What to do with a high vigilance region?

Psieye
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Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:27 am

What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by Psieye »

In my current Commander campaign, I've been rampaging too hard in East Europe. 10 rebels on intel with radio tower haven't been able to find any missions besides the occasional Smash & Grab for about a month now. That means vigilance is so high even Troop Columns don't spawn. Network tower cleared so I can do HQ anytime. Str 5 and its neighbour - East Africa - is soaking up all the extra legions (currently Str 8). Fairly sure there are no Faceless anymore in East Europe.

I have 3 new regions to farm GOps in (West Asia, New Arctic, West US). West US will be getting a tower as I'm brute-rushing through the lib chain: East US has Blacksite and New Mexico has a facility. Tygan will be decoding facility leads (and then datapads) before I get a radio tower in West US. Liberated regions: New India, East Asia.

I don't want Smash & Grabs to spawn in East Europe with its Str 5. There can only be 2 Smash & Grabs in the world at a time. I'm having to keep vigilant in East Europe in case of UFO and Strategic DE missions. East Africa will suffice for Troop Columns. I'm considering just liberating East Europe as I'm close to finding some Alien Facilities to combat the Avatar project (3 pips: just recently did Skulljack an Officer objective). Liberating East Europe will knock it down another pip and the 3 young regions should be spamming vigilance soon anyway.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
LordYanaek
Posts: 940
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by LordYanaek »

I'd say if you can't find any good mission, then yes liberate it.
In my (now finished) Long War campaign i kept Avatar under control for quite some time simply by spamming liberation (starting in early July for the first one). In the end i had liberated all of Asia, West US, New Mexico and New Brazil and still had no shortage of missions. I was also playing on Commander. I even had a full squad specialized for Liberation (with 3 DFA snipers).

The alternatives would be to lay low until you get missions again but i think it's counter-productive or to try and farm UFOs (i would have to know the level of your 10 rebels to use my detection simulator).
Noober
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by Noober »

If liberate it now with str 8 neibor - you are calling the invasion upon yourself. Sure you don't want this. :D
Just fish for good mission, most notably - UFO precursor, Strategic DE and S&G.
All of them are good to do but the first two - are just godly $-)
S&G has no RNF before a fixed 12-turn internal timer and usually it spawns with good time so it's totaly doable even in str5 region if could overinf it to VL activity with 6 man squad.
Psieye
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by Psieye »

Actually I don't care for the invasion - I already have a promise of an invasion as New India is next to East Africa (and has been liberated for a long time). I want the extra supplies more than 10 rebels spending all their time watching for about 3 possible missions. I don't care what the Str is for a Smash & Grab, I'm happy to do them at Swarming. I want missions and supplies. If a region can't provide a steady stream of missions, I want it to generate supplies. But I don't want to ignore a potential Strategic DE or UFO mission, hence why I want to shut them down by liberating.

By the way, do you get corpses from an Invasion? If Advent takes a region back, what's its starting Str and is every last rebel killed?
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
LordYanaek
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by LordYanaek »

Almost sure you do indeed get corpses from a failed invasion.
Don't know what happens if you fail, my guess is you'll have an empty haven, unless the rebels you manged to evac are safe. I've had only 1 in my entire campaign despite having several adjacent regions with str ≥ 8 for a loooonnnng time so it sure isn't automatic.

They are not even that hard to win actually if you have a good squad available (or if you are ready to give up a partially infiltrated mission). You should expect to loose some rebels and take some wounds if you try not to loose too much of them, but you shouldn't loose the region.
A Spark can help tremendously because if the relay spawns on a roof and you can gain vision (e.g. with a concealed shinobi), bombarding the relay will (in my experience) always result in it's immediate destruction when it crashes on the ground.
Psieye
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by Psieye »

LordYanaek wrote: A Spark can help tremendously because if the relay spawns on a roof and you can gain vision (e.g. with a concealed shinobi), bombarding the relay will (in my experience) always result in it's immediate destruction when it crashes on the ground.
I'm counting on the shinobi to do that with a Shaped Charge. I've yet to divert resources to a Spark, much as I like them. Late Proving Grounds does that.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
stefan3iii
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by stefan3iii »

Can also just stick everyone on supply. Don't have to liberate if you don't want to take the risk. It's only a 20% difference between a liberated and unliberated region for supply generation.
faket15
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by faket15 »

LordYanaek wrote:I've had only 1 in my entire campaign despite having several adjacent regions with str ≥ 8 for a loooonnnng time so it sure isn't automatic.
It's a very small daily chance (1% base + 1% per faceless) and you only start to roll after 21 days.
faket15
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by faket15 »

Psieye wrote:If Advent takes a region back, what's its starting Str and is every last rebel killed?
1. The origin keeps half of the Strength (rounded up) and the destination gets the rest.

