I'm getting rocked on legendary o.o

Share strategy and tips here.
Jacke
Posts: 623
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 1:10 am

Re: I'm getting rocked on legendary o.o

Post by Jacke »

trihero wrote:Looking at xwynn's run, he's at a later date (July 13th) and just did his first network tower, and has like 20 supply income. I'm July 8th working on my first HQ with +200 income.
I don't know what dark sorcery or sacrifices made to Eldritch horrors Xwynns does. A July network tower with a laser shotgun assauilt and 4 stock SMG on a Shinobi, 2 Technicals, and a Grenadier. 3 wound success. And he got that 20 supply income because he finally switched a few rebels to supplies, as he's been running them on intel, recruit, or hiding until now.

I figure Xwynns and JoINrbs have such an internalized knowledge of playing LW2 on Legendary that they can just pull off stuff others struggle with and often fail. I'm following Xwynns and I see him riding a knife-edge. Yet I won't be surprised if he rides it into the endgame where he could do the Golden Path missions if he still has enthusiasm for his campaign.

I could do some of this, but I don't think I could do it all. To me, it just seems there's too many knobs to fiddle and you have to set them to exacting values that are not very obvious.
Saph7
Long War 2 Crew
Posts: 167
Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2017 4:00 pm

Re: I'm getting rocked on legendary o.o

Post by Saph7 »

Jacke wrote:a Shinobi, 2 Technicals, and a Grenadier
The reason Jo and X can get away with running midgame missions with bad equipment is that they're using classes that don't need equipment to be good. Technicals are exceedingly strong in the early game, probably the strongest class in all of LW2, and Shinobis and Grenadiers are close runners-up.

I don't bring Techs or Grenadiers to Network Towers, but then I've never had to do one with really sub-par equipment. If you do, bringing two Technicals and rocketing/burning everything is the right choice.
dario_gaston
Posts: 28
Joined: Wed May 24, 2017 3:32 am

Re: I'm getting rocked on legendary o.o

Post by dario_gaston »

I guess you (OP) and I are doing the same mistake: focusing too much on one region while maybe we should play more with kiting advent: hit a region just a few times and then switch rebels to recruit and supply while advent activity is still low enough to prevent retaliations; and look for missions in another region.
stefan3iii
Posts: 319
Joined: Wed Feb 01, 2017 3:49 am

Re: I'm getting rocked on legendary o.o

Post by stefan3iii »

dario_gaston wrote:I guess you (OP) and I are doing the same mistake: focusing too much on one region while maybe we should play more with kiting advent: hit a region just a few times and then switch rebels to recruit and supply while advent activity is still low enough to prevent retaliations; and look for missions in another region.
I don't think you should be avoiding retaliations, use your rebels as much as you can, and if some die in a retaliation so be it.

I see the early game strategy like this:
1) Everyone on intel until I have 2 GOPs detected.
2) Switch everyone to recruit.
3) Everyone back on intel once mission completes. etc cycling between intel/recruit.
4) Expand as fast as possible, ie as soon as I have 100 intel contact new region.
5) New regions go on intel + scan as soon as they're detected. Then they cycle between recruit+intel.

At some point you're going to realize that you're detecting more missions than you can send soldiers on, that usually happens around when you have your third region. At that point I prefer to do missions in the lowest strength regions, and recruit elsewhere. Eventually those havens where you're recruiting are going to have 11+ rebels, at which point you can strongly consider switching them all to supply.

One exception is when your first region hits strength 4, really good idea to go max intel to get yourself an Ambush Troops mission, which is hugely important for corpses.

For example in my game, my first full 13 rebel supply drop was in may, though faceless ate a lot of the income. By July I had something like 20+ rebels on supplies generating 500 income, after clearing out the faceless. I have a 9 strength haven that I leave on supply, it seems to attract retaliations like flies, but most are supply retals which are super easy.

Mission wise, I was doing 2-3 missions at a time in March/April, 3 missions in May/June, and 4 in July/August.

Finally, I've experimented with a bunch of openings, and the thing I've noticed the most is that there is a LOT of RNG in the early game. I've had an opening where I couldn't detect the first two GOPs before there was only like 3-4 days left on them. That's ridiculously bad and puts you way behind. I've seen early games where you find lots of scientists/engies in the first month, and ones where you find none. Getting a successful Alloy or Large Supply Cache hack can put you way ahead. Getting the right Intel Package can also boost your early game a lot. Your region being connected to 2 vs 3 other regions is important. How quickly you detect faceless has massive impact on your income. Even your rookie starting stats and the classes they promote to can make the game easier/harder. Getting XCOMed isn't just for the tactical layer anymore, now bullshit can happen in the strategic layer as well! Prepare yourself :)
deducter
Posts: 43
Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2017 3:47 am

Re: I'm getting rocked on legendary o.o

Post by deducter »

Long War has many elements similar with roguelikes.

