No Avatar Project?

[Vince]

Dear all,

I've been playing Long War 2 for a couple of weeks now and I have yet to see any sign of the avatar project.

I was expecting the progression bar at the top of the screen to show up fairly early into the game, as well as the related missions where you get to assault gene "factories". None of that has come my way so far. I don't remember how the plot is supposed to unfold though, as last time I beat the game was the week of its release...

My current progression:

- I have built the gateway in the avenger
- I have to do an autopsy on the avatar soldier (The dude with the funky haircut you have to fight when you skulljack a codex)

Have I missed an important step or am I not there yet in the storyline?

Thanks for your replies and a million thanks to Pavonis for this amazing mod!

[Manifest]

You have to liberate a region to view the avatar progress, that's why it's in the objective list on the side of the geoscape, although the specifics of liberating a region are rather vague.

You have to complete a mission with "find a lead" as a reward. (not all of them unlock liberation missions, only some). Then, if the lead led to the liberation missions, every mission after that that is labeled with "liberation" somewhere in the description must eventually be completed, until you unlock the network tower mission, and that unlocks the HQ assault which liberates the region.

Essentially liberation is the process by which you destabilize Advent's control in a region and gain the intel to roust them, revealing the avatar project at the first region you liberate.

[fowlJ]

Like Manifest says, you need to liberate a region to view the progress, but an important thing to note is that even though you can't see it yet, the clock is still ticking - you sound like you're pretty far into the game, so I'd strongly recommend focusing on securing a region for yourself, or you could be in trouble.

One thing you should do is check the resistance overview in the Commander's Quarters, where it lists all your havens, and see if there is a dot next to any of the havens on the list. That dot means you've completed the 'Find a Lead' mission in that region, so you can focus on Intel there to find the rest of the mission chain. If no regions have a dot, pick one, set all the rebels there to Intel, and scan there with the Avenger.

[Ithuriel]

How early should we be aiming to liberate a region, and how late in the worst case? Due to a lot of poor timing (liberation missions usually popping up while Alpha, Beta, and Gamma squads are out) and liberation missions usually showing up with under a day and a half remaining for me despite large numbers of rebels on intel, I'm currently on August 8 and have yet to liberate a single region, 'though I've made contact with 7 different regions. (Btw- what do you do when aliens start camping 10-11 strength on your three biggest Havens? Just sit, hide, and pray they don't notice you?)

[Sax2514]

You should try to liberate a region as soon as possible, possibly May, for two reasons: first, it is needed in order to progress the story, because in this way you can know about the avatar project, and second, liberating a region grants you a steady income of supplies over the months, because when a region is liberated you essentially put all your resistance members on supply jobs, plus an engineer as haven advisor which grants a bonus. The liberation of a region is a series of five quests, which can be done for every region ( so more regions you liberate, more supplies you will have). Choose a region with minor advent strenght, then put your resistance members on intel, plus 1 or 2 on recruit and a strong soldier, well equipped, possibly official, as haven adviser. Then start scanning with the avenger for the first quest of the chain, which is labeled "find a lead" and it will have, as rewards, only intel (and not intel+intel package). After that, scan for two other quests, which are simple labeled as "liberation". The 4th quest will be assigned automatically after you completed the 3rd quest of the chain and it is "network tower mission", and after that it will be the final assault at regional Advent Headquarter, which will give you also bodies, supplies, intel and elerium and alloys. As said above, if you find a dot next to the name of the region in the resistance page, you have already done the first mission in that region, so it will be a good place to start, if regional advent strenht is not too high. Sorry if I have made any mistakes but english is not my native language.

[Manifest]

How early should we be aiming to liberate a region, and how late in the worst case?

I think for the first region, you should just liberate it at soon as possible (and afterwards you don't really need to liberate as far as I know), both for the avatar and for the first big influx of supplies. (After that first big wave of money, you don't starve for it quite so often afterwards). Apparently Liberation destroys five strength, so I would prefer liberating at around 5 or 6 strength if possible (often not) otherwise the remaining strength will flood to a neighbor and make invasions easier (invasions can occur when a neighboring region to a liberated region is at 8+ strength.

Btw- what do you do when aliens start camping 10-11 strength on your three biggest Havens? Just sit, hide, and pray they don't notice you?

Well, this seems kind of like a simple solution. Find mission's to "Get Advent's attention" in neighboring regions, or simply start conducting OPs in neighbouring regions and doing some supply raids (if you want them to spread out). Basically, just start conducting intel operations in your smaller regions instead if you want to avoid big missions!

