[Feedback/Suggestions] Observations at the 50h mark

[Thrombozyt]

Having recently clocked in my 50th hour of Long War 2 and I must say that the mod - just as Long War did for EU/EW - has brought the game to a whole new level and actually managed to capture my interest as opposed to the base game that was cute for about 8-10h of play and then faded away.

I REALLY love the infiltration mechanic replacing the fatigue mechanic. Slowing letting your soldiers blend into the area instead of having to buy that the aliens didn't notice the sky ranger dropping a strike team is a brilliant move. The same goes for the enhanced region/haven management, the mission spawn mechanic and the ADVENT responses on the strategic map. It poses an excellent way to earn advantages for your campaign through good decision making.

There are a few things that are - maybe not bad or poorly though out per se - not fulfilling the potential they could have. So let me start with the most fundamental criticism and a suggestion to it:

1) The missions that go according to plan are either mostly/completely stealth or overwatch crawls
I enjoy a dynamic combat. It was one of the things that kind of bugged me even in LW1 - you are punished for advancing aggressively even though that should be something that XCOM does. This affects different missions in different ways:

1a) Un-timed, shooty missions:
In LW1 it was the landed UFO, that calmly waited for you to crawl over it inch by inch instead of after a while just taking off and blasting the skyranger to bits. In LW2 it's the 0% supply raids / troop ambushs, where the mission description explicitly states, that XCOM is mounting an attack striking hard before the enemy has the chance to regroup. Look at the standard tactic of well-known streamers and it's clear a corner and camp in it until the vast majority of pods have suicided into your prepared meat grinder.

Instead of acting according to ADVENTs stated goal (keep the supply train alive or regroup with larger forces), the opponents just wander about and will eventually wander into your kill zone. Is that realistic? Hell no! Is that rewarding good play? Not really.
The main problem here arises from the fact, that in order to create a challenge, enemy density has to be increased, which in turn further pigeon holes you into the camp-in-the-corner tactics because advancing will result in multi-pulls on your turn which will cause you massive pain.
This is further compounded by the disparity of what a pod pull means on your turn vs on the aliens turn..... and is even FURTHER compounded by 0% materiel missions being such a big factor on your income.

Suggestion / Potential Solution:
Ideally the AI is tweaked to react differently. What does do on a defend-the-supply-train mission? Pull in close together and defend. If a human commander knows there is a pod of aliens camping in the corner waiting for you, he would group, encircle and advance in coordinated fashion. So instead of feeding pods into the grinder, please let ADVENT group and advance with 3 pods on the last known position. That allows a clever commander to shift position and pick off pods out of position but also means that you will aggro pods on your turn.

Of course the amount of opponents needs to be adjusted to compensate for the increase in AI quality.

If that proves to be impossible, introduce a generous turn time to reach a certain point on the map to those missions, similar to the UFO-beacons.

1b) Timed stealthy missions:
The introduction of a timer is the obvious counter to the overwatch crawl and forces dynamic movement. Unfortunately, that just mean 1-3 soldier sneak jobs. Don't get me wrong - I really like stealth missions occasionally and it feels good to pull off a 2-man-hack-job. But it seems to me the higher the challenge, the more binary the results become, because with stealth being the prevalent approach, squads are geared towards being REALLY stealthy and even less proficient in a shoot-out.

The main problem here is the fact, that many missions are detected with only very little time left to infiltrate combined with massive penalties for under-infiltration. Throw this together with the fact that failing a mission is not worse than not attempting the mission (apart from the risk to the soldier involved), you are looking at a significant subset of missions that are "stealth or nothing" and "stealth" has next to no risk attached to a potential reward. This is compounded by the fact, that soldiers are good or great at stealth from the start and don't need equipment in later levels that could get lost. The calculation of "I might get an engineer/scientist but might lose 10 supply" can be solved using black market prizes towards "Unless you lose your investment 13-14 times more often than you get the prize, go for it".

Suggestion / Potential Solution:
- Decrease base infiltration time (e.g. based on ADVENT strength) and do not give bonus to undersized squads. -> Increase the pool of missions that can be done by squads than can actually risk a fight
- Let the infiltration penalty affect the readiness/quality of reinforcements more than the amount of opponents present -> Allows for concealment to be broken without immediately having 20+ ADVENT surround you -> less binary missions
- Increase the duration a squad has to interact with an objective for some mission types -> less chance to pull off a job completely undiscovered -> increases the risk of 1-2 man team

2) The interplay between strategic and tactical layer
It is great, that the aliens move around their forces to quell the resistance - however there are a lot of areas that could be improved in the strategic layer. The strategic game boils down to 'train and equip a squad to beat the golden path' - not my words but those of the players that have beaten L/I campaigns. It would be awesome to have the choice not only to train up for the final objective but to soften up the objective. In a similar vein, the impact of a bad slew of dark events has been extensively discussed on the boards.

