Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post Reply
chaosxxxxx
Posts: 35
Joined: Tue Jul 12, 2016 7:13 pm

Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by chaosxxxxx »

Hi. A while ago i liberated my starting region(New India),and immediately before that,i had my first rendezvous mission.After completing it i thought i was golden,and put all my rebels on supply duty.
However,my supplies are still getting stolen,and i haven't received any other rendezvous in 40-45 days,even though i have a sergent appointed as haven adviser.
My questions are:
1)do i need to put my rebels on intel duty to unlock rendezvous?
2)if i have,lets say,a faceless rebel in Arctic,will my supplies from india still get stolen?
3)Lets say,i eventually detect the faceless,and kill him/her.How will i replace them?since there seems to be no missions in liberated region,is recruiting the only option?
4)what is the quickest way to detect faceless spies?

TIA
Jacke
Posts: 623
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 1:10 am

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by Jacke »

To detect Faceless spies, you need a soldier Haven Advisor, the higher the rank the better, and the higher the Officer rank, the better. Rendezvous is like any other mission, you need to accumulate Intel to detect the mission. Having a soldier in the Haven accumulates some Intel. I don't know if putting rebels on the Intel Job would help. Of course, any Faceless on any job sabotages it. And getting Intel on a mission is very variable in discovering it. I've detected a Faceless within days of getting back from Gatecrasher and other times I've gone months without finding any while still having supplies lost, so there was definitely a Faceless hiding there.
Clibanarius
Posts: 205
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2017 1:33 am

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by Clibanarius »

The only way to generate the intel for the Rendezvous mission to be uncovered is with a Haven liaison soldier, not with rebels working Intel job.

edit: Forgot the other questions there. No, Faceless only affect supplies within regions, so an Arctic Faceless won't steal India's supplies generated. To replace the rebels, you set rebels to Recruit and pray that the RNG god will give you some more. Jailbreaks and Resistance Broadcast hack rewards are my primary way of getting rebels, but they dry up in liberated regions.
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
Posts: 364
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2017 8:43 pm

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by chrisb »

Here's a breakdown of my best understanding based on information from the ini and a little reading between the lines.

The rendezvous mission has its own special "intel" that is only produced by a soldier in the haven and not from rebel intel. This intel is based on the rank of the soldier, with modifiers for officers and psionics. Here's a breakdown of how each rank is currently configured in the ini.

Config/XComLW_Activities.ini : LW_Overhaul.X2LWActivityDetectionCalc_Rendezvous : Line 686

Soldier Ranks

Code: Select all

Squaddie         |  5
Lance Corporal   | 10
Corporal         | 15
Sergeant         | 20
Staff Sergeant   | 22.5
Tech Sergeant    | 25
Gunnery Sergeant | 26
Master Sergeant  | 27
Psi Ranks

Code: Select all

Initiate |  6
Acolyte  | 12
Adept    | 20
Disciple | 25
Mystic   | 30
Warlock  | 35
Magus    | 40
Master   | 45
Officer Ranks

Code: Select all

Second Lieutenant  |  2.5
First Lieutenant   |  5
Captain            |  7.5
Major              | 10
Lieutenant Colonel | 12
Colonel            | 14
Field Commander    | 15
This of course makes psionics the best once leveled up, but a Master psionic is only 3 points better than a Master Sergeant Field Commander. Also worth noting is that while there's huge differences between the lower ranks, Sergeants are 4 times more likely to catch faceless than Squaddies, that same Master Sergeant Field Commander is only a little better than twice as good as a basic Sergeant is. So while there is some advantage to higher ranks and officer ranks, really you just want to ensure that they are a minimum of Sergeant to get a decent chance of detecting faceless.

There is also one other aspect to this mechanic, the mission itself. Like other missions the rendezvous mission spawns for up to 3-4 weeks. Every day the intel from the soldier advisor is adding to a pool that is increasing the chances of detecting the mission. If after the 3-4 week period the mission is not detected, then it respawns the whole thing starts over. In the ini this is presented as:

Code: Select all

DiscoveryPctChancePerDayPerHundredMissionIncome = 2
Essentially, for every 100 intel the odds of detection go up by 2%. Here's a couple of examples showing the detection chance by the time the mission resets and you start over. All of these examples of course assume that someone of this rank is constantly in the haven. In my own games I'm often swapping haven advisors when high ranking guys come back from a mission and do not need to be put into training somewhere else. This helps to maximize the odds of detecting them.

