Advent Supply Raid Low % penalty

[oesis]

To my knowledge advent gets a super command squad if you under infiltrate Supply raid's, and maybe certain other missions. So I had some question about the details of the command pod. What % do you see the command pod at. Do you have to face the command pod at anything under 100%. I infiltrated one to about 70-75% and the command pod seemed insanely strong. Does it get even stronger if you go even lower, or is it an all or nothing thing. Lastly The command Pod I saw seemed stuck in a train car and wasn't moving much, do command pods normally have the same mobility and patrol patterns as other squads, or is that what is supposed to happen.

[fowlJ]

The enemies that appear on a mission are not based directly on infiltration level, they are based on 'Alert Level', which is equal to ADVENT Strength (for most missions the strength of the region they occur in, but in the case of a Supply Raid in particular, either the region they occur in or the region that is sending the supply convoy, whichever is higher), plus in some cases a modifier based on mission type (Supply Raids are +1), plus a modifier for how infiltrated the mission is (+0 at 100%, +12 at 0%, -3 at 200%).

Supply Raids have a command pod of 5 units if the Alert for the mission is 5-6, or a command pod of 8 units if the Alert is 7+. Beyond increasing from size 5 to size 8, I don't believe the command pod gets any scarier with increased Alert, but the number of other enemies on the mission increases.

[DerAva]

but in the case of a Supply Raid in particular, either the region they occur in or the region that is sending the supply convoy, whichever is higher

I feel like this is a huge issue right now, since there is almost no way of knowing which region the source is. So you can't really make an informed decision on whether or not you can take on the supply raid. Since each supply raid always moves just a single point of strength from one region to another it would make much more sense if they had a static strength level, unrelated to source or target.

[Thrombozyt]

It would be cool to have some information about the scaling of the low infiltration penalty beyond "there will be an increasingly difficult command pod".

I'm just coming of a 'light' supply raid, where a point of STR was coming in from an unknown region to a STR3 region - my starting region. I managed to infiltrate to 92% and I decided not to boost because while concealment is nice, there were 2 phantoms on the 5 man team.

I shot up an assortment of troopers, when the central pod came in consisting of a Muton Centurion, a Heavy MEC (MKII), a Shield Bearer, a Muton and an Archer - on MAY 1st with Commander/Ironman difficulty!!

Thankfully I lucked out in multiple ways:
1) I had my abolute best shooters all in that squad.
2) I spotted them last and they moved away.
3) I consistently hit with my holo-sniper taking out the Archer before anything came into range.
4) Both gunner and ranger went into god mode hitting and max-rolling around 8 shots in a row.

Still I lost two high potential soldiers, that I could have easily avoided had I spent 25 intel which were available. At 92% I could have understood +2-3 force level, but going from force level 3-4 to force level 9-10 for missing 8% of infiltration seems a tiny bit over the top.

[fowlJ]

Still I lost two high potential soldiers, that I could have easily avoided had I spent 25 intel which were available. At 92% I could have understood +2-3 force level, but going from force level 3-4 to force level 9-10 for missing 8% of infiltration seems a tiny bit over the top.

Like I said in my response to the OP, the Supply Raid command pod doesn't actually have anything directly to do with Infiltration, it just has to do with the effective ADVENT Strength in the region. At STR 3 (assuming that the region the Supply Convoy you were attacking was being sent from wasn't higher, in which case the mission would have used that instead), the mission you went on had an effective strength of 3 (Regional) + 1 (Supply Raid modifier) + 1 (92% Infiltration) = 5, the minimum level to have a Command Pod appear on it.

On the subject of more information, I can understand how running into something like this could be an unpleasant surprise, but I'm not really sure how they could provide more useful information as to how the mechanics work - there's no space on the mission UI for that level of detail, so it would basically have to be this great big text dump in the Commander's Archives or something, which a) would overwhelm new players with a lot of Required Reading, while not actually being something you need a comprehensive knowledge of to play the game, and b) is essentially just straight up impossible, because part of being an official 2k sponsored mod is that LW2 supports all of the languages that XCOM 2 does - that's part of the reason why some UI elements are pretty sparse as is, the amount of translation required for a full info-dump would be completely infeasible.

