What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

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Padishar
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What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by Padishar »

I play 1.5 with Veteran difficulty. I have not completed any LW2 campaign yet, because I've been too slow and I always restarted when new versions appeared.

After the start of the game I increased my roster of troops as is natural: I always hired the soldiers from black market and any recruit that became available. I recruit with soldier liaison in any region with less than 13 rebels, producing rookies every now and then. Jailbreaks also can give rookies.

The thing is that I never stopped doing this. I also got the recruits cost 0 supplies regional bonus in a couple of months, making it free (except for the Black Market soldiers, but they're quite cheap). I am now playing October, and I have over 120 soldiers and sparks combined. I have 11 10-man squads (some of which are in training/sickbay or act as liaison), each having all 8 of the normal classes and 1 psiop+1 spark, with one of them being an officer as a dedicated squad leader. Soon I will form my 12th squad. Newbie squads rank up to Sgt with Trial By Fire officers from other squads helping, and they are viable for completing some of the easier missions.

I collect intel in every region I haven't liberated, so I get enough missions that these squads are not just idling. The biggest hurdle is to equip them all, but on the other hand supplies are not a problem because I get so much loot to sell in black market (lately I have had over 20 missions between supply drops). Not all missions require top tier weapons or armor either, especially with high-rank soldiers. When I reached coil tech, elerium started being the bottleneck, but with 70 or so cores I just render them for crystals, which is quite fast with 12 scientists.

I think I'll continue adding people to my roster just for fun in this campaign, but this makes the game really long. I don't need to skip any missions except for those that show up at less than 2 days infiltration time and have a lot of enemies. But if I ever wanted to repeat an LW2 campaign, at what amount of soldiers should I stop and only recruit people to replace fallen ones? Collecting intel in every region is good for stopping dark events, but I guess not all of them have to be stopped, and by switching between intel and other jobs I could have missions spawning at a rate sufficient for a smaller amont of squads. I would just hate to skip any mission with a good infiltration timer just because I don't have the manpower.
jorgen_cab
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by jorgen_cab »

To be honest this is basically the way I approach the game too, I like to just play the missions and completing the campaign are secondary to me. This means that I get as many soldiers and squads as I can and do as many missions as I'm able.

As you say, you don't need all the fancy equipment on all soldiers in all squads on all missions everywhere, you don't need max size squads either.

The more missions you go on the more resources you bring in so equipping and training your soldiers is more or less a none issue and when you need to go on those super hard missions you have enough of the best gear to not worry about it, you always also have enough spare soldiers of good quality to fill in for wounded ones too.

I just think this is one way to play the game and not the wrong way.

You can play with a minimalist soldier pool of perhaps 35-40 or so over a campaign and make it too, the campaign will be over much faster if that is important to you.

I usually start out with 5 man teams and then add permanent members until I reach 8 members over time. The last two positions I usually keep open depending on the missions. I'm also not afraid to run slim operations with less than 5 men if the timer is limited and it is a stealth mission. XP are after all distributed among the soldiers so smaller OPS means more XP for the involved soldiers, I even take pride in not killing a single enemy at times.
Psieye
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by Psieye »

Padishar wrote: I collect intel in every region I haven't liberated
This means you haven't been liberating a lot of regions compared to how many you've contacted. A valid strategy - there is real risk of losing a campaign because you don't have enough missions spawned to gather intel for completing the story.
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Padishar
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by Padishar »

Currently I have contacted 13 out of 16 regions, and only 4 are liberated. I haven't intended to skip liberations, but I just didn't take those liberation chain missions that popped up with too low infiltration times (which happens often in regions that have at most 5 intel rebels and I don't scan with avenger). I don't want to save scum through missions, so I only infiltrate ones where I know I have a good chance of completing the objective.

However my hiatus on liberating has come to an end, because I got plenty of "infiltratable" liberation missions in different regions within a short timeframe. I am infiltrating two advent HQs at the time of writing this, and I have two additional Network Tower missions completed, so I will liberate two more regions after current ones are finished. I don't want to tie up soldiers and gear for infiltrating four advent HQs concurrently. I think I'm gonna leave it at 8 regions liberated for now, because it seems that I will have enough supplies anyway (even though old regions will start to dry out of supplies). If I need some bodies as loot, that would be a reason to liberate more. And of course I can also collect supplies in non-liberated regions.

