Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Jacke
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by Jacke »

trihero wrote:There's no point to "nerfing" or making 0% harder than it is in a vaccuum, because the end result is we go on few missions ever and we don't have the option to go loud if we want to. You have to do something in addition to make up for it, like make 5-6 men missions much more plausible and much more frequent to make up for the lack of missions we can go on.
Exactly.

Right now a lot of mods being created or upgraded for LW2 are aimed at easing the very tight resource scarcity and trying to shift LW2 back to a little less full-stealth missions and more standard XCOM active 5-6 troop squad action. Right now, it's very very hard to infiltrate supply raids or troop columns to any useful amount. I read in another post a player got his squad dropped in such a tight map for a 0% supply raid that the first soldier on his blue move activated 5 pods.

Is this a rational insurgency? That's supposed to be all about hitting with our strength where the enemy is weak, not vice versa.
aedn
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by aedn »

marco.costa wrote:I think one thing that could be done is increase the granularity of infiltration breakpoints affecting alien strength below 100% infiltration, so that 98% stays pretty much as is now, while 0% becomes something like swarming squared.

That said, with the current AI behavior and state of the game, there is a limit as to how much difficulty you can get by just putting more enemies on the map, due to concealed start and no turn limits, so this problem remains, imho.

ADVENT tanks, maybe? lol
More aliens really does not impact supply raids at all, until you reach the point of the AI in civ 5, with an alien on every tile being a problem because nothing can move. At the end of the mission, more aliens means more unbalancing of the economy faster, resulting in a easier snowball. It does increase the risk to a minimal extent, but players would just postpone supply raids until laser weapons instead of going with ballistics in april.

Any player who has played long war one, is already familiar with the supply raid, they were called large landed UFO's in LW1. The overall mechanics changed a bit in LW2, but they are honestly easier then large landed UFO's because of the lack of an outsider pod, and the fact that aliens will come to you, rather then being forced to move to them.

There are two issue with supply raids, the first being that the frequency is far to high for them to spawn. In my last game i restarted because i had 14 supply raids between april and july, resulting in 1 death, and a completely unbalanced economy on my end, i restarted because the game was largely boring by the time i hit august. Supply raid farming results in excessive resources being obtained by the player, allowing them to sell them on the black market for significant levels of supply, as well as obtaining many resources needed to prosper later in the game(elerium, alloy, cores etc). A simple solution to this is to change how supply raids spawn, putting a cap on the number of raids that can occur, and creating alternative missions in place of them to accomplish the game mechanic that was intended with them. Additionally, make it have really bad negative impact so there is a reason to do them, provided timers are fixed.

The second issue is at the moment the infiltration timer on them is largely broken and meaningless. Allow players the option to take smaller squads and most will do so. Right now, most everyone does 0% supply raids, because there is no real alternative. Its rare to get a supply raid that you can actually take a 5-8 man squad on, because the timers are detected far to late in 90%+ of the cases.
marco.costa
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by marco.costa »

Yea, that was my point about the AI being quite "inelastic" about providing difficulty based on scaling of number of aliens, therefore my suggestion of "ADVENT tanks, lol"

perhaps extreme levels of low infiltration could not only increase numbers but also the "level" of aliens, like seeing advanced troopers instead of regular troopers based on your point in the game, heavy lancers as opposed to lancers, reinforcements dropping on top of you, in addition to the 8-man-pod-at-a-time you're trying to take on without pulling any more, etc.
Mooncabbage
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by Mooncabbage »

I know it's been mentioned, just throwing my voice behind the No Infiltration option. IE. just launch the mission, as if you had just launched it at 100% infiltration. If you discover it earlier, you have more time to organise a strong squad to make best use of the opportunity.
sortulf
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by sortulf »

