activity. This only happens every 21 days, and only then if global Vigilance is 20 points higher than global strength. It's a catch-up mechanic. It creates 2 legions in the area that it lands in, and another legion in two adjacent regions, for a total boost of four legions. Intercepting it is an incredible disaster for ADVENT, probably one of the most damaging things that XCOM can do to them.

There is no way to tell the difference between reinforcements and super reinforcements without using the console. See this thread for instructions on how to do that.

Overall, the player can't realistically beat ADVENT in the strategic game. New legions are created faster than you can likely destroy them, except maybe on the lower levels of difficulty. Strategy on the geoscape is mostly about managing enemy strength, not eradicating it.
LordYanaek
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by LordYanaek »

Antifringe wrote: The second method is the SuperEmergencyOffworldReinforcements activity. This only happens every 21 days, and only then if global Vigilance is 20 points higher than global strength. It's a catch-up mechanic. It creates 2 legions in the area that it lands in, and another legion in two adjacent regions, for a total boost of four legions. Intercepting it is an incredible disaster for ADVENT, probably one of the most damaging things that XCOM can do to them.
From what i've read Super Emergency Reinforcements also adds one pip to the Avatar project, probably to prevent it from stalling too much as 20 points of vigilance above str will slow each pip by 200h or slightly more than 8 days! Thus if you are in a position to slow every pip by 8 days or more, one will be added for free every 21 days.
Overall, the player can't realistically beat ADVENT in the strategic game. New legions are created faster than you can likely destroy them, except maybe on the lower levels of difficulty. Strategy on the geoscape is mostly about managing enemy strength, not eradicating it.
But what we can do (at least up to Commander) is slow down the avatar project a lot. The added vigilance when you liberate a region is interesting. It means liberating is the most efficient way to slow down Avatar a lot. It also mean you can have troubles liberating adjacent regions if you didn't already progress in the chain there.
josna238
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by josna238 »

Fantastic post, thanks.

For the discusion about negative supplies I am pretty sure that it works in this way:

1.- You generate a net amount of positive supplies you receive a "green box" with that value (you can pick or not)
2.- You generate a net amount of negative supplies you don't receive anything (but you don't have to give the resistance a "green box" with that value)
LordYanaek
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by LordYanaek »

Negative supply does reduce your supply stock as you have to pay for the maintenance of your facilities but won't drop you to negative supplies because there isn't such a concept so if you have zero supplies in reserve at the end of a month (not that hard early on) and negative supply you simply pay nothing for your maintenance. That's what JoINrbs meant by :
JoINrbs wrote: Currently if you end a month with negative income but have no net supply you will not lose any supply; the game can't understand how to make your money go negative.
Not sure what's so hard to understand, "no net supply" might have been better worded as "no supply left in the supply bank" but really there's no need to discuss this over and over
chrisb
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by chrisb »

LordYanaek wrote:
Antifringe wrote: The second method is the SuperEmergencyOffworldReinforcements activity. This only happens every 21 days, and only then if global Vigilance is 20 points higher than global strength. It's a catch-up mechanic. It creates 2 legions in the area that it lands in, and another legion in two adjacent regions, for a total boost of four legions. Intercepting it is an incredible disaster for ADVENT, probably one of the most damaging things that XCOM can do to them.
From what i've read Super Emergency Reinforcements also adds one pip to the Avatar project, probably to prevent it from stalling too much as 20 points of vigilance above str will slow each pip by 200h or slightly more than 8 days! Thus if you are in a position to slow every pip by 8 days or more, one will be added for free every 21 days.
I remember reading this too, and thought that the best strategy would be to ride as close to 20 Net GV as possible, basically never hitting Severe. But in my current campaign, I don't seem to be getting any new pips, even though I can see the Super Reinforces land when the strength jumps by 4.