Isn't there also the risk that when you liberate enough regions, all the remaining non-liberated ones will have a crazy advent strength, making you skip most missions, and risking invasions in many places?
Psieye
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by Psieye »

Padishar wrote: Isn't there also the risk that when you liberate enough regions, all the remaining non-liberated ones will have a crazy advent strength, making you skip most missions, and risking invasions in many places?
There is, but I'd consider the risk of low global vigilance (and thus, no delaying of AVATAR progress) to be somewhat more significant - mitigated by constantly liberating. Invasions aren't all downside: the region gets unliberated so you can liberate it again.

Anyway, it's a playstyle thing. If I had that much manpower, I wouldn't have hesitated with Lib chains. Establish an A-team and then send B-teams through high attrition firefights to complete Lib missions. Dark VIP Lib 3 can be solo-shinobi suicided to complete if a sniper fucks up. Lib 2 VIP can be sent to evac while the squad activates the whole map and tanks everything's attention. A callous approach, but I'm used to not taking significant wounds while going big.

Then again, I don't invest in increasing manpower as much as you. I control how many regions I've contacted to ensure there's just enough for the manpower I have and don't care too much in expanding it. I'd much rather have fucked up MSgts with AWC perks running around in July than a mass of mediocre soldiers who can only do easy missions. Where "easy" is compared to "GOp, Str 5 RNF schedule, 27 enemies".
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SonnyWiFiHr
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by SonnyWiFiHr »

Unliberated ?
Nice tip. Will try that.
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jorgen_cab
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by jorgen_cab »

Psieye wrote:
Padishar wrote:I'd much rather have fucked up MSgts with AWC perks running around in July than a mass of mediocre soldiers who can only do easy missions. Where "easy" is compared to "GOp, Str 5 RNF schedule, 27 enemies".
I don't think this is true at all, more mission means more and equally experienced soldiers. The way I play I make sure all of my best squads are out fighting as much as is possible, low ranking soldiers train up really fast on the easier missions which means you end up with more experienced replacement soldiers when your best ones are wounded or in some training. You can also pick the most suitable replacement and know they will perform almost equally well as your best ones.

As long as you can manage advent strength and the global vigilance at reasonable levels it is not a bad strategy if you like to play lots of missions that is. ;)

There is allot of management to do and not everyone will enjoy that part.
Padishar
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by Padishar »

I agree with Jorgen. As I said, my squads haven't been idle. I think the way to get quick MSGTs is to always make them be part of small squads so they get experience faster. That can be done even with a large number of soldiers available; just put the highest ranking guys on any small-suaqd missions.
gimrah
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by gimrah »

Personally I think you an have too many soldiers. Yes, they can carry hand me down kit up to a point but things like armour don't get upgraded until end game so there is a cost to maintaining a big barracks.

I think it is more efficient to have enough to run 4 regular missions at once or 2 and an HQ or GP mission. You do need to concentrate xp and promotions to some degree for the big missions. And the economics of going broader have diminishing returns once that and equipment costs are taken into account.

That is of course predicated on not having many deaths.
Dwarfling
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by Dwarfling »

I got two campaigns to give you info, both Legendary:

4/2/2035: 23 Total, 0 available for recruit
9/17/2035: 38 Total, 14 available for recruit
1/16/2036: 44 Total, 44 available for recruit (same campaign as above, pretty much won at this point)

The most visible difference with the lowest difficulties is that recruits cost $20, which is a large expense at any point during the early and midgame (liberation takes more time), and GTS training takes 12 days. Less obvious differences are:

- Low level soldiers are a heavy burden to carry during and after midgame, specially after the upper tier of T2 enemies start to show.
- You're gonna be too tight on resources to give a large barracks adequate equipment, specially if said soldiers need good guns to perform.
- Hardly any Rookie you recruit after July will come close to MSgt by the time you get to Water World.

From experience, around July I have trouble manning 3 missions at a time, usually because wounds seem to increase because a combination of yellow alert, T2 alien toughness and rising regional strenght. Then my troops reach higher ranks, I get coils rolling and my wound total goes down.
jorgen_cab
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by jorgen_cab »

It might not work on Legend but that is true for many other strategies that work on Commander and below. The most boring thing about Legend are how it constrain your tactical and strategic choices. In my opinion anyway. At least this tactic seem to work well on Commander difficulty so far for me.

