Wait weren't the pods supposed to become smaller?

[Bullett00th]

Cause I'm facing pods with as many aliens as in 1.2, and the game has overall become annoyingly difficult. Maybe not just because of that but I'm having a hard time understanding why

[Dlareh]

Are you paying attention to the Strength of the regions you're running timed missions in?

Quoting from http://www.pavonisinteractive.com/phpBB ... 15&t=25843

In 1.2 it was possible to largely ignore the Advent Strength in a region, since most of the missions you were doing were stealth ops (which bypassed combat entirely) and the rest were no-timer corpse retrievals (where an extra point of Advent Strength just meant a few extra enemies to bring home). This is no longer the case in 1.3 – if you haven’t been paying attention to the Strength rating of the regions you’re doing missions in, start now!

As a general rule, you should try to do as many as possible of your timed missions in regions of strength 1, 2, or 3. This will minimise not only the number of enemies you have to shoot your way past but also the quantity of reinforcements that will get dropped on your head. Timed missions in regions of strength 4-5 are significantly more dangerous, and anything at Strength 6+ is very dangerous. You won’t always have the luxury of being able to avoid timed missions in these areas, but be aware that by accepting them you’re taking a risk.

Liberation is also something to pay more attention to in 1.3. Radio Relays scale up in cost much faster than in 1.2, but if you do a Network Tower, you get a relay in that region for free. So if you don’t want to bankrupt yourself expanding, do those Lib chains! Fully liberating a region also knocks off a point of doom from the Avatar Project, buying you that much more time.

[Bullett00th]

Are you paying attention to the Strength of the regions you're running timed missions in?

ah, makes more sense now, thanks

[Clibanarius]

Yeah, once a region's strength hits 3 or 4, the pod sizes start to look like they did in 1.0-1.2. It kinda made me sad, too, because I wasn't ready for the kind of shit I'm seeing in my current campaign on Light missions in Strength 5 regions, haha.

[Bullett00th]

I'm having a hard time understanding what to do on the strategy layer now, because the advent strength increases progressively in all of my 3 regions unless I put almost everyone into hiding, in case of which I'm just sitting there waiting for Advent to stack up on Dark Events

[Zyrrashijn]

I'm having a hard time understanding what to do on the strategy layer now, because the advent strength increases progressively in all of my 3 regions unless I put almost everyone into hiding, in case of which I'm just sitting there waiting for Advent to stack up on Dark Events

Expand.

[Bullett00th]

Expand.

Is this a good idea? I clearly recall expansion being a very slow process in LW1, not sure if I'm ready to deal with 4+ regions while having just unlocked laser weapons a month ago

[Dwarfling]

I'm having a hard time understanding what to do on the strategy layer now, because the advent strength increases progressively in all of my 3 regions unless I put almost everyone into hiding, in case of which I'm just sitting there waiting for Advent to stack up on Dark Events

Early game try to focus all your missions on one region and have the others on Recruit. That will move the legions toward that region, and when the strenght gets too high for your taste, switch to hiding and start Intel on another quiet region. I had something odd happen in my campaign tho... Despite spamming a bunch of missions on the home region, the aliens still moved strenght OUT of it. Maybe they were moving the legions toward a facility, I dunno.

[Zyrrashijn]

Expansion will give you more room to maneuver. You can leave a high alert region to calm down while running missions in lower alert regions. This may result in more supplies (SnG's), personnel and experienced soldiers. Don't fear the enemies. They will only get tougher in time, not by expansion, so, by expanding, you'll actually set up yourself in a better situation.

[chrisb]

Expand.

Is this a good idea? I clearly recall expansion being a very slow process in LW1, not sure if I'm ready to deal with 4+ regions while having just unlocked laser weapons a month ago

In general it's a good idea to expand as quick as intel and resistance contacts allow. Unlike LW1 there's no major downside to expanding, and in fact there are serious detriments to not expanding as the strength will pile up in those areas. Expanding let's you spread out the vigilance so that Advent doesn't know where to hit.

Once you contact a new region, if you don't need it for missions right away, it's a good idea to staff a good ranked soldier there and put everyone on recruit. It takes awhile at first but usually within 3-4 weeks the region will have some solid numbers to scan for missions with, especially if the avenger can help them out. The more rebels you have and the higher ranked the soldier, the faster recruiting will go. Once you have at least 5-6 if you need to bail out of other regions.

Another upside to a new region is that it will have really low vigilance and therefore will tend to spawn Jailbreak and VIP missions early on. This can help you get some more engineers and scientists, as well as rebels to get better mission timers. This is one of the benefits that is easy to miss and wonder why your behind on engi/sci personnel. Contacting new regions almost always gives you a shot at a couple of new staff before vigilance goes up.

