HQ assaults

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WanWhiteWolf
Posts: 138
Joined: Tue May 16, 2017 10:09 pm

HQ assaults

Post by WanWhiteWolf »

I find the reward underwhelming for the planning and risks involved.

That said, it is no surprise that most people liberate a single (required) region per campaign. It's simply not worth it. You can easily get the same loot from 1-2 supply raids with a fraction of risk / squad investment. Not to mention that the STR reinforcement can make it so that 2 squads simply lost their time for 1 month (I doubt many people would push STR 9 HQ with lasers)

Does anyone know where I can change the infiltration time for this mission? Perhaps this would make it a bit more appealing ... want to give it a try.
Exquisitor
Posts: 53
Joined: Wed May 10, 2017 4:50 pm

Re: HQ assaults

Post by Exquisitor »

I had the same question re changing the infiltration timers. See the answer about half way down the discussion:
http://www.pavonisinteractive.com/phpBB ... 15&t=25822
JM01
Posts: 69
Joined: Fri Feb 10, 2017 2:29 pm

Re: HQ assaults

Post by JM01 »

WanWhiteWolf wrote:I find the reward underwhelming for the planning and risks involved.

That said, it is no surprise that most people liberate a single (required) region per campaign. It's simply not worth it. You can easily get the same loot from 1-2 supply raids with a fraction of risk / squad investment. Not to mention that the STR reinforcement can make it so that 2 squads simply lost their time for 1 month (I doubt many people would push STR 9 HQ with lasers)

Does anyone know where I can change the infiltration time for this mission? Perhaps this would make it a bit more appealing ... want to give it a try.
The problem now though with the way 1.3 works, you will go broke if you try expand to new regions by building network towers. Building radio relays now start at 250 and go up by 100 per new radio relay. This gets insanely expensive insanely fast. This pretty much forces you to push a region to at least clear the Network Tower mission so that you can get the free radio relay. The problem with this is that once you do that and reveal the HQ advent usually goes apeshit and starts sending supply raids from all neighboring regions like mad (and even gets UFO supply reinforcements) which makes the area a real big risk to run missions in anymore (though you can work this to your advantage by putting all your people to hide in that region while you go elsewhere since the neighboring regions will likely lose a lot of strength from sending all of their forces to the area with the HQ revealed).

Basically running liberation to at least the network tower is now pretty much required at this point. That being said the actual HQ raid is super easy with some high aim DFA snipers and some gunners. What I would do is plan on bringing a full squad and boosting the infiltration so you aren't sending a squad out for 10 million years.
Lyzak
Posts: 81
Joined: Thu May 18, 2017 5:01 pm

Re: HQ assaults

Post by Lyzak »

JM01 wrote:The problem with this is that once you do that and reveal the HQ advent usually goes apeshit and starts sending supply raids from all neighboring regions like mad [...]
I don't think this is actually true. Completing the network tower doesn't generate any more vigilance than any other mission; I think people seeing "ADVENT going apeshit" is just an artifact of running a lot of missions in that region to complete the liberation chain, and thus spiking vigilance (which takes a bit of time to resolve into increased ADVENT strength).

Case and point, the first region I unlocked HQ in, I spiked vigilance to about 13 in the process. I decided (stupidly) to put everyone on hiding and allow vigilance to cool off, but unfortunately it still cools off slow enough that force continued to trickle in and in and in until it was a Strength 8 region (up from 1-2). Some time passes and vigilance ultimately cools off to about 1-2, meanwhile I'm running missions in other nearby regions and ADVENT is freaking out and pouring strength from the now-low-vigilance Strength 8 region into these neighboring regions... Currently it's a Strength 2 region, even with the exposed HQ :lol:

You begin to understand the relationship between vigilance and strength a lot more when you're playing with a mod like LW2 Information Display.
Tuhalu
Posts: 433
Joined: Wed Feb 01, 2017 9:02 pm

Re: HQ assaults

Post by Tuhalu »

Note: The cost of radio relays varies immensely depending on difficulty (see config below). Each "free" radio tower also adds to the cost of buying a new tower outright. JM01's quote of 250 supply would be playing on Classic/Commander and already having picked up a free relay.

If you manage to unlock the Black Site by doing your first Tower mission in your home region (where you already have a tower), then you might consider buying a tower in the correct direction while it is still relatively cheap.

Code: Select all

; Tower base cost
OutpostSupplyCost[0]=50 ;Easy
OutpostSupplyCost[1]=100 ;Normal
OutpostSupplyCost[2]=100 ;Classic
OutpostSupplyCost[3]=200 ;Impossible

; Cost increase per outpost (radio tower) built
OutpostSupplyCostIncrease[0]=50  ;Easy
OutpostSupplyCostIncrease[1]=100 ;Normal
OutpostSupplyCostIncrease[2]=150 ;Classic
OutpostSupplyCostIncrease[3]=150 ;Impossible
Saph7
Long War 2 Crew
Posts: 167
Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2017 4:00 pm

Re: HQ assaults

Post by Saph7 »

WanWhiteWolf wrote:I find the reward underwhelming for the planning and risks involved.