A fix might be to make these missions timed - with normally an extremely high timer (110 turns at 100%?), but having the infiltration percentage heavily affecting that timer (Simple mechanic could be 10 turns + infiltration %). If you fail to eliminate all opposition before the timer runs out, the objective becomes failed, and changes to evacuate all soldiers.
In other words - going in at 0% means you will need to eliminate the opposition very quickly... Typically impossible with a swarming foe.
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johnnylump
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by johnnylump »

We're looking at three things on this:

1) Reducing max allowed squad size to 8
2) Requiring a minimum infiltration % to start the mission in concealment
3) Requiring a minimum infiltration % or else the enemies start in yellow alert (able to shoot on activation)
archangel
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by archangel »

johnnylump wrote:We're looking at three things on this:

1) Reducing max allowed squad size to 8
2) Requiring a minimum infiltration % to start the mission in concealment
3) Requiring a minimum infiltration % or else the enemies start in yellow alert (able to shoot on activation)
I hope you are also going to make them easier to detect so we actually get a chance to infiltrate them properly. Atm, going full in 0% is often the only choice.
Tuhalu
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by Tuhalu »

Raid missions (supply raid, troop convoy) are critical to the health of the campaign.

The main issue is how hard it is to get them with decent timers. Even if restricted to 8 guys, only having 3 days to infiltrate turns it into a swarming mission. It needs to be more like 8-10 days average when discovered (considering the squad size penalties).

Being able to do more supply raids and troop convoys at higher infiltration rates would work better than feeling forced to 10 man raid swarming missions or fail the campaign.

The other penalties (concealment and yellow alert ones) on infiltration are just trying to punish you for something that you are being forced to do.
Antifringe
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by Antifringe »

I think that the problem is that a 10 man squad can beat almost anything that the poor AI can do, given savvy play. "Making it harder" isn't going to help, because players will always find a way to beat the "impossible" mission. It's like getting a lucky large landed UFO on your first month in LW1. It was supposed to be impossible to beat, but we figured out how to beat them consistently, and it getting one was like winning the lottery.

The way the game is structured, you want to infiltrate because there is less risk, and you can get away with using less soldiers. But supply raids give you more rewards than almost any other mission, by a lot, and the rewards actually scale down with infiltration. Worse, your resource commitment actually goes up, since your squad is now tied up during infiltration. The result is a degenerate gameplay state where investing more soldier time gives you less reward, and the maximum reward comes from investing zero soldier time.

Suggestions that supply raids be less frequent won't work, I think, because supply raids aren't just an icon on the map. They are the player-interactable manifestation of ADVENT moving strength points around. If you make supply raids less common, you are also reducing ADVENT's ability to move legions around, which is bad.

I think I'd prefer a softcap on squad size. Require a minimum infiltration percent so that you have to invest soldier time (personally, I think 100% is best, since putting it any lower just reintroduces the problem of better payoff for less investment. Infiltration time will have to be adjusted for this to be workable). This will also put limits on how many troops you can send. At this point, I think I can beat almost anything with a 10 man unit, but I'm less confident about a 4 man unit doing the same. I might even let some supply convoys go! I'd also have to consider the strategic cost of investing that infiltration time, a cost that is effectively zero right now.

The tricky part is that, while we have missions with durations, and missions with minimum infiltration, we don't have both, and it will take some finagling to make that work.
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johnnylump
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by johnnylump »

Tuhalu wrote:The other penalties (concealment and yellow alert ones) on infiltration are just trying to punish you for something that you are being forced to do.
No, it's to deter you from going on unsafe missions, or make you pay a more appropriate cost for the potential rewards.
justdont
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by justdont »

johnnylump wrote:We're looking at three things on this:

1) Reducing max allowed squad size to 8
2) Requiring a minimum infiltration % to start the mission in concealment
3) Requiring a minimum infiltration % or else the enemies start in yellow alert (able to shoot on activation)
So basically "let's make it harder".
Doesn't seem like it's going to solve long-term issues. Some people will avoid doing them until stronger soldiers (more than in 1.1, I doubt many people try to do 0% supply raid with just rookies or squaddies, unless they save-scum every turn). But over time an acceptable power level will be found, where 8-soldiers squad not in concealment and with alerted enemies will still handle supply raids just fine.

