A couple beginner 1.3 questions

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sadh
Posts: 18
Joined: Tue Dec 29, 2015 8:43 pm

A couple beginner 1.3 questions

Post by sadh »

I'm early May of my first 1.3 campaign and have a couple questions.

1. Is there any benefit to infiltrating an "Extremely Light" mission past 100%? I know there is no enemy strength level below that, but is it possible that infiltrating to 150% might make the number of enemies drop from 9 to 6, for example? Or does the Skyranger evac happen more quickly at 150%? I've been infiltrating right up to the final moment just to be safe, but I don't want to be wasting a day or two extra infiltration time for no benefit.

2. If a concealed Shinobi melee attacks and kills a stunned enemy without ever entering LoS of any other enemies, is the Shinobi revealed? I assume so, but am playing Ironman so I haven't wanted to risk it just to find out.
nmkaplan
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Joined: Thu Jan 26, 2017 5:14 pm

Re: A couple beginner 1.3 questions

Post by nmkaplan »

1. Yes, I believe there are a couple of parameters that can change even if you're already down to "exremely light" at 100% infil. You could push the number of enemies from 8 to 6 (both would be considered "extremely light"). You can decrease the evac timer (ie. the time it takes from when you throw the beacon to the time you're allowed to evac). You decrease the likelihood of aliens on yellow alert getting reactions. I think you decrease the detection radius of enemies while you're concealed slightly, as well.

2. Almost all actions taken by concealed soldiers will break concealment regardless of whether there are enemies in sight. This includes things like throwing the evac beacon, hacking an objective, tossing a smoke grenade, shooting at a enemy via squadsight, etc. In your example, yes, your Shinobi would break concealment.

There are a few exceptions. Holo-targeting doesn't break concealment, and most of the officer abilities (command, oscar mike, get some, incoming, etc) don't either. I'm 85% sure that successfully haywiring a robot doesn't break concealment either.
Last edited by nmkaplan on Fri May 19, 2017 7:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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8wayz
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Re: A couple beginner 1.3 questions

Post by 8wayz »

By going towards 200% infiltration two main things happen:
-The Evac timer gets better. In 1.3 the lowest it can get is 2 turns I think.
- Enemies may be downgraded. For example later in the campaign instead of facing Mutons you might face Vipers instead. At the start though there is nothing lower to downgrade them to. :)

Unless you use some mods (Musashi's Katana mod or True Concealment) any hostile action will break concealment. So even if it just the one unit, you will be revealed.
Flintrok
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Re: A couple beginner 1.3 questions

Post by Flintrok »

I know a successful hack of a drone does not break concealment. This is quite useful early game to help get by those roaming single drone pods that threaten to spot your squad...just shut them down and walk by...allowing you to go loud on something else closer to the objective.
Daergar
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Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2015 7:47 pm

Re: A couple beginner 1.3 questions

Post by Daergar »

Flintrok wrote:I know a successful hack of a drone does not break concealment. This is quite useful early game to help get by those roaming single drone pods that threaten to spot your squad...just shut them down and walk by...allowing you to go loud on something else closer to the objective.
Thanks for reminding me of this, pretty sure I've done it 1.2 but completely forgot about during this campaign. Not that I'd try it yet, what with my weak-sauce specialists, but still, good to be reminded. ;)
Tuhalu
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Re: A couple beginner 1.3 questions

Post by Tuhalu »

There is some misinformation about infiltration in this thread.

As you reach 125%, 150% and 200% infiltration, you get reduced detection radius on enemies, making it easier to stealth.

At 150% and 200% you get -1 and -2 rounds on throwing an Evac Flare.

At 125%, 150% and 200% you get reduced number of enemies if the Current Activity was more than Extremely Light. Once it reaches Extremely Light, there are no "easier" missions as far as enemy numbers or level goes.

The absolute minimum number of enemies that will spawn into a mission is 8 in LW2. The game has schedules that determine how many enemies will appear and what sizes the pods are they are split into. The variety in pod sizes comes from the ability of the game to randomly select a schedule that is available for that activity level (some missions have multiple schedules per activity level).