Code: Select all

Squaddie  | 0.1%/day  | 2.1 - 2.8%
Sgt       | 0.4%/day  | 8.4 - 11.2%
MSgt      | 0.54%/day | 11.3% - 15.12%
Sgt Major | 0.6%/day  | 12.6% - 16.8%
FC MSgt   | 0.84%/day | 17.64% - 23.52%
All of these details are in the same ini file but are located at the bottom under
Rendezvous X2LWAlienActivityTemplate : Line 1118

Of course you can also modify the ini to increase the odds of detection if you find they are not being detected easy enough or you are having a hard time getting high ranking soldiers to be advisors due to training/wounds/missions. The simplest setting to change is the DiscoveryPctChance variable listed above. Bumping that up to 3 or 4 will increase the odds by 50 - 100%. At 4 this would basically make Sergeant nearly equal to a Master Sergeant Field Commander with the default of 2.

Another way you can tweak this is to increase the mission duration. The default is 3-4 weeks after which the mission resets and the intel pool is cleared. Increasing this to say 4-5 weeks would allow the intel pool to get bigger, and thus give higher odds of detection in that extra week.

Doing this will of course make certain strategic and tactical aspects of the game easier since with fewer faceless in havens there will be higher infil times, more supplies, and better recruitment chances. So essentially this lowers the difficulty of the whole game by a small amount.

To balance this you could also increase the odds of a haven recruit being a faceless. By default it is set to roughly a 1 in 6 chance of a rebel being faceless. You could increase this to 1 in 5 or more which would hurt more when faceless are present but with higher detection chance you would clean them out eventually. Also this might even give you more resources since the increase in rendezvous missions would lead to more corpses and loot. Balancing is tricky business, tweak at your own peril!

Increasing faceless rebels can be done in
Config/XComLW_Outposts.ini : Line 9

Code: Select all

DEFAULT_FACELESS_CHANCE=0.2f	; Initial chance [0.0 = never, 1.0 = always] of a new rebel being faceless
For those wanting some different settings, the options I go with are:
  1. Default soldier ranks
  2. Increase mission duration to 4-6 weeks
  3. Increase DiscoveryPct to 3
  4. Increase Faceless chance to 0.2 (1 in 5)
This gives me the following changes to the example table above.

Code: Select all

Squaddie  | 0.15%/day | 4.2 - 6.3%
Sgt       | 0.6%/day  | 16.8 - 25.2%
MSgt      | 0.81%/day | 22.7 - 34.0%
Sgt Major | 0.9%/day  | 25.2 - 37.8%
FC MSgt   | 1.26%/day | 35.3 - 52.3%
josna238
Posts: 182
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2017 4:09 pm

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by josna238 »

Awesom info chrisb. Thanks.

I would highly apreciate if you could clarify me a thing (if you know). And is the point of when the "advisor intel" is added to the pool. Is it added at 23:59 to 0:00 of each day? And when I make shifts in my advisors, do I lost the entire day?

I mean because I use mainly a rooster of snipers as advisors and had the idea of making shifts with my snipers as soon as they are ranked or end training and move the current advisor to training or squad and go on.

But i important to know how much intel I los for every shift I do in order to estimate how frequently I should make the shifts.
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
Posts: 364
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2017 8:43 pm

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by chrisb »

I don't know for sure, but my guess would be that switching people out should be fine. Lots of mechanics in the strategy layer (and this whole true for lots of games in general) have update 'ticks' where things change. I'm guessing when that 'tick' occurs it will check your advisor rank and update the pool. And I think the ticks are likely more frequent than per day.