I don't have quite as extensive barrack as 120 soldiers but closer to 80 by mid game and around six permanent squads that go on missions pretty much all the time and two that are resting and training and used for special missions if there is a need for it.
Psieye
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by Psieye »

Padishar wrote:I agree with Jorgen. As I said, my squads haven't been idle. I think the way to get quick MSGTs is to always make them be part of small squads so they get experience faster. That can be done even with a large number of soldiers available; just put the highest ranking guys on any small-suaqd missions.
Let's do the math then:

You propose sending 4-man squads as often as possible. Presumably you're reaching 100% infil each time, so that's 4d 19h on Commander. Let's assume you're doing E.Light missions so that's 9 enemies. Let's say you kill all of them. Then that's 9/4 ~= just over 2 kill XP (assuming every enemy is worth the same XP for simplicity) per soldier.

I propose sending 8-man squads as often as possible (assuming player patience doesn't run out). I don't need to 100% infil. Let's say I'm sending out a mission on average every 2d (can be shorter if I've contacted more regions). Let's assume I'm doing E.Heavy missions so that's 33 enemies. Let's say I kill all of them. That's 33/8 ~= just over 4 kill XP per soldier for twice as many soldiers. That's just from mission success XP, there's a lot more kill XP as well. These fat XP missions are happening faster than any 4-man can hope to achieve without underinfiltrating.

I go from Sgt -> MSgt in about 8 fat missions or so. Depending on what my strategy layer looks like, that might be about a month or two. All this assumes no wound time anywhere, but it's also my view that 4-man squads have more risk of wounds than 8-man squads.
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Jacke
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by Jacke »

I would be very, very careful with 4-soldier squads. Especially with a stealthed Shinobi, they barely have enough firepower to properly take down a single 2 or 3 Advent pod activation. Not unless they are already ranked and geared well, if not overgeared with respect to Advent.

I've found 5 to be the bare minimum truly safe to send on missions, with 6 being even better as a minimum.
Padishar
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by Padishar »

Dwarfling wrote:I got two campaigns to give you info, both Legendary:

4/2/2035: 23 Total, 0 available for recruit
9/17/2035: 38 Total, 14 available for recruit
1/16/2036: 44 Total, 44 available for recruit (same campaign as above, pretty much won at this point)

The most visible difference with the lowest difficulties is that recruits cost $20, which is a large expense at any point during the early and midgame (liberation takes more time), and GTS training takes 12 days. Less obvious differences are:

- Low level soldiers are a heavy burden to carry during and after midgame, specially after the upper tier of T2 enemies start to show.
- You're gonna be too tight on resources to give a large barracks adequate equipment, specially if said soldiers need good guns to perform.
- Hardly any Rookie you recruit after July will come close to MSgt by the time you get to Water World.

From experience, around July I have trouble manning 3 missions at a time, usually because wounds seem to increase because a combination of yellow alert, T2 alien toughness and rising regional strenght. Then my troops reach higher ranks, I get coils rolling and my wound total goes down.
Thanks for this very helpful answer. I'm not going to play another LW2 campaign with a huge roster like I currently have. That would take so much time, and I have other games to play too. So around 50 soldiers at most should suffice for any future campaign then.

It is true that recruit cost of 10 vs 20 is a huge difference, half of Elerium Core's worth. GTS training going from 7 to 12 days is big as well, so things are very different between Veteran and higher difficulties.

Just to clarify to everyone, I'm not trying to justify having a bigger barracks. I did what I did in this campaign because I could, and equipping the squads hasn't been a big issue. Having lasers for some easier missions was fine when I had magnetics researched, for example, and I have been using magnetic tier weapons for some guys even though I have regular plasma and plasma shotguns unlocked. But I certainly don't think this is near an optimal approach even with the easy veteran difficulty.
Psieye wrote:
Padishar wrote:I agree with Jorgen. As I said, my squads haven't been idle. I think the way to get quick MSGTs is to always make them be part of small squads so they get experience faster. That can be done even with a large number of soldiers available; just put the highest ranking guys on any small-suaqd missions.
Let's do the math then:

You propose sending 4-man squads as often as possible. Presumably you're reaching 100% infil each time, so that's 4d 19h on Commander. Let's assume you're doing E.Light missions so that's 9 enemies. Let's say you kill all of them. Then that's 9/4 ~= just over 2 kill XP (assuming every enemy is worth the same XP for simplicity) per soldier.