Either this simply isn't true, or it isn't work as intended. I'll try to watch it as I play more.
Antifringe
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by Antifringe »

I think it's a hold over from an old system that isn't used anymore. From XComGameBoard.ini
; this is a chance that each facility will be able to generate doom if the update ticks during a super-emergency
; Note this mechanic is still coded, but disabled with these ini settings for new vigilance/avatar throttling mechanisms
CHANCE_TO_GAIN_DOOM_IN_SUPER_EMERGENCY[0]=100.0
CHANCE_TO_GAIN_DOOM_IN_SUPER_EMERGENCY[1]=100.0
CHANCE_TO_GAIN_DOOM_IN_SUPER_EMERGENCY[2]=100.0
CHANCE_TO_GAIN_DOOM_IN_SUPER_EMERGENCY[3]=100.0
It's not clear if the "super-emergency" refers to the SuperEmergencyOffworldReinforcements event, although that sounds like a reasonable guess. Either way, the comment makes it sound like this was scrapped. It looks like the old system actually gave one pip for every facility in play, which is a disaster.

I too have never seen a UFO trigger a doom pip, so I don't think it's a real effect anymore. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense anyway, since it would mean that high vigilance would actually speed up the Avatar project, by a lot. Average pip time is 32 days in Commander. Being 20 points over strength would slow that down to 40.4 days, but the UFO adding a new point every 21 days would mean that you go from an average of 1.25 pips every 40 days to almost 3 pips per forty days. You'd need about 50 overkill points just to start breaking even again.
LordYanaek
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by LordYanaek »

It really surprised me when i read it in deaconivory's compendium as i didn't notice this either but given he's the moderator in charge of the Long War 201 sub, i thought it should be true.

Good to know it's no longer in effect.
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johnnylump
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by johnnylump »

From what i've read Super Emergency Reinforcements also adds one pip to the Avatar project,
This is untrue.
LordYanaek
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by LordYanaek »

Thanks for the clarification :)
Dwarfling
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by Dwarfling »

Need some advice here:

So this is a new 1.2 Legendary campaign (no >50% infiltration), I'm in March 31th with 5 days to Lasers (AWC delay to buy Scientist, dissasembled core), and my home region just turned Strenght 4 (Supply Raid detected with 18h :( ). Thing is, I juuuuust completed Liberation 1. Dunno why it took so long to pop. Normally I complete it before the 1st supply drop.

Anyways, I got my 2nd region to 10 rebels and Strenght 1 (yay). 3rd region to be contacted soon. Should I bother trying to Liberate the home region, knowing that the liberation missions are gonna get harder to do, or just skip those and try to liberate Region 2? I know I'm gonna get Troop Columns and those are fine, but I'm more worried about the Light-Moderate "Destroy the Relay" or "Rescue VIP from vehicle" missions that might pop up. Any my roster ain't that large to manage missions on two fronts (I think): 21 soldiers, 2 rookies training, 1 rookie left, balanced classes but 3 wounded (9d left).
ndessell
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by ndessell »

Dwarfling wrote:Need some advice here:

So this is a new 1.2 Legendary campaign (no >50% infiltration), I'm in March 31th with 5 days to Lasers (AWC delay to buy Scientist, dissasembled core), and my home region just turned Strenght 4 (Supply Raid detected with 18h :( ). Thing is, I juuuuust completed Liberation 1. Dunno why it took so long to pop. Normally I complete it before the 1st supply drop.

Anyways, I got my 2nd region to 10 rebels and Strenght 1 (yay). 3rd region to be contacted soon. Should I bother trying to Liberate the home region, knowing that the liberation missions are gonna get harder to do, or just skip those and try to liberate Region 2? I know I'm gonna get Troop Columns and those are fine, but I'm more worried about the Light-Moderate "Destroy the Relay" or "Rescue VIP from vehicle" missions that might pop up. Any my roster ain't that large to manage missions on two fronts (I think): 21 soldiers, 2 rookies training, 1 rookie left, balanced classes but 3 wounded (9d left).
Do the raid, if its possible. the entire point of under infiltration penalties are to spawn in difficult missions with tactical importance. As long as you're not abusing 0% missions ( going 0% with no other tactical reason to not infiltrate) the poorly tuned rewards are a windfall.
Jadiel
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by Jadiel »

Dwarfling wrote:Need some advice here:

So this is a new 1.2 Legendary campaign (no >50% infiltration), I'm in March 31th with 5 days to Lasers (AWC delay to buy Scientist, dissasembled core), and my home region just turned Strenght 4 (Supply Raid detected with 18h :( ). Thing is, I juuuuust completed Liberation 1. Dunno why it took so long to pop. Normally I complete it before the 1st supply drop.