Suggestion:
Let the alert value modify the force value.
It makes little sense, that the ADVENT elite is EVERYWHERE out of the sudden. Where did all the regular troopers go? If the region alert is higher than the global alert, the force level for missions - not so much for pods on the map but especially for reinforcements - is increased. On the flip side, if XCOM gets active in a backwater region, it faces only the 2nd/3rd string of ADVENT which in turn allows for B-teams / C-teams to be viable choices even when the A-team is available

Suggestion:
Propaganda missions don't generate extra vigilance but draw extra vigilance from neighboring regions.
Currently propaganda missions makes sense only in a very limited context and it's often a good idea to avoid them. On the flip side it often takes ages for a region to cool down. Instead of just being a vigilance spike, let it siphon off vigilance from other regions so you can actually draw away the attention of ADVENT and generate troop movement that you can then ambush

Suggestion:
Let the player invest research time and soldier force into reducing ADVENT capabilities.
This covers a mission path to eliminate a DE-upgrade or event as well as dangerous missions that delay the force level progression. This would allow a campaign that has fallen behind to catch up eventually.

3) Hacking
Hacks fall into two categories. The "let's grab goodies for the strategic game" hack and "let's deal with this robot" hack. The latter is in a good spot, while the former is - well just lame. There is rarely, if ever, a trade-off between the tactical cost of a hack and the strategic gain. When you hack an objective, it's just a bonus on top of the mission reward - you could easily put that reward into the mission reward without losing anything. When you hack a lamp post... well I have never really hacked a lamp post for a tactical reward. I check it if I can get a strategic reward. If I can, I wait until I can make sure that the penalty of a failed hack doesn't hurt me and then hack - usually right before evac. If it's not strategic reward, I don't even bother.

Suggestion:
Multi-layered objective hacking
Hacking an objective has now a variable difficulty level represented by hit points - something that could be easily tied into the infiltration level. You hack the first time, you automatically disable the mission timer and can chose between "Exploring the ADVENT Network" and "Decrypting the files". The first option allows you to search for goodies in the network, the second option allow you to shave off a hit point from the objective. On success, you immediately continue the hack (not expending another action with the hacker) with the objective gaining X hacking defense (e.g. 15-45). Exploring the network gradually gives you information about what rewards lurk in the depth of the system and allow you to pursue them. Investing into file decryption lets you shave off hit points off the objective (or grab it at 0HP).
You can always cancel the hack, if it gets too dicey.
Failure on a hack OR grabbing a reward OR grabbing the objective leads to break of concealment or re-routes the nearest pod towards the objective or shaves off a turn from the reinforcement timer and adds 1-2 more opponents to the drop (in that order or priority).
Note that the actual hack-interfaces does not need to be reworked so I hope that this can be scripted without much of a problem.

The effects on this would be that you trade tactical advantages for strategic advantages, making the missions even less binary but a more graded success. You got to the prison door undetected with plenty of turns to burn? Hack away while the squad covers your hacker. You got there in the nick of time with aliens at your heels? Burn through that lock ASAP and proceed to the evac.
This would alter the stealth mission setup to be more dependent on scouting for patrolling pods.

Suggestion:
Better tactical hacking of lamp posts
First of all, hacking defense should go up when the cover is blown. Also the rewards should change. When in cover, rewards should revolve around misdirection, information gathering and softening of hacking defenses. Examples would be 'False Alert' where the closes two pods are re-routed to the lamp post, 'Virus Injection' resulting a reduction in the hacking defense of the objective or 'Camera Highjack' revealing pods in the fog of war or disable the detection for good. A lamp post could be hacked multiple times for different rewards though the hack defense would slowly increase (by 5-15 each time).
A failure would mean break of concealment for everybody including Phantom operatives and immediately ending the turn for the specialist.
The main cost would be the time investment to hack on time limited missions (ideally hacking a lamp post ends the specialists turn and moving before hacking results in a hacking penalty)

Once the squad is revealed, you could have rewards reducing alert levels (red->yellow->green), spawning loud noises at locations far away, pushing back reinforcements, displacing reinforcements, disorienting robotic units in the area.
Failure should be feedback damage for the specialist and the specialist being stunned for 2-3 turns.

Suggestion:
Failsafe protects only for the first (or first two) failed hack.

4) Class/Perk Balance
This is just a work in progress and it's early in the cycle so I don't worry about that. I miss, however, the option of LW1 where some weaker perks were carrying stat-boni to incentivize picking them up. Needle Grenades could come with +1 mobility to pick up those loot drops. Some of the hacking progression could be moved from the level up to the hacker perks, so that the medic / overwatch specialists don't hack as well as those dedicated to it.