But since this is buried in the code somewhere it would need one of the LW Devs to verify if I'm right about advisor intel. Or maybe I can find some debug command that will show the advisor pool intel somehow and watch it to see how it works.
josna238
Posts: 182
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2017 4:09 pm

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by josna238 »

I guess it too. I am not an expert on programing neither progaming. But what you say makes sense. What means I wasted a lot of intel fearing the lost if I switched too much (I thought they needed a whole day in the slot to count).

If it is as we guess it would be very helpful to load and unload gear and ranking properly the advisors.
Tuhalu
Posts: 433
Joined: Wed Feb 01, 2017 9:02 pm

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by Tuhalu »

For Rebel jobs, switching their job stops them from providing points towards the job for a day (see GetRebelLevelsOnJob() in XComGameState_LWOutpost.uc for the source code).

For Haven Advisors, no such checks exist (see LWRebelJobIncomeModifier_SoldierLiaison.uc and X2LWActivityDetectionCalc_Rendezvous.uc for the source code relevant to Soldier advisors). As long as you have a soldier advising your haven and Faceless exist in it, you have a chance to spot a Faceless at each check. Not sure how often a check occurs, but the research output seems to be chopped up into 6 hour chunks.

Sidenote: While looking this up, I also found code that confirms that a Faceless can actually be in disguise helping you root out Faceless on a Rendevouz mission (see UnitSurvived() in XComGameState_LWOutpost.uc). Not that knowing this for sure helps at all :twisted:
User avatar
SonnyWiFiHr
Posts: 416
Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2017 1:57 pm

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by SonnyWiFiHr »

I presume that mission resets after detecting.
Or it continues if you have more faceless ?
The Preacher
Phaseless
Posts: 225
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 9:06 am

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by Phaseless »

SonnyWiFiHr wrote:I presume that mission resets after detecting.
Or it continues if you have more faceless ?
As I understand it, once you get a Rendezvous Mission, all faceless active in that Region will be there. I had a Mission with 3 faceless and I lost miserably. But at least you get the Chance to kill them all in one stroke. Kinda hard with only one officer and 3 rebels :D
Icarus
Posts: 151
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:26 pm

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by Icarus »

Phaseless wrote:
SonnyWiFiHr wrote:I presume that mission resets after detecting.
Or it continues if you have more faceless ?
As I understand it, once you get a Rendezvous Mission, all faceless active in that Region will be there. I had a Mission with 3 faceless and I lost miserably. But at least you get the Chance to kill them all in one stroke. Kinda hard with only one officer and 3 rebels :D
As far as I know, you can flee that mission and the faceless will still be gone. You only lose out on the mission loot.
Phaseless
Posts: 225
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 9:06 am

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by Phaseless »

Icarus wrote:
Phaseless wrote:
SonnyWiFiHr wrote:I presume that mission resets after detecting.
Or it continues if you have more faceless ?
As I understand it, once you get a Rendezvous Mission, all faceless active in that Region will be there. I had a Mission with 3 faceless and I lost miserably. But at least you get the Chance to kill them all in one stroke. Kinda hard with only one officer and 3 rebels :D
As far as I know, you can flee that mission and the faceless will still be gone. You only lose out on the mission loot.
Are you trying to make me look like an idiot?
I'm just asking because you make me look like an idiot.
Thanks for the reminder though, I remember reading about this but forgot it.
There's more to know about Long war 2 than there is to know about Quantum mechanics
Icarus
Posts: 151
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:26 pm

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by Icarus »

Phaseless wrote:Are you trying to make me look like an idiot?
I'm just asking because you make me look like an idiot.
Thanks for the reminder though, I remember reading about this but forgot it.
There's more to know about Long war 2 than there is to know about Quantum mechanics
Umm, no, I didn't mean to try. :)

I can't count the number of times I've been blindsided by some mechanism I didn't think of at that moment. My favorite is "oh, yeah, enemies can have shadowstep and can thus run suppression without ill effects".