[Tuhalu]

but in the case of a Supply Raid in particular, either the region they occur in or the region that is sending the supply convoy, whichever is higher

I feel like this is a huge issue right now, since there is almost no way of knowing which region the source is. So you can't really make an informed decision on whether or not you can take on the supply raid. Since each supply raid always moves just a single point of strength from one region to another it would make much more sense if they had a static strength level, unrelated to source or target.

You can make an informed guess. The baseline activity scales up roughly linearly with the strength of the region, starting at very light (due to the +1 alert level). For a strength 3 region, you can expect it to say light (the schedules at that strength have 14 or 15 enemies). For a strength 4, it's light-moderate (16-17 enemy schedules). For a strength 5, it's either light-moderate or moderate (18 or 20 enemy schedules).

Any supply raid you launch with a light-moderate activity or higher is going to have a command pod. So the obvious solution for command pods is to only hit a supply raid if you can get it down to light.

It's also worth noting that only the command pod for the FL4-7 period (Late April to Early June) has enemies that are inordinately strong for that time period. The command pod in Late June is just barely stronger, replacing the Muton with a second Muton Centurion.

As in every other mission, what you can "handle" scales as you progress into the game. By the mid-game, the Command Pod is going to be strong, but not terribly hard at all.

[Thrombozyt]

Still I lost two high potential soldiers, that I could have easily avoided had I spent 25 intel which were available. At 92% I could have understood +2-3 force level, but going from force level 3-4 to force level 9-10 for missing 8% of infiltration seems a tiny bit over the top.

Like I said in my response to the OP, the Supply Raid command pod doesn't actually have anything directly to do with Infiltration, it just has to do with the effective ADVENT Strength in the region. At STR 3 (assuming that the region the Supply Convoy you were attacking was being sent from wasn't higher, in which case the mission would have used that instead), the mission you went on had an effective strength of 3 (Regional) + 1 (Supply Raid modifier) + 1 (92% Infiltration) = 5, the minimum level to have a Command Pod appear on it.

On the subject of more information, I can understand how running into something like this could be an unpleasant surprise, but I'm not really sure how they could provide more useful information as to how the mechanics work - there's no space on the mission UI for that level of detail, so it would basically have to be this great big text dump in the Commander's Archives or something, which a) would overwhelm new players with a lot of Required Reading, while not actually being something you need a comprehensive knowledge of to play the game, and b) is essentially just straight up impossible, because part of being an official 2k sponsored mod is that LW2 supports all of the languages that XCOM 2 does - that's part of the reason why some UI elements are pretty sparse as is, the amount of translation required for a full info-dump would be completely infeasible.

I think you misunderstand:
1) The advent STR may have triggered a command pod, but the command pod being about thrice the force level is what is irritating. I would have understood a very strong pod - lets say muton/muton/stunlancer/mech/sentry. That's still +2-3 FL above what I'm encountering and really tough with 5 soldiers at conventional weapons. I would also have understood the killer pod I encountered at infiltration levels around 50% - I would have understood the risk I send my soldiers into.
From all the mechanics presented here on the forums and in the wiki, I have expected a minor upgrade as a penalty for missing those 8% - not Bradford informing me back to back about MECs, Mutons and Shield Bearers when looking at the MKII versions of the former 2.

2) I don't expect the info in the UI - here in the forums or the change log would be fine as well.

[Psieye]

From all the mechanics presented here on the forums and in the wiki, I have expected a minor upgrade as a penalty for missing those 8% - not Bradford informing me back to back about MECs, Mutons and Shield Bearers when looking at the MKII versions of the former 2.

I don't expect the info in the UI - here in the forums or the change log would be fine as well.

