Liberated regions - advanced mechanics

[8wayz]

I was wondering about how actually liberated regions interact with other non-liberated ones, as well as missions.

Here are a couple of questions:
- If you liberate all the regions surrounding an already liberated one, will that mean that Advent has no way of launching missions in the center region? For example New Indonesia, it is connected to Australia, India and East China. If you liberate all 4, will that mean that Indonesia is safe from ADVENT?
- If a high-strength ADVENT region borders 2 or more liberated ones, how does the AI decide which one to attack?
- Regarding Full Override, can you permanently hack anything else than a MEC and have it show in your Haven after the mission ? For example, a turret, Sectopod or even an Andromedon shell?
- Is there a limit to how many MEC units you can have in a given Haven?
- If there is a Supply raid/ Invasion mission in a liberated region, will hacked units with Full Override still go to that Haven?
- If you liberate too many regions too fast ( 1 region per month for example) will that make the AI run more reinforcement missions in its other regions, to be able make up for the lost strength worldwide ?
Thus possibly slowing the rate at which you liberate regions, as ADVENT strength will be higher in the newly contacted ones.

This could be also a way to exploit Supply Raids/ Troop columns/ UFOs.


Thank you in advance and good luck out there against the Aliens.

[Jadiel]

1. If you've liberated all the regions around a region, that region is immune to invasion. If all the regions around a liberated region are less than 8 strength, you're also safe from invasion.
2. I'm not sure. In my experience, once you liberate a region (at least on Legendary), the AI immediately chooses an adjacent region as a staging post to invade it, and starts transfering a lot of strength there. If you're also trying to liberate that region, it can make things interesting (in my current game, I infiltrated an HQ at strength 7, and in the 10 days it took to get to 66% infil the strength had jumped to 11). If the AI has two liberated regions adjacent to a high strength region, I don't know if it can launch invasions at both simultaneously. I've never seen it happen, so I suspect not.
3. No, I don't think anything else will go into your haven except MECs
4. Not as far as I know, but I've never had more than 3
5. I believe you can still get MECs even in liberated regions
6. No, I don't think the AI has any control over how quickly Global Strength rises. It can just choose where to put the additional legions, and can run missions to move them around. I guess you can probably make the AI run more transfer missions if you keep messing with vigilance and changing the AIs priorities. In my experience they tend to run a lot of transfers anyway - it's detecting them with enough time to infiltrate is the problem.

[LordYanaek]

- If you liberate all the regions surrounding an already liberated one, will that mean that Advent has no way of launching missions in the center region? For example New Indonesia, it is connected to Australia, India and East China. If you liberate all 4, will that mean that Indonesia is safe from ADVENT?

Invasion requires an adjacent region with str>=8 so yes, a region surrounded by only liberated regions is safe.

- If a high-strength ADVENT region borders 2 or more liberated ones, how does the AI decide which one to attack?

It's probably a random roll among eligible regions (a region can't be invaded until 21 days have passed)

- Regarding Full Override, can you permanently hack anything else than a MEC and have it show in your Haven after the mission ? For example, a turret, Sectopod or even an Andromedon shell?

Pretty sure i've read it's only mecs. Pretty sure it was from a developer.

- Is there a limit to how many MEC units you can have in a given Haven?

???

- If there is a Supply raid/ Invasion mission in a liberated region, will hacked units with Full Override still go to that Haven?

Why not? I got a mec from the HQ assault and it's now patrolling the streets of my newly liberated region so mecs can go to liberated regions, i don't see why there would be an exception for Supply Raids.

- If you liberate too many regions too fast ( 1 region per month for example) will that make the AI run more reinforcement missions in its other regions, to be able make up for the lost strength worldwide ?

I think you'll get more emergency reinforcements from offworld (UFO reinforcements), but messing with them severely also slows down the avatar project (i've had 49% slow down at one point) so it's not necessarily a bad idea if you can actually liberate as many regions.

Thus possibly slowing the rate at which you liberate regions, as ADVENT strength will be higher in the newly contacted ones.

It will be more concentrated, but if you have a lot of liberated regions early, you probably don't need to liberate more if you realize it's too much troubles. You definitely don't need more than 1 region to win (and you don't even need to keep it)

EDIT : Ninja'd

[8wayz]

Hey, thank you for the replies !

In that case it seems that hacking MECs might not be a good proposition. Liberating new regions will do a better job.

My idea is currently to liberate regions in other to protect a core of well entrenched home regions where I can focus on supplies.

With the supplies themselves you can buy almost anything, including elerium and alien alloys.

[trihero]

Well, the alternate style to what you're doing is contact all regions, and set 4 rebels on supplies, thus avoiding retaliations entirely. This is just as well protected as a "liberated region surrounded by other liberated regions." Most of your questions were answered, I'll take a stab at this one

- If you liberate too many regions too fast ( 1 region per month for example) will that make the AI run more reinforcement missions in its other regions, to be able make up for the lost strength worldwide ?

Regardless of whether you liberate regions too fast or not, advent is constantly reinforcing via UFOs, often in regions you don't have contact with (the cooldown for the regularly scheduled one is 8 days on legendary, and it adds +1 strength to TWO connected regions at a time). One easy way to convince yourself that you can't beat advent strength on legend is to simply look at the global strength every so often. It starts at 40'ish on legendary and no matter what you've been doing a few months in it's at 70. On rookie this is quite different and you can even have pipe dreams of liberating all regions and curtailing advent strength.

Again to re-emphasize, regardless of how many regions you liberate "too fast" you will encounter globally upwards reinforcements. I made contact with a new region I never saw before and it was already strength level 5 like 3 months in. There is some variability in this, sometimes you will meet a strength 3 or so region and rejoice in your luck. How they reinforce is a complicated decision. I've noticed for instance that they tend to reinforce wherever the blacksite/forge locations are with UFOs, even if they are many tiles away from your contacted regions and even if you spike vigilance somewhere else.

I believe the only real consequence of "liberating too fast" is you will trigger a lot of emergency reinforcements in the region that you're spiking vigilance in.

But at the end of the day, yes you need to decide how to secure a steady flow of income, whether it's by liberating a number of regions, or going super wide with 4 supply rebels per haven. It depends on the difficulty and how good / lucky you are. Liberating obviously is the biggest payoff, but the guy who did L/I only liberated one region (and lost it) and got by with minimal 4 supply rebel havens.