1.3 balanced around squadwipes?

[Olin]

Question to the devs and testers. I understand that campaign success/failure depends on many variables. But one of the major variables is how well you perform during missions which is related to what soldiers you have available, how levelled they are etc. So I was wondering if campaigns were tested for squadwipes (especially A-Team wipes). What is a general feeling/design regarding this? How many times one can fail a mission loosing whole squad or suffering multiple casualities before it turns into a death spiral? I believe that with shifting the mission dynamics from solo or duo stealth to small squad firefights in 1.3 the losses will be higher.

As I mentioned before I'm talking about a loose estimate not a precise equation:)

[MacroNova]

I heard joinrbs talking about this on a stream, and he said the general idea he was pushing for was that you can suffer major setbacks and still have a small chance to claw your way back (I mean, it should be hard, right?) or you can be stomping the aliens and still have a small chance to get your butt handed to you in the last mission (because why play if success is assured?). Good philosophy, IMO.

[LordYanaek]

I'm also interested in an "official" answer (that's more likely to come from tester than developers).

From a totally external PoV (1 completed commander campaign in LW2 1.1-1.2, several completed vanilla XCOM2) i want to point out that A-Team wipe shouldn't be possible in LW2 because an A-Team shouldn't exist in LW2 (and to some extend shouldn't have existed in vanilla XCOM2 either). Most of the people who have issues recovering from wipes (some even say it's impossible in Vanilla XCOM2) have issues because they have a single high level squad and a bunch of very low level guys. People who actually try to level-up a large barrack never have issues recovering from a wipe in vanilla. I always had at least 3 "squads" in vanilla as i kept that from LW1 so loosing some guys was a setback but never the end of a campaign.
LW2 sort of enforces a large barrack of roughly equal ranks so your roster should be more resilient to losses (and maybe even a wipe) than it is typically in vanilla. However since we need more soldiers (and will need even more in 1.3) loosing a squad, whether it's A or D team will limit our ability to answer enough missions but i think the key to recover from a wipe will be similar to vanilla : keep one more squad than we strictly need. Of course an early wipe usually means we don't have a replacement squad available yet. Interestingly it's what happened to xwynns in his new 1.3 campaign. He seem to be recovering pretty well even if he had to skip some missions due to a lack of soldiers but is progressing somewhat slowly (at least more slowly than he hoped for when he started)
The new "Trial by Fire" officer perk will help us for leveling soldiers quickly (up to Sgt) and build up a roster of additional soldiers in case we loose some high level guys (or even a squad) so i think we'll have the tools to build a resilient XCOM but it will be up to us to use those tools or not. I'm sure some people will just try to power-level a single squad as much as possible and then complain that it's impossible to recover from a wipe. Power-leveling certainly have merits but it's also dangerous.

[Olin]

LordYanaek, yes, you are right about a wide roster of soldiers that you will have anyway due to running multiple missions simultaneously.
Still, there is also a case of loosing your best weapons, armors and items. You might not be able to replace all the stuff quickly enough which will cause more wounds, deaths, failed missions as you progress. It would be great if you had enough breathing space to be able to suffer such setbacks in 1.3, especially on veteran/commander. After all, this is long war - there should be place for major defeats even for the winner, like in history. We will see what the devs/testers say

[Alketi]

I'm also interested in an "official" answer (that's more likely to come from tester than developers).

From a totally external PoV (1 completed commander campaign in LW2 1.1-1.2, several completed vanilla XCOM2) i want to point out that A-Team wipe shouldn't be possible in LW2 because an A-Team shouldn't exist in LW2 (and to some extend shouldn't have existed in vanilla XCOM2 either).

In my 1.2 experience, playing without 0% supply raids, it was impossible to gear up more than 1 1/2 squads with the latest equipment simply due to the intended choke-points of elerium/alloys/supplies.

I had ~30 soldiers in 4 squads that I could use effectively through lasers, but who quickly fell behind when it came to Mag and especially Coil weapons (and of course Predator Armor, which was the punitive choke-point).

So, by the time I got to Coil Weapons, I only had an A-Team fully geared, a B-Team partially geared, and select other soldiers with gearing who I'd mix/match with the previous two teams. I completely lost my 4 team rotation due to lack of alloys/elerium/supplies.

So, despite a deep bench, I had an "A-Team" due to gearing -- and once you have an A-Team and the missions get harder you don't feel comfortable sending in your D-Team with sub-par weapons/armor, so those soldiers then fall behind in experience as well. It snowballs.