Anyways, I got my 2nd region to 10 rebels and Strenght 1 (yay). 3rd region to be contacted soon. Should I bother trying to Liberate the home region, knowing that the liberation missions are gonna get harder to do, or just skip those and try to liberate Region 2? I know I'm gonna get Troop Columns and those are fine, but I'm more worried about the Light-Moderate "Destroy the Relay" or "Rescue VIP from vehicle" missions that might pop up. Any my roster ain't that large to manage missions on two fronts (I think): 21 soldiers, 2 rookies training, 1 rookie left, balanced classes but 3 wounded (9d left).
Liberation missions aren't supposed to appear for the first month, so I'm surprised you've got Lib 1 so early, not so late.

If I were you, I'd continue to do Liberation missions in your home region. Lib 2 is an extract vip - extra engineers/scientists are extremely valuable at this stage of the game, and sending in a solo shinobi (ideally with Com/OM) is a very small risk. Consider sending a suicide rookie too, they can usually distract a pod for a couple of turns to get the scientist out. Even at str4 you should be able to get it down to Extremely Light at 200% inf.

For Lib 3, Destroy the Relay is going to be tricky, but you might get a Dark VIP mission which is much more straightforward. Unlocking the Network tower will prompt the AI to deploy strength heavily in that region, which you want to do, even if you don't liberate it, as it will make liberation elsewhere much easier.
LordYanaek
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by LordYanaek »

Jadiel wrote: Liberation missions aren't supposed to appear for the first month, so I'm surprised you've got Lib 1 so early, not so late.
Where did you get this? I'm almost sure i've seen liberation 1 before the first supply drop too (but it's been some time now)
Even at str4 you should be able to get it down to Extremely Light at 200% inf.
Lib2 has an Alert Modifier of +3 so he won't drop it to Extremely Light, he can however drop it to the same activity level as he would have had with Str1 by infiltrating to 200%, however this mission usually spawn with really short timer so it's not obvious 200% will be possible
For Lib 3, Destroy the Relay is going to be tricky, but you might get a Dark VIP mission which is much more straightforward. Unlocking the Network tower will prompt the AI to deploy strength heavily in that region, which you want to do, even if you don't liberate it, as it will make liberation elsewhere much easier.
This. Even if you don't plan to liberate the region, you shouldn't abandon it with "only" 4 str, you want str to rise to 8-9 in regions before you abandon them as those legions locked there are legions you won't face in adjacent regions. So just keep going, if you have opportunities to run other liberation missions, do them, but prepare for plan-B in another region.
Jadiel
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Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by Jadiel »

LordYanaek wrote:
Jadiel wrote: Liberation missions aren't supposed to appear for the first month, so I'm surprised you've got Lib 1 so early, not so late.
Where did you get this? I'm almost sure i've seen liberation 1 before the first supply drop too (but it's been some time now)
Even at str4 you should be able to get it down to Extremely Light at 200% inf.
Lib2 has an Alert Modifier of +3 so he won't drop it to Extremely Light, he can however drop it to the same activity level as he would have had with Str1 by infiltrating to 200%, however this mission usually spawn with really short timer so it's not obvious 200% will be possible.
On Legendary, Lib 1 was changed to not spawn until month 2 in 1.1 or 1.2 (can't remember which). That's only on Legendary though, on all other difficulty levels Lib 1 spawns from the start of the game.

Good call on +3 str in Lib 2 - I had forgotten about that.
LordYanaek
Posts: 940
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:34 pm

Re: LW2 Strategic Layer: Managing Strength and Vigilance

Post by LordYanaek »

OK. With a Commander campaign started in 1.1 it's no surprise my Lib 1 came earlier then.
I guess first "month" in this case means first supply drop which comes before the end of the actual first month.
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