1.2 Campaign feedback + some thoughts on 1.3

[Franzy]

1.2 feedback

So far I played several campaigns, only one finished though. Did not play vanilla xcom 2 at all. I only bought the game 'cause of the LW2, actually, as vanilla had really bad reviews. I enjoyed LW1 a lot, so I expected a good revision, and I was not disappointed.

First campain I played on veteran for a few in-game months, just to get hold of the mechanics. So it was kind of a tutorial for me.

Restarted on Commander (not ironman, with both AH and SLG DLC, no mods) right after patch 1.1, with the intention to fully unlock everything (all researches, all PG projects, read all lore etc... yes I am that kind of a player, a full completionist ). I failed. Not at the campaign, but at my goals. Around october or november I had finished every research and project I had available and just sit there hoping to finally encounter andromedon or Elite Muton on a mission with corpse retrival. Also AH-starting mission (nest) never spawned for me. After a month of doing all the intel package missions in hopes of spawning the POI I gave up and went for Waterworld. At that moment I had a roster of 50-60 master sergeants, all fully equppied with plasma weapons and best armor for their class. Still 0 andromedon corpses, and I only saw Elite Muton in the Watertworld. So that was kinda dissappointing. Well, it was partially my fault, I power-played through the game, optimizing everything, always ahead of aliens (save/load make it easy ).
Difficulty-wise it was OK in the beginning, was really struggling with supplies. But then Black Market was interested in viper and sectoid corpses, and I had lots of those from 0% supply raids/columns. Raised around 3k in one day, built facilities, upgrades, towers, items... steamrolled after that. Finished campaign way after patch 1.2 arrived. Avatar project had 1 or 2 pips, 5-6 liberated regions, global resistance threat over 200%.

Started second campaign, this time 1.2, legend/ironman, with a number of QoL mods (like gotcha again, etc). That was way more fun. Especaially 0% supply raids. After a second squad wipe decided I am not doing these anymore Anyway I botched 4 or 5 campains early (ironman takes some time adjusting tactics... those flanking pods are really devious!), finally I had a good thing going. Played till september, and was doing fine, can probably win. Stopped playing because of a few annoying bugs, waiting for 1.3 where they are reportedly fixed to start a new campaign. One of those bugs in particular is POI-spawning. If in previous campaign I tried to spawn Alien Nest... now literally all PoI I get is Nest or Tower. I have like 7 of them active at the moment. Argh!

1.3 thoughts

I know it's kinda wierd to critisize before the patch is actually out, but please humour me.

Conceal changes
Just moving it to hier rank solves nothing (just postpones), but really hurts shadowstrike builds. To fix it just make it unusable while there are active enemies and while carrying bodies/quest items.

Serial changes
Funny, but I thought that serial was the same as LW1 "in the zone". I used it as if it actually had damage debuff, i.e. as if it was 1.3 version already However the real problem with serial is autoloaders, not damage. Maybe make any action except for primary attack stop the chain?

Flashbang changes
I'm okay with some enemies like Avatars or High Archons or Elite Mutons being completely immune, makes sense actually. I'm not okay with partial immunity. 20% chance of not working?.. That's really bad randomization of outcome. After all, flashbangs are 1-use limited items! You missed a shot? Well, reload and shoot again next turn. Your flashbang did not work? Too bad! No second chance for you. I guess, we'll have to rely on suppression now. Please reconsider
Also, Avatars should be immune to fire and explosives, just like our own PSI

0% raids
The real problem with them is you get lots of corpses that you can then sell for lots of money, which kinda breaks the game. Maybe instead of making raids harder or imposing minimum infiltration level, solve the problem with the market? How about a diminishing returns on selling items? For example, first 10 corpses of a particular species sell for 200% price, next 10 corpses for 150% (that will give extra so-much-needed supplies early game to help with the start), next 10 for 100%, next 10 for 50%, next 10 for 25% and all rest for a 1$ per corpse. Or there may be a system similar to supply gain from regions. Market will only have a limited amount of supply per month for you to earn. After you reach it, prices drop dramatically.