"No starting concealment" is kind of irrelevant because of Phantom and/or Conceal perks. You don't need entire squad, 1 concealed soldier will give you practically the same benefits (safe scouting). Yellow alert may just require taking more smokes on these missions. 8 soldiers cap essentially means that you'l simply need better ranked soldiers to do it reliably safe than with current 10 cap.
nightwyrm
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by nightwyrm »

Pfft...I have never met a pod on a Supply Raid or Troop Column after breaking concealment that wasn't already on yellow alert, since these missions tend to generate lots of dead alien bodies and explosions.
Antifringe
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by Antifringe »

Johnny Lump, I think it is very important that some kind of mandatory infiltration mechanic be introduced. The infiltration mechanic works really well for the bulk of the missions. You have to balance how important the reward is versus the cost of having soldiers tied up for a long period of time. It's a good system.

Supply raids are a problem because they subvert that system. A raid isn't a choice about whether I should invest resources or not, because it requires literally zero soldier time to do. It's just a free event that I get to do if I happen to have 8-10 soldiers available.
Tuhalu
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by Tuhalu »

johnnylump wrote:
Tuhalu wrote:The other penalties (concealment and yellow alert ones) on infiltration are just trying to punish you for something that you are being forced to do.
No, it's to deter you from going on unsafe missions, or make you pay a more appropriate cost for the potential rewards.
I'm not against those penalties. I just feel like you need to fix the underlying problem before they feel fair.

If I can't do most supply raids because they are too dangerous, then how do I get the Alloys and Elerium needed for Coil and Plasma weapons and Warden level armor? There are some other sources, but they feel pretty limited (black market) or luck based (hack rewards).

Will the Smash'n'Grab mission type be common enough to make up for it?
trihero
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by trihero »

The suggested fix is to make 5-6 man missions vastly more lucrative/potentially doable so that you don't even care to have to do 0% supply raids. I would be happy to skip 0% supply raids if I felt I had other ways to get the rewards that weren't so heavy-handed max men in nature.

Slapping 0% raids down (and 1 man stealth shinobis) just reduces the number of missions we go on overall without increasing variety since we still won't attempt 5-6 missions since they have awful infiltration and rewards. I say let 0% raids be doable if you want to for sake of variety and options, but make other options directly more viable instead of indirectly more appealing just by slapping 0% raids down.

To some degree I can understand yes, because of how highly rewarding a supply raid, it could/should be more risky. But there's a much bigger underlying problem which is we have left the tactical feel of 5-6 man xcom in favor of james bond shinobi and civ 5 raids.

More specifically, I recently infiltrated a very appropriate 96% supply raid with 6 men, and you know what? It didn't even feel good. I took just as many wounds with my 6 vs 24 as I would have taking 10 men vs 40 aliens. I just ranked up less men, got less corpses, etc. Infiltrating properly needs to be rewarded better, not just penalizing inappropriate infiltration.
Alketi
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by Alketi »

johnnylump wrote:We're looking at three things on this:

1) Reducing max allowed squad size to 8
2) Requiring a minimum infiltration % to start the mission in concealment
3) Requiring a minimum infiltration % or else the enemies start in yellow alert (able to shoot on activation)
With all due respect, these are all just nerfs.

0% supply raids are NOT easy, nor are they especially enjoyable. Also note that some of the people claiming they're easy are either save-scumming (to fix a "bad pull") or typing console commands to complete them.

I'd like to see 0% supply raids removed as well, because I'd rather see more do-able 5-8 man supply raids.

Further, troop columns are an absolute cluster$*@ as they currently exist.

A troop column map is maybe 1/4 the size of a traditional map. It's also an urban landscape with massive LOS issues, and every enemy is pathing on top of every other enemy.

I've lost soldiers on a Moderate troop column, because once you engage, the entire map activates.

