LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

trihero
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LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by trihero »

Love the game, been playing it a lot the last couple weeks.

The short gist of what I want to say is: mission variety seems polarized into stealth maps, and 8+ man maps, and this polarization is more apparent as you go up in difficulty level. I'm not saying it's impossible to find some middle 5-6 man squads to do things, but it rarely feels efficient or necessary.

When you look at the type of missions, it's fairly consistent and easy to do these types by stealth (1-3 men, I would say ALWAYS there's a shinobi):

Hacking, freeing from prison, escorting vip, neutralizing target, shooting relay. These comprise a *lot* of missions you do early on.

Not only are these types of missions consistent/easy to to by stealth, but on higher difficulties you feel like you don't have any other viable options because the turn timer is tight, your base infiltration time is so high you can't rely on your 4-5 man team beating through 20+ enemies and getting to the objective in time.

And then, there's the missions you don't do by stealth:

Retaliations (no reason not to bring max men), HQ, supply raids, ambushes, "golden path" missions. You try to bring as many people as you can with as low infiltration as you can to bring home the most corpses but of course do so safely.

Now, I don't feel that stealth missions nor raid missions need to be nerfed nor tweaked necessarily - they offer a great deal of variety, it's fun to learn them, and in general it feels good. But what I feel more as I play is I'm missing the "middle man" - the missions that are balanced around 5 or 6 people, like the good old XCOM 2 experience. You might say troop ambush/supply raids/sabotage statue - but here I say that sabotaging the statue is not necessarily desirable because of the vigilance cost, supply raids are hard to detect and usually have so little time remaining you skip it (or you just bring 10 men and say YOLO), and troop ambushes are necessarily rare as well (otherwise it'd be too easy to defuse advent strength). In other words, there are rarely any missions where a middle-sized groups feels like it's the right answer (well maybe network tower, but that comes at the end of a chain of events and it's too linear anyways).

We kinda need more middle class missions. I feel like all I'm doing is ok guerilla ops oh ok here we go again 1 shinobi + specialist + some guy I want to level up who I just stick an smg on and say lol. Or here we go again a mass raid mission with 8+ people bring the overwatch camping and mass explosives.

I think the best way to address this would be to introduce some mission types that are really designed and cater to the 5-6 man squad, hopefully designed in such a way that outright *punishes* stealth shinobis because god they're too useful on every type of mission out there, and I think the reward should primarily be soldier experience, which is a way to encourage leveling outside of either feeding on stealth missions or waiting for 10 man raids. Stealth missions can have their themed intel/lead rewards, and raid missions can have their themed supply/loot rewards, and these new middle class missions which I call "skirmish" missions could be primarily experience rewards to keep your troops up to date. I want to have these kind of middle sized group fights that I enjoyed in vanilla. I miss it a lot after doing stealth stealth stealth then 2 hour overwatch creep overwatch creep.

I think "skirmish" missions could be very similar to retaliation missions, but just balanced for 5-6 men instead of 8. The objective shouldn't be tied to doing a single action (or else we go back to stealthland), but also a bit more than just neutralize everything (then we go to raidland), and the retaliation missions have that feel to it since you have to protect something but also kill stuff. Except retaliation missions are things you shouldn't be trying to trigger, and they are balanced around 8 man - instead make some version of them that are 5-6 men and have them as regularly occurring missions as a way to train your troops by doing what they actually do instead of being the third wheel on stealth missions or huddling in a raid group.

Hope I'm making some sense ^^
dstar3k
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by dstar3k »

trihero wrote:Love the game, been playing it a lot the last couple weeks.

The short gist of what I want to say is: mission variety seems polarized into stealth maps, and 8+ man maps, and this polarization is more apparent as you go up in difficulty level. I'm not saying it's impossible to find some middle 5-6 man squads to do things, but it rarely feels efficient or necessary.

When you look at the type of missions, it's fairly consistent and easy to do these types by stealth (1-3 men, I would say ALWAYS there's a shinobi):

Hacking, freeing from prison, escorting vip, neutralizing target, shooting relay. These comprise a *lot* of missions you do early on.

Not only are these types of missions consistent/easy to to by stealth, but on higher difficulties you feel like you don't have any other viable options because the turn timer is tight, your base infiltration time is so high you can't rely on your 4-5 man team beating through 20+ enemies and getting to the objective in time.

And then, there's the missions you don't do by stealth:

Retaliations (no reason not to bring max men), HQ, supply raids, ambushes, "golden path" missions. You try to bring as many people as you can with as low infiltration as you can to bring home the most corpses but of course do so safely.