[Ithuriel]

...are you guys getting missions coming up more often than me? I've tried the "lots of intel+scan" strategy, and never reliably had a liberation mission come up. As to the "look for the Get ADVENT's Attention" missions, I think I've had... a single one appear in the last month and a half? I'm just not getting these missions that often, folks >.<

A few other things- I'm currently in a lull with ~24 soldiers idle, and I've swapped haven members all over the world to scanning; I think I have over 25 total. Also, every region in the continent that I started on is at or above 9 strength... >.<

[trihero]

The first liberation mission doesn't even say it's a liberation mission, it's a "find the lead" objective that's a hacking mission. Are you sure you did that first? (if you did it properly, there will be one white dot in the haven management screen next to the region's name to indicate that you are in progress for liberating that region). Other than that, there's no magic about liberation missions, no they are not particularly rare. How many rebels on intel do you have going? You may wish to spend some time recruiting more rebels before drilling intel. Also, there is a nasty dark event that halves intel gathering worldwide so check if you have that.

[Ithuriel]

I think three regions have 0 on intel (something about not wanting to face 10 strength missions), and other four have 5-6? And I've seen the liberation missions pop up occasionally; just it's very inconsistent, and I've almost never had enough time to take them.... I don't think I've ever seen one pop up with more than 2.5 days to infiltrate.

EDIT: Also I've gotten something like 4 retaliation/defend supply convoy missions in the last 8 days... kinda taking up a lot of resources >.< Any advice?

[trihero]

Well you're going to want more rebels on intel to get reliable timers. Usually when I expand to a new region I just set it to recruit and let it fill up to 10 rebels or so before I switch to intel. It's worth the investment. I did a casual experiment where I had one region I was working on set to 5 intel + 1 recruit, and I had a new region I just contacted to to all (4) recruits. In 1.5-2 months, the new region was nearly maxed on rebels so I could set 10+ rebels to intel, while my other region was at like 7 intel + 1 recruit in that same amount of time.

[Ithuriel]

@trihero do you mean set to intel? Also I just looked at a soldier's training time and realized why it's been so obnoxious- I've had a retaliation and 2 defend supply convoy missions in the last 2 days >.<

So do you literally set like 10 rebels on intel? I'm just having a hard time keeping up with supplies and all at the same time; I'm particularly starved on alloy >.< Have no idea how I'm going to produce any significant quantity of armor- I'm almost investing more into the tac vests, just because I can't afford the 5 alloy/armor of even basic predator armor.

[8wayz]

In regions where you want to do missions it is advisable to have at least 12 rebels on Intel + 1 on Recruit. Thus you get better timers and you can do a lot more missions.

The rewards from said missions will pay up in supplies, alloys, elerium and others so you should not worry too much putting anyone on Supplies in that region.

The Haven management accepts no half-mesures it seems, so you will have to decide whether you want to do missions in that region or not and just go with your decision.

[Ithuriel]

In that case, I have a bit of a conundrum. I have one Haven I can reasonably do that in. Out of my other 6 Havens, 3 of them have under 6 members, and the other 3 have over 8 ADVENT strength >.<

...also tbh I suspected for some reason that intel had diminishing returns, so I was wary of that- also I thought it might cause more retaliation-type missions. On that subject is having resistance members hide actually worth it? Had ~5 members hiding for at least a month or two in three separate Havens because of huge ADVENT activity.

Is it harmful to completely neglect a job in a region? For a while I've been scared that having 0 members on intel in a region would deeply screw me; am I wrong?

[trihero]

What do you mean intel has diminishing returns? It's linear. Each rebel provides the same amount of "intel income."

If you want to avoid retaliations, then have 4 rebels working total in that region (rest hiding). 4 on supplies for instance.

If you're low on alloy, start rendering corpses for alloys. Troopers give 2 alloy and sneks give 3 alloy, it adds up pretty quick.

There's nothing directly harmful about ignoring a job type in a region. Indirectly you're missing out on possibly rewarding missions, but if advent strength is high enough then it's too scary to do even basic missions. Move elsewhere; it's important to have many contacts as the game goes on.

The only purpose of "hiding" is to avoid retaliations. Retaliations require a certain number of working rebels before they are allowed (5). Hiding does absolutely nothing to reduce or slow down advent strength.

[Ithuriel]

Interesting to know- I was scared that if I didn't take certain missions I might be screwed. Another important question- so far I've avoided rendering corpses due to fears of research time. The render always shows as "1 day." Is this static, or does the game simply round up? I.e. with 2 scientists in a lab, can I still only render 1 corpse/day?

PS- if I have an excess of Elerium Cores, is there a significant downside to rendering a few into Elerium? I have iirc 36 cores and nowhere remotely near the resources to use them, but my friend was telling me he's desperately hungry for cores; that plus the high render value made me wary I'd have something that would eat vast numbers of cores later.

[8wayz]

About rendering, it is faster the more scientist/labs you have. I think there is always a 1 day minimum though.

Keep your Elerium cores, as some of the late armor and weapons requite quite a few them. Elerium and Alloys can be bought via the black market if need be.

For your regions that have fewer than 13 rebels, put everyone on Recruiting to get up to speed.

For those who are already outfitted, just pick what job you would like them to do - Supplies or Intel. I always keep at least 1 rebel per region to have a steady flow of extra rebels/soldiers.