When I heard Xavier was going to attempt a Heavy troop column I wondered how the hell he was going to pull it off. Personally I won't even attempt anything beyond a Moderate troop column no matter how many soldiers I bring because of the map activation issues. Well guess what -- Xavier only avoided a complete and utter wipe by succeeding on a Hail Mary 22% Sectopod hack. Total BS, btw. :) His final tally: 5 wounded, 1 dead. And, exactly as I expected, he activated the entire map.

To nudge this in the right direction, I would suggest:

1) Slightly increase supply raid detection
- People are running these at 0% because they're nearly impossible to detect with any meaningful time left. Detecting a supply raid with 2 days left means you either ignore it, 3-man it on Light (impossible), or 10-man it on Swarming. Which would you choose?

2) Slightly increase the map size on troop columns.
- I'd start at +4 or +8 squares in every direction

I think those are both reasonable small steps.

IMO, if the supply raids are more detectable/doable at 5-8 man, then applying penalties for deliberately under-infiltrating at 10-man are perfectly warranted.
kai
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by kai »

From my humble opinion, these missisons have the same problems late games missions in LW1 had: they punish you for not using endless overwatch traps.

The game already have a timer mechanic to deal with that, I think it could be used for these missions too.

E.g.:Supply runs, give a 14-16 turn timer, and you have to manually pick the crates by being adyacent to them and activating, getting as much of the loot as you can before the time runs out. You have to evac before timer gets to 0, you lose the soldiers than did not evac in time.

Rebalance mission difficulty, mission appearance chance, infiltration difficulty, etc... as needed.

Just my 2 cents.
trihero
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by trihero »

Yeah if the solution is simply to make 0% supply raids harder, you might as well remove them from the game considering

1) how infrequently you can get "good" infiltration times on them with "reasonably sized squads"

2) even when you do get "good" infiltration times, they are not terribly easy with medium squads due to the often-present 8 man squad.
seananigans
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by seananigans »

Is it at all possible for these types of missions to award extra corpses to make up for alien number reduction during infiltration (simulating stealthy dispatching of a few pods, I guess?) Basically making rewards for supply raids / troop columns even across the board.

If that's possible, combine it with a slight ease in detection chance resulting in slightly longer timers, and boom, you have rewards for infiltration of these missions.


I'm personally for even rewards across the board on these types of missions, since corpses/alloys/elerium are such key resources in LW2. That said, I think if it were me, I'd go with the 100% required infiltration times (accomplishes my other point indirectly) similar to Lib4 and Lib5, some golden path, etc, simply because as has been stated multiple times, infil time is partially supposed to mimic fatigue timers from LW1, requiring you to have multiple squads and a full roster. If you're allowed to pop into these missions immediately for fantastic rewards and zero soldier downtime, there's just zero downside to them, regardless of any attempts to make them "harder."
Maebalzurakin
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by Maebalzurakin »

http://www.nexusmods.com/xcom2/mods/421/?

Here is a link to a mod which will fix your issue. What it does is activate every pod on the map once you break concealment. If there is no concealment, all pods start activated. I really like it because it is much more realistic. A pod should not remain inactive when there is gunfire and explosions 30 feet away! Mod Launcher did not detect any conflicts with this mod and LW2.

Now, I don't care how good your sniper position is, you are not going to hold off 30+ troops all active at the same time. But if you can, you DESERVE, the rewards.
Antifringe
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by Antifringe »

seananigans wrote:I'm personally for even rewards across the board on these types of missions, since corpses/alloys/elerium are such key resources in LW2. That said, I think if it were me, I'd go with the 100% required infiltration times (accomplishes my other point indirectly) similar to Lib4 and Lib5, some golden path, etc, simply because as has been stated multiple times, infil time is partially supposed to mimic fatigue timers from LW1, requiring you to have multiple squads and a full roster. If you're allowed to pop into these missions immediately for fantastic rewards and zero soldier downtime, there's just zero downside to them, regardless of any attempts to make them "harder."
Yes. Just to illustrate the point, I recently had a situation where I had 2 supply raids and a troop column show up all at once. If these had been any other mission type, I would have had to make difficult decisions about which ones I wanted to do, and how many soldiers I should leave behind for defense/other opportunities.