5) UI Improvements
The improvements in 1.1 - specifically the option to train AWC and officer skills from the soldier profile - have come a long way, but I would really welcome to be able to train rookies the same way. Also please give us in the soldier list the squad their are in and the AWC perk icons. When editing the load-out in the mission select, please have the arrow buttons cycle through the selected soldiers first, not randomly through all the soldiers I have. Same when browsing soldiers in the barracks - sort them by squad first then by rank.

So that's it. Sorry for it being a wall of text. If there are specific items of particular interest, We can make a separate thread out of it, but for now I didn't want to start spawning threads all over the place.

[Devon_v]

I've got a similar playtime, and I agree with a lot of this.

Stealth really is the answer to almost everything. I also love the idea of a stealth mission, but lately I will send a single, speedy soldier to any extraction regardless of remaining time just to see if I can pull it off. Sometimes all the rebels die, and sometimes I just walk a scientist away from 18 guys who patrolled into just the right spots.

I see other people bringing small squads and getting into moving firefights and lamenting RNF drops on their heads, and the clear solution is what Monty Python taught me all those years ago: not to be seen.


Troop Columns also seem too easy because they don't react well. Given that it's a bunch of soldiers on patrol, shouldn't they, you know, radio for help? They're getting wiped out and they never consider calling the squad 50 feet away to come help?

Lamp posts have always seemed pointless. The hack rewards need to all be general battlefield effects I feel. A random bonus to the specialist that they may not be speced to use, even if it's relevant to the mission, doesn't help. I also only take strategic boni, they're clearly the superior option.

[Alketi]

Apparently I must really suck because I'm 0-2 on stealth missions (Shinobi/Specialist). Got trapped by squirrelly patrol routes both times and spotted.

I think the risk/reward for stealth missions is mostly fine. Stealthing a mission means you're giving up all the loot drops and all the troop experience. A decent tradeoff. I picked up Wet Work early in the campaign, I go heavy Intel in a Haven, and run 6+ man squads on most every mission. It's been working great and I have 3 squads of highly leveled soldiers with lots of loot.

>>> So instead of feeding pods into the grinder, please let ADVENT group and advance with 3 pods on the last known position.

The sound travel mechanic is, in my opinion, one of the best in LW2. I hate the idea of 3 pods deciding to converge on a "known" location just because you attacked and not because they heard you. That removes all the tactics of deciding whether or not to go loud or go quietly. Also, good luck with multiple pod activations on a Heavy/Swarming mission. 24 Advent?

OP, you didn't say if you're playing on L/I with any save scumming or with any game-altering mods. LW2 isn't easy if played on true Ironman, even at Veteran difficulty.

[8wayz]

The meat grinder situation is really tricky. I currently have a Supply raid mission which has been on hold for a few days because Advent pods actually advance two at a time, covering almost the whole width of the map. That makes for an average of 10 units activated each turn and the map simply is not that good for that kind of a firefight in June.

It really depends on the map you get, as well as how many explosives you use to clear any cover that the aliens might get. Since they are advancing on a wide front against me on that mission there is no way I can feasibly destroy all the good cover. So sooner or later I am going to get swarmed.

I do prefer a more mobile and aggressive gameplay and am kind of disappointed that Assaults and Shinobis are almost useless in these kind of missions.

[Thrombozyt]

Apparently I must really suck because I'm 0-2 on stealth missions (Shinobi/Specialist). Got trapped by squirrelly patrol routes both times and spotted.

I think the risk/reward for stealth missions is mostly fine. Stealthing a mission means you're giving up all the loot drops and all the troop experience. A decent tradeoff. I picked up Wet Work early in the campaign, I go heavy Intel in a Haven, and run 6+ man squads on most every mission. It's been working great and I have 3 squads of highly leveled soldiers with lots of loot.

>>> So instead of feeding pods into the grinder, please let ADVENT group and advance with 3 pods on the last known position.

The sound travel mechanic is, in my opinion, one of the best in LW2. I hate the idea of 3 pods deciding to converge on a "known" location just because you attacked and not because they heard you. That removes all the tactics of deciding whether or not to go loud or go quietly. Also, good luck with multiple pod activations on a Heavy/Swarming mission. 24 Advent?

OP, you didn't say if you're playing on L/I with any save scumming or with any game-altering mods. LW2 isn't easy if played on true Ironman, even at Veteran difficulty.

I'm playing at Veteran/Ironman. 6 man missions are still possible, but I'm starting to see, that with even slightly more opposition, I would be pushed further into the stealth/camp dichotomy. 6 man missions where there is fighting on a timer against very light opposition are often significantly HARDER than 10man untimed missions against swarming opposition or 2 man stealth missions against light-moderate opposition.

The sound travel mechanic is nice, but why shouldn't ADVENT have... you know.. radio communication? Lore-wise you even have them on the same psionic network with a god-like commander processing and coordinating squads. And just because they converge on the last known position, doesn't mean that you'll still be there. Move and attack another pod somewhere else.