Hopefully the new Smash & Grab missions will help address this.

[Infty]

Good question, considering that major loss of equipment and elite soldiers is very likely in the snare mission.

[Sir_Dr_D]

Even if you do as Lord Yanek says, and keep la barracks full of experienced soliders, I don't think LW2 handles squad wipes as well as it should. The fact is aliens keep upgrading in abilities, and the missions keep getting harder. These require full squads of top tier troops to handle. Taking some high level troops, and some low level troops can get you through a mission, but not with out extra injuries. The low level soliders increase the risk for everyone. And it looks like you can recover , but things are just a slow spiral death. You will end up with most of your forces in the hospital.
-------
The fact is I find the game most exciting, with tense battles, where the soldiers suvivive by the skin of their teeth. Their is so much tension then. If your squad is always dominate and can avoid most things without injury, then the game is boring. The game wouldn't be properly balanced then for my preferences. But if half your squad gets injured every battle, there comes a time later in the game where your soldiers start feeling too outclassed. But if you win everything with low injury then the game is boring.

I think things are close, but there could be more to help have lower level soldiers be viable later in the game. One thing that would help is do to lower level soliders not having their faces plastered to every billboard, they get an infiltration bonus that is relative to the commanding officer on the team.

Story missions could be balanced in such a way that they require a full decked squad of your highest ranking soliders. But even then they should be risky, and hard to escape without major injury. But other missions should be balanced with the assumption their is a wide variety in rank, in order to keep cycling new soliders in to handle the story and liberation missions.

[Jacke]

Keeping a large enough barracks with a distribution of soldiers may allow recovery of the soldiers lost to KIAs and squadwipes. But what about the equipment, especially on Legendary?

The economics are very tight in LW2 1.2 at Legendary. Xwynns on his campaign often forgot to upgrade gear on many of his soldier Haven advisors yet at times was short of gear for his squads. I know he took a different start to his campaign (liberate a zone before contacting others) that likely hurt his economics, but I think this is just more indication that things are tight in Legendary. Likely too tight.

Xwynns has some losses that led to loss of equipment, about 12 soldiers I think, but I think most of them he didn't replace. He had a big enough barracks except for Sharpshooters. I think the tight economics did lead him to not being able to pursue some Research and PG projects and even gearing his troops as best as possible. But Xwynns is a damn good player and managed to clear the Golden Path missions despite that.

But 1.3 is bringing in a lot of changes all around. We'll have to see what the economics are for it and whether they will be enough to cover the costs of regearing after lost troops.

[LordYanaek]

In my 1.2 experience, playing without 0% supply raids, it was impossible to gear up more than 1 1/2 squads with the latest equipment simply due to the intended choke-points of elerium/alloys/supplies.

I think 1.2 wasn't balanced without 0% raids because the availability of those obscured balance issues with the economy.
Hopefully Smash and Grab will help in 1.3.
We'll see. Regular missions have much smaller RNFs (at least early) and smaller pods so it might also change how they play.
Wait and see, it shouldn't be too long now (batch 2 of translations just got removed from the board)

[gimrah]

You shouldn't be squadwiping really as most missions shouldn't be that binary.

Especially an all - A Team as they will tend to be the bigger squad missions (8 guys).

Xwynns wiped a very low ranked team early on in his stream.

I had a bad mission mid game with 3 of 6 dead (and equipment left on the field) and 1 of the others having to be carried off (still won the mission somehow). That's absolutely survivable but should be a one off.

I throw in the towel on a campaign more because of a rising attrition rate. If I start to lose people regularly on easier missions, I've probably lost. Sometimes that culminates in a wipe, sometimes not. If there is a wipe, it's usually because I decide to go for broke on an important mission instead of aborting.

1.3 does help by adding Trial by Fire as an officer perk to help rank up newer soldiers in the mid game. And soldier ranked below SGT is guaranteed a rank-up by going on a successful mission with a TBF officer.

[Sharur]

If I take a mid/late-game Squaddie on a mission with a Trial By Fire officer, I assume based on the ability description they'll still only level up to Lance Corporal - which they likely would have done anyway. So I'm skeptical of the value there. If there was some ability to gain multiple levels in a single mission, even just once, that would be a different story.

[RantingRodent]

In terms of equipment loss, the same principle applies. Don't shuffle around your equipment so that one team has all the good gear and the rest have leftovers. Upgrade individual soldiers on each squad over time and have a mix of tech levels on each. Don't take equipment away from squad B just because squad A is doing a super important mission. This also has the side benefit of eliminating a huge amount of busywork with re-equipping people all the time.

