Finished L/I campaign, some thoughts.

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Franzy
Posts: 69
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 9:05 am

Finished L/I campaign, some thoughts.

Post by Franzy »

Started in 1.3, had a pretty solid experience, difficulty seems about right for legendary. Took my time, done 217 missions, final mission on 15th of February. Surprisingly, lost only 3 soldiers (2 of those were rookies in the very beginning, third one was one-shot by a sectopod in Blacksite. That 100+ hp monster took me like 7-9 turns to kill.), however I played extra carefully. All missions were overinfiltrated, did not do a single mission lower than 100% infiltrated. Used intel-boosting on most missions. In my previous commander-campaign I did not care about strategy layer at all, just put 5-6 rebels on intel in every haven and attempted all missions with good timer. I liked how Legendary difficulty forces you to make important startegic decisions and mind your play on strategic layer also. Picking missions, controlling vigilance and so on.
Now some notes.
- Mech-pods were too common IMO. Sectoids, on the other hand, were strangely rare sight. Constantly found lacking their corpses.
- Kubikiri totally rules. Starting from November you basically HAVE TO take a kubikiri-specced sniper on every mission, even extremely-light jailbreaks. Because it's common to face a sectopod or gatekeeper on those lategame. Halobots are very good in this role BTW. Stock+HT+talon+plame lance = 100% crit chance on most enemies. +Mind merge, if neccessary :)
- Flashbang nerf ended not mattering much. Lategame I ended up using hard control like fire grenades, as mk3 advent routinely hits you in high cover, while flashbanged or/and suppressed.
- Speaking of cover, I think defense value on cover should be increased. When you have aim over 90 (like most mk3 enemies) cover just does not matter. Who needs to flank when your MSgt ranger has 50+ chance to hit enemy in high-cover million tiles away?
- Psi seem a bit over-powered now. I suggest putting 2-turn cooldown on insanity and make Stasis turn-ending at least.
- On the other hand, SPARKs were just... meh. Early they are okay, but mid-late... they even have less HP than most my soldiers (in warden with vests)! I suggest adding a lot of HP on their advanced armors and some aim/crit on weapons. And more aim with progression. Msgt SPARK with best weapon should have 100 aim, not 80. Alternatively allow weapon upgrades on their cannons.
- Alien Rulers turned out to be an easy prey. Well, I waited for COIL before activating them, but still... 25% reaction chance is too big a nerf, IMO.
- 2-day PoI scan is too long. I suggest reducing it to 1 day, as in most cases rewards just don't justify the time.
- There might be a bug with mini-retaliations. I used to have a mini-retal almost every week in july-september, but once I contacted most regions and liberated a few, there were no more mini-retals till the very end. Not that I complaining, but it does seem a little strange.
llll BlackFlag
Posts: 62
Joined: Mon May 29, 2017 4:12 pm

Re: Finished L/I campaign, some thoughts.

Post by llll BlackFlag »

Congrats on your victory! I've been trying to play through L/I in 1.3 and haven't been successful yet. I was wondering if you could give some pointers about how you manage your rebels and and advent strength. When did you switch from all intel to adding recruits and supplies? Also, what was your strategy for managing advent strength? Did you bounce back and forth doing missions all over the place and keeping average vigilance in each region or did you spike strength in one region, move to the next and spike strength there, etc?
DjAci
Posts: 63
Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2016 12:07 am

Re: Finished L/I campaign, some thoughts.

Post by DjAci »

Thanks for the info Franzy.

Could you give us some more detail.

How did you do science. When did you reach coilguns? How did you control avatar progress lategame? Just story missions or facility raids as well?
Franzy
Posts: 69
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 9:05 am

Re: Finished L/I campaign, some thoughts.

Post by Franzy »

I rushed mag weapons, so midgame was quite easy, until mk3 started to appear.
I did basic research before going for laser, which is what everyone shoukld do unless you get 3 or more scientists from missions in the first two months.
My rebels managment is pretty standard. You contact a region, you put everyone on intel + avenger scan to spawn jailbreak. If you have spare soldiers continue to do intel for missions, if everyone occupied, switch to recruit, until you have 10+ soldiers. Then I leave 2 on recruit, 5-6 on intel, rest on supply, unless it's a region I try to liberate. In that case - everyone on intel until the lib mission is spawned. Try to minimize switching jobs though, as they contribute nothing for a day after switching. It is important to understand the mechanics of mission spawning.
Extending as fast as possible might seem a good idea, but it is not actually. You need to squeeze maximum amount of easy missions from the region as fast as possible, before the strength rises. After you raised strength to 4-5, which takes about a month, stay for a couple of weeks to catch a troop column or UFO, than move to another neighbouring region. By that time vigilance will be so high, ADVENT will leave your new farming region and stay in the previous for a while (in my game all my starting regions were 7-9 right till the end, though I did not do missions in them). Usually newly contacted regions will have very low strength because of this tactics. BTW, if your new region has surprisingly high strength, 99% it has hidden facility in it.
Your global strategy should be something like this
1) contact a 4-5 regions, train your troops, build base, research mag weapons as fast as possible.
2) choose a low strength region to liberate, concentrate on liberating it.
3) concentrate on finding facilities as by the late summer advent will have 4 of them most likely and doom counter will tick very often. This is the crucial moment of the game. I got lucky to find facility with 4 stored pips while the doom counter was almost full. Do not delay destroying facilities, as on legendary they transfer pips at a much faster rate. Send suicide squad if you have to (I did not).
4) After destroyng a couple of facilities and buying some time this way, concentrate on golden path missions.
5) When you start seeing andromedons and elite mutons, your time is running out. Soon even extra light missions will often have a sectopod or a gatekeeper, which may well mean mission failure, if you did not bring a kubikiri sniper :) So REALLY concentrate of golden path. You can also switch every rebel on supplies. In my game I had income of about 3k per month, quite enough to equip everyone for final missions.
DjAci
Posts: 63
Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2016 12:07 am

Re: Finished L/I campaign, some thoughts.

Post by DjAci »

Thanks for the info.

When did you get coil? Did you skip lasers?
Franzy
Posts: 69
Joined: Thu Apr 06, 2017 9:05 am

Re: Finished L/I campaign, some thoughts.

Post by Franzy »

Lasers are very cheap to research when you have scientists, so no reason to skip them as they really help on randezvous missions. I did not reasearch advanced lasers though until I needed it for plasma.

I don't really keep track of when I got what so I can't tell :)
Dwarfling
Posts: 524
Joined: Wed Jan 25, 2017 12:16 pm

Re: Finished L/I campaign, some thoughts.

Post by Dwarfling »

I find that Adv. Lasers are key to getting DFA Sharpshooters online and Assaults being more reliable at doing their job. I guess it's not that hard to skip it, but with 2 scientist (from BM) and Basic Reasearch done, Laser research is so quick that waiting something like 14d+14d for Adv. Mags is just unbearable.
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