Now, I don't feel that stealth missions nor raid missions need to be nerfed nor tweaked necessarily - they offer a great deal of variety, it's fun to learn them, and in general it feels good. But what I feel more as I play is I'm missing the "middle man" - the missions that are balanced around 5 or 6 people, like the good old XCOM 2 experience. You might say troop ambush/supply raids/sabotage statue - but here I say that sabotaging the statue is not necessarily desirable because of the vigilance cost, supply raids are hard to detect and usually have so little time remaining you skip it (or you just bring 10 men and say YOLO), and troop ambushes are necessarily rare as well (otherwise it'd be too easy to defuse advent strength). In other words, there are rarely any missions where a middle-sized groups feels like it's the right answer (well maybe network tower, but that comes at the end of a chain of events and it's too linear anyways).

We kinda need more middle class missions. I feel like all I'm doing is ok guerilla ops oh ok here we go again 1 shinobi + specialist + some guy I want to level up who I just stick an smg on and say lol. Or here we go again a mass raid mission with 8+ people bring the overwatch camping and mass explosives.
An easy way to do this would be to have some missions with inherent reduced infiltration difficulty but enough enemies that you can't do it with only one or two units. E.g., one which does _not_ supply corpses (thus removing the incentive to simply go in with every soldier you can no matter what that does to your infiltration level), but provides a non-trivial amount of supplies if you eliminate all of the enemy units, with an infiltration difficulty tuned to allowing a 5-6 unit team to hit 100% without boosting via intel.

(Speaking of boosting... I've noticed that sometimes boosting provides a 75% increase, and sometimes it provides a 100% increase, and I have _no_ idea what the difference is. I'm fairly sure that I had to reload after a particularly _unfortunate_ incident involving a cat, a powerstrip, and the switch on the powerstrip, and it went from 100% to 75% -- I'd noticed the 100%, you see, because it was the first time I'd seen it.)
Tuhalu
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by Tuhalu »

dstar3k wrote:(Speaking of boosting... I've noticed that sometimes boosting provides a 75% increase, and sometimes it provides a 100% increase, and I have _no_ idea what the difference is. I'm fairly sure that I had to reload after a particularly _unfortunate_ incident involving a cat, a powerstrip, and the switch on the powerstrip, and it went from 100% to 75% -- I'd noticed the 100%, you see, because it was the first time I'd seen it.)
Sounds like your difficulty got set to Rookie. At Rookie difficulty, you have the +100% infiltration bonus for intel. At Veteran it is +75%.
gimrah
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by gimrah »

I dunno. I play on Commander and I find 2-man missions way too risky unless it's a really important one. Seems like unless you hit 200% infiltration you'll have a 4-turn extraction. That's a long time to try to stay alive when there's almost certainly pods active. I had my only mission failure so far this campaign doing that and lost two promising soldiers.

Maybe a solo VIP extract with a shinobi is less risky because you don't have to reveal. But even then, once you activate, and you probably will, you'll have to be dashing for the LZ. The chance of getting revealed by a civilian is then quite high. And if you get revealed you're in a very sticky spot. So sure it's doable but I'd only risk it for liberation.

I'm actually starting to think more that 3-4 man teams are better on those so you can hold off pods, e.g. it's very nice to have rapid deployment grenadiers and the like.
gimrah
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by gimrah »

Also when I opened this tab I was half-expecting to see someone advocating missions like "recover a nice silver cream jug for your parents' wedding anniversary".
trihero
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by trihero »

After reading this guy's debriefings on two legend/ironman wins, I'm more convinced than ever that this game is actually headed in the wrong direction, especially on higher difficulties

https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/ ... n_writeup/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Xcom/comments/ ... n_debrief/

As I suspected, the game devolves into either stealth 1-3 man missions or 8+ man missions with nothing in between because it is too hard to legitimately fight through the aliens with the evac timers.

The writeups also emphasize that 0% supply raids are too easy/rewarding.

I think mission balance needs to be looked at in such a manner that highly encourages 5-6 man squads on a very regular basis instead of us always choosing either the stealth option or the "bring the hammer" option. I do like stealth/raid missions and they provide variety, but they have overtaken the game especially on higher difficulties when infiltration times/turn timers are what they are.
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Arcalane
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by Arcalane »

Inclined to agree. It also punishes attempts to bring rookie teams up to scratch late game, because they're facing enemy numbers and strengths that are way above their pay grades. I sent my beta team off to do a troop movement ambush in a lower-strength (3-4) region and they wound up killing the first Sectopod of my campaign because apparently those can appear on Light Enemy Activity. :?