As suggested, if you want to bait Advent to remove some Strength for a given region, start doing missions in neighboring regions. Put everyone on Intel there so you will get better timers and in a month or two you should see Advent rushing towards the new hotspots.

[Ithuriel]

Thanks for the advice ^^ ....although 0.0 you're recommending buying alloy/elerium from the Black Market? 0.0 You seem to underestimate how desperate I am for cash; 200 supplies for 32 alloy is getting close to half my income.

[8wayz]

Once you liberate a region you will have some good income. Also you can sell off some extra PCS and weapon mods.

Even corpses if you have plenty of those.

The black market is expensive, but always a good source of extra materials. That is why I am suggesting that you keep the cores, as they are difficult to find.

[LordYanaek]

I did a casual experiment where I had one region I was working on set to 5 intel + 1 recruit, and I had a new region I just contacted to to all (4) recruits. In 1.5-2 months, the new region was nearly maxed on rebels so I could set 10+ rebels to intel, while my other region was at like 7 intel + 1 recruit in that same amount of time.

Wow, sometimes i wonder if we all play the same game. The first region i contacted in mars was 6 rebels and i tried putting them all on Recruit with a soldier adviser. In april i had 7 rebels all on recruit in that same region and triggered a recruitment raid where i lost one (back to 6 so no progress at all in one month). After that i left 4 on recruit and 2 on supply (since 2 intel doesn't really help) and managed to grow back to 8 by june where i'm now 4 intel/4recruit. I don't know how you guys manage to max out a haven at all. My biggest one is at 12 and only because i had a 3 rebels jailbreak in that region. Recruitment will occasionally give me a rookie but very rarely a rebel and i wonder if i wouldn't max a haven faster by running all intel and hoping for a jailbreak.

Sorry for being totally off topic

[cerebrawl]

You have to complete a mission with "find a lead" as a reward. (not all of them unlock liberation missions, only some). Then, if the lead led to the liberation missions, every mission after that that is labeled with "liberation" somewhere in the description must eventually be completed, until you unlock the network tower mission, and that unlocks the HQ assault which liberates the region.

The starter has find a lead as objective, but does not have an intel package reward like all other find a lead missions do. It's always a hack hidden resistance terminal mission. The rest of the chain all have liberation in the objectives.

[cerebrawl]

Wow, sometimes i wonder if we all play the same game. The first region i contacted in mars was 6 rebels and i tried putting them all on Recruit with a soldier adviser. In april i had 7 rebels all on recruit in that same region and triggered a recruitment raid where i lost one (back to 6 so no progress at all in one month). After that i left 4 on recruit and 2 on supply (since 2 intel doesn't really help) and managed to grow back to 8 by june where i'm now 4 intel/4recruit. I don't know how you guys manage to max out a haven at all. My biggest one is at 12 and only because i had a 3 rebels jailbreak in that region. Recruitment will occasionally give me a rookie but very rarely a rebel and i wonder if i wouldn't max a haven faster by running all intel and hoping for a jailbreak.

I run almost all intel, with a few recruiters, if a region has 6 rebels I put 2 on recruit and 4 on intel, after that I don't add more recruiters until I have at least 6 on intel. I do get quite a few jailbreaks too. Currently infiltrating my first two regional HQs for liberation, and my most populated region has 17 rebels(!) and I've put a ranking officer there to root out the faceless, runner up region is on 12 rebels.

[trihero]

Wow, sometimes i wonder if we all play the same game. The first region i contacted in mars was 6 rebels and i tried putting them all on Recruit with a soldier adviser. In april i had 7 rebels all on recruit in that same region and triggered a recruitment raid where i lost one (back to 6 so no progress at all in one month). After that i left 4 on recruit and 2 on supply (since 2 intel doesn't really help) and managed to grow back to 8 by june where i'm now 4 intel/4recruit. I don't know how you guys manage to max out a haven at all. My biggest one is at 12 and only because i had a 3 rebels jailbreak in that region. Recruitment will occasionally give me a rookie but very rarely a rebel and i wonder if i wouldn't max a haven faster by running all intel and hoping for a jailbreak.

I set them all to recruit, not half-baked 4. If you set only 4 to recruit, then of course your results are different. And if you got recruit raided, know that you can't get recruit raided again for 14-21 days or something like that, so you should have been like "YES" free recruitment time. Hoping for jailbreaks won't do it, they are on a 14-19 day cooldown and have no guarantee of success, nor guarantee of many rebels (since they can be rookies as well).

[trihero]

About rendering, it is faster the more scientist/labs you have. I think there is always a 1 day minimum though.

Nope, the display can't go lower than 1 day, but you can actually finish multiple renders per day if you have enough scientists. I had like 12 scientists and was doing 2-3 faceless rendering a day. Those are rough numbers but you can definitely do more than 1 render per day.

[Jacke]

I had like 12 scientists and was doing 2-3 faceless rendering a day.

Nietzsche was right. XCOM has stared too long into the Abyss and has become what they were fighting.