Anyway, fleeing a rendezvous isn't completely trivial. You need to get the evac flare down before engaging the faceless pod, which makes you lose concealment. So you can
- scout out the number of faceless before losing concealment and retreat if necessary
- or give up on concealment right at the start of the mission to be able to retreat
- or risk being blindsided by the pod.
Phaseless
Posts: 225
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 9:06 am

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by Phaseless »

Haha I popped the evac with my remaining lone officer after my Team got slaughtered and ran circles until the dropship arrived :D
Good times
Jacke
Posts: 623
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 1:10 am

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by Jacke »

Phaseless wrote:There's more to know about Long war 2 than there is to know about Quantum mechanics
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !!!!

No. There's a massive amount more in Classical Wave Theory than there is in Long War 2. Quantum Mechanics is way beyond that.

It's just that most scientific theories hang together and connect mostly. There's only a few disconnects that combat conflict and games about combat conflict have many of. So there's all these fiddly little bits to remember, especially if the game doesn't organically display the features in an appropriate way in its interface.
User avatar
SonnyWiFiHr
Posts: 416
Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2017 1:57 pm

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by SonnyWiFiHr »

How this works ?
I detected faceless. Is mission still on or it reset it self ? I just pick up 5 rebels .
The Preacher
RookieAutopsy
Posts: 80
Joined: Sat May 13, 2017 9:35 am

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by RookieAutopsy »

Icarus wrote: Anyway, fleeing a rendezvous isn't completely trivial. You need to get the evac flare down before engaging the faceless pod, which makes you lose concealment. So you can
- scout out the number of faceless before losing concealment and retreat if necessary
- or give up on concealment right at the start of the mission to be able to retreat
- or risk being blindsided by the pod.
The mission info box at the middle bottom of the screen on the strategy map (where you normally get turns to evac etc) actually says 'Faceless: 3' so you can tell before you hit start. I believe even if you let the mission expire the faceless still disappear, but the game does tell you how many you will be facing. It took me a while to notice that though :)
Phaseless
Posts: 225
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 9:06 am

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by Phaseless »

RookieAutopsy wrote:
Icarus wrote: Anyway, fleeing a rendezvous isn't completely trivial. You need to get the evac flare down before engaging the faceless pod, which makes you lose concealment. So you can
- scout out the number of faceless before losing concealment and retreat if necessary
- or give up on concealment right at the start of the mission to be able to retreat
- or risk being blindsided by the pod.
The mission info box at the middle bottom of the screen on the strategy map (where you normally get turns to evac etc) actually says 'Faceless: 3' so you can tell before you hit start. I believe even if you let the mission expire the faceless still disappear, but the game does tell you how many you will be facing. It took me a while to notice that though :)
Yeah that's true. But I had a true forest gump moment and faced all the advent and 3 faceless at once
RUN FOREST, RUN
User avatar
8wayz
Posts: 340
Joined: Sat Jan 16, 2016 3:59 pm

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by 8wayz »

Phaseless is writing in a thread about uncovering Faceless. This is getting fishy. :)
Phaseless
Posts: 225
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 9:06 am

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by Phaseless »

8wayz wrote:Phaseless is writing in a thread about uncovering Faceless. This is getting fishy. :)
I am on your side, trust me.
TrainInVain
Posts: 27
Joined: Sat Sep 02, 2017 3:24 pm

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by TrainInVain »

Phaseless wrote:
8wayz wrote:Phaseless is writing in a thread about uncovering Faceless. This is getting fishy. :)
I am on your side, trust me.
I think a blood test is in order
Image
Jacke
Posts: 623
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 1:10 am

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by Jacke »

TrainInVain wrote:
Phaseless wrote:
8wayz wrote:Phaseless is writing in a thread about uncovering Faceless. This is getting fishy. :)
I am on your side, trust me.
I think a blood test is in order
Image
Most definitely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqVbOSEsJNo
Phaseless
Posts: 225
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 9:06 am

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by Phaseless »

This is ridiculous, this doesn't prove anything!
TrainInVain
Posts: 27
Joined: Sat Sep 02, 2017 3:24 pm

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by TrainInVain »

Phaseless wrote:This is ridiculous, this doesn't prove anything!
Why don't we just wait here for a little while, see what happens...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA4Ozqt7338
Phaseless
Posts: 225
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 9:06 am

Re: Detecting faceless/rendezvous missions

Post by Phaseless »

Image
Post Reply