Maybe tie the likelihood of advanced units and tactical dark events applying to regional strength as well as global force level? It makes sense ADVENT would shunt the vast majority of their force strength into the regions you're highly active in and as a result the 'reserve' and low-alert areas would be forced to make do with lesser equipment. Might help encourage players to focus less on certain areas until they're pushing to liberate.
trihero
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by trihero »

I've always thought mission experience should be a function of type of alien, not just number, that would let your laggers in the late game catch up quicker. I mean if you're infiltrating or killing elite mutons and sectopods, that should count more than 4 hp troopers.

And yes in general I agree the solution doesn't have to be introduce new mission types, it could just be rebalance existing missions/infiltrations to make 5-6 men highly viable and rewarding. I really miss that core xcom 2 experience, all I feel I'm doing is going yolo with 1 shinobi, or overwatch creeping for hours with a 10 man squad.
wei270
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by wei270 »

i would like more middle class mission but the game generally fell fine. if you are being 1-3 man on stealth mission i feel that is alot of uncertainly cause you are essentially relaying map generation and alien patrol pattern, where as if you being more men you may face one extra pod but then you can more of less relay take them out in 1 turn so it is a trade off, and i am having a hard time balancing which uncertainty i should take on time constrained missions
trihero
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by trihero »

where as if you being more men you may face one extra pod but then you can more of less relay take them out in 1 turn so it is a trade off,
Problem is on legendary it's hard to take more men because base infiltration is so high, and advent strength rockets up combine this with the tight turn timers and you get a recipe for disaster. You can read the account of the legendary/ironman I posted; he avoids everything except stealth/8+ man raids, which is exactly what I was beginning to suspect as I wandered into legendary myself.
Jacke
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by Jacke »

I've just started a Legendary campaign and I find a lot of the discussion on this forum shows the balance of LW2 at that difficulty needs tuning and even some changes. I can see the split into 1-3 troop stealth missions and 8-12 major assaults. I've been sending out 5-6 soldiers on early missions with just over 100% infiltration (spent my starting Intel on expanding to another zone). Mostly Very or Extremely Light with Vulnerable or Normal. And I still need to stealth them, partly due to the opposing force and my lack of tactical skill, but mostly due to mission timers, which I think are inappropriate and barely allow the mission to be completed.

I had one Jailbreak mission on a huge map (stock, I have no map mods). My 3 soldiers barely saw ADVENT at a distance and were going at a dead run the whole time. Got to the evac on turn 11 of 12. Even a perfect ambush of an enemy pod would likely have caused that mission to fail. And this is just March. So I decided to pad my mission timers. Was playing with 4 more turns, but I think I can get by with 2 more. But it's still going to be a mostly stealth play with practicing my tactical skills on at most 1 pod. And maybe just stealth. To be as time efficient as possible demands parallel reconnaissance from concealment for most turns and that means Shinobi or Phantom Sharpshooters. And the Shinobi is going to be better.

I know loot and mission timers were this big factor changing the game in stock XCOM EW and XCOM 2, intended to break the power of patient overwatch tactics in XCOM EU. However, I think they often weaken the game, changing what should be a battle into a race. Why does loot disappear in 3 turns? Why is there a timer on most of these missions? Artificial player pressure. Despite American film and television's obsession with exact deadlines, that's not what really drives most combat, whether conventional or guerilla. It's taking and appropriately holding vital ground, defeating the opposing forces, and maintaining and expanding friendly forces. What should be driving the tactical play shouldn't be the clock but the other side. LW2 already has a better control for the guerilla context, escalating reinforcements. That's why ambush and other missions are done quickly, to complete the objective and avoid the response.

I think Pavonis will eventual address these and other issues in further version upgrades. Until then, I'm not likely to get through much beyond one campaign. At 100+ battles, it's going to take me a while. And I can't change the nature of the missions I encounter. So I'm going to address some imbalances with INI edits and mods. There are issues I am experiencing and can see coming and I think my response is reasonable.

That includes Extract Corpses (hey you can haul out your squadmates, why not an ADVENT Trooper), Elerium Grounds, Guerilla Job, and other minor gameplay mods. I'm currently just padding the mission timers but may consider a stronger response, like True Concealment for LW2. To make 5-6 soldier missions more reasonable, I think I'll have to look at Infiltration mods eventually.

