Legend difficulty vigilance generation mechanics

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DjAci
Posts: 63
Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2016 12:07 am

Legend difficulty vigilance generation mechanics

Post by DjAci »

Hi all Long warriors:)

I have been playing legend lately and have consistently been able to do missions nicely all up until very late game (December), however I get killed by the inevitable increase in avatar progress speed:(

I have been scouring the internet trying to find a way in the strategic layer to deal with it and have found some info, but not all I need.

The answer to my troubles seem to be higher vigilance to slow down avatar progress. Now that is nice and dandy, but with 72 ADVENT legions on the map by December I would need a vigilance of above 72 to do any meaningful avatar slowdown.

I wish to ask people who have experience with it
1. is vigilance generation important to consistently do a successful campaign. To deal with avatar progress?
2. If it is, how do you generate it, are "Get advent attention missions keylate game?"
3. If so, can you do it, if vigilance decays by 1 every week over 16 regions you need to generate more than 16 vigilance per week to get it up consistently or am I missing something?
Dwarfling
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Re: Legend difficulty vigilance generation mechanics

Post by Dwarfling »

I know it's not exactly what you asked but I'll tell you this: completing the campaign without losing to Avatar is not so much about raising vigilance to slow Avatar but about expanding horizontally fast enough so that when you liberate your first region you are two jumps away from the Blacksite and potentially one from a Facility. So what you must be doing the first months is putting all your barracks to work on infiltrating missions so that you have enough Intel to expand when the time comes. Boosting missions thus should be avoided unless it's an absolutely critical mission, and expanding vertically should be avoided unless it's your third region.
DjAci
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Re: Legend difficulty vigilance generation mechanics

Post by DjAci »

I get you, did that. Finished my Blacksite mid september followed by immediate shadow chamber on win. By late september i had access to forge and psi gate.

However even with boost it took me 13 days to inf that mission with 8 man squad. I would do it immediately, but i had to take care of wounds and then wait for a UFO hunt to fisinh to do avanger defense. This DE happened automatically after Blacksite. Ba the time ti was done it was mid October. More wounds. Had to start psi gate inf at start of November. Then abort it as a regular UFO hunt DE started. Did psi gate finally at end of November, and then avatar jumped 8!!!! pips in 3 weeks (supply drop interval). I was almost dead but managed a facility lead with a suicide shinobi for two pips.

A week later both pips were back again with 7 days left on the AVATAR timer and 13 days to infiltrate forge, so I lost. I made the absolute superfast run. Focused on it, but those UFO hunt DE's delayed me.

I am not sold on the idea that on legend you can reliably win the campaign without slowing avatar. Pehaps if you get luck lategame, some facility leads and a clear path you might just do it, but it will be more luck than strategy.

I am trying to gather thoughts here about how AVATAR progress mechanics work and how to reliably handle them late game.
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WanWhiteWolf
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Re: Legend difficulty vigilance generation mechanics

Post by WanWhiteWolf »

I tried both spiking vigilance vs non-spiking vigilance strategies.

The heavy spiking vigilance postponed the Avatar timer on November without doing anything against it. But I had 90 Legions on November and most missions were on STR 5-7. By December I rushed the end campaign with EXO and Coils. I had 6 squads.

The non-heavy spike strategy revolves into fast expanding. By September you should be set with 2 full squads able to do missions against Avatar timer. After September my A squad was simply on queue from one big mission to another (Blacksite, Forge, Facility, HQ). The B team was doing all the supply raids / troop columns and dealing with UFO defense mission.

If any of the A team gets wounded, someone from the B team takes the spot. Only wounds you should take on golden path missions are some reaction shots - at best. I mean ...on HQ I go with 4 snipers, 2 OW specialists 1 Shinobi and a PSI /Grenadier. It's pretty hard to take any damage since you are snipping everything before they reach you.

As for your campaign lost ....you had the Forge available on September and you lost in December. I would say that was your missplay. You don't need a full MSGT team to deal with a base defense. Just OW the first 3-4 pods; snipe the relay and get out. Worst case you get a death/ maybe 2 but that's hardly an issue by that time. Only one team can go into the final mission and most missions end-game are not very appealing.
Dwarfling
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Re: Legend difficulty vigilance generation mechanics

Post by Dwarfling »

I also do an average of 2 Facilities on a successful campaign.
DjAci
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Re: Legend difficulty vigilance generation mechanics

Post by DjAci »

Those are some great advice guys. Thx. I will take it into account on my next campaign.
stefan3iii
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Re: Legend difficulty vigilance generation mechanics

Post by stefan3iii »

I haven't been able to slow Avatar in 1.4 on L/I. It would require doing hard missions with weak soldiers. I basically only play extremely lights on GOPs, with the rare very light.

Joinrbs, Saph, and xwynns play in a similar way. Aedn though from what I've gathered does a LOT of missions, even things like Moderate GOPs. So another style beyond the ultra cautious one may be viable, I've never tried myself.
Saph7
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Re: Legend difficulty vigilance generation mechanics

Post by Saph7 »

Just finished a Legend campaign a couple of days ago, and to confirm what's already been said, I don't think focusing on increasing vigilance is necessary or even particularly useful. Just try to expand as fast as possible and generate as many resources as possible.

Think of an XCOM 2 campaign as a race. You're racing against two main things: the Avatar clock (which goes up mostly with Facilities but can be set back) and the Force Level clock (which goes up every X days and is basically impossible to stop). While it's possible to get ahead in the Avatar race by taking down Facilities, by far the most effective way to win the race is to do the Golden Path missions, set back the Avatar project, and complete the game before they can recover. In my opinion, the Force Level race is actually the scarier one since you can't do anything to set it back and the aliens always win it eventually. The only way you 'win' the Force Level race is by closing out the game as quickly as possible.
DjAci
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Re: Legend difficulty vigilance generation mechanics

Post by DjAci »

Great info Saph.