Sometimes you find a Belt of Aias on level 5 of the Pit and win. Sometimes you find no weapons for the first 15 floors and probably lose.
trihero
Posts: 1099
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 7:01 am

Re: I'm getting rocked on legendary o.o

Post by trihero »

I see the early game strategy like this:
1) Everyone on intel until I have 2 GOPs detected.
2) Switch everyone to recruit.
3) Everyone back on intel once mission completes. etc cycling between intel/recruit.
4) Expand as fast as possible, ie as soon as I have 100 intel contact new region.
5) New regions go on intel + scan as soon as they're detected. Then they cycle between recruit+intel.
I'm not necessarily certain step 2 is always the most optimal. For one thing, when you switch people, you lose a day of the job they are on. For this reason, if you wait until a mission completes before you do intel, you "lose" a day of intel that you otherwise would have had, had you not switched intel. On Legendary where mission timers are balanced on a razor's edge, who knows what these days of lost jobs add up to (as you alluded to, you can easily get a lot of 3-4 day missions which screw up the early game). I guess you could try to time your switches so they are 1 day before the mission is going to launch...?

Personally I go full intel for the first 3 missions (get everyone the hell out of the barracks in the best possible timer missions), then leave 1 guy on recruit in the main region with rest on intel. New regions immediately go full recruiting. I try to drill the home region with the avenger scan as hard as possible because you start with a network tower there so you get the most of your scans, but I do switch to recruit / supplies when the strength hits like 4 or 5 and then flip off the recruiting in the new region and go drill there some.
Finally, I've experimented with a bunch of openings, and the thing I've noticed the most is that there is a LOT of RNG in the early game. I've had an opening where I couldn't detect the first two GOPs before there was only like 3-4 days left on them. That's ridiculously bad and puts you way behind. I've seen early games where you find lots of scientists/engies in the first month, and ones where you find none. Getting a successful Alloy or Large Supply Cache hack can put you way ahead. Getting the right Intel Package can also boost your early game a lot. Your region being connected to 2 vs 3 other regions is important. How quickly you detect faceless has massive impact on your income. Even your rookie starting stats and the classes they promote to can make the game easier/harder. Getting XCOMed isn't just for the tactical layer anymore, now bullshit can happen in the strategic layer as well! Prepare yourself :)
Yeah I'm going to chalk up a lot of early game bad rng, like I said I only had 1 rescue engineer mission until July, and also maybe I should just continue the campaign since it's not irreparable. Personally I use a 10-12 assaults with 4-5 shinobis in my barracks to serve as the main source of firepower. They can fight above their tier, and it's especially helpful to R+G into stun gun on high hp targets to give the rest of your team time to run up there and kill them next turn (on my July network tower I ran into a 31 hp archon + 2 sectoids, barf, but I had 4 assaults so I opened by stunning everything, shinboi chopped up sectoids, and assaults kept the archon under stun lock).
That's not what I am saying. I'm saying that once you have 2 GOP + Liberation, the low hanging fruit are all now gone. It has nothing to do with rescues, which aren't even a type of activity (missions are sorted and spawned by activity, not mission type). You can continue to run intel if you are hoping to catch a Dark Event or a Supply Raid, but for low pop havens, it is almost always better to do a round of recruiting instead, because there isn't anything that can legally spawn anymore that you can realistically detect.
But the low hanging fruit isn't gone if you haven't picked up a second rescue mission in the same region. And believe me I've done a lot of the switching strategy back in 1.2, but I'm not convinced it's always optimal now. I know rescue mission isn't a type, but because you can get two missions with rescue engi/scientist in one region without waiting for an 18 day cooldown, you might as well hang around until you see two of them rather than keep losing time switching rebel jobs.
Antifringe
Posts: 226
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2017 9:52 pm

Re: I'm getting rocked on legendary o.o

Post by Antifringe »

trihero wrote:
That's not what I am saying. I'm saying that once you have 2 GOP + Liberation, the low hanging fruit are all now gone. It has nothing to do with rescues, which aren't even a type of activity (missions are sorted and spawned by activity, not mission type). You can continue to run intel if you are hoping to catch a Dark Event or a Supply Raid, but for low pop havens, it is almost always better to do a round of recruiting instead, because there isn't anything that can legally spawn anymore that you can realistically detect.
But the low hanging fruit isn't gone if you haven't picked up a second rescue mission in the same region. And believe me I've done a lot of the switching strategy back in 1.2, but I'm not convinced it's always optimal now. I know rescue mission isn't a type, but because you can get two missions with rescue engi/scientist in one region without waiting for an 18 day cooldown, you might as well hang around until you see two of them rather than keep losing time switching rebel jobs.
I still don't think you understand. Rescues are spawned by ProtectData (a GOP), HighValuePrisoner (a GOP), and Lib2 (a non-random mission that is always either available or not available, depending on where you are on the chain. That's it for the low hanging fruit. Period. Dark Events sometimes spawn rescues, but 1) they're rare 2) they're hard to detect with small havens, 3) they don't even spawn during the first 1-2 months (depends on difficulty).