It'll be interesting to see what Pavonis does with the next few updates to LW2 to address these concerns.
trihero
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by trihero »

Simple solutions would be extend the turn timers to make stealth not so over-ridingly important, or do something indirect like reduce the officer cost to extend the timer. We just don't have options for timed missions, it's soooo easy/preferred to yolo shinobi (extract), or shinobi + spec (rescue, hack), or shinobi + sharp for relays/vips. I'm just like you Jacke wandered into legendary in the early months sure you can send out some 5-6 man squads but you wind up playing it just like a 1 man mission where you get as close as possible to the objective, then maybe fight for 2 seconds and you have barely any time to grab any loot at all then zip yoink you're outta time gotta go.

Yea yea yea this game is sold on the whole infiltration thing, but I think infiltration serves its purpose as a "fatigue" modifier and we need to get back to the actual 5-6 man xcom 2 experience. I also find it unsettling how I want a shinobi for every mission even untimed ones. The class is OP, elephant in the room OP (sharpshooter conceal doesn't even begin to compete since they can't use an SMG, so less movement and huge detection radius).

After watching xwynn's smash and grab mission, I have little hopes that this makes the game any less stealth oriented. He did just fine with 2 shinobi grabbing 2/3 caches, and I have a hard time imagining a non-stealthed 5-6 man team being able to shoot down 15 mobs and grab containers and get out in 8 turns. He'd have done even better had the shinobis enough ranks to get conceal.
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Arcalane
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by Arcalane »

trihero wrote:I've always thought mission experience should be a function of type of alien, not just number, that would let your laggers in the late game catch up quicker. I mean if you're infiltrating or killing elite mutons and sectopods, that should count more than 4 hp troopers.
I would be very surprised if it isn't already, to be honest-- when I do get rookies that survive a rough mission, they typically get catapulted straight up to Sergeant at minimum. I play with robojumper's No Rank Up Throttling which helps speed up rookie catchup if they do survive.
trihero
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by trihero »

Arcalane wrote:
trihero wrote:I've always thought mission experience should be a function of type of alien, not just number, that would let your laggers in the late game catch up quicker. I mean if you're infiltrating or killing elite mutons and sectopods, that should count more than 4 hp troopers.
I would be very surprised if it isn't already, to be honest-- when I do get rookies that survive a rough mission, they typically get catapulted straight up to Sergeant at minimum. I play with robojumper's No Rank Up Throttling which helps speed up rookie catchup if they do survive.
I don't think you're necessarily wrong about there being more experience with more advanced alien species, but I thought the game is hard capped at one promotion per mission even if you have enough experience for multiple ones. Are you saying you got multiple promotions after one fight?

(I also watched xwynns video lately and he mentions there's some bug where the soldiers from the black market always gain one level up after every fight, which is pretty exploitable oh mai)
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Arcalane
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by Arcalane »

trihero wrote:I don't think you're necessarily wrong about there being more experience with more advanced alien species, but I thought the game is hard capped at one promotion per mission even if you have enough experience for multiple ones. Are you saying you got multiple promotions after one fight?
Yes, the point of robojumper's No-Rank-Up-Throttling (as linked in my previous post) to allow soldiers to rank up several levels at once if they pass the XP thresholds.

As far as I know, once you rank up during a mission (or at the end of the mission) any more XP after that point goes to waste. No-Throttling just means they can continue to accumulate XP and potentially level multiple times.

Doesn't make it any easier or faster early on though. It was still a slog up to Brigadier for my Original Crew - and a few stragglers from it have yet to max out.
trihero
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by trihero »

As far as I know, once you rank up during a mission (or at the end of the mission) any more XP after that point goes to waste.
As far as I know and have tested, it's not wasted. You just have to do another mission to get the next rank.
Jacke
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by Jacke »

trihero wrote:After watching xwynn's smash and grab mission, I have little hopes that this makes the game any less stealth oriented. He did just fine with 2 shinobi grabbing 2/3 caches, and I have a hard time imagining a non-stealthed 5-6 man team being able to shoot down 15 mobs and grab containers and get out in 8 turns. He'd have done even better had the shinobis enough ranks to get conceal.
The combination of short time limits and too many troops is forcing stealthing. The video hasn't even gone 90 seconds when that was obvious. xwynn must have realised it was a stealth mission and didn't even bother sending any one other than 2 Shinobis. And the blade-spec one was at a disadvantage.

