Blacksite.

[Rikokrates]

Just wondering when people usually beat the blacksite by?

I just beat it at the start on November, it was strength 6 and brutal. 38 aliens including all the commandos etc... but also the hive queen and a sectopod!! Lost my best soldier and 3 others were pretty badly beaten up.

I started the liberation chain so slowly, it's my first play through, my mistake was the region where I discovered a network tower was strength 8 so I had to wait until the force level dropped so that's why I started so late.

So, mistakes aside when do most people manage to clear the blacksite level?

[Exquisitor]

It depends for me on whether the Blacksite is within a region I've already contacted or outside of it. If the former, I usually cue it up as soon as possible. If the latter, then as long as the Avatar timer isn't critical, I'll take my time, continue on my research and just build intel from missions. I think it was November in my latest game.

[LordYanaek]

I'm now in late December and haven't taken the Blacksite yet but this campaign isn't a typical one. I was extremely unlucky with VIPs early and extremely careless not buying a scientist when i realized i wouldn't get one quickly so my research have been slow (Coil in late September-early October, Plasma still nowhere to be seen) and i'm really fighting a Long War

I think it really depends on the doom clock. If you can slow it down enough by liberation and blowing facilities there is no need to rush it. Typically i would attempt it around September-October if possible when i have high ranking soldiers an good gear as this would still leave me time for the rest of the storyline. This time i really put a high priority on slowing down AVATAR by actively fishing for Facility Leads and liberating all of Asia so i'm not too worried but i'm really late.

[Rikokrates]

This time i really put a high priority on slowing down AVATAR by actively fishing for Facility Leads and liberating all of Asia so i'm not too worried but i'm really late.

I haven't get any facility leads yet and i'm in November, do you need to take the blacksite out first or is it a case of getting lucky with the "find a lead" missions?

I know there are some sites n regions I have contacted but haven't located them yet.

P.S coil guns in Nov, but as yet not built....

[LordYanaek]

You can find them as soon as you learn about AVATAR (after liberating your first region)
Some facts about Facility Leads missions :

• As you might know already they appear as either Hack (any type of hack or item recovery) or Rescue VIP (always a Scientist) missions with an "Intel Package" reward. You can't know before the mission if it's a Point of Interest or a Facility Lead.
• There can be 2 in the world but they only show if there is more hidden facilities in the world than you already have leads (including those currently under research) so you can't stockpile them for future facilities.
• They are hard to detect (they are twice as hard to detect as regular "find a lead" missions and require an intel "pool" of 120 instead of 5!). As a result they tend to appear with low infiltration timer and if you don't suspect it might be a facility lead you'll probably just ignore them. They are easier to detect in regions with a facility (you can learn where hidden facilities are located if your pay attention to the message that briefly shows when a new "pip" is added to the doom clock.
• They are limited to regions with a Strength of 10 or lower.
• They are not "General Ops" so they can appear in addition to other "find a lead" missions.

What probably helped me was the creation of a dedicated stealth squad to take missions with very low timer. Stealth is definitely not dead in 1.4. A small squad with full SMG, Chamelon Suits and an Infiltrator officer is really fast to infiltrate a mission.

[Rikokrates]

You can find them as soon as you learn about AVATAR (after liberating your first region)
Some facts about Facility Leads missions :

• They are hard to detect (they are twice as hard to detect as regular "find a lead" missions and require an intel "pool" of 120 instead of 5!).
  
  What probably helped me was the creation of a dedicated stealth squad to take missions with very low timer. Stealth is definitely not dead in 1.4. A small squad with full SMG, Chamelon Suits and an Infiltrator officer is really fast to infiltrate a mission.

Intel pool? As in I should have 120 intel "banked" to be able to detect these facility leads?

I am now in Dec, missions are incredibly difficult now, I don't feel at all confident running a stealth squad. I think this campaign is on the cusp of failing. I didn't realise science was so important in Long War 2. Vanilla was a joke, I never built a lab once! In this campaign I only just built a lab and it's Dec!

[nmkaplan]

You can find them as soon as you learn about AVATAR (after liberating your first region)
Some facts about Facility Leads missions :

• They are hard to detect (they are twice as hard to detect as regular "find a lead" missions and require an intel "pool" of 120 instead of 5!).
  
  What probably helped me was the creation of a dedicated stealth squad to take missions with very low timer. Stealth is definitely not dead in 1.4. A small squad with full SMG, Chamelon Suits and an Infiltrator officer is really fast to infiltrate a mission.