Unused engineers
Unused scientists still contribute to your research. Engineers without a job just sit there doing nothing. How about +1$ per day for each free engineer? It's logical lore-wise and it offers another strategic choice to a player, which is always nice.

Hier-tier enemy bodies
I really wish for a new type of mission that will let you get hier-tier enemy bodies reliably. For example, "Ambush enemy general". Mission spawns only in high alert regions (giving you reason to do intel jobs in them). It's like a mini-column. You can only take 6 soldiers, and must infiltrate to 100%. The map is small and contains only 1-2-3 large pods, including a special command pod with an ADVENT general and a hier-tier enemies as bodyguards. Reward are corpses, a guarantied data cashe, and a high spike in vigilance.

[DaviBones]

Problem with 0% supply raids is not just corpses, although that is certainly part of it. Primary issue is that it spikes vigilance so high, and you are doing them at 0% so you can do a ton of them breaking the avatar progress and really just the alien AI in general. Secondary issue is the silly amount of resources you get, again, because you can do so many: Not just corpses, but also the supplies, the loot nodes (i.e. elerium cores) the alloys, the elerium, and probably most overlooked, soldier experience (which is as much a resource that needs to be balanced as any of the others). Supply raids were balanced around doing maybe 4 or 5 all campaign if you are lucky, from what I've heard. In this light, an infiltration requirement seems a good fit.

Conceal is probably going to stay broken at MSGT (like many MSGT perks). Your idea is alright, but the best I've seen was give Conceal a cooldown that starts ticking down when you BREAK concealment rather than when you use the ability. Again, probably won't make it into the mod due to time constraints

I agree wholeheartedly about Serial, but the problem with your idea is it breaks one of the huge advantages of snapshot: you can reload once and continue a Serial chain even without a free reload. No idea what could be done though, besides removal of Auto-Loaders, which is a silly idea for obvious reasons.

Agree with you on flashbangs mostly, but think of it this way if it makes you feel better: All enemies with flashbang resistance actually have flashbang immunity, but you can try to get lucky if you really really have no other option. Also, there are many options for CC'ing besides flashbangs and suppression which people always forget when discussing this: Arc thrower, Incendiary grenade, flamethrower, Arc Blade, Fusion Blade. Particularly flamethrower, available all game long and puts everything but mechs and melee units out of commission for a turn.

Unused engineers can be assigned as haven advisers for supply income, but I do like your idea for when you need soldiers to detect faceless. Seems slightly powerful though, don't want to encourage micromanagement too much. Perhaps 1 supply every 2 days, or 2 supplies every 3 days (per idle engineer of course).

Higher tier enemies are seemingly TOO common when you get into spring or so year 2. You just didn't get far enough in. Stop being so good, you're breaking the game

Seriously though? Not even sure why plasma and tier 3 armors are in the game, getting them just feels like pointless grinding because you can always finish the game before you research them. Basically a victory lap, but even more so than in OG Long War.

[Tuhalu]

Unused engineers can be assigned as haven advisers for supply income, but I do like your idea for when you need soldiers to detect faceless. Seems slightly powerful though, don't want to encourage micromanagement too much. Perhaps 1 supply every 2 days, or 2 supplies every 3 days (per idle engineer of course).

Normal resistance rebels provide 1 supply per day on the supply job. I'm not convinced 21 supply per supply drop is game breakingly powerful. You can get up to 1000 supply per supply drop with just a couple liberated regions working supply. If anything, it seems like a very, very small safety net that is almost irrelevant at that level.

0% raids
The real problem with them is you get lots of corpses that you can then sell for lots of money, which kinda breaks the game. Maybe instead of making raids harder or imposing minimum infiltration level, solve the problem with the market? How about a diminishing returns on selling items? For example, first 10 corpses of a particular species sell for 200% price, next 10 corpses for 150% (that will give extra so-much-needed supplies early game to help with the start), next 10 for 100%, next 10 for 50%, next 10 for 25% and all rest for a 1$ per corpse. Or there may be a system similar to supply gain from regions. Market will only have a limited amount of supply per month for you to earn. After you reach it, prices drop dramatically.