This isn't how a guerilla movement makes warehouse raids. There isn't some doomsday clock running. They infiltrate to points of observation and watch until enemy force movements gives an opportunity to disrupt the guards and seize the contents. Then they retreat before reinforcements arrive. And the enemy isn't fortunately blind to the movement of our troops unless they get real real close. This is like some cross between a mini-game inside the game and a Disney cartoon: be sneaky and raid the warehouse before the Beagle Boys notice you.

I'm hoping to address the obvious shortage of several resources in a less gamey way with a few mods: Extract Corpses and Elerium Grounds directly, and Guerilla Job indirectly.

I edited the INI for Extract Corpses to prevent larger aliens like Mutons from being carried. They can be hauled out directly by a device called a Fulton Harness. Still have to check that out. And it's been successful. In the initial run of my Legendary Campaign (went a couple of months and decided I should restart), hauled out a bunch of corpses in a few missions. One was really crazy. Squad had hauled each of their corpses to the evac but were waiting for the last soldier to get back with his. After a bad encounter with reinforcements in a previous mission, they all dropped their corpses and went on overwatch. Then some more ADVENT dropped almost on top of the evac. Everyone opened up with reaction shots and followed up on my turn. No ADVENT left standing. :)
trihero
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by trihero »

The combination of short time limits and too many troops is forcing stealthing. The video hasn't even gone 90 seconds when that was obvious. xwynn must have realised it was a stealth mission and didn't even bother sending any one other than 2 Shinobis. And the blade-spec one was at a disadvantage.
He didn't know it was a stealth mission; it was new to him as well. He even comments early in the video he hopes that his 2 shinobis can't accomplish anything, because it would be balanced. And yet he gets 2 out of 3 containers on his first legendary run of this type of mission. Of course we applaud his skill, but like you said jacke it's apparent 90 seconds in this kind of mission is not going to favor a small team that actually fights.
xmd1997
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by xmd1997 »

Jacke wrote:
trihero wrote:After watching xwynn's smash and grab mission, I have little hopes that this makes the game any less stealth oriented. He did just fine with 2 shinobi grabbing 2/3 caches, and I have a hard time imagining a non-stealthed 5-6 man team being able to shoot down 15 mobs and grab containers and get out in 8 turns. He'd have done even better had the shinobis enough ranks to get conceal.
The combination of short time limits and too many troops is forcing stealthing. The video hasn't even gone 90 seconds when that was obvious. xwynn must have realised it was a stealth mission and didn't even bother sending any one other than 2 Shinobis. And the blade-spec one was at a disadvantage.

This isn't how a guerilla movement makes warehouse raids. There isn't some doomsday clock running. They infiltrate to points of observation and watch until enemy force movements gives an opportunity to disrupt the guards and seize the contents. Then they retreat before reinforcements arrive. And the enemy isn't fortunately blind to the movement of our troops unless they get real real close. This is like some cross between a mini-game inside the game and a Disney cartoon: be sneaky and raid the warehouse before the Beagle Boys notice you.

I'm hoping to address the obvious shortage of several resources in a less gamey way with a few mods: Extract Corpses and Elerium Grounds directly, and Guerilla Job indirectly.

I edited the INI for Extract Corpses to prevent larger aliens like Mutons from being carried. They can be hauled out directly by a device called a Fulton Harness. Still have to check that out. And it's been successful. In the initial run of my Legendary Campaign (went a couple of months and decided I should restart), hauled out a bunch of corpses in a few missions. One was really crazy. Squad had hauled each of their corpses to the evac but were waiting for the last soldier to get back with his. After a bad encounter with reinforcements in a previous mission, they all dropped their corpses and went on overwatch. Then some more ADVENT dropped almost on top of the evac. Everyone opened up with reaction shots and followed up on my turn. No ADVENT left standing. :)
Its my understanding that this particular mission type actually wont end or fail if the timer runs out, the devs in an interview described that its actually a "SOFT" timer. Instead of the mission straight up failing an overwhelming force of enemies will spawn in dropships instead(hence the reason why the timer is called "Alien Distress signal". This may make huge squads viable, I figure as long as they can hold off the reinforcement waves they can get away with a bunch more loot.
Jacke
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by Jacke »

xmd1997 wrote:Its my understanding that this particular mission type actually wont end or fail if the timer runs out, the devs in an interview described that its actually a "SOFT" timer. Instead of the mission straight up failing an overwhelming force of enemies will spawn in dropships instead(hence the reason why the timer is called "Alien Distress signal". This may make huge squads viable, I figure as long as they can hold off the reinforcement waves they can get away with a bunch more loot.
The point we're trying to make is why bother. Send in 3 stealth specced Shinobi and get the loot and get out. The infiltration time was low and xwynns didn't have Intel to spare, so he went with 2 Shinobi. Even with a longer infiltration, to send in a squad able to deal with 15 enemy might not get to 100% and then they're dealing with more aliens. As it stands, one of xwynns' Shinobis was wounded. Go with more soldiers, even a full 10, and infiltration would be worse. There would be a lot more enemy to start and the first break of concealment would start reinforcements. Strong likelihood of more wounds and maybe death. 2 of the 3 caches gave 5 Alien Alloy and 1 Elerium Core. Even with all 3 caches, that's poor reward for a lot of risk.