2. Yes, if the aliens win the mission they wipe out the outpost.
Psieye
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by Psieye »

Ah, Invasion must pass a 1% roll daily if Faceless have been wiped out. Time to liberate.
stefan3iii wrote:Can also just stick everyone on supply. Don't have to liberate if you don't want to take the risk. It's only a 20% difference between a liberated and unliberated region for supply generation.
In my warped perception of threat, doing the HQ itself is almost-zero risk - in fact I just sent a 7-man squad to get it done faster. Leaving the region vulnerable to spawning a Strategic DE or UFO precursor while I gather supply is the greater risk to me.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
Noober
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by Noober »

faket15 wrote:
LordYanaek wrote:I've had only 1 in my entire campaign despite having several adjacent regions with str ≥ 8 for a loooonnnng time so it sure isn't automatic.
It's a very small daily chance (1% base + 1% per faceless) and you only start to roll after 21 days.
Whaaat?!
My last invasion started almost immedaitely once nearlest region hit str 8.
I know it for sure as once it hit str 8 I've diverted all rebels from supply into intel and they (12 with some promotions) revealed a raid in less then a week after that with only 2+ days to infiltrate.
Zork
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by Zork »

It looks that liberation is also linked to the number of squad you want support. More then you probably need more missions and then you want keep the number of liberated regions higher, less and then you want keep the number of liberated regions lower.
NOT a tactical/strategy expert player, playing LW2 at Easy. Rather old so I appreciate not be bothered by excessive familiarity, I'm not your friend and will never be. Refuse to learn English well so don't attempt learn it to me, thank you. :-)
Dong101
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by Dong101 »

Zork wrote:It looks that liberation is also linked to the number of squad you want support. More then you probably need more missions and then you want keep the number of liberated regions higher, less and then you want keep the number of liberated regions lower.
Should be the other way around? You want more non liberated regions if you want to support more squad with missions?
faket15
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by faket15 »

Noober wrote:
faket15 wrote:
LordYanaek wrote:I've had only 1 in my entire campaign despite having several adjacent regions with str ≥ 8 for a loooonnnng time so it sure isn't automatic.
It's a very small daily chance (1% base + 1% per faceless) and you only start to roll after 21 days.
Whaaat?!
My last invasion started almost immedaitely once nearlest region hit str 8.
I know it for sure as once it hit str 8 I've diverted all rebels from supply into intel and they (12 with some promotions) revealed a raid in less then a week after that with only 2+ days to infiltrate.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. It's 21 days counting from when the region was liberated, not from when an adjacent region hit 8 Strength.
Noober
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by Noober »

faket15 wrote:
Noober wrote:
faket15 wrote:
It's a very small daily chance (1% base + 1% per faceless) and you only start to roll after 21 days.
Whaaat?!
My last invasion started almost immedaitely once nearlest region hit str 8.
I know it for sure as once it hit str 8 I've diverted all rebels from supply into intel and they (12 with some promotions) revealed a raid in less then a week after that with only 2+ days to infiltrate.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. It's 21 days counting from when the region was liberated, not from when an adjacent region hit 8 Strength.
Ok that's right but still 1% base chance seems unlikely compare to my experience in both 1.2 and 1.4 compaigns.
For me it looks like 80% chance.
LordYanaek
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by LordYanaek »

Noober wrote: Ok that's right but still 1% base chance seems unlikely compare to my experience in both 1.2 and 1.4 compaigns.
For me it looks like 80% chance.
It always looks like 80% success :lol: the same is true for ADVENT hitting you in full cover.
OTOH, your shots always seem to have only 20% chance to hit ;)

1%/day isn't that small actually, after a month of rolling you'll already have close to 30% chance to actually have an invasion. I've learned not to worry too much about those thought, same as regular retaliations.