The corpses aren't even that big a deal. I think a lot of people overestimate the value of the additional corpses to their overall economy. In fact, the bulk of the corpses you get going from a Light supply raid or troop column to a swarming one are ADVENT Trooper corpses and they only go for 5 supply each. After the first couple of months where the black market is most likely to be interested in corpses and you are likely to have liberated your first regions, you get to a point where an extra 100 supply per raid is not worth the risk of injury to your soldiers.

[Thrombozyt]

No idea what could be done though, besides removal of Auto-Loaders, which is a silly idea for obvious reasons.

Well, in LW1 reloading was a turn-ending action except when you had the Locked & Loaded perk. You could reintroduce this mechanic and allow auto-loaders to reload with just 1 action. That would actually also bring many gunner skills in line more nicely than the massive increase in ammo cost and CD plus a single gunner can't put on infinite area suppression by simply reloading each turn then continuing the suppression.

Plus Locked & Loaded was an interesting perk in LW1..

[DaviBones]

Normal resistance rebels provide 1 supply per day on the supply job. I'm not convinced 21 supply per supply drop is game breakingly powerful. You can get up to 1000 supply per supply drop with just a couple liberated regions working supply. If anything, it seems like a very, very small safety net that is almost irrelevant at that level.

You might be right. It would certainly need testing.

The corpses aren't even that big a deal. I think a lot of people overestimate the value of the additional corpses to their overall economy. In fact, the bulk of the corpses you get going from a Light supply raid or troop column to a swarming one are ADVENT Trooper corpses and they only go for 5 supply each. After the first couple of months where the black market is most likely to be interested in corpses and you are likely to have liberated your first regions, you get to a point where an extra 100 supply per raid is not worth the risk of injury to your soldiers.

Agreed, out of the ridiculous number of benefits from a 0% supply raid, the only thing that matters less than the corpses is the flat number of supplies you get, which are even less than what you could sell the corpses for.

Well, in LW1 reloading was a turn-ending action except when you had the Locked & Loaded perk. You could reintroduce this mechanic and allow auto-loaders to reload with just 1 action. That would actually also bring many gunner skills in line more nicely than the massive increase in ammo cost and CD plus a single gunner can't put on infinite area suppression by simply reloading each turn then continuing the suppression.

Plus Locked & Loaded was an interesting perk in LW1..

The problem with that is the same as the main problem with getting rid of auto-loaders -- the entire game is balanced around that mechanic, you would have to rebalance the entire game all over again if you changed it.

[LordYanaek]

A lot of your feedback is similar to my own experience/ideas

Conceal changes
Just moving it to hier rank solves nothing (just postpones), but really hurts shadowstrike builds. To fix it just make it unusable while there are active enemies and while carrying bodies/quest items.

Said this since the first time the change was rumored. Suggested the same restrictions and then more as just those won't fix all abuses (like calling for evac and immediately going into concealment again). It will be a MSgt perk, OK. We'll have to live with it but at least i hope now they make it worthy of MSgt rank for every build and not only for abuses. Making it cooldown (with cooldown starting when you break concealment) would make the perk worse for abuses and better (because you can re-use it) for shadowstrike assassin builds. The developers are not always answering our posts but they do read them so i still have reasonable hopes. There will probably be a batch 2 of translations so they may be planning more perk changes. Wait and hope

Serial changes
Funny, but I thought that serial was the same as LW1 "in the zone". I used it as if it actually had damage debuff, i.e. as if it was 1.3 version already However the real problem with serial is autoloaders, not damage. Maybe make any action except for primary attack stop the chain?

Make the free reload only available as your first action of the round and make it available when you want it (rather than on 1st reload) would fix the serial abuse and make Autoloaders generally useful. Currently i consider them useless or overpowered depending on how the mission play but rarely balanced.

Flashbang changes
I'm okay with some enemies like Avatars or High Archons or Elite Mutons being completely immune, makes sense actually. I'm not okay with partial immunity. 20% chance of not working?.. That's really bad randomization of outcome.

We'll have to change our tactics and not use 'bangs as the last action of the turn. That's it. There are not that many resistant enemies anyway so for the vast majority of them, they will still be very good.

