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I must be the odd one but I liked the system of hard timers much better than what we have in 1.3 now.

Sure having increasingly more plentiful and powerful reinforcements is sorta more realistic than an immediate mission failure, but the timer becomes completely obsolete in many missions.

Why show me that I have 8 more whole turns left when it's objectively impossible either for me to survive these 8 turns or for my machine to handle a gazillion of aliens on screen simultaneously without fps dropping to 20-s regardless of the settings?

To be fair, there are 8-turn hack missions still. That's pretty much a vanilla-length hard timer.

There's several things that affect rnf drop rate, but the biggest here is region strength. Low strength regions should be able to hit the hard timer without getting swarmed, but around strength 3-4 they certainly become a bigger issue

I don't know how many times in 1.2 I had a soldier left behind because they were three tiles away from evac and the timer was up. It seemed a good amount of my 'rescue' missions were to free former comrades. Firebrand was not really popular around the Avenger. It's more realistic to be hauling ass back to evac with reinforcements dropping all around you then to be trying to pace a number up in the corner.

Oh my god stop saying the reinforcements are "more realistic". Did you miss the part where every single time the timer is mentioned it specifically says things like "ALIEN INTERCEPTORS ARE INBOUND TO YOUR LOCATION". Interceptors, not dropships. The timer represents the ability for the Skyranger to actually pick you up and get out without getting blown up. Because an alien air superiority fighter is on its way. And will blow up the Skyranger. Unless it leaves before the timer runs out.

How do people consistently miss this?

Bullett00th wrote:I must be the odd one but I liked the system of hard timers much better than what we have in 1.3 now.

Sure having increasingly more plentiful and powerful reinforcements is sorta more realistic than an immediate mission failure, but the timer becomes completely obsolete in many missions.

Why show me that I have 8 more whole turns left when it's objectively impossible either for me to survive these 8 turns or for my machine to handle a gazillion of aliens on screen simultaneously without fps dropping to 20-s regardless of the settings?

I don't. I hated them in Xcom 2 vanilla and I hated LW2 didn't fix that shit when it first released.
1.3 LW2 finally has done it right. Fuck instant death for whole team once timer is out.

Garthor wrote:Oh my god stop saying the reinforcements are "more realistic". Did you miss the part where every single time the timer is mentioned it specifically says things like "ALIEN INTERCEPTORS ARE INBOUND TO YOUR LOCATION". Interceptors, not dropships. The timer represents the ability for the Skyranger to actually pick you up and get out without getting blown up. Because an alien air superiority fighter is on its way. And will blow up the Skyranger. Unless it leaves before the timer runs out.

How do people consistently miss this?

Maybe makes sense in vanilla Xcom 2, but in LW2 they spend days infiltrating, they should have a way to run away and hide for few days if they miss their evac time by a Skyranger. Then you could go and evac them few days later. That kind of system would have been cool as well.

1.3 LW2 system is also good. Vanilla Xcom 2 and 1.2 LW2 was not cool.

As someone who defended the XCOM 2 Vanilla timers, I do find myself liking the 1.3 timers so far. The timer itself, and more regular reinforcements discourages dilly-dallying, but I find myself able to spare a turn here or there for whatever reason, which is quite nice. The timers in Vanilla were to discourage the sort of bland overwatch creep of one soldier moving per turn that was pretty much the best way to start all fights in XCOM 1.

1.3 timers (and reinforcements) discourage that without making you rush. Feel free to sit down a turn and reload all your guns after a pod fight, or wait while your nest sniper repositions, or scout out enemy positions. Just don't sit still waiting for them to come to you while you let all of your cooldowns refresh.

I think the timers could safely be a bit tighter, but if things never changed, I'd be quite happy.

archangel wrote:

Bullett00th wrote:I must be the odd one but I liked the system of hard timers much better than what we have in 1.3 now.

Sure having increasingly more plentiful and powerful reinforcements is sorta more realistic than an immediate mission failure, but the timer becomes completely obsolete in many missions.

Why show me that I have 8 more whole turns left when it's objectively impossible either for me to survive these 8 turns or for my machine to handle a gazillion of aliens on screen simultaneously without fps dropping to 20-s regardless of the settings?

I don't. I hated them in Xcom 2 vanilla and I hated LW2 didn't fix that shit when it first released.
1.3 LW2 finally has done it right. Fuck instant death for whole team once timer is out.

Yes, fuck instant death for the whole team once the timer is out. But if I really have to have that i'd rather skip the whole gruelling process of watching 12+ enemies mauling my units and just skip to the mission failed screen.

JulianSkies wrote: Yes, fuck instant death for the whole team once the timer is out. But if I really have to have that i'd rather skip the whole gruelling process of watching 12+ enemies mauling my units and just skip to the mission failed screen.

Maybe but fuck this system as well.

When the reinforcements start coming there's pretty much nothing you can do unless you're very lucky.
You're supposed to either fight them every turn or dash and pray that RNGods have mercy on you, which we all know how often that happens.

This is a bullshit system that made a lot of mission types MUCH more stressful than what we had when we had hard timers.
I can fight 2 bloody pods before reinforcements start showing up every turn. Not fun.