Intel pool? As in I should have 120 intel "banked" to be able to detect these facility leads?

I am now in Dec, missions are incredibly difficult now, I don't feel at all confident running a stealth squad. I think this campaign is on the cusp of failing. I didn't realise science was so important in Long War 2. Vanilla was a joke, I never built a lab once! In this campaign I only just built a lab and it's Dec!

The "Intel pool" he mentioned has nothing to do with the Intel resource.

It has to do with the mechanics of the way that rebels set to the Intel job detect missions.

My understanding is that each rebel on the Intel job will generate some amount of this "other"type of Intel. Initially this Intel fills a global bucket. Each mission type has an Intel threshold that must be met before it can be detected. That's what he was referring to.

I believe a full explanation is posted up on ufopaedia.

[Rikokrates]

You can find them as soon as you learn about AVATAR (after liberating your first region)
Some facts about Facility Leads missions :

• They are hard to detect (they are twice as hard to detect as regular "find a lead" missions and require an intel "pool" of 120 instead of 5!).
  
  What probably helped me was the creation of a dedicated stealth squad to take missions with very low timer. Stealth is definitely not dead in 1.4. A small squad with full SMG, Chamelon Suits and an Infiltrator officer is really fast to infiltrate a mission.

Intel pool? As in I should have 120 intel "banked" to be able to detect these facility leads?

I am now in Dec, missions are incredibly difficult now, I don't feel at all confident running a stealth squad. I think this campaign is on the cusp of failing. I didn't realise science was so important in Long War 2. Vanilla was a joke, I never built a lab once! In this campaign I only just built a lab and it's Dec!

The "Intel pool" he mentioned has nothing to do with the Intel resource.

It has to do with the mechanics of the way that rebels set to the Intel job detect missions.

My understanding is that each rebel on the Intel job will generate some amount of this "other"type of Intel. Initially this Intel fills a global bucket. Each mission type has an Intel threshold that must be met before it can be detected. That's what he was referring to.

I believe a full explanation is posted up on ufopaedia.

Great, thanks a lot, that clears it up, still think this campaign is going to fail though. ;-(

[Cogo]

Lol had I that Intel package already. Didnt know! Thanks!

[LordYanaek]

Intel pool? As in I should have 120 intel "banked" to be able to detect these facility leads?

nmkaplan is right, sorry for the short answer.
To be more precise, here is how mission detection works (unless i understood it wrong, all of this came from code digging by various people and some answers by developers).

• Each Rebel on "Intel" job will generate some "Mission Intel" towards mission detection, that "Intel" is separate from the "Intel currency" you use to boost infiltration and contact regions. A level 1 rebel will generate 1 "Mission Intel" every 6 hours (a level 2 will generate 1.5 and a level 3 will generate 2, scanning with the avenger adds 4). Faceless in the Haven will reduce the generation of "Mission Intel" even if they are not assigned to the Intel job.
• That "Mission Intel" is added to what i called "intel pool" (internally it's called RequiredRebelMissionIncome but i'm not sure it would have been better if i had used that name) for every Activity currently running silently (ADVENT is always performing various "Activities" in all regions and you are trying to detect them, thus spawning missions).
• Once that pool reaches a certain threshold (it's different for every Activity) you start rolling to actually detect it, before you don't even get to "roll the dices". You get to roll every 6 hours.
• When you have accumulated 100 "Mission Intel" above the threshold your chance to detect the mission becomes equal to another value defined in the config files and often referred as "Detection Chance" (but internally it's called DiscoveryPctChancePerDayPerHundredMissionIncome ). If you have more or less than 100 it's just a direct relation (if you have 50 you have half chance to detect)

In the case of Facility Leads mission and "common guerilla operations" (the other "Intel package" missions) here are the relevant lines from XComLW_Activities.ini

Code: Select all

[ProtectResearch X2LWAlienActivityTemplate] ***This is the facility lead mission***
iPriority=50
RequiredRebelMissionIncome=120.0
DiscoveryPctChancePerDayPerHundredMissionIncome=17
MaxAlert=10
MaxVigilance=10

MissionTree[0] =	(	MissionFamilies[0]="Hack_LW", \\
						MissionFamilies[1]="Recover_LW", \\
						MissionFamilies[2]="Rescue_LW", \\
						MissionFamilies[3]="Extract_LW", \\
						Duration_Hours=216, \\
						DurationRand_Hours=72 \\
					)