That said, it is no surprise that most people liberate a single (required) region per campaign. It's simply not worth it. You can easily get the same loot from 1-2 supply raids with a fraction of risk / squad investment.
Not even close.

HQs give you an enormous amount of rewards. 40+ corpses, lots of supply/alloys/elerium, a bunch of datapads, assorted loot, etc. Then on top of that there's the strategic benefits – 5 points of destroyed strength, a ton of vigilance, a permanent 20% boost to haven jobs, the ability to safely farm the region with an engineer advisor, and more. It's the most rewarding mission in the game by a mile.

General rule is that if you can liberate a region, do it. The more the better. I usually aim to liberate about 2-4 regions over the course of a campaign. If you keep doing liberations then it's technically possible to reach a point where it isn't worth running an exposed HQ since you have so many liberated regions that you're getting diminishing returns and have more supply than you need, but if you've reached that point you're so far ahead that you're almost certainly going to win regardless.
JM01
Posts: 69
Joined: Fri Feb 10, 2017 2:29 pm

Re: HQ assaults

Post by JM01 »

Lyzak wrote:
JM01 wrote:The problem with this is that once you do that and reveal the HQ advent usually goes apeshit and starts sending supply raids from all neighboring regions like mad [...]
I don't think this is actually true. Completing the network tower doesn't generate any more vigilance than any other mission; I think people seeing "ADVENT going apeshit" is just an artifact of running a lot of missions in that region to complete the liberation chain, and thus spiking vigilance (which takes a bit of time to resolve into increased ADVENT strength).

Case and point, the first region I unlocked HQ in, I spiked vigilance to about 13 in the process. I decided (stupidly) to put everyone on hiding and allow vigilance to cool off, but unfortunately it still cools off slow enough that force continued to trickle in and in and in until it was a Strength 8 region (up from 1-2). Some time passes and vigilance ultimately cools off to about 1-2, meanwhile I'm running missions in other nearby regions and ADVENT is freaking out and pouring strength from the now-low-vigilance Strength 8 region into these neighboring regions... Currently it's a Strength 2 region, even with the exposed HQ :lol:

You begin to understand the relationship between vigilance and strength a lot more when you're playing with a mod like LW2 Information Display.
Yeah I was starting to understand this is how it worked the more I played with it and it basically makes it so that you want to kind of hold off on the HQ raid before you actually attempt it and go do missions in other areas beforehand (which probably isn't the worst idea as you can get supplies and other resources from all of the other missions so that you can get a well enough geared squad to run the HQ).
Icarus
Posts: 151
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 12:26 pm

Re: HQ assaults

Post by Icarus »

Saph7 wrote:

HQs give you an enormous amount of rewards. 40+ corpses, lots of supply/alloys/elerium, a bunch of datapads, assorted loot, etc. Then on top of that there's the strategic benefits – 5 points of destroyed strength, a ton of vigilance, a permanent 20% boost to haven jobs, the ability to safely farm the region with an engineer advisor, and more. It's the most rewarding mission in the game by a mile.
Don't forget the doom counter reduction.

Regarding strength and vigilance, that changes through liberation, but whether it's good depends on the circumstances a bit. Strength goes down, but remaining legions get pushed to the adjacent regions, so liberating a strength 8 region is a net gain in effective strength in the remaining regions. Vigilance gets higher in all other regions while strength goes down, but you lose the vigilance inside the liberated region. And the vigilance spike in other regions can be annoying if you're farming them. But altogether IMO: worth it, but with diminishing returns and some potential side effects.
Daergar
Posts: 93
Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2015 7:47 pm

Re: HQ assaults

Post by Daergar »

Complete opposite experience.

HQ's are very easy with the right squad. One shinobi to scout and Reaper for the entrenched command pod, two to three sharpshooters, two rangers, officer specialist with reaction fire bonus and Get Some, a gunner, grenadier, technical as flavor, psi soldier if you got one.

Since there are no reinforcements, this is the one mission where the old LW1 overwatch play shines. I just completed my fourth HQ with two sharpshooters killing 21/36 enemies between them; it took more time to flush out and mop up the command pod and stragglers than anything else.

Total infiltration time taken; 10 days with a fee of 25 intel boost (just got a colonel, so next one will take less time), total wounds taken was 1 hp on a ranger because I got tired of crawling forward.

Total rewards; ton of corpses, loot, other good stuff. On the map I now flip 13 rebels into supply job and slap another one of my spare engineers on it, generating over 400 supplies per month for me. My income is now close to 2k supplies per month; "The sinews of war are infinite money".

Doom counter reduced, keeping that sucker at a shiny "one".

Naturally you leave several regions in order to farm missions (the free-range Advent taste the best, after all), but only liberating one? Inconceivable!
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