city defense since 1.3

[dario_gaston]

How many people around here think city defense missions have become insanely hard since 1.3?
They were quite challenging before, but with the new reinforcement mechanics dropping increasingly larger pods every turn (sometimes with 1 turn in between if you are lucky) since your 3d turn... well, it's become nearly impossible.
I got lucky once and the psionic relay was somewhere I could one shoot it with my sniper, still lost one to three rebels every turn (it sucks when a rebel panics and triggers an overwatch), but the next city defense the relay was behind a wall, with way more reinforcements than my troops could deal with dropping behind my cover every turn since my third turn.
It was June and advent was deploying a lot of tanky shit, was a massacre, lost my top 12 soldiers and I gave up that campaing.

Is there a way to tune down reinforcements on city defense missions?
How many rebels on intel you need to detect the invasion before it happnes? I kept 3 and they never detected it
You are usually trying to reach the black site, so you can't really go on contacting and monitoring adjacent missions to the liberated one, can you?

[Xavaal]

Played my first invasion the other day (only veteran) and it was quite ridiculous. I was facing 23 active enemies at one point because I couldn't deal with the RNFs in time. (including 2 Berserkers, 2 Centurions, 3 Mutons, 2 Shieldbearers, couple rocketeers...)

If I hadn't been able to one-shot the relay (by making it fall through the floor, which feels a bit cheaty) that would've been the end...
Somehow everyone made it out alive, heavily wounded though.

[Dwarfling]

I kept 3 and they never detected it

That's not gonna work. You can't detect the mission until it's generated (and you won't know when), and when it's generated, you won't have a lot of time to get its intel bucket full so that it pops up in your map. You have to fully dedicate your Haven to detect it if you think it's gonna happen (over 21 days after Liberation I think, plus adjacent strenght 8 region).

Weirdly enough I've been successful in keeping the strenght of the neighboring regions below the limit in my current Legendary campaign, by contacting and hiding the rebels on those regions. And I was actually looking into detecting the Supply raid precursor, just because I haven't done it before.

[Manifest]

You can't detect the mission until it's generated (and you won't know when).

Well you mentioned the strength limit, so you do have some idea when, right? To be more specific I think a neighboring region to the liberated region needs to have at least 7 strength to launch an invasion, so maybe keep all your liberated rebels on intel when a neighboring region gets to seven.

[Dwarfling]

No, it's Strenght 8.

Code: Select all

[LW_Overhaul.X2LWActivityCreation_Invasion]
INVASION_MIN_ALERT_TO_LAUNCH=8

The Strenght going that high is a strong indicator, yes, but not necessarily means it's gonna autogenerate... I think.

Anyhow, if I'm reading the XComLW_Activities.ini correctly, the Supply Raid will generate with only 4 days (96h) to infiltrate and you need to have gathered at least 50 intel income (each lv1 rebel gains 5 per day, then you factor the bonuses). And I dunno if it's possible to get it to reveal soon after it's generated, so it's gonna be less than 4 days. I'm guessing it's gonna base its strenght level out of the region it's coming from, therefore I think you'd be looking at very low infiltration Supply Raid with 8 ADVENT strenght, and per 1.3 rules, you start without conceal and you'll be fighting a command pod. Might be worth the risk tho, think of the bodies you'll get and the supplies you won't lose when you're re-filling your liberated haven.

I think in the end it'd be better to have a squad ready specifically tailored for the Invasion mission, one that can blitz thru the map quick enough to destroy the ground pods before getting slowed down and destroyed by the scaling RNFs. I'm thinking perhaps tank SPARKs, Assaults, Grenadiers with incendiaries, with a scouting Shinobi, a DFA Sharpshooter and maybe a dedicated overwatcher. Decked out with EXOs.

[Saph7]

If you make sure to bring a Technical on invasion missions, you can generally deal with the relay by rocketing the roof it's standing on. Makes for a good way of telling Advent "no more reinforcements, please".

[justdont]

And I dunno if it's possible to get it to reveal soon after it's generated

Yes, it's quite possible to detect a mission in about ~1 hour after it was generated, provided you've generated intel beforehand and got a bit lucky.

[Sweetrain]

is there a way to disbable constant reinforcements on this type of missions or to reduce the time frame they arrive (every turn 6-8 enemies with Mutons and co is not fun anymore if you are still stuck in evac area of an invasion while your shinobi somehow tries to sneak to the relay