[ProtectData X2LWAlienActivityTemplate]
iPriority=55
RequiredRebelMissionIncome=5.0
DiscoveryPctChancePerDayPerHundredMissionIncome=35
MaxVigilance=12

MissionTree[0] =	(	MissionFamilies[0]="Hack_LW", \\
						MissionFamilies[1]="Recover_LW", \\
						MissionFamilies[2]="DestroyObject_LW", \\
						MissionFamilies[3]="Rescue_LW", \\
						MissionFamilies[4]="Extract_LW", \\
						Duration_Hours=216, \\
						DurationRand_Hours=96 \\
					)

What does it tell us?

• Both activities have similar MissionTree (they create similar missions : Hack, Recover Item, VIP - but only regular GoPs can be a destroy the relay mission) thus it's hard to tell one from another.
• They stop at Vigilance 10 (facility) or 12 (others). Vigilance is a hidden variable that rises when you complete missions and drops when you're quiet. In short and because you shouldn't worry too much about a hidden variable it means those missions are unlikely to spawn in regions where you are extremely active.
• Both have a duration of around 10 days (9-12 days for Facility Leads, 9-13 for other Intel package missions)
• Facility Leads are much harder to detect!
  Let's consider a 10 rebels haven (level 1 and no faceless for simplicity). It's not a small just-contacted haven and no faceless means you've already ran some Rendezvous missions so it's actually a good, thought not super strong haven. That haven generates 10 "Mission Intel" every 6 hours, 40 per day.
  For simplicity, let's also consider both Activities spawn with a duration of 10 days, somewhere in the middle.
  • You can start detecting the common mission almost immediately, the pool of 5 "Mission Intel" is full after the first 6 hours following the start of the Activity.
  • You need to wait 3 days and 6 hours to start detecting the Facility Lead mission (the mission only have ≈7 days left - I think you can't really detect if you are just at the threshold, you need to be above, thus the additional 6 hours) At that point you have 130 "Mission Intel" in the pool of the regular mission which requires only 5 so your chance to detect it is 35×(130-5)/100 ≈ 44% (if you haven't detected it yet). The Facility Lead mission also have 130 "Mission Intel" but for a pool of 120 so your chance to detect it is 17×(130-120)/100 = 1.7%
  • 3 more days will bring the duration down to only a meager 4 days to infiltrate. If you haven't detected the regular mission at that point you now have 82% chance to detect it. The Facility Lead mission now have a reasonable but still small 20% chance to be detected!
  • Of course your actual chance to have detected both missions before the 4 days reasonable limit (less than that and you probably won't try to infiltrate) is higher than 82% or 20% since you roll for rising chances every 6 hours but you get the picture.

I am now in Dec, missions are incredibly difficult now, I don't feel at all confident running a stealth squad. I think this campaign is on the cusp of failing. I didn't realise science was so important in Long War 2. Vanilla was a joke, I never built a lab once! In this campaign I only just built a lab and it's Dec!

It's too late to assemble it from scratch but not too late if you have the required soldiers. The idea for a stealth squad on Hack or recover missions is :

• Shinobi Officer (2nd Lt is enough) with Oscar Mike and Command, full stealth built.
• Specialist with an Emergency Life Support PCS.
• If you can stay hidden and wait for the evac, good for your specialist, if you can't just stand with your specialist where the evac will spawn and keep the shinobi hidden. The specialist will be "killed" but will have 6 turns of bleedout guaranteed. This should be more than enough for the evac to spawn and your shinobi can now move in, grab his comrade and evac. Enjoy your AWC resting time
• The overdrive serum can be invaluable with a large boost to mobility, it costs only 3 supplies to produce one unit.

Yes, research is very important. If you want more help to try and manage your campaign i suggest you open a new thread (even all this facility discussion was a bit out of place here) and give more details such as AVATAR level, your research state, your difficulty, how may regions you have liberated, how many network towers you have uncovered, captured ...

[Rikokrates]

Wow, thanks for the comprehensive breakdown! Very useful indeed, facility leads seem very hard to proc! It also taught me it's useful to have advisors in regions even if you are just running intel jobs.

Thanks for all the help, I actually started a new campaign yesterday, I was running a mission and a gatekeeper spawn as a rnf.... 7 armour!