Finding Alien Facilities

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Anbalsilfer
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Jan 29, 2017 4:19 pm

Finding Alien Facilities

Post by Anbalsilfer »

So I'm at the point in my campaign right now where the highest priority has become tanking the AVATAR progress for a while by taking out some facilities while I catch up technologically. The problem is, whatever I do I can't seem to uncover one of those places. I know for a fact that a few regions I have already contacted have facilities in them, because the game tells you the region of the facility that generated a pip of AVATAR progress when it happens. I also know that you are supposed to uncover the facilities by completing missions that give an "Intel Package", and then research the Facility Lead if you're lucky enough to get one. Two questions remain:

1. At the current point in my campaign, around october/november, I have a ton of rebels assigned to intel in most of the 11 regions I've contacted so far, and I'm more often than not drowning in mission. Yet, for some reason, missions that give intel packages seem to have become EXTREMELY rare. During the first few months of the campaign I used to get at least one of these per week, but now I can't remember having seen a single one for over a month, even though I'm detecting a lot more missions all over the world.

2. I understand that researching an Facility Lead should reveal an alien facility somewhere in the world, which you can then assault, if you have contacted the region in question. Second question is, is it easier to find a facility by focusing on doing missions in a region where you know a facility is hidden? In other words, does contacting a region where you know there's a facility at all help with finding it, or does contacting the region only become important once the facility has been revealed?
LordYanaek
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Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:34 pm

Re: Finding Alien Facilities

Post by LordYanaek »

Not sure where you are in research but november is quite late so if you have a lot to "catch up", it might be too late. That being said.
  1. As far as i understand, the missions giving intel packages are the guerilla missions targeting advent activities Protect Research and Protect Data. They have max vigilance level respectively 10 and 12 and Protect Research have max alert (strength) of 10 so you won't find that one in really high str regions and neither in very high vigilance. If you are running a lot of missions, you are increasing vigilance. 12 is really high but maybe you are at that point late in the game if you keep doing lots of missions.
  2. No, because of point 1. Facility leads are random rewards. In my first attempt (now abandoned) i had half a dozen of those by july. I just found my first one in august this run. Skullmining can give you more facility leads so if you are desperate trying to find some, i would suggest equipping a couple skulljacks on high hacking soldiers each mission, it might be your best hope. Try to spread missions in multiple regions to avoid increasing vigilance too much.
Good luck commander.
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Hobbes
Posts: 20
Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2017 5:21 pm

Re: Finding Alien Facilities

Post by Hobbes »

LordYanaek wrote:Not sure where you are in research but november is quite late so if you have a lot to "catch up", it might be too late. That being said.
  1. As far as i understand, the missions giving intel packages are the guerilla missions targeting advent activities Protect Research and Protect Data. They have max vigilance level respectively 10 and 12 and Protect Research have max alert (strength) of 10 so you won't find that one in really high str regions and neither in very high vigilance. If you are running a lot of missions, you are increasing vigilance. 12 is really high but maybe you are at that point late in the game if you keep doing lots of missions.
Protect Data only gives a VIP/Intel and a POI/Supplies. In addition to the Vigilance/Alert conditions you mention, Protect Research only appears after the Avatar project is revealed and if you have in your possession less Facility Leads than there are facilities on the map.

There's no way to tell if a if a mission will be Protect Data and Research - you'll only know when you receive the reward
This alien aggression will not stand man!
Rebus
Posts: 46
Joined: Sat Jan 21, 2017 2:26 pm

Re: Finding Alien Facilities

Post by Rebus »

I see on Steam there is a mod that allows you to set haven personnel (in liberated zones only) to "find facility" research. I've not tried it, but perhaps that would help you?
Anbalsilfer
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Jan 29, 2017 4:19 pm

Re: Finding Alien Facilities

Post by Anbalsilfer »

Thanks for the additional info, it all rather makes sense. I suppose I should just keep trying to find as many Intel Package missions as I can and do them all (except Destroy the Relay ones, I understand from the list of Advent's Activities that that one is always Protect Data, rather than Protect Research), and try to skullmine ADVENT troops a lot more often.

I did notice the Facility Hunt Job mod in the Steam Workshop, but I figured I can't really decide if that is needed in my campaign or not until I understand the vanilla LW2 mechanics a bit better.

If any LW2 designer happens to be reading this, while I agree it should be possible to find facilities in other regions, I think it would also make a lot of sense to make it rather more easy to find a facility in a certain region by focusing on gathering intel and doing missions in that particular region. Perhaps another type of more common and more easily detected "Protect Local Research" mission could be added, but which can only spawn in the same region as the facility it would give intel on? I think that would make the mechanics a bit more intuitive.
Anbalsilfer
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Jan 29, 2017 4:19 pm

Re: Finding Alien Facilities

Post by Anbalsilfer »

Just a FYI:

After having messed around a fair bit in the game now, as well as going through the LW2 config files for anything seemingly related to Facility Leads, I can say with a decent amount of certainty that you actually can not acquire Facility Leads through skullmining. That seems to be explicitly disabled in Long War 2, since the reward entry "FacilityLead" in the config files has been dummied out by replacing the icon and reward with those of the the Big Intel Cache result instead.

In fact, LW2 appears to go to great lengths to ensure that the only possible way of acquiring these items is the "Intel Package" missions. I suspect the rationale behind it is to ensure that the player can never acquire more Leads than there are currently active Facilities. My guess is that you can place conditional restrictions on mission rewards in XCOM 2, but not on hacking rewards/loot.
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