The invasion is pretty hard to detect because it's very short (4-8 days). 6 rebels (including 1 lvl2 and 1 lvl3) would reliably detect a 6 days invasion with 18 hours left! It means you have to keep everyone on Intel : even with 12 rebels (3 lvl2, 2 lvl3) you're around 3 days of infiltration for reliable detection which is quite short for a supply raid (unless you like under-infiltrated raids, i didn't try those since 1.2) so my approach now is : don't bother! At worst you'll loose the region but then what, is it better to put everyone on Intel and have a useless region now rather than risk loosing it later? It's almost like you've already surrendered it to ADVENT.
Noober
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by Noober »

LordYanaek wrote:
Noober wrote: Ok that's right but still 1% base chance seems unlikely compare to my experience in both 1.2 and 1.4 compaigns.
For me it looks like 80% chance.
It always looks like 80% success :lol: the same is true for ADVENT hitting you in full cover.
OTOH, your shots always seem to have only 20% chance to hit ;)

It means you have to keep everyone on Intel : even with 12 rebels (3 lvl2, 2 lvl3) you're around 3 days of infiltration for reliable detection which is quite short for a supply raid (unless you like under-infiltrated raids, i didn't try those since 1.2) so my approach now is : don't bother! At worst you'll loose the region but then what, is it better to put everyone on Intel and have a useless region now rather than risk loosing it later? It's almost like you've already surrendered it to ADVENT.
The raid comes from 8 str region so it will have a command pod and with 3 days left I could have max 4 mans to inf 100% with boost and it's not even close vs v.heavy + command pod.
So in realty there is no way to prevent it in 1.4. And your team is reduced to 10 vs 12 in 1.2
I HATE, HATE and HATE this mission! It's just stupid (sorry, on offence)
4 turns to first RNF, and 2 - for the second RNF and the relay is like 5 dashes away through area swarming with aliens...
You have to bring an officer with jummer to buy one more turn without RNF, and a high level sniper and a high level SPARK with bombard (TSGT skill after all) as technic should dash for like 4 turns to just reach the necessary range for rocket.
Last time my sniper somehow had a vision on the relay right after 1 rnf wave and OH it (AMF rules) thus saving my squad as by this time my technics was still 2 dashes away to rocket it and I was already fighting vs like 12 ayys not counting RNF...
Psieye
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by Psieye »

Noober wrote: 4 turns to first RNF, and 2 - for the second RNF and the relay is like 5 dashes away through area swarming with aliens...
I need to farm these Invasions. This sounds awesome. Are there Faceless among the civlians (assuming that Strategic DE isn't up)? Do your rebels help out?
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
1st
2nd
3rd
Noober
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by Noober »

Psieye wrote:
Noober wrote: 4 turns to first RNF, and 2 - for the second RNF and the relay is like 5 dashes away through area swarming with aliens...
I need to farm these Invasions. This sounds awesome. Are there Faceless among the civlians (assuming that Strategic DE isn't up)? Do your rebels help out?
I had no faceless. But I didn't have any in this region so it means nothing.
There are tons of civilans - much more then number of rebels in this region and among them are all your rebels and you need to save at least one (?) of them or you fail the mission.
The real problem is that you have no idea if it's a random civ or your rebel until you come close and activate - the random one will flee and dissapear while your rebel will stay and come under your control. You should evac him then like in regular retal mission.
To do this you should drop evac flyer and wait for 4 or 5 turns (don't remember - it was a while ago).
And you can't farm this missions because of the cooldown like 40 days between the invasions - I've never have more then one in the campaign and I'm extremely happy about it.
The rnf starts from 4 or 5 and increasing with each drop.
And aftert 6 or so turns it will be dropped EVERY turn until the relay is down.
And there are like 21 ayys at the start of the mission.
And at the same time you should find and evac your rebels among tons of the exactly same looking random stuff unlike in the normal retal where you know exactly where is your rebel.
It's insane.

Oh! I forget to say that ayys kill like 3-4 of the civs EVERY turn. Even if your soldiers are at their LOS. And it seems to me that they prefer to shoot your rebels rather then random civs which is also insane.
Psieye
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by Psieye »

Noober wrote: I had no faceless. But I didn't have any in this region so it means nothing.
Actually it means random civilians don't turn into faceless. Which is huge, I'm still scarred by the 7 Faceless (with Alien Infiltrators) I encountered in a Swarming Lib 3 - pretty much convinced me that Lib 3 is the one timed mission I shouldn't try to 8-man so recklessly.

I thought the 40 day cooldown was per region, not per world?

20+ aliens who give their position away by shooting rebels, RNF starting at turn 4, evac flare takes 5 turns and a relay 5 dashes away. This basically sounds about the same as a Str 6 Destroy Alien Relay GOp, except I get to bring a 10-man squad (and any Res. Mecs). Meaning I can bring 2 support grenadiers and have one Ghost the other who brings Shaped Charges. Ok so I'll be losing rebels meaning I'll lose supply time but that's an acceptable price to bring in EXP and corpses. My understanding is that "just kill all the ayys" after destroying the relay is enough to win the mission if you have rebels still alive.

It'll be another story entirely when Sectopods and Gatekeepers show up, but I'm at the start of August.
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
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Noober
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by Noober »

Psieye wrote:
Noober wrote: I had no faceless. But I didn't have any in this region so it means nothing.
Actually it means random civilians don't turn into faceless. Which is huge, I'm still scarred by the 7 Faceless (with Alien Infiltrators) I encountered in a Swarming Lib 3 - pretty much convinced me that Lib 3 is the one timed mission I shouldn't try to 8-man so recklessly.

I thought the 40 day cooldown was per region, not per world?

My understanding is that "just kill all the ayys" after destroying the relay is enough to win the mission if you have rebels still alive.

It'll be another story entirely when Sectopods and Gatekeepers show up, but I'm at the start of August.
No, it's not enough - you should save a rebel (at least 1 I suppose) and that alone make a big difference as you don't know where to find it.
And the real ussue in late game will be not a Sectopod in early rnf who can be controlled and thus almost trivialize it but a banch of sectoid commanders with their mass rsurect in a HUGE radius which allows them to resurect from far behind LOS.
The horde of 10-11 HP zombies (8+2 from DE) with 4-7 dmg and 80-85 aim are a real pain as you will kill tons of advent and there is no way to kill them all with the reaper after nerf. And those sectoids will most likely sit somehwere outside LOS and repeat this psi-noncence every 2 or 3 turns...
This is just stupid.
lumber-chick
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by lumber-chick »

Invasion RNF starts way sooner than turn 5. I just had one at turn 2, and then every turn, starting with 4 units and going up quickly to 8. It is the most difficult mission in my experience unless you get lucky and can kill the relay from afar. Then it just becomes a supply raid mission.
Noober
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by Noober »

lumber-chick wrote:Invasion RNF starts way sooner than turn 5. I just had one at turn 2, and then every turn, starting with 4 units and going up quickly to 8. It is the most difficult mission in my experience unless you get lucky and can kill the relay from afar. Then it just becomes a supply raid mission.
I beleive 3-4 turns is a base for 8str and I always use "Jammer" on officer so it's 4-5 turns before first rnf.
Yes, it's by far the most difficult mission in the game even at midgame when s.commander is not a factor.
And I would suggest to remove sectoid commander from the pool for Invasion and Forge missions as on both you should kill tons of advents (= tons of zombies) and time pressure force you to move agressively and engage a lot of ayys.
Psieye
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by Psieye »

I'll have to actually play one of these missions to see what it's like. But "kill relay from afar" will always be my strategy with Bunker Busters and Shaped Charge to remove the inconvenient walls (and later, Combat Engineer). Relay gets affected by Bluescreen rounds iirc?
My three 8-man GOp squad Commander campaigns:
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2nd
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Noober
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Re: What to do with a high vigilance region?

Post by Noober »

Psieye wrote:I'll have to actually play one of these missions to see what it's like. But "kill relay from afar" will always be my strategy with Bunker Busters and Shaped Charge to remove the inconvenient walls (and later, Combat Engineer). Relay gets affected by Bluescreen rounds iirc?
Be advised that Relay doesn't counter as a inv. object so it's immune to insta-kill by Shaped Charge/Rockets/Bunker Bustard/Sapper-Combat Eng. Explosives. They (other then Shaped Charge) will still damage it but just it's a scratch.
I don't know about BS rounds but most likely - no.
So there are only two reliable way to kill it early as far as I know and both works only under certain conditions:
1. Use TSGT SPARK with Bombard to blow the roof under it. Obviously require a TSGT SPARK and Relay on the Roof.
2. Sniper capable to deal 10+ DMG on it in one shot. Require a LOS or a miracle like I had after1 rnf wave.

All other ways to insta-kill it (like rocketing the roof under it or Demolition the Ayys who use it as a cover with the gunner) require LOS and the relay is always faaar away from the start - like 4 full dashes through aliens just to be in range to rocket it.
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