Ah... you missed the anecdotes (and subsequent explanations) that were told as 1.3 was coming out. Yeah news of these suped-up command pods weren't put in an official changelog or post. Some of the play testers and early pioneers from the ordinary players came back with horror stories of ridiculous command pods and the mechanical breakdown of them showed up buried in long threads.

But yes, condolences on the nasty surprise leading to casualties.

[Thrombozyt]

OK.. after searching for "supply" "raid" - that lead me to this thread - I now searches again for "command pod" and found the post that explains it:

I spent some time going through the mission schedules to see where the breakpoints were for the supply raids. Here's a general idea of what to expect. Keep in mind that supply raids have a +1 alert modifier, so the minimum alert is always 2. If the region strength is > 1 then you can overinfiltrate to effectively lower the region strength. For force level, you can roughly equate supply drops with FL as they have similar timings but are not strictly related to each other, just gives a general idea of the timing.

Command Pods
The command pod varies based on mission alert level and force level. As FL rises the command pods become stronger. With high alert, the command pod will also go from an 5 man pod to an 8 man pod.

Alert

Code: Select all

2-4 : No Command Pod
5-6 : 5 Man Command Pod
7+  : 8 Man Command Pod

5 Man Command Pod - Force Level

Code: Select all

1-3   : No specific command pod.
4-7   : Muton, M2 Muton, Shield Bearer, M2 Mec, Archer
8-12  : 2xM2 Muton, Shield Bearer, M2 Mec, M2 Archer
13-16 : M2 Muton, M3 Muton, M3 Shield Bearer, M3 Mec, M2 Archer
17-20 : 2xM3 Muton, M3 Shield Bearer, Sectopod, M2 Archer

8 Man Command Pod - Force Level

Code: Select all

1-3   : No specific command pod.
4-7   : Muton, M2 Muton, Shield Bearer, 2xM2 Mec, Archer, Berserker, Random
8-12  : 2xM2 Muton, Shield Bearer, 2xM2 Mec, M2 Archer, Berserker, Random
13-16 : M2 Muton, M3 Muton, M3 Shield Bearer, 2xM3 Mec, M2 Archer, Berserker, Sectoid Commander
17-20 : 2xM3 Muton, M3 Shield Bearer, 2xSectopod, M2 Archer, Berserker, Sectoid Commander

Encounter Size
As usual, the encounter size increases with alert, there's a rough guide of the encounter sizes to expect at each alert level. The variation at different alert levels is because there are often 2-3 possible schedules at each alert level and some are harder than others even within the same alert.

Code: Select all

2 : 10-11
3 : 12
4 : 14-15
5 : 16-17
6 : 17-20
7 : 20-26
8 : 24-25
9 : 26

Basically I had the bad luck to just tick into FL4 while not knowing that Alert 5+ means nasty command pod. So thank you chrisb for posting this. This info should be in the wiki or at least the changelog should have read "Supply Raids at Alert 5+ contain a substantial command pod" instead of the vagueness that was actually there.

Also it would be cool to tweak the schedules a bit to have FL break points at 4-6, 7-9 and 10-12 to be able to scale a little bit more. Comparing the FL4 to the FL12 command pod makes the latter a bit of a joke compared to the former.

[Thrombozyt]

I'll revive this thread to have all information in one place:

It appears that the command pod is in addition to the regular schedule. I have just infiltrated a supply raid to 99% and it was moderate-heavy activity. Not keen on doing such a raid without concealment, I boosted the infiltration and it went down to very light.

Given the info in the post above, the only explanation is that I went down to STR3 with the boost (12 opponents, no command pod = very light). Without the boost, I'm at STR5, which is 16-17 enemies (light-moderate) and the command pod is added instead of replacing the enemies bringing it to 22 (which is barely moderate-heavy).

[Thrombozyt]

Just played the Moderate-Heavy supply raid. Not a single alien. 24 ADVENT troopers in 3 pods. I don't get anything about the supply raid schedule.