Instead, I just said "Cool!" and did all three back to back with the same squad, and in the same game day.
trihero
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by trihero »

Yup, the infiltration idea is brilliant in concept but is easily overridden by the extremes of the parameter space (one man vs 10 man). It's also shot itself in the foot by being a dual lever for both difficulty and fatigue. By increasing base infiltration time on higher difficulties, you increase both difficulty and fatigue at the same time which is exponentially punishing to middle range teams but doesn't even scratch 2-3 day infiltrations for small men nor the 0 day infiltration mechanic for UFO/raids/ambushes.

It doesn't serve its fatigue purpose well at all, except for invading HQs/towers then it does feel like it's doing its job.
Jacke
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by Jacke »

Sounds like infiltration needs a minimum time for certain missions.
Goumindong
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by Goumindong »

Here is an option

Make supply raids scale in reverse. Give them massive timers. When you get them initially you can send an everyone on your team at zero %... And face an extremely light mission with few rewards. No supplies/elerium/alloys, just corpses.

But the longer you infiltrate the more supplies are brought in. The more troops are there.

If you added a minimum infiltration % on this it would work really well. Because players could infiltrate with fewer troops in order to get to the mission faster. (Or increase the size of the take faster). So if you want that sweet 0% loot be prepared to go in to a swarming mission after 12 days of infiltration with 6-8 troops. If you want minimum loot you can go in after 6 with 5-6 troops. If you want to bring the full squad (before paying the infil GTS tax) be prepared to get very little resources out of it after infiltrating for 20 days.

Justify it as "advent can detect when xcom is nearby and tempers it's vulnerable actions when it does so. The longer you wait before attacking the more supplies are brought in. The bigger squad you bring the more wary advent is of bringing supplies and troops to the region."

Granted this does produce a different problem in that supply raids may fail their "alien strategic" option. But well people care more about the game being fun and balanced than they do the aliens having a consistent strategy.

Alternately you could give tangible advantages for high strength so that it might make sense for players to opt out of doing a raid.(very high vigilance could spawn UFOs and supply raids could spike vigilance)

TL/DR : long expiration timer (15-20 days average detect) with 50 to 100% minimum infiltration. At 100% infiltration mission is light and contains low supplies. At 200% infiltration the mission is heavy and contains lots of supplies.

In order to get the huge loot you need to expend lots of infiltration time and increase risk. As the game goes on it becomes easier to do these due to attaining the GTS infil bonuses. Base infiltration (or slightly more) is intended balanced resources for the campaign.
JackDT
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Re: Suggested fix to supply raid, troop column, HQ 0% infiltration abuse

Post by JackDT »

Abusing squadsight/conceal or just strong defensive setups (without squadsight) on these maps really well but is tedious and not super fun, but way too effective not to do. No concrete suggestions for how to fix.

1) Find an place on the edge of the map with high cover, and that has very little high cover *near* it so that Advent has no way to approach in in high cover.

2) Either initiate a pod or better, use the sound system to overwatch lure a single pod into your setup squad.

3) For pods triggered out of sight the pod will charge you until they get to the dead zone, where the majority of the pod will just wander back and forth. The enemies that can take the limited high cover locations will approach you and get in range, but since there are so few, they have to go in just one or two at a time. The rest of the pod will wait their turn for the high cover spots. In order for the pod to have a chance they'd have to be willing to all charge you and take the low or no cover spots -- but they rarely do. The AI will see no good ways to approach and stay 'out or range' and so just send in a trickle at a time.

You don't have to do with with squadsight snipers either, it works fine with regular troops as long as you setup a situation where they still only wander in a few at a time.
Last edited by JackDT on Fri Feb 24, 2017 7:41 am, edited 5 times in total.
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