Can you share some details. When did you manage to finish the campaign? When did you do blacksite? Did you do any advent facilities to slow down the AVATAR and how imporatant was that in your overall strategy?
DerAva
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Re: Legend difficulty vigilance generation mechanics

Post by DerAva »

Saph7 wrote: Think of an XCOM 2 campaign as a race. (...) by far the most effective way to win the race is to do the Golden Path missions, set back the Avatar project, and complete the game before they can recover. (...) The only way you 'win' the Force Level race is by closing out the game as quickly as possible.
While I understand that this is the most effective way to win the campaign, for me personally there's little satisfaction in completing the final mission and winning the video game. The fun is playing the game, especially once you get all the fun lategame toys and abilities and challenging late game enemies. So racing to finish the game just as you unlock the fun stuff is not something that I really enjoy.
Again, that is all just personal preference, so no absolute statements here. Going well into the 2nd year right now, so force level is capped out at 20 (it still caps out, right?), but the doom clock is a bit concerning.
Saph7
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Re: Legend difficulty vigilance generation mechanics

Post by Saph7 »

DjAci wrote:Great info Saph.

Can you share some details. When did you manage to finish the campaign? When did you do blacksite? Did you do any advent facilities to slow down the AVATAR and how imporatant was that in your overall strategy?
Ran Blacksite on August 14th, finished the campaign on September 26th. This is much much faster than you need to go – it's the current record for Legendary as far as I know, though it's possible someone out there has a better time!

Since I was going so fast, I could ignore facilities completely, which I think is a good strategy in general. I dislike doing facilities due to the lack of rewards and due to how costly they are to run. GP missions are a much better deal.
DjAci
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Re: Legend difficulty vigilance generation mechanics

Post by DjAci »

Congrats, that is an amazing speed.

Did you even get plasma? Or dod you end with predator coilguns?

How many paralel GOPs did you do during midagame on average 3 or 4?

I see now how you managed to skip all the hardest late game months. September with coil is still fairly doable, while things in October become very tough. great thinking.

One other question, when doing GP missions how many soldiers did you take. I usually take 7 for blacksite and 8 for Psi gate and forge. What are your typical compositions? Psi gate is hardest IMO cause crysalidds shut down shinobi scout.
Saph7
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: Legend difficulty vigilance generation mechanics

Post by Saph7 »

I got plasma rifles in time for the last missions, though it meant I didn't have time for Warden, so I had to do Waterworld with my team in Predator.

I had 4ish combat teams, of which 3 would be infiltrating at any one time. Did an average of 11-12ish GOPs per supply month throughout midgame.

Blacksite was easy (coil rifles vs M1s/M2s). Psi Gate was much harder as I only brought 7 soldiers, but they included two Rapid Reaction Rangers and a Double Tap Sharpshooter, which was just about enough firepower (though I had a couple of nasty moments when I pulled double pods of 15 enemies each). Forge was a giant epic battle where I had to kill 55 enemies going across the map, but I had two DfA sharps in good positions and they were able to pick off most of the targets while my Specialists hacked drones and MECs to keep the aliens busy. I also had an Avenger Defence which was pretty much a joke (four Rangers with Plasma Rifles meant that the aliens barely got to take any shots).

My team composition for the lategame missions varied with wounds and soldier availability, but the core squad was 1 Gunner, 1 officer Specialist, 2 overwatch Rangers, and 1-2 DfA Sharpshooters. A Phantom scout is nice if you can get one, but on Psi Gate I didn't have room, and on Forge and Waterworld my scout got flanked and detected early so I had to play the rest of the mission without it. Then I'd have 1-2 'meat shield' soldiers, either Assaults or Technicals. They were high rank and could do some damage, but their main job was to soak up incoming fire that otherwise would be hitting the Rangers. Had one critically wounded on Psi Gate and one killed on Forge, but in both cases they lasted long enough that I'd won the mission by the time they went down.
DjAci
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Re: Legend difficulty vigilance generation mechanics

Post by DjAci »

Saph7 wrote:I got plasma rifles in time for the last missions, though it meant I didn't have time for Warden, so I had to do Waterworld with my team in Predator.

I had 4ish combat teams, of which 3 would be infiltrating at any one time. Did an average of 11-12ish GOPs per supply month throughout midgame.

Blacksite was easy (coil rifles vs M1s/M2s). Psi Gate was much harder as I only brought 7 soldiers, but they included two Rapid Reaction Rangers and a Double Tap Sharpshooter, which was just about enough firepower (though I had a couple of nasty moments when I pulled double pods of 15 enemies each). Forge was a giant epic battle where I had to kill 55 enemies going across the map, but I had two DfA sharps in good positions and they were able to pick off most of the targets while my Specialists hacked drones and MECs to keep the aliens busy. I also had an Avenger Defence which was pretty much a joke (four Rangers with Plasma Rifles meant that the aliens barely got to take any shots).

My team composition for the lategame missions varied with wounds and soldier availability, but the core squad was 1 Gunner, 1 officer Specialist, 2 overwatch Rangers, and 1-2 DfA Sharpshooters. A Phantom scout is nice if you can get one, but on Psi Gate I didn't have room, and on Forge and Waterworld my scout got flanked and detected early so I had to play the rest of the mission without it. Then I'd have 1-2 'meat shield' soldiers, either Assaults or Technicals. They were high rank and could do some damage, but their main job was to soak up incoming fire that otherwise would be hitting the Rangers. Had one critically wounded on Psi Gate and one killed on Forge, but in both cases they lasted long enough that I'd won the mission by the time they went down.
Thx Saph, that is some great and very useful info:)
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