0% raids

I actually like the idea of the first corpses selling for higher prices as it would help the early game but the issue as was discussed by others is much larger than just selling corpses.
I still don't know exactly how they addressed the issue in 1.3 but being able to run them completely snowballs out of control as you noticed. I think the entire supply raids system should be reworked but maybe they will hit the right balance with the current system.

Hier-tier enemy bodies
I really wish for a new type of mission that will let you get hier-tier enemy bodies reliably. For example, "Ambush enemy general". Mission spawns only in high alert regions (giving you reason to do intel jobs in them). It's like a mini-column. You can only take 6 soldiers, and must infiltrate to 100%. The map is small and contains only 1-2-3 large pods, including a special command pod with an ADVENT general and a hier-tier enemies as bodyguards. Reward are corpses, a guarantied data cashe, and a high spike in vigilance.

I like the idea. Not sure of the specifics as 6 soldiers against a few large pods including general+high tier enemies seems like suicide but we need a way to reliably get late game corpses and this is probably easier to do as a specific mission rather than messing with the pods generation system of every missions.
I got my first Andromedon in February second year and never built any bomb

[JulianSkies]

0% raids

I actually like the idea of the first corpses selling for higher prices as it would help the early game but the issue as was discussed by others is much larger than just selling corpses.
I still don't know exactly how they addressed the issue in 1.3 but being able to run them completely snowballs out of control as you noticed. I think the entire supply raids system should be reworked but maybe they will hit the right balance with the current system.

I do believe, based on some commentary from xwynns, that they may be tieing rewards to infiltration level. So you can still run at 0%, just get 0% of the rewards. (Comment was me saying I found 0% missions super fun and HQ raids did not come often enough to make me happy so I wanted more missions like that, he said I could still run those, just get no reward)

[Zyrrashijn]

That would hardly do anything. The real value of 0% raids is the body count, not the supplies gained. They are merely a nice bonus.

[JulianSkies]

That would hardly do anything. The real value of 0% raids is the body count, not the supplies gained. They are merely a nice bonus.

One would imagine that would also include no bodies. (Not infiltrated enough, no time to extract bodies) Only advantage to that approach would be having an actually fun mission. Oh, as eating strength.

[LordYanaek]

I do believe, based on some commentary from xwynns, that they may be tieing rewards to infiltration level. So you can still run at 0%, just get 0% of the rewards. (Comment was me saying I found 0% missions super fun and HQ raids did not come often enough to make me happy so I wanted more missions like that, he said I could still run those, just get no reward)

So they would have adopted this idea. Once again, it would show that they do read what we say even when they don't have time to answer.

That would hardly do anything. The real value of 0% raids is the body count, not the supplies gained. They are merely a nice bonus.

I think it would do much more than you think.
Corpses are one part of the reward but on their own, corpses don't have any value. Their value comes from what items can be built with them and how much they sell.

If you collect corpses to sell them, the supplies gained through the normal rewards are as important as whatever corpses you sell. If you gain twice as many corpses and no supplies, you might end up selling all the corpses to have the same amount of supplies in the end which means you got the same reward with higher risk.
If the risk/reward ratio favors infiltrating, players will want to infiltrate whenever they have time to do it. Being able to run the 0% missions for the same reward as a 100% infiltration with higher risk is a nice option for those who want to take some risk to reduce ADVENT strength but it won't allow your economy to snowball out of control.

If you consider corpses important for what they allow you to build, then you also need alloy/elerium and both are also offered as regular rewards to supply raids. Not having those if you run at 0% mean you have to render some of your corpses to, maybe, break even and once again if the total reward is equal with higher risk, the risk/reward ratio will favor infiltration. In addition, rendering corpses takes time.

This is assuming you do get corpses with 0% raids which might not be the case.

[Zyrrashijn]

I agree to some degree. If the corpses would also be denied, there would be little point in doing raids on low %. I guess we'll have to see when the patch is out.

[LordYanaek]

There would be a point if you really can't infiltrate it because you gain experience and reduce ADVENT strength, making other missions easier and slowing down AVATAR. Even with no corpses at all if i can reasonably run them (with only 8 men rather than 10 now!) i'll do, but sure enough i will be happy when i have time to infiltrate.