[Zyxpsilon]

..loosing a squad, whether it's A or D team will limit our ability to answer enough missions but i think the key to recover from a wipe will be similar to vanilla..

That's exactly what a bottleneck condition can do to any campaigns (even if it may seem to go smoothly enough with the luring illusions that real bad squadwipes DO happen!).

IMO.. the mid-game structure of Missions & how we must respond to a fair chunk... dictates our reasonably minimal state of development. We have to keep pace with the Avatar-Doom & also pretend (or make sure) to match Combat scaling of both Advent and Aliens.

Soooo -- what i can already predict is the immediate needs for extra mid-range Teams (1 or 2 more than the previous version) to still obtain precious resources (Smask&Grab "success" included) during the first 3/4 months.. and then, a VERY steep curve towards ranking most soldiers high enough (A+B..Z) to reach a level where battlefields are at least manageable without too much damages that lead to some serious off-duty spirals anyway. --Chicken_Or_TheEgg-- or --Occam Razor-- principles apply.

And that's the whole point of sweet Balance i want to get into.. if we let the loop of auto-attrition (KIA, Injuries, etc) inflict more solid limitations to our obligatory pattern(s) to KEEP pace -- it simply means Loosing (as in hopeless situations) will seem to occur faster than before -- without us consciously trying to slow it down, at first. Thus.. between fair odds (rational capacity to Win) & brutal obstacles (of & by our own faulty decisions.. luck or not) there just isn't much more than being --outnumbered- of anything (ours & theirs).

Nothing new under the sun honestly -- it just shines brighter & now pushes us into a wild hotter Heat-Wave. In a perfectly fine LongWar'ily fashion - i should add.

[Dlareh]

If I take a mid/late-game Squaddie on a mission with a Trial By Fire officer, I assume based on the ability description they'll still only level up to Lance Corporal - which they likely would have done anyway. So I'm skeptical of the value there.

It probably matters more for the guaranteed Corporal and Sergeant promotions.

What I want to know about Trial by Fire is how it interacts with the current XP bucket and future level up thresholds.

[Jacke]

If I take a mid/late-game Squaddie on a mission with a Trial By Fire officer, I assume based on the ability description they'll still only level up to Lance Corporal - which they likely would have done anyway. So I'm skeptical of the value there.

It probably matters more for the guaranteed Corporal and Sergeant promotions.

What I want to know about Trial by Fire is how it interacts with the current XP bucket and future level up thresholds.

This lead to me thinking and recalling.... If Squaddies, LCpls, and even Cpls are active enough in taking down ADVENT, they mostly get promotion to the next rank in 1 mission, rarely 2. I really remember this because I used Grimy's Moral Mod which has Will damage and promotions removed all Will damage. And I definitely remember not having soldiers under Sgt left with Will damage to recover because promotions cleared it.

So will Trial By Fire really help? Unless missions are pushed to maximum number of XCOM soldiers and minimum number of ADVENT kills. Which is contrary to small squad XCOM combat focus shift desired for 1.3.

[Clibanarius]

Sergeant needs 70 kills worth of exp to get to on Legend. Each normal guerrilla op gives you, if you're doing mostly extremely light with 4, very light with 5, light and above with 6+, ROUGHLY 2 points of post-mission XP multiplied by just under 6. That means you're shaving 6ish missions off their training regimen. That's not nothing. Especially if it happens all at once ala the No Rank-Up Throttling mod. I imagine they've gone and implemented something like that to allow multiple rank-ups per mission, given that they went to the trouble of making Trial By Fire.

[Jacke]

Sergeant needs 70 kills worth of exp to get to on Legend.

Now I'm wondering if my quick succession promotions came from the bug affecting soldiers from the Black Market getting a promotion every mission. But it did stop at Sgt as going to SSgt took many missions.

I think I'll just have to see what happens with 1.3.

[Saph7]

Now I'm wondering if my quick succession promotions came from the bug affecting soldiers from the Black Market getting a promotion every mission.

It did. Trial by Fire is highly recommended if you want to keep levelling up Squaddies/LCPLs/CPLs in the mid game.

[Clibanarius]

Sergeant needs 70 kills worth of exp to get to on Legend.

Now I'm wondering if my quick succession promotions came from the bug affecting soldiers from the Black Market getting a promotion every mission. But it did stop at Sgt as going to SSgt took many missions.