The alternative would be to lessen the gap between an activation on your turn and an activation during the alien turn. You pull a pod on your turn - maybe even as your last action - and you are screwed. The pod scampers and then gets a full turn to hammer you probably from an exposed flank.
A pod gets activated in the alien turn, all your squad gets overwatch shots and then you have a full turn to hammer the stragglers. That's no challenge, unless there are actually more than one pod getting pulled in one alien turn because some might actually survive (probably not enough to inflict damage but still). So to create a challenge at higher difficulty, the enemy count/quality needs to rise to absurd levels - which in return makes any strategy BUT the camp-in-a-corner not viable anymore.

Please note, that I mentioned that to compensate for advanced pod tactics, you would see a reduction in opponent numbers, so the 3-pod-death-squad would be around 18 advent and you might even be able to pick those off over multiple turns because one squad will be off moving in from another angle.

[deducter]

I'm honestly finding the stealth missions more useful when the timer is low more. On occasion if I lack manpower I might send some stealth teams to do missions with 6+ days, but in general I send the stealth teams for 3-4 day missions. They can easily infiltration to 200% and make things much easier.

One idea to reduce the prevalence of these stealth missions and and especially solo sinobi extraction is simply to make infiltration time not reduced below 5 soldiers. Thus, you would still be stuck with a infiltration time of 5 (6 on commander+) days with a sinobi on that 3-day extraction mission. The difference between very light and moderate-heavy and the increased detection radius would discourage those tactics.

[Thrombozyt]

In LW1, giving XCOM corpses / captives to the aliens actually increased their research speed. Would such a penalty work to make sending a single operative more of a risk?

On the flip side - what mechanics could be devised to slow down the alien research so that a squad wipe isn't an auto-campaign-loss?

[Sir_Dr_D]

The goal of stealth should be to pick and choose the squad you should first ambush, and not sneak through the whole level. If you want to increase the fighting here are some things that would help, and be cool:

- The prison doors on prison rescue missions, involve the proper finger print scan to access it. In order to unlock the door you need to kill the advent commander who has access, and carry his/her body to the jail cell in order to hack it.

- hacking is always in high security areas, so it can be expected to be highly guarded and more then you can fight. Sneaking to the objective is expected. But as soon as you hack the computer or summon the skyranger, a large siren goes off. Every enemy in the battle field is immediately alerted to your presence, including the 5 or 6 drones that hang out around the computer they are protecting. You need enough men to hold things off, until your skyranger gets there.

- In missions where where you are rescuing someone from a van , there is always a guard squad outside that just does not move. The rescuing will refuse to leave until that guard squad is killed. In the mean time, every squad in the area has been notified and is heading towards you.

- Supply raids and such should be timed as well with a more generous timer then normal. But if the timer runs outs, it doesn't mean you lose. It just means the remaining guards escape and you don't get their loot. That will prevent overwatch crawls.

The big thing that needs to get fixed though is the scamper mechanic. That is what breaks the game, and forces players to use extreme stealth or extreme overwatch. It needs to get fixed somehow. One way is that if you are in a fight and happen to accidently activate another pod, that pod scramble counts as its next turn. And you should also no be able to overwatch scambing aliens, when you are not it stealth mode. But if the aliens don't get a full next turn, it can cause the players to abuse that and slaughter them, so it is hard to know how to handle it.


And there is also a problem with the strategic game in how it relates to the tactical. 2 scenarios. In exaggerated scenario 1 you have all 13 haven guys set to intel, a scientist as an advisor, and scanner with the avenger. The other havens you have set to just supply and recruit. In scenario 2 you have intel spread out across havens and have 5 to 6 in each doing intel. This will have a drastic effect on mission difficulty and infllitration time, and squad size. If people do the second scenario and not realize it could be done differently, but the longwar team is balancing things around the first scenario, it will look like the tactical combat is too hard. My first scenario is exaggerated, but is the game meant to be played with intel being specialized to certain havens, or be spread around? For balance discussions it will be good to know what the design goal is.

[Thrombozyt]

If you look at my hacking suggestion (Multi-Layered Hacking) you see that you either 'go loud' and attract enemies but hack the objective quickly or you need a long time window to crack it silently. Would that work? It would reduce the chances for a full-stealth mission while still allowing for it if there is careful scouting.

I really like the idea of making the scamper immune to overwatch shots on the one hand but also costing the next alien action. I think it goes a long way of making dynamic tactics viable while penalizing the overwatch crawl. I don't think that if the aliens don't get the next turn, that it will result in slaughtering the pod. Vision range is usually much farther than blue-move range, so you can't just run up and shoot their face. Pod on yellow alert could be allowed singular defensive actions (overwatch or suppression) on their turn or maybe even singular shots. It would still go a looong way.