I propose sending 8-man squads as often as possible (assuming player patience doesn't run out). I don't need to 100% infil. Let's say I'm sending out a mission on average every 2d (can be shorter if I've contacted more regions). Let's assume I'm doing E.Heavy missions so that's 33 enemies. Let's say I kill all of them. That's 33/8 ~= just over 4 kill XP per soldier for twice as many soldiers. That's just from mission success XP, there's a lot more kill XP as well. These fat XP missions are happening faster than any 4-man can hope to achieve without underinfiltrating.

I go from Sgt -> MSgt in about 8 fat missions or so. Depending on what my strategy layer looks like, that might be about a month or two. All this assumes no wound time anywhere, but it's also my view that 4-man squads have more risk of wounds than 8-man squads.
Wow, I have never thought about starting timed missions with 30+ enemies present. Is it crucial to use officer's intel-costing timer delays often in these missions? I was certainly wrong at sending small squads often when trying to rank up quickly, if what you described is viable. Do enemy reinforcements start appearing quicker as well with low infiltration? I know they won't give any loot, and you get exp from them only if you live some original enemies on the map alive. But the reinforcements would make the missions even harder.

So if I have used three 5-6 man squads to infiltrate 3 missions to 100% in six days, I could have actually used one 8-man squad to complete each of those missions, infiltrating 2 days per mission. It would be interesting to test if I can handle such large enemy counts in timed missions.
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by jorgen_cab »

I'm not sure exactly how much XP you get from kills or missions but mission XP are seriously inflated in Long War and kills toned down allot as well.

A smaller team earn more XP per member from mission XP since they share that too there might not be a huge difference from inflating the enemies on the map.

For me personally this is more of a role-play than efficiency thing I guess and I would gladly half the XP of enemy kills and double the mission XP instead to make the kiils really a minor XP gathering source. I will probably change that if easily done, just for kicks.

For me if just feels gamey to purposefully inflate the number of enemies just to gain more XP, this is a balance issue since it goes against the logic of the game mechanics and what I think is the goal of the infiltration mechanics to start with.

I would be happy if kill XP was removed entirely in favor of only mission XP or at least remove kill XP to very marginalized numbers.
Padishar
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by Padishar »

jorgen_cab wrote:I'm not sure exactly how much XP you get from kills or missions but mission XP are seriously inflated in Long War and kills toned down allot as well.

A smaller team earn more XP per member from mission XP since they share that too there might not be a huge difference from inflating the enemies on the map.

For me personally this is more of a role-play than efficiency thing I guess and I would gladly half the XP of enemy kills and double the mission XP instead to make the kiils really a minor XP gathering source. I will probably change that if easily done, just for kicks.

For me if just feels gamey to purposefully inflate the number of enemies just to gain more XP, this is a balance issue since it goes against the logic of the game mechanics and what I think is the goal of the infiltration mechanics to start with.

I would be happy if kill XP was removed entirely in favor of only mission XP or at least remove kill XP to very marginalized numbers.
You are correct that mission XP is a bigger factor than kill XP. However, the mission xp scales with enemies present. So even if you kill zero enemies, if you complete a 4-man squad mission with 10 enemies, you get the same experience per soldier as completing an 8-man squad mission with 20 enemies. And therefore you can get more exp per soldier for doing an 8-man squad 30 enemies mission than 4-man 10 enemies. Add kill xp on top of that, so you'll get even more XP/soldier, assuming you kill all 10/30 enemies in those cases.

If you can sneak in concelament and complete a mission with a 3-man squad with 20+ enemies, their experience gain will be quite hefty. But that is very risky. I like the approach of 8-man squad kill-all better.
jorgen_cab
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by jorgen_cab »

If that is how it is calculated then it is in my opinion a balance issue since it seem to go against the intention of the game mechanics overall.

Mission XP should be set on the baseline 100% infiltration and that is it. That would give many more option for how you tackle missions based on infiltration and squad size and XP gain.