With Extract Corpses, a completely reasonable mod in my opinion, you could send in a squad of 5-6 and waste a pod or 2, then evac with their corpses. Call it the Body Snatchers Strategy. May have a better return even for a "failed" mission, as failing the mission would supposedly avoid increasing ADVENT vigilance in the zone. Sounds like a strategy straight out of "The Producers" and would likely not work, as the lost mission and the enemy death must have some negative consequences and ADVENT reaction.

But getting back to trihero's point, this isn't a "middle class" mission for 5-6 soldier squad as he's hoping for. The best way to handle it is to stealth it. The next best would be to go with a full 10 squad and got for experience and maybe fight to the objective, but there's a high risk of a Pyrrhic victory, if not even a loss.

BTW, I've been rewatching xwynns earlier videos and really need to catch up on them. I watched the previous video (stealth Shinobi on a jailbreak frees 6 civilians) and this one to better understand the Smash and Grab mission. But I also noticed he's not carrying a lot of grenades on his Shinobis now. Stealthing missions would really help to have even 1 smoke grenade each. I wonder why he doesn't take them.
trihero
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by trihero »

I think the officer time extension would go a long ways to making 5-6 man missions viable, but it's just too costly to use regularly especially when you deliberately stop running intel missions in order to avoid vigilance spikes.

I would prefer for a viable strategy to be about 4 squads of 5-6 men each rotating out, each with their personal officer, but it's mostly shinobi/specialist/sharpshooter farming the lowbie missions and 10 man farming everything else.
Alketi
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by Alketi »

I vastly prefer 5-6 man missions as well. Here are a few ideas:

1. Tweak the XP balance to make it more beneficial to kill enemies / less beneficial to complete a mission not having killed anything. This means you can still stealth, but killing stuff levels your squad faster (than currently).

2. One or more of the following:
- Increase the turn timers
- Tone down the vigilance level increases
- Make it easier to detect missions sooner
- Employ a true concealment mechanic (perhaps for larger squad sizes, i.e. 5+)
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Arcalane
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by Arcalane »

Neither of your suggestions do much for the quantity or quality of aliens though, which is the primary concern?
Hazelnut
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Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by Hazelnut »

I agree that the game devolves into 1-3 on stealth or 8-10 full combat mode. I don't mind this so much because I like large squad sizes, 5-6 is frustrating for me cos I like my swiss army knife style squads. I think the more critical issue is beyond a certain point you have your top squad & equipment but when they're busy there's not much for a lesser squad to take on, especially when stealthing is so easy & risk free (as long as you book it if it goes FUBAR)

I think some missions where squad size for infil has to be around 5-7 (or hefty reinforcements penalty) and stealth is not a feasible way to win mission. For larger top squads (who can handle reinforcements) or smaller lesser squads.

The best idea I can come up with is an extract VIP with good intel (facility lead?) or resistance intel (cause DE or bad thing if advent get it) where instead of jail cell (easy stealth) or escort (harder to stealth), the VIP is being escorted by a large 8 pod of advent. So you can't stealth it, you have to engage them. Also have the complication of not being able to rocket/nade open without possibly killing VIP.

Restrict the squad size to 5-7 depending on mission parameters, if you take more reinforcements are called earlier (1 turn) rather than say 4 turns.

Anyone think this would work to fix the middle class mission gap?
Alketi
Posts: 159
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 3:11 pm

Re: LW2 needs more "middle class" missions

Post by Alketi »

Arcalane wrote:Neither of your suggestions do much for the quantity or quality of aliens though, which is the primary concern?
I thought #2 addressed it with the first 3 points:

- Increase the turn timers
- Tone down the vigilance level increases
- Make it easier to detect missions sooner

Turn timer increases mean you can handle more aliens or it's slightly easier for a given level of aliens.
Lowering vigilance levels mean you get fewer aliens on the missions.
Sooner detection means more soldiers are allowed.
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