You'll never get "easier" enemies just because of more infiltration. It's all determined by the pods that are allowed to spawn by the schedule and a random roll against some weighted probabilities. The weighted probabilities are affected by force level, which determines which aliens can turn up and progresses higher as the campaign continues.

Currently, there are only 2 ways that force level can be adjusted up or down. In the Rendevouz mission, the Force Level is halved to determine what kind of enemies can turn up. In the Supply Raid mission, there is a new boss pod that can use a higher Force Level if you underinfiltrate.
trihero
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Re: A couple beginner 1.3 questions

Post by trihero »

There is some misinformation in Tuhalu's post
The absolute minimum number of enemies that will spawn into a mission is 8 in LW2.
You can get a minimum of 6 on a rendezvous mission.

I'm curious to know how infiltration affects yellow reflex chances past 100% infiltration. It is asserted in one of the earlier posts that it still helps, but I kind of doubt it, and Tuhalu's post makes no mention of it, so what is the truth?
Tuhalu
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Re: A couple beginner 1.3 questions

Post by Tuhalu »

trihero wrote:There is some misinformation in Tuhalu's post
The absolute minimum number of enemies that will spawn into a mission is 8 in LW2.
You can get a minimum of 6 on a rendezvous mission.

I'm curious to know how infiltration affects yellow reflex chances past 100% infiltration. It is asserted in one of the earlier posts that it still helps, but I kind of doubt it, and Tuhalu's post makes no mention of it, so what is the truth?
Yep, ya got me. Rendezvous is a special case. I was more responding to the idea that you can magically make things spawn less by overinfiltrating and you can't infiltrate a Rendezvous, so I should have said "into an infiltratable mission".

Yep, you also affect yellow and green alert chances by overinfiltrating. On Rookie, it's -1% per 1%. On Veteran it's -0.5% per 1%, On Commander and Veteran it's -0.1% per 1%.

Edit: Some change/things I didn't know yet. Rendevouz is now a -2 force level modifier. The force level UFO (if you can catch it), has +1 to force level, for obvious reasons! If you somehow liberate every region, the "Foothold" activity that allows the aliens to launch new invasions has +18 to force (cap is 20, so basically always 20 since you aren't going to liberate the world in the first month).
trihero
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Re: A couple beginner 1.3 questions

Post by trihero »

On Rookie, it's -1% per 1%.
That is quite bizarre, considering I thought enemies don't have any yellow/green reflex chances on Rookie, at least in 1.2. It might have changed though on Rookie 1.3, at least with underinfiltrating maybe it's actually possible to have yellow/greens reflexes on Rookie??
On Commander and Veteran it's -0.1% per 1%.
Is there more going on here? I thought I read somewhere in Legend that at 0% infiltration the enemies have 130+% yellow reaction, something like that. If infiltration "only" reduces the reflex chance by 0.1% per 1% infiltration, then even at 200% infiltration you would expect over 100% yellow reflexes. Is there some kind of funky threshold where if you hit 100% you drastically reduce it, because I don't on the surface understand how it's a purely linear function from 0 to 200% infiltration.
Tuhalu
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Re: A couple beginner 1.3 questions

Post by Tuhalu »

You didn't ask about underinfiltrating, so I didn't mention it, but the numbers for underinfiltrating are different. And yes, at Rookie you have 0% chance of reflex actions normally.

For underinfiltrating, it's 0 at rookie, +0.1% at Veteran, +0.5% at Commander and +1% at Legend. All per 1% underinfiltrated.
trihero
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Re: A couple beginner 1.3 questions

Post by trihero »

Yep, ya got me. Rendezvous is a special case. I was more responding to the idea that you can magically make things spawn less by overinfiltrating and you can't infiltrate a Rendezvous, so I should have said "into an infiltratable mission".
You missed another case- smash and grab. I've gotten a minimum of 7 enemies many times on S&G, contrary to your claim that 8 is the minimum for "infiltratable" missions.
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