[Drogmyre]

Expand.

Is this a good idea? I clearly recall expansion being a very slow process in LW1, not sure if I'm ready to deal with 4+ regions while having just unlocked laser weapons a month ago

In general it's a good idea to expand as quick as intel and resistance contacts allow. Unlike LW1 there's no major downside to expanding, and in fact there are serious detriments to not expanding as the strength will pile up in those areas. Expanding let's you spread out the vigilance so that Advent doesn't know where to hit.

Once you contact a new region, if you don't need it for missions right away, it's a good idea to staff a good ranked soldier there and put everyone on recruit. It takes awhile at first but usually within 3-4 weeks the region will have some solid numbers to scan for missions with, especially if the avenger can help them out. The more rebels you have and the higher ranked the soldier, the faster recruiting will go. Once you have at least 5-6 if you need to bail out of other regions.

Another upside to a new region is that it will have really low vigilance and therefore will tend to spawn Jailbreak and VIP missions early on. This can help you get some more engineers and scientists, as well as rebels to get better mission timers. This is one of the benefits that is easy to miss and wonder why your behind on engi/sci personnel. Contacting new regions almost always gives you a shot at a couple of new staff before vigilance goes up.

One thing to add to the recruit thing: Whatever you do, don't set more than 5 dudes on recruit. Recruit raids are BRUTAL.

[fowlJ]

Is this a good idea? I clearly recall expansion being a very slow process in LW1, not sure if I'm ready to deal with 4+ regions while having just unlocked laser weapons a month ago

In general it's a good idea to expand as quick as intel and resistance contacts allow. Unlike LW1 there's no major downside to expanding, and in fact there are serious detriments to not expanding as the strength will pile up in those areas. Expanding let's you spread out the vigilance so that Advent doesn't know where to hit.

Once you contact a new region, if you don't need it for missions right away, it's a good idea to staff a good ranked soldier there and put everyone on recruit. It takes awhile at first but usually within 3-4 weeks the region will have some solid numbers to scan for missions with, especially if the avenger can help them out. The more rebels you have and the higher ranked the soldier, the faster recruiting will go. Once you have at least 5-6 if you need to bail out of other regions.

Another upside to a new region is that it will have really low vigilance and therefore will tend to spawn Jailbreak and VIP missions early on. This can help you get some more engineers and scientists, as well as rebels to get better mission timers. This is one of the benefits that is easy to miss and wonder why your behind on engi/sci personnel. Contacting new regions almost always gives you a shot at a couple of new staff before vigilance goes up.

One thing to add to the recruit thing: Whatever you do, don't set more than 5 dudes on recruit. Recruit raids are BRUTAL.

I'm pretty sure that's irrelevant in 1.3, because of the Retaliation changes. Now any working rebels will contribute to spawning one.

[Bullett00th]

I'm pretty sure that's irrelevant in 1.3, because of the Retaliation changes. Now any working rebels will contribute to spawning one.

So what's the optimal amount of working rebels per region then? In order to not draw too much attention too fast

[fowlJ]

I'm pretty sure that's irrelevant in 1.3, because of the Retaliation changes. Now any working rebels will contribute to spawning one.

So what's the optimal amount of working rebels per region then? In order to not draw too much attention too fast

This is the way the new system works, per the patch notes:

- Retaliations (and mini-retals) will occur according to a different mechanism: every day you have a rebel on a job, the rebel has a chance to be detected by ADVENT. That chance is impacted by difficulty level, regional vigilance and alert. If detection occurs, a global bucket to trigger a retaliation gets a little more full. (There are buckets for each rebel job except hiding and a master bucket for full Haven retaliations). Once a threshhold is reached, a retal/mini-retal will occur and the bucket empties. They will tend to occur in busier regions. This reduces the minimum working rebels threshhold to trigger retals and should space out retals/mini-retals better. Increased regional cooldowns for these missions.

So, to my understanding (and without having examined the mechanic in detail, just looking at the patch note here), retaliations are no longer directly based on the number of rebels at all - more rebels working will linearly increase the average number of points added to the bucket, but the chance of each rebel being detected is based on difficulty, ADVENT Strength, and regional vigilance.

So the optimal number (which arguably no longer exists, since the retaliations will happen anyway eventually) varies based on the region they are working in - X rebels working a region with Strength 1 and Vigilance 1 produce less retaliation points than X rebels working a region with Strength 6 and Vigilance 6, for instance.