So, in most situations, and in 100% of the first month situations, if you have 2 GOPs + a Lib, you're done until you start clearing missions. Any Intel you generate is wasted, unless you just really, really value the tiny resource intel income you get (which will be quickly made up for by the increased productivity from recruiting).

An example: I detect three missions in a region. I have not done any liberation missions in this region, and Strength and Vigilance is low (let's say they're both 3, just so that we have a number) I find a "steal package from vehicle mission" that grants an Intel Package, an Extract VIP and a hack workstation that doesn't grant an Intel Package. The fist mission is a Protect Data, the second one is a HighValuePrisoner (it can't be ProtectData because the first mission must be a ProtectData already). The other mission is Lib1, which always a data raid of some sort that offers some Intel but no Intel Package. I will not get a second rescue mission until I start clearing those missions out. Ever. The slots are filled. There is no "second rescue mission slot," there are only GOP and Lib slots. Any Intel gathered during this time is wasted. Most missions take 4-6 days to infiltrate, and there's a ~1 day cooloff between the queue being emptied and the AI refilling it, so there will usually be a substantial amount of time to get in some recruiting, even taking into account the the work lost by switching.

Assuming you do all three missions, I can even predict what the next draws will be. I will get one Rescue/Extract (Lib2, 100% guaranteed to be in the pool if Lib1 is done), a Smash and Grab (Logistics), and a Jailbreak (PoliticalPrisoners). The Jailbreak and the VIP are the obvious plums, and they are guaranteed to be present, given the strength and vigilance numbers. Potentially squeezing in an extra rebel for Intel during the waiting period actually increases the average rescues you get in this situation.

The only benefit to staying on Intel is that you might snag a rare mission, like a Dark Event or a UFO or something. But we are talking about small havens that really, really need the recruits. Those missions are hard to detect even with large havens backed up with towers and scientists. I would rather increase the haven's long term detection power than take a tiny gamble on 1) those missions even being present and 2) detecting them with a small haven.

For larger havens (i.e. ones that you done a few Jailbreaks), I still usually do a round of recruiting between cooldowns, simply because the time needed to grab a recruit is now very small, so I get a near-immediate benefit for a very small opportunity cost.It gets more complicated as Vigilance and Strength go up and the pool of possible missions changes, but that's a different topic altogether.
sacho
Posts: 30
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2017 4:08 pm

Re: I'm getting rocked on legendary o.o

Post by sacho »

trihero wrote: I'm not necessarily certain step 2 is always the most optimal. For one thing, when you switch people, you lose a day of the job they are on. For this reason, if you wait until a mission completes before you do intel, you "lose" a day of intel that you otherwise would have had, had you not switched intel. On Legendary where mission timers are balanced on a razor's edge, who knows what these days of lost jobs add up to (as you alluded to, you can easily get a lot of 3-4 day missions which screw up the early game). I guess you could try to time your switches so they are 1 day before the mission is going to launch...?
You cannot detect a third mission in your first region on Legendary until the first supply drop. The benefits from the recruit are marginal(maybe about a 50% chance of getting a rookie/rebel) so I would agree that it's questionable if it's worth doing. It depends a lot on how early you detect the missions. Early detect - high 7-8 day timers - you can put your rebels on recruit for 4-5 days, which is pretty good. Late detect(past March 6), 4-5 day timers, don't bother.

Joinrbs had a much more useful early game trick in one of his videos(or comments?) - do not contact the second region until you have detected(and possibly a few days after) your second round of missions. This will stagger the mission timers between your first and second region and give you a nice constant stream of missions up until the end of April.

