Veteran Diff, its December, how far should I be?

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Ptaco
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Aug 10, 2017 6:49 pm

Veteran Diff, its December, how far should I be?

Post by Ptaco »

I feel like I was doing great in this campaign, but it's not December, I have full coils researched and wrath armor and I'm starting to feel like I'm stuggling in missions now.

I've got 4 blips left on my avatar timer, there's 4 facilities up, I have 2 revealed (one of them luckily has 6 blips so that one will alter progress a LOT), and I'm currently infiltrating the gate, and still have to do the forge.

I feel like the missions are extremely difficult though. The average advent troop is around 12-16 hp with 1-2 armor. I guess I got screwed on the dark events because this feels really high, when I need 3 shots on coil weapons to take out one troop. Is this normal for a December timeline? I mean realistically I only have 2 story missions to do before I'm at the end. But I still feel like I'm not going to make it, at the rate advent seems to be tearing away in their difficulty.
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WanWhiteWolf
Posts: 138
Joined: Tue May 16, 2017 10:09 pm

Re: Veteran Diff, its December, how far should I be?

Post by WanWhiteWolf »

That's pretty standard.

I mean...on Veteran difficulty you can probably reach plasma on September or something like that if you know exactly what you are doing. But if you have a solid strategy, you might as well go on a higher difficulty to begin with.

Coil guns + Predator armor is enough to finish the last mission.

Make 2 solid squads and do the 8-9 soldier missions (HQ, Facility, Golden path missions..etc). Everyone else ...farm whatever you can.Just skip missions that are not attractive. Only do Ex Light / Very Light missions on less than 6 STR regions. 6 people of Ex Light / 7 people for V Light.

As long as you can keep the avatar timer on check, you can't really lose. That said, have 1 squad infiltrating on Facility missions. Those are the most important to keep the avatar timer. You need on average 2 snipers / big squad late game (at least from my point of view). Have evac always placed next to your squad. Just do OW camp and slow advance. If things get nasty -> evac. By nasty I mean - risk of squad wipe. Losing 1 soldier at that point in campaign doesn't make much difference. You only need a handfull of soldiers for the last mission. Everyone else is expendable.
Kwic
Posts: 35
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:13 pm

Re: Veteran Diff, its December, how far should I be?

Post by Kwic »

WanWhiteWolf wrote:That's pretty standard.



Coil guns + Predator armor is enough to finish the last mission.
That is exactly what I pointed in an another post. This game is frustrating : not only it seems that you can fisnish the last mission with taht gear ( I have to say that I always had better gear to finish it), but anyway, with the avatar Project running, you can never have the best gear and have a lot of fun.

This should be a way to extend the play with harder missions you could do with best gear and perks...
Psieye
Posts: 829
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:27 am

Re: Veteran Diff, its December, how far should I be?

Post by Psieye »

Kwic wrote:with the avatar Project running, you can never have the best gear and have a lot of fun.

This should be a way to extend the play with harder missions you could do with best gear and perks...
There are reports of people extending the campaign into the second year. You just need to control the Avatar project, meaning wiping every facility and jacking global vigiliance up. The reason people don't do that is because finding facilities means doing lots of risky low-timer hack missions. That and they want to get the game over before Sectopods and Gatekeepers show up everywhere.

So your mid-game determines whether you're setting up for an extended campaign or racing the two timers. It's my theory that if most of your GOps are still E.Light, V.Light around June, you're playing to race the timers. If instead your GOps are typically V.Heavy in the mid-game (and you take minimal wounds from them), you'll have the extra resources to afford lots of gear and you'll be getting MSGTs by June.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
Exquisitor
Posts: 53
Joined: Wed May 10, 2017 4:50 pm

Re: Veteran Diff, its December, how far should I be?

Post by Exquisitor »

Psieye wrote:There are reports of people extending the campaign into the second year. You just need to control the Avatar project, meaning wiping every facility and jacking global vigiliance up. The reason people don't do that is because finding facilities means doing lots of risky low-timer hack missions. That and they want to get the game over before Sectopods and Gatekeepers show up everywhere.
I played through to late March or early April in year 2 of one game (Veteran level). It got boring so I finished it. :D

To the OP: as long as you are careful with your pulls and have high level troopers, then you should be fine. You need to control and kill aliens so your troopers need some good skills for dishing it out or stopping the aliens from dishing: grenadiers with sting grenades and incendiary grenades, rangers with rapid fire, assaults with close combat spec, DfA sharpshooters with double tap, solid psi troopers for additional control, etc.
Ptaco
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Aug 10, 2017 6:49 pm

Re: Veteran Diff, its December, how far should I be?

Post by Ptaco »

My campaign ended up going until late January. I had 2 alien facilities still revealed that I could have done that would of dropped the timer another 6-7 blips.

Honestly though I really don't understand how people can finish so early. I felt like I rushed the story this time around and still couldn't complete before December. I had all wrath, plasma rifle's and beam cannons for the last mission, and it was virtually a cake walk.

I wish I knew how people were ending so soon though, because I feel I just happen to get really lucky with alien facilities this time around.

And maybe it was the difficulty, but I don't feel the low timer missions for facilities were really that bad. When u fully upgrade your squad size timers and I think the AWC? You can do a 4 day mission with six troops. It's just slightly over 4 days, but with a boost can put you well into over 100. That was pretty much what I did to find all the facilities.
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