[Olin]

I want to chime in regarding 0% supply raids being walk in the park. I get a feeling that this is an opinion of very experienced players on this forums that can do the raids reasonably well all the time.

However, my experience is different. In my second campaign (the first has became kinda downward spiral) I was able to do four 0% raids. Three at the beginning and one later in the game. The first one was the easiest, of course, but super fun (epic firefight in the cemetery)!!! My casualties were 4 wounded (2 almost dead). The second and third one were more dangerous (cause sneks and more mechs) but I got some experience and was able to pull them off with around 5-6 wounded (1 bleeding out). The fourth one was brutal. Sneks, turrets, lots of mechs, muton elites and sectoid commander. In the end I fought around 70 enemies (including two waves of zombies), Many enemies had AOE attacks. I did it with 7 wounded afair (2 bleeding out). Had I played ironman this might have been a squad wipe because I don't know If I would have survived till the evac. I savescummed a few times to do it. After that raid I said to myself that I wasn't going to do them anymore later in the campaign.

What I'm saying is I would hold with nerfing the rewards too much. Despite the fact that I did the raids I didn't feel that I was snowballing much especially that half of my squad usually got wounded. The later in the game the more people were out of action for a month. That meant I could run less GOPS missions and consequently got less intel rewards. Maybe the balancing of these missions could be tied to difficulty level so that the guys playing on legend get punishing (or less rewarding) experience they wish for. For the less experienced players the raids can get pretty brutal even as they are right now. I wonder how many people savescum the raids or repeat the missions and then complain they are snowballing. As always these missions should be balanced around an ironman campaign.

Finally, with the changes to missions/pods introduced in 1.3 as far as I understand you will need more guys to run every mission. Unless the roster of soldiers is expanded that means running fewer missions. Getting many wounded on 0% raids can be a cost in itself as it can prevent you from running sufficient number of missions unless you invest heavily in replacements.

EDIT: Forgot to add. I played LW2 on veteran. Previous experience: one I/C vanilla and one bronzeman/C with ABA2 mod.

[LordYanaek]

I want to chime in regarding 0% supply raids being walk in the park. I get a feeling that this is an opinion of very experienced players on this forums that can do the raids reasonably well all the time.

I don't consider myself a "very experienced player" nor do i pretend they are a walk in the park but they are definitely an issue.
The trick is once you can do one or two of those it propels your economy forward at high speed, possibly making the next 0% raids easier and easier. In addition it shortcuts soldiers infiltration time allowing a single squad (in my finished Commander campaign i had a specialized one) to run them all in addition to every quick response mission.

However, my experience is different. In my second campaign (the first has became kinda downward spiral) I was able to do four 0% raids. Three at the beginning and one later in the game. The first one was the easiest, of course, but super fun (epic firefight in the cemetery)!!! My casualties were 4 wounded (2 almost dead). The second and third one were more dangerous (cause sneks and more mechs) but I got some experience and was able to pull them off with around 5-6 wounded (1 bleeding out). The fourth one was brutal.

Actually, the earlier they come, the stronger the economic effect. Your first raid which you said was the easiest was also the most important because at that point of the game all those corpses plus some supplies make a very large difference while later when you might gain ≈1000 supplies from your liberated regions it's nice to get the corpses but the difference isn't as big.

What I'm saying is I would hold with nerfing the rewards too much. Despite the fact that I did the raids I didn't feel that I was snowballing much especially that half of my squad usually got wounded. The later in the game the more people were out of action for a month.

You might not think you were snowballing but trust me if you tried a campaign with no raids<100% you would feel how much you lag compared to that campaign I still have laser in early August due to lack of supplies to build the lab early or recruit scientists on the Black Market. Sure i probably made some sub-optimal choices such as pushing very hard for an early liberation rather than contact more regions and try to build an early Psi Lab but in my previous campaign i didn't feel those strategic errors, probably because of the 0% raids i did in May-June.

For the less experienced players the raids can get pretty brutal even as they are right now. I wonder how many people savescum the raids or repeat the missions and then complain they are snowballing. As always these missions should be balanced around an ironman campaign.