It is rather fun to run a few men on missions to try and see if you can ignore enaging the enemy but you can only do this if the enemy is not all over the map.

You should not be incentives to make missions harder to harvest XP, that seems like a design flaw if that is the case.
Dwarfling
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by Dwarfling »

Just be advised that in Legendary you'll get mowed down by any pod walking into you, with all of them getting yellow alert shots, if you heavily under-infiltrate a mission. You're bound to lose any soldier caught behind half cover against enemies with 75+ aim, like the T1 Mutons, or even T1 Gunners with Scope and Veterans DE.
Psieye
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by Psieye »

Padishar wrote:Is it crucial to use officer's intel-costing timer delays often in these missions? Do enemy reinforcements start appearing quicker as well with low infiltration?
Not really, you can kill enemies fast enough to not need to extend the timer (except maybe an 8-turn hack mission). RNF don't show up faster with low infiltration, but they show up FAT. 6-man on the first RNF wave isn't unusual. And as Dwarfling points out: orange-alert shots will murder you if you don't pre-emptively expect a pod to show up even when it might not.
jorgen_cab wrote: It is rather fun to run a few men on missions to try and see if you can ignore enaging the enemy
That was v1.2 and before. It was not fun, it was repetitive. Doing it occasionally is fine, but the meta forced you to do it as often as possible.

As for your opinion on whether it goes against the intention of the game mechanics, I'm going to disagree. High risk, high reward is common sense and that's what the game mechanics are saying: "we're not telling you to never underinfiltrate, we're just going to make the mission hardcore". It's fine to say that goes against what you want the game to be. But I'm going to say you've misread the intent of the mechanics. From a strategic perspective, my campaign looks abysmal because of these tactics - Advent is concentrating legions in all the good regions where I want to be in, so I'm forced to keep going loud. 8-man low infiltrations are only viable when Str is low. I have to make do with 3 regions at Str 6+, meaning RNF land so fast you have to infiltrate a lot to keep them small. So the game mechanics can cope with this playstyle and presents an alternate challenge: I'm rich in supply but poor in intel.
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jorgen_cab
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by jorgen_cab »

Psieye wrote:As for your opinion on whether it goes against the intention of the game mechanics, I'm going to disagree. High risk, high reward is common sense and that's what the game mechanics are saying: "we're not telling you to never underinfiltrate, we're just going to make the mission hardcore". It's fine to say that goes against what you want the game to be. But I'm going to say you've misread the intent of the mechanics. From a strategic perspective, my campaign looks abysmal because of these tactics - Advent is concentrating legions in all the good regions where I want to be in, so I'm forced to keep going loud. 8-man low infiltrations are only viable when Str is low. I have to make do with 3 regions at Str 6+, meaning RNF land so fast you have to infiltrate a lot to keep them small. So the game mechanics can cope with this playstyle and presents an alternate challenge: I'm rich in supply but poor in intel.
Well I will just have to agree to disagree. It make no sense to do any such thing from a military perspective where you intentionally make things more difficult than it needs to be.

The game mechanic seem to follow what makes sense from a military perspective except that you get rewarded for intentionally make it harder on your self which make no military sense at all.

The game certainly does not have to behave like that and of course I can see it as a handicap I give myself not to exploit it, like I do with many other things.
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SonnyWiFiHr
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by SonnyWiFiHr »

Military perspective ? It would be 33 Avengers vs 8 Advent and Avengers lose. Humans are low tech .
XCom does not have chance your barracks should be big as 1000 and 900 should be on wall in first month.

But who would like to play like this ?

8 Xcom vs 3 Advent where Advent are better and can wipe out 8 XCom is something to consider.
XCom 1 has lost earth with all resources. XCom 2 right now is like bunch of superheroes. Fighting against 33 Advent should be impossible on any difficulty. Soldier as reward ? Who trained them ? Resistance = few bombs and that's all. No liberation without proper force just attrition and extermination .
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Padishar
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by Padishar »