I think I'll just have to see what happens with 1.3.

The bug was such: The first person in your squad list, usually your officer, would override the starting MissionXP (that's the shit you get after a mission that gets multiplied by a ton to provide the vast majority of a soldier's rank-ups) of a new unit, replacing the 0 with whatever that unit had. I kept looking in my logs and it'd show my Specialist would have, say, 14.9. Well, a new SPARK would, if participating in the mission with that Specialist, have 14.9 missionXP as their baseline from that mission on. That's why you'd see a unit bootstrapped up in rank so quickly; they'd have these 80 kills worth of experience pending and they'd rank up once per mission until caught up to that point.

[Jacke]

Now I'm wondering if my quick succession promotions came from the bug affecting soldiers from the Black Market getting a promotion every mission.

It did. Trial by Fire is highly recommended if you want to keep levelling up Squaddies/LCPLs/CPLs in the mid game.

Then why did it stop at Sgt? My Sgts took many missions to get to SSgt. That's not the bug, as I saw the bug at work in Xwynns first LW2 campaign and they leveled up all the way at one mission per.

I think this will have to be tested by many players in LW2 1.3 before we can be sure what the balance is.

[Clibanarius]

Now I'm wondering if my quick succession promotions came from the bug affecting soldiers from the Black Market getting a promotion every mission.

It did. Trial by Fire is highly recommended if you want to keep levelling up Squaddies/LCPLs/CPLs in the mid game.

Then why did it stop at Sgt? My Sgts took many missions to get to SSgt. That's not the bug, as I saw the bug at work in Xwynns first LW2 campaign and they leveled up all the way at one mission per.

I think this will have to be tested by many players in LW2 1.3 before we can be sure what the balance is.

Because I just explained what the bug was and how it worked and why it would bootstrap them to the point another unit was at. It didn't stop at Sergeant. It stopped where the soldier at the top of the squad was at.

[LordYanaek]

You shouldn't be squadwiping really as most missions shouldn't be that binary.

Especially an all - A Team as they will tend to be the bigger squad missions (8 guys).

Thanks for confirming what i suspected. Squadwipes will mostly be a reality for smaller GOps squads and loosing 4-5 guys probably won't be the end of our campaigns.
Loosing an entire 10 men squad on HQ assault would certainly be much harder to recover from but shouldn't occur unless we have some really rotten luck, are careless or totally incompetent (or possibly all three) as we should at least be able to evac part of the squad when we realize the mission is going badly.

In terms of equipment loss, the same principle applies. Don't shuffle around your equipment so that one team has all the good gear and the rest have leftovers.

My thought exactly. Full Coil Rush with only minimal laser and mag production might be attractive but it's similar to power-leveling a single squad : you're putting all your eggs in the same basket. It might work and can work very well when it does, but it's dangerous and if you manage to loose that squad, your game might be screwed but you choose a risky strategy in the first place. Such an approach is probably best reserved for pros who have a large number of completed campaigns.

Spreading equipment and promotions around is probably the "slow but steady" approach that's most likely to allow recovering from losses and the safe way to go especially now that the doom clock should allow a bit more freedom to progress slowly as long as we progress steadily and don't just turtle in our corner.

[Jacke]

It did. Trial by Fire is highly recommended if you want to keep levelling up Squaddies/LCPLs/CPLs in the mid game.

Then why did it stop at Sgt? My Sgts took many missions to get to SSgt. That's not the bug, as I saw the bug at work in Xwynns first LW2 campaign and they leveled up all the way at one mission per.

I think this will have to be tested by many players in LW2 1.3 before we can be sure what the balance is.

Because I just explained what the bug was and how it worked and why it would bootstrap them to the point another unit was at. It didn't stop at Sergeant. It stopped where the soldier at the top of the squad was at.

But many of the lower rank promotions happened to all of the squad members, including the highest rank. I had squads of LCpls and lower where everyone went up a rank, including all the LCpls. And that happening again with Cpl and below, with everyone going up a rank including all the Cpls.

I can't remember well enough nor do I have records good enough to completely rule out the bug affecting some of the soldiers, but I definitely remember enough happening that it had to be more than the bug. Some of it could be 3-member squads getting the max from mission experience and a good amount of kill experience from going loud near the mission end.

But I definitely remember almost never needing more than one mission to promote until I got Sgts. Then a significant pause before seeing any SSgts.

I'll take another look at this come 1.3 to see what happens.