Bullett00th wrote:

JulianSkies wrote: Yes, fuck instant death for the whole team once the timer is out. But if I really have to have that i'd rather skip the whole gruelling process of watching 12+ enemies mauling my units and just skip to the mission failed screen.

Maybe but fuck this system as well.

When the reinforcements start coming there's pretty much nothing you can do unless you're very lucky.
You're supposed to either fight them every turn or dash and pray that RNGods have mercy on you, which we all know how often that happens.

This is a bullshit system that made a lot of mission types MUCH more stressful than what we had when we had hard timers.
I can fight 2 bloody pods before reinforcements start showing up every turn. Not fun.

The first RNF pod in a low-strength region is tiny, and by the next RNF wave you would have hit the hard limit for turns in 1.2. Can you give some concrete examples of missions that would have been significantly easier in 1.2? The pod changes allow you to have kill-squads of assaults/shinobis/technicals who can wipe pods on the move, which was not really possible in 1.2(not enough people to wipe a 4man pod), which gives you more turns to work with.

We have some great tools available early to us to cover retreats. Rapid deployment flashbang pretty much means you won't have to care about those enemies as you dash away. Ever vigilant or overwatches + RD smoke grenades can have you set up ad-hoc return fire for your retreat. EVAC is more likely to spawn between you and the objective, meaning your snipers and gunners could already be covering your retreat. There's been a bevy of changes to the way you can approach missions in 1.3, and I think the missions have opened many more tactical decisions than 1.2.

It's hard for me to give specific examples because I simply don't recall having this much trouble with reinforcements unless I REALLY overstayed my welcome in 1.2.

But currently I'm on a dark VIP mission which I'm restarting for the 5th time because I can't even get in shooting range of the VIP, let alone the evac zone, without reinforcements starting to drop in every turn.

There are 3 pods on the map, 2 of which are between my squad and the VIP. Even if I quite successfully deal with both, by the time I get to the VIP building I have reinforcements spawning on top of my squad every single turn.
This isn't challenging, it's just annoying and demotivating. With over 800 hours in EU/EW, 3/4 of which were spent in LW1, and over 300 hours in vanilla X2 with all of its bugs and LOS issues, I don't recall ever being as frustrated as I am now with this non-stop reinforcement system.

Look I'm not saying we should revert to what was in 1.2 (although I was fine with that), but the current system needs radical change as well. The RNF just start dropping too soon: either have them deploy later or give me AT LEAST ONE TURN in between reinforcements, at least between the first few ones.


I'm losing the sense of playing a tactical game and managing my surroundings when I know that 4 turns into a timed mission the game will show me the middle finger and start spawning in extra enemies wherever. It's bullshit.

I would say if RNFs are dropping 4 turns in, you are underinfiltrating and or running missions in regions with high Advent strength.

RookieAutopsy wrote:I would say if RNFs are dropping 4 turns in, you are underinfiltrating and or running missions in regions with high Advent strength.

yep, 7 Advent strength, but full infiltration so light advent presence on the mission.

I did not know that adv strength also affects how SOON the RNF start dropping in. This changes the perspective but my point on non-stop RNFs stands

Bullett00th wrote:7 Advent strength

You need to play closer attention to the Strength rating of your regions. I play on Commander/Legend, and if I'm looking at a Capture VIP mission, the maximum strength at which I'm happy to do the mission is 3 or below. 4 is dangerous, but doable. 5 is the point at which I go "screw this", snipe the VIP from range, and bug out. I have no idea what a Capture VIP mission at Strength 7 is like, because I wouldn't even try it in the first place. Oh, and if this is a Liberation mission, then it's even worse, since Lib 3 missions get a bonus to Advent Strength.

Your issue isn't reinforcements, your issue that you're basically assaulting a fortress. Don't do timed missions in Strength 7 missions unless you're desperate.

I'm playing on Veteran to get a feel of the new patch without suffering a lot, so I'm not sure how valuable my opinion on this issue is.

Having said that, I'm around June/July with 3 regions (trying to finish lib on the first one and stocking up on intel to expand to another) and at the moment all of them are fluctuating between 1 and 4 strength (obviously depending on the ops I run). I have laser weapons, just pumped out two psi operatives, built a lab and started building res comms to start expanding further.

So far I haven't been overwhelmed by RNFs in a crippling way. I found both timers (hard and soft) to be juuuuust right for my experience. I get the sense of urgency from the RNF countdown, but I usually have several turns before they go red, and once one of them drops (usually just two guys) I get around 2 or 3 turns until the next one (the ones after that one are on a one-turn basis though). The hard timers are long enough to give me time to plan some solid tactics which I love, in contrast with the shorter ones from before which just had me running like a madman with a gun.

In short, so far I'm finding that the timers are in a good place (both RNFs and hard timers). As someone mentioned above, I believe Advent's strenght in the regions does have a huge influence on how punishing those RNFs will be.

Bullett00th wrote:When the reinforcements start coming there's pretty much nothing you can do unless you're very lucky.

You can run. Which leaves you a lot more creative space than teamwipe with a hard timer. Yes, there are a lot of tricks to successful retreat. Especially when compared to just getting "everyone's dead" result.

in defense of the hard timers, I don't remember any "boom, you're dead" timers. only "meh, goal failed" and "you're coming with us!" timers. But all in all, it feels more organic now. And Advent taking less prisoners also fits.