The trick to do this manipulation is to use the Avenger carefully: Scan in your first region until you detect the first two missions. Then scan the new region until it's close to done(you can scan for black market if you haven't researched comms yet). Go back and scan in your first region until you detect the next round. Contact the new region when you have about 4-5 days left on your infiltrations. Scan in that region, and you should have your third set of missions spawn about the time you finish your second set. If you manage to complete all these missions with reasonable(1-2) wounds, you should be on a very rapid tempo of progression.
stefan3iii
Posts: 319
Joined: Wed Feb 01, 2017 3:49 am

Re: I'm getting rocked on legendary o.o

Post by stefan3iii »

sacho wrote: You cannot detect a third mission in your first region on Legendary until the first supply drop. The benefits from the recruit are marginal(maybe about a 50% chance of getting a rookie/rebel) so I would agree that it's questionable if it's worth doing. It depends a lot on how early you detect the missions. Early detect - high 7-8 day timers - you can put your rebels on recruit for 4-5 days, which is pretty good. Late detect(past March 6), 4-5 day timers, don't bother.
The way I understand recruitment to work is that it's filling a bucket. So even if they're recruiting for only 3 days, it's still beneficial, because the next time you recruit for 3 days you'll get a recruit/haven member. It adds up over time.
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
Posts: 364
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2017 8:43 pm

Re: I'm getting rocked on legendary o.o

Post by chrisb »

stefan3iii wrote:
sacho wrote: You cannot detect a third mission in your first region on Legendary until the first supply drop. The benefits from the recruit are marginal(maybe about a 50% chance of getting a rookie/rebel) so I would agree that it's questionable if it's worth doing. It depends a lot on how early you detect the missions. Early detect - high 7-8 day timers - you can put your rebels on recruit for 4-5 days, which is pretty good. Late detect(past March 6), 4-5 day timers, don't bother.
The way I understand recruitment to work is that it's filling a bucket. So even if they're recruiting for only 3 days, it's still beneficial, because the next time you recruit for 3 days you'll get a recruit/haven member. It adds up over time.
That's right, each RebelLevel nets 3 recruit points per day, and the soldier liaison nets you 3 along with a 5% multiplier per rank. So if you have 6 rebels in a new region with a CPL then you will get 24.15 (21 * 1.15) per day. Once the bucket hits 100 it rolls for a rebel/rookie. If IIRC, the bucket is cleared, so the overflow does not carry over, so there's probably some min-maxing you could do to determine if it's worth putting all of them on recruit or not. Especially now with no negative monthly from facilities making it at least somewhat useful to even have a few rebels per region on supply.
Antifringe
Posts: 226
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2017 9:52 pm

Re: I'm getting rocked on legendary o.o

Post by Antifringe »

Hey chrisb, this is kind of a tangent, but do you know the numbers for the effect of Faceless on Recruiting and Intel gathering? The old system in the config is no longer read by the code, and I don't know if it was ever replaced by anything else.

EDIT: Okay, I partially answered my own question. There's a new entry in the config that I hadn't seen before:

Code: Select all

[LW_Overhaul.LWRebelJobIncomeModifier_LocalFaceless]
PCT_PENALTY_PER_FACELESS[0]=0.03
PCT_PENALTY_PER_FACELESS[1]=0.05
PCT_PENALTY_PER_FACELESS[2]=0.06
PCT_PENALTY_PER_FACELESS[3]=0.07
But I'm still a little confused. I get that this applies to the Recruit and Intel jobs (probably), but does it also affect Supply? Supply already gets a 20% penalty taken off the top per faceless. Does this other penalty I just found also get applied, but at the generation step?
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
Posts: 364
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2017 8:43 pm

Re: I'm getting rocked on legendary o.o

Post by chrisb »

Antifringe wrote:Hey chrisb, this is kind of a tangent, but do you know the numbers for the effect of Faceless on Recruiting and Intel gathering? The old system in the config is no longer read by the code, and I don't know if it was ever replaced by anything else.

EDIT: Okay, I partially answered my own question. There's a new entry in the config that I hadn't seen before:

Code: Select all

[LW_Overhaul.LWRebelJobIncomeModifier_LocalFaceless]
PCT_PENALTY_PER_FACELESS[0]=0.03
PCT_PENALTY_PER_FACELESS[1]=0.05
PCT_PENALTY_PER_FACELESS[2]=0.06
PCT_PENALTY_PER_FACELESS[3]=0.07
But I'm still a little confused. I get that this applies to the Recruit and Intel jobs (probably), but does it also affect Supply? Supply already gets a 20% penalty taken off the top per faceless. Does this other penalty I just found also get applied, but at the generation step?
IIRC those per difficulty penalties don't apply to supply gathering, just the 20% per faceless in the region. Supply does not penalize until the EndOfMonth trigger occurs. This is to prevent being able to use the predicated supplies to determine if and how many faceless are in a region.
HerrDoktorMencus
Posts: 12
Joined: Fri Jan 20, 2017 10:35 pm

Re: I'm getting rocked on legendary o.o

Post by HerrDoktorMencus »

Just to add a resource to the conversation:

joinrb's post on haven management strategy in the 201 forum gives great detail on how to maximize the number of missions you get.
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