jorgen_cab wrote:
Psieye wrote:As for your opinion on whether it goes against the intention of the game mechanics, I'm going to disagree. High risk, high reward is common sense and that's what the game mechanics are saying: "we're not telling you to never underinfiltrate, we're just going to make the mission hardcore". It's fine to say that goes against what you want the game to be. But I'm going to say you've misread the intent of the mechanics. From a strategic perspective, my campaign looks abysmal because of these tactics - Advent is concentrating legions in all the good regions where I want to be in, so I'm forced to keep going loud. 8-man low infiltrations are only viable when Str is low. I have to make do with 3 regions at Str 6+, meaning RNF land so fast you have to infiltrate a lot to keep them small. So the game mechanics can cope with this playstyle and presents an alternate challenge: I'm rich in supply but poor in intel.
Well I will just have to agree to disagree. It make no sense to do any such thing from a military perspective where you intentionally make things more difficult than it needs to be.

The game mechanic seem to follow what makes sense from a military perspective except that you get rewarded for intentionally make it harder on your self which make no military sense at all.

The game certainly does not have to behave like that and of course I can see it as a handicap I give myself not to exploit it, like I do with many other things.
I'd say it still can make sense from military perspectice, at least in cases when there are severeal operations available, but manpower is limited. A "real-life" commander might make the decision to put troops to a higher risk, because the reward is worth it. E.g. it could be important to gain intel towards liberating a region, and also try to prevent a dark event from completing. So a team of soldiers is sent on two back-to back operations with less time to infiltrate each instead of just infiltrating properly only one of those ops.
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SonnyWiFiHr
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by SonnyWiFiHr »

Every operation is high risk. If you can't replenish your troops than you stop actions. But this is more about supply , manpower is always cheap and replaceable. You can't do much about manpower in war.

Guerrilla on other hand operates on different set of rules.
Strike as many time as you can and be invisible - everywhere.
This is statement that you are in war on all of your territory. More like economic war vs aggressor. You are forcing him to spend more resources and manpower. Totalitarian states are quite immune to this kind of warfare because they will purge society just to make everybody clear - who is on power and who is terror.
Then you should form army or guerrilla is pointless.
If you do just guerrilla you will lose war. You can't liberate. You will hurting your own people. Your own people will remember that and than start to fight you . Enemy will win because in that scenario they protect people.

Send one with bomb (vest) and you send message - we are here . (Killing your own is justified ?)
Send squad to attack/ambush you are sending message - we are here. (Can't even qualify as skirmish)
Attacking military installation - war (good luck with 8 man squad on enemy base - it is not possible. This is skirmish)

Why HQ have bad defense - where are equipment , air support, manpower (in hundreds and more) , Armor , nukes ?
Two flames and rocket and aliens are defeated - c'mon
0% infiltration is fun but penalty should be far more higher. Something like 100% more HP and 100% more troops.

Liberation chain is missing one chain. Raise army - you actually need to control region. Attacking HQ is first skirmish in that chain and not actual battle. Battle for region is war in region and winning side needs to be better force.

I can see Avenger helping in that battle generating real military missions. Diversions can be the best case. And liberation should have bar with percentage - how much rebels control region.
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jorgen_cab
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Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by jorgen_cab »

Padishar wrote:I'd say it still can make sense from military perspectice, at least in cases when there are severeal operations available, but manpower is limited. A "real-life" commander might make the decision to put troops to a higher risk, because the reward is worth it. E.g. it could be important to gain intel towards liberating a region, and also try to prevent a dark event from completing. So a team of soldiers is sent on two back-to back operations with less time to infiltrate each instead of just infiltrating properly only one of those ops.
Yes... I would agree if the risk are on those terms.

Here it is more about doing the risky thing on purpose because it give more XP and make future missions easier in the process. It is more of a general mechanic issue.

If missions was given XP at a fixed rate you would instead work as hard as possible to do as many missions as you possibly could and that would make the risk reward more realistic. You would try to send fewer soldiers so you can afford more missions or at least find a good balance between number of soldiers and time you infiltrate a mission.

In reality, if I can refer to that in a game, you would benefit more from doing as many missions as possible. It just would feel more logical.
Phaseless
Posts: 225
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 9:06 am

Re: What is a reasonable amount of soldiers/squads to have?

Post by Phaseless »

SonnyWiFiHr wrote:Unliberated ?
Nice tip. Will try that.
Advent will do it for you :D
Big downside is that it's real hard to save rebels on Invasion missions.
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