If anything, changing the rewards (remember so far it's still rumors) would make it clear you're not supposed to run those raids at 0% and forbid the "0% raids economy" which would

• Prevent new players from receiving the advise to try them and end up squadwiped or think save-scumming is required to play this mod
• Possibly expose issues in the strategic layer balance that might have been hidden by "easy" supply gain for the (experienced) beta tester

I also don't think missions should be balanced around ironman. Ironman is an option and the game should ideally be balanced for everyone not using obvious cheats. Save scumming might be considered an obvious cheat but "bronzeman" is perfectly valid in my view as not everyone have the time to play dozens of campaigns and sometimes restarting a mission to try another tactic also helps you learn (that tactic didn't work, this one does)

Finally, with the changes to missions/pods introduced in 1.3 as far as I understand you will need more guys to run every mission. Unless the roster of soldiers is expanded that means running fewer missions. Getting many wounded on 0% raids can be a cost in itself as it can prevent you from running sufficient number of missions unless you invest heavily in replacements.

Yes, but once again "nerfing" the reward of those 0% raids will ultimately remove the temptation to run those and could help create a better experience for everyone, and most importantly make the balancing easier because there won't be such a large difference in power between players who can run those and players who can't. Overall i think new/casual players will benefit from the change as much as experienced/hardcore ones, if for different reasons.

[DonCrabio]

I'm on final stage of my Veteran/Non-Ironman campaign played without >100% Supply Raids and stealth missions to get as close to 1.3 as I probably can. This house rules had some serious implications on my playthrough.

TLDR: It was fine generally, but need reliable source of supplies.

1. Supply shortage.

To play as many missions as possible I was fielding four 5-man squads, enforced to 7-man for Troop Columns and to 10-man for HQ assaults. Early game it's fine, tho I was sometimes short on Rookies. But when campaign slip into mid-game phase this become a problem, since you need to spend about 100 supplies per fielded soldier. Troop Column ambushes do not provide enough Supplies, I was just lucky to have Elerium Cores on demand in right moment, this just saved my campaign.

2. Vigilance and Avatar project.

Since every mission takes around 5 day/5 soldiers to complete instead of 3 days/2 soldiers I had serious problems with generating enough Vigilance to significantly slow Avatar project. I was forced to field additional squads just to avoid loosing game because of it. This is send us back to point 1.

3. Barracks pressure.

This was minor issue. Most of time I had enough soldiers to field one additional squad, but don't had enough equipment. And competition for AWC time become very tense.

[Olin]

I also don't think missions should be balanced around ironman. Ironman is an option and the game should ideally be balanced for everyone not using obvious cheats. Save scumming might be considered an obvious cheat but "bronzeman" is perfectly valid in my view as not everyone have the time to play dozens of campaigns and sometimes restarting a mission to try another tactic also helps you learn (that tactic didn't work, this one does)

Finally, with the changes to missions/pods introduced in 1.3 as far as I understand you will need more guys to run every mission. Unless the roster of soldiers is expanded that means running fewer missions. Getting many wounded on 0% raids can be a cost in itself as it can prevent you from running sufficient number of missions unless you invest heavily in replacements.

Yes, but once again "nerfing" the reward of those 0% raids will ultimately remove the temptation to run those and could help create a better experience for everyone, and most importantly make the balancing easier because there won't be such a large difference in power between players who can run those and players who can't. Overall i think new/casual players will benefit from the change as much as experienced/hardcore ones, if for different reasons.

I gave it some thought and I can agree that creating a large deterrent to 0% raids (especially those first few) will probably help balancing economy better for everybody. At the same time supply raid should get and increased spawn time and or detection chance so we can get missions that we are actually able to inflitrate.

Regarding bronzeman - it depends what you actually mean as valid. If by valid you mean devs should try to balance the game around this type of play then I disagree. The difficulty should be balanced around a player suffering some (major) defeats and still being able to prevail IMO. Ideally for me, this would mean I can suffer around two squadwipes (meaning 20 guys/gals) + some deaths here and there and still have a shot at getting pretty nice squad to the waterworld. I like the idea of the meatgrinder of classic Xcom