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Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2018 3:17 pm
by Nunya
I'm an experienced Xcom player (all versions, including DOS versions) and played LW1 a lot. Decided to try LW2. On recruit level as I like to play easy mode until I understand how the mod progresses. I am fairly early into my campaign.

Have made contact with 3 regions (All of Africa), but can not seem to obtain Advent Officer to research and advance the story line. I did have an Officer corpse in my inventory after the very first mission, and even though Tygan says the corpse is in the freezer, they must not have told him that someone dumped the corpse into the incinerator when it started to stink, as it corpse is no longer in my inventory. Based on things I have read, I need to do a mission where I do not need to evac in order to get a new corpse. Unfortunately, it seems like 99% of my mission require evac to end. So, my question is have I messed up somehow, or do I just need to be patient?

Of the 3 regions, one is at Advent Strength 2 (is higher better for me or worse?) and has one pip towards liberation. I am mainly concentrating on missions with Intel Packages, but I am not finding the blacksite. One source I read said to concentrate on those types of missions and another I read implied that this is not a good tactic. I read some more this morning and it appears I need to have 8 Haven personal (in one Haven?) on Intel. Right now, I have about 4 on Intel in each region. So, 2nd question: Does it appear I am going in the right direction and again just need to be patient, or is there more I can do?

Thank You for any help!

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2018 4:39 pm
by SonnyWiFiHr
Look at the inventory. It should be there. If not do some Supply raids or troop columns or Faceless. You can't sell it until you research it.
You can always research Advent Datapad for intel.

Liberate region for advancing the "story".
Liberation 1 , 2 ,3 ,Tower (reveal Black Site), HQ.
Liberation 1 is just Intel Mission.
Liberation 2 is VIP - Scientist, Soldier, Engineer
Liberation 3 is +1 Contact
Tower - you can't miss it
Advent Officer is for skulljack story. You can delay it.
When you reveal Black Site than you can go for Facility hunt - not before.
Importance of missions - 1st Jailbreak for rebels (mission detection )
2nd Scientist, 3rd Intel, 4th Engineer. After Blacksite detected - intel package.

Did you research Advent Trooper ? If not you will not get Advent Officer.

Strength represent difficulty- higher it goes harder mission are .

Haven of 4 is fine on easy- why so low ?. Full 13 rebels haven is not enough on Legendary do detect hard to detect missions (important ones). Put everything on intel when you try to catch some missions and scan with Avenger

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2018 5:03 pm
by Nunya
Thanks! That helps.

As I mentioned, "easy" is basically for a walk-through. Once I understand and have a solid grasp on some of the things you just posted, I will switch to "hell incarnate". I don't have a lot of game time, so it is hard to obtain a grasp of the mod itself while I am getting my butt kicked.

Yes, I have research the Advent Trooper. Problem is that I am not getting any Supply Raids, Troop Columns or Faceless hunt missions. I imagine that they will appear eventually.

The Advent Officer was in my inventory after the very first mission, but after I researched the Trooper, it disappeared. No lie. I am positive on this as this is actually my second attempt at LW2. On my first, I felt stuck by not being able to obtain an Advent Officer and started a new LW2 campaign, as I though I might have sold one I had obtained. After the introduction mission (first mission) where you do not need to evac, I check my inventory and saw the Officer (did not mistake him for a trooper). Researched trooper and noticed the ability to research the Officer was not there. Checked inventory and no Officer.

I suspect that this might be intentional so that we can not research an Officer right away and need to wait until after the first non-evac mission.

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2018 5:37 pm
by DerAva
Normally you should not be able to do the Trooper Autopsy until you complete the Officer one, so that would indicate that you completed it. What do your objectives currently say (top left corner)?

For the Faceless: are you putting soldiers as Haven Advisors into your havens? That's the only way to detect those Faceless. Troops Columns can only appear once Advent Strength in a Region is up to 4, so not yet in your case. Supply Raids will only show up if Advent thinks that it needs to send more troops in your direction. Considering that you said you only have 4 people on Intel I think you are not finding enough missions, so Vigilance (an indicator for how much of a pain in the ass you are to Advent) is not being raised.
Try to find more missions by having more rebels on Intel and scanning with the Avenger. Jailbreaks are really valuable at the start to get your Rebel numbers up. Having more people on Intel also means that you should find missions with better timers.

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2018 6:18 pm
by Nunya
I'm pretty sure I did the trooper autopsy. I can "render" a trooper.

The objectives say to autopsy an Officer. Every time I go to select new research Tygan says something about an Officer being in the freezer, but autopsying an officer is not an option.

Your hints on how to trigger the Supply Raids/Troop columns were great and exactly what I was looking for. I do not have an adviser assigned yet, but soon will. I have plenty of fighters in my main Haven (over 13), but it seems I need to put more on Intel. I'm getting plenty of missions for my 3 squads, but not the Supply raids, etc.

Looks like I am going in the right direction. The responses were great and a big help!

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2018 7:38 pm
by SonnyWiFiHr
If you want to detect hard to detect missions do not spread haven. Hunt in low Strength regions for no evac missions after you do some missions in them. Strength / number of mission done (vigilance) will spawn them. If you did 6 missions (example) in starting region Advent will reinforce region. Works for UFO and Troop columns

How many Scientist do You have ? You need two

http://www.pavonisinteractive.com/phpBB ... hp?t=23566

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:15 pm
by Nunya
I think i have 2 scientists, but could only have 1 at this stage. I'll look tonight. That is good to know that I need 2 scientists.

If I correctly understand what you are saying:

Do not do missions in multiple regions. Only do missions in one region to trigger the Supply/Troop mission. The more missions I do in a specific region, the more likely Advent will reinforce that region.

Correct?

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:51 pm
by SonnyWiFiHr
No.
Just do missions anywhere and scan after that. Missions will raise Vigilance and that is the trigger.
If number of missions (Vigilance) is bigger than Strength than Advent will send reinforcements.
Just scan for them after March 15-17. They are there. Put your full haven on Intel and do some scanning.

I don't think that you will have plenty of them on easy. There is not enough Strength on map. If bordering regions have only 1 Strength nothing gonna happen.

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2018 8:56 pm
by Nunya
Ahhh...ok. understand now. Thanks.

Yes, adjacent regions are at a strength of 1. If nothing much happens soon, I might start a new game at a higher difficulty.

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2018 3:28 pm
by SonnyWiFiHr
They will get more Strength. Strength = more troops.
Non contacted regions will send troