A happy medium between stealth and assault

[llll BlackFlag]

During my recent 1.3 campaigns I've been struggling to find a balance between stealth and assault. Although 1.3 was aimed at increasing the effectiveness of medium sized squads I don't think I've been able to utilize these changes optimally. I can still cheese 2-3 man stealth missions, and going in to kill everything is just as easy. My problem is when I try to use medium sized squads of 3-5 and try to strike a balance between stealth and assault. I always seem to complete missions without activating any pods, or I activate the entire map in 1-3 turns. Does anyone have tips for trying to go in, clear a pod or two, complete the objective, and evac? This seems to be the style of play 1.3 was pushing for but I've been unable to reliably execute it.

[WanWhiteWolf]

During my recent 1.3 campaigns I've been struggling to find a balance between stealth and assault. Although 1.3 was aimed at increasing the effectiveness of medium sized squads I don't think I've been able to utilize these changes optimally. I can still cheese 2-3 man stealth missions, and going in to kill everything is just as easy. My problem is when I try to use medium sized squads of 3-5 and try to strike a balance between stealth and assault. I always seem to complete missions without activating any pods, or I activate the entire map in 1-3 turns. Does anyone have tips for trying to go in, clear a pod or two, complete the objective, and evac? This seems to be the style of play 1.3 was pushing for but I've been unable to reliably execute it.

I did quite a few Smash and Grab as semi-stealth. I usually do this when I am out of gear but I have some soldiers to spare. My setup:
- 2 shinoby min CPL - first 2 skills from stealth three
- 1 technical flame/tanky build - CPL is fine
- 1 OW specialist with HACK PCS - CPL is ok; SGT is ideal for cool under presure
- 1 support grenadier - LCPL / CPL (ideally officer)

Gear req: None.
Nice to have: A decent Assault Rifle on Spec; Venon rounds on spec; Some tanky vest on Technical

AWG req: Phantom on Technical
Nice to have: Rapid deployment on Shinoby / lightning reflexes.

The way it works it's like this:
- You start with splitting your Shinoby (one left side of the building - one on right side. There is always one pod outside the building and 2 inside. The one from outside you have to kill with the other 3 soldiers. To kill the pod outside you thrown a flashbang (enemy doesn't scatter if he doesn't see you) + burn them from concealment with Technical + take shots from OW specialist. After the ayy is disoriented , burned and potential poisoned - it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

- By the time you finish with the first pod, your shinoby should be each close to a chest and have at least a good idea where the pods are. Leave the closest chest to the evac to the 3 man group.

- Move the 3 man group to the closest chest from evac. If you trigger a pod; pop fortify, aid protocol + smoke on technical and dash to the chest. With 60+ defense even a flanking shot has 15% chance to hit. You can also command the technical and launch a rocket just to make some noise / easier for shinobys to get to the chests. Ideally you reach to the chest with Shinoby concealed. It's not so difficult since you have SMG + radius detection + ghost walk. Unless the enemies sits like 3 tiles away from the chest, you can get there with no problem.

You can tipically pick 3 out of 4 chests. 1 for each Shinoby and 1 for the 3 man group.

You need a specialist that is able to hack a drone.That's why you go with the HACK PCS. It's also useful if there is a MEC on the first pod; depending on the Technical's level / Grenadier level , you may not be able to do anything about that one. If it's a heavy MEC not even the specialist can hack it,so you might need to avoid the fight entirely and simply get the chests only with Shinobys. If you manage to HACK a drone, you may even get 4 chests since the enemy focuses the drone and they are simply not able to kill it.

Later in the game, you get grapple on Shinobys and you can do whatever you want. I had 2 Shinoby with 20 movement speed. (17 + 3 PCS). With 20 ms, you can simply enter in the building, triggering all pods. Pick the loot as free action, grapple on the other side of the roof -> dash out. The enemy cannot really do anything about that.

I even managed once to finish a mission in 3 turns with 3 shinobys. It was ridiculous.

Early game you have to be careful on lancers. They are the only ones who can take you shinobys out since they can dash + hit so they can keep up with you. Otherwise, it's a pretty safe mission regarless of enemies.

Final note: don't forget medikit or hazmat on technical. With so much stacked defense, all vipers will poison you.

[llll BlackFlag]

Thanks a lot for such a detailed reply. Being relatively new to the game one area where I need to improve is efficient squad composition and building squads with a specific strategy in mind, like the one you mentioned. Until now I've mostly played with 'all purpose' squads with the occasional stealth team and have had most of my campaigns fizzle out in mid December / February (probably with squad comp as a contributing factor).

I haven't built many stealth shinobis in 1.3; I've been picking up lone wolf and combatives for survivability>riskier plays>higher damage output, but maybe I'll give them another shot to try to complete half-stealth missions. It has been frustrating to strike a balance between aggressive and stealthy play, but I think when done correctly it can be super efficient. Unfortunately a lot of it comes down pod positioning when the mission timers are short and you don't have much time to scout the map.

[Dwarfling]

I have yet to find stealth a viable option after 1.3. Evac timers are either too long, or there's the threat of RNF when evac is fixed. Add to that the scattered solo drones on random patrol paths and the objective defense pod and I equip my teams to fight it out with the first pod 95% of the times, even with 4-man teams. The other 5% is when I lack the soldiers available to carry out that mission and I try to cheese it. Mostly I do it with Lib3 VIP assassination teams.

[llll BlackFlag]

I have yet to find stealth a viable option after 1.3. Evac timers are either too long, or there's the threat of RNF when evac is fixed. Add to that the scattered solo drones on random patrol paths and the objective defense pod and I equip my teams to fight it out with the first pod 95% of the times, even with 4-man teams. The other 5% is when I lack the soldiers available to carry out that mission and I try to cheese it. Mostly I do it with Lib3 VIP assassination teams.

I don't think stealth is dead. I can regularly pull off full stealth on legend (at least until January) with a shinobi / sharpshooter duo during hacking or item recovery missions. I try to spot pods while on the way to the objective and look for good cover (high ground if possible) near the objective for my sharpshooter. I put the sharpshooter out of sight of any pods and drop the evac flare halfway between the sharpshooter and objective. I sit still until the evac pops then hack with the shinobi and rush both troops to evac. If you can't hack for whatever reason you can just evac in stealth and cut your losses. Another strategy is to replace the sharpshooter with a specialist and make the shinobi an officer. While out of sight drop evac in a position where you can see and hack the objective. Dash to evac, command the specialist to hack the objective, then dip right out.

Stealth isn't as broken as it was in 1.2 but it is still viable on certain missions. It's probably possible to pull off similar tactics with rescue VIP and jailbreak, but I usually send a death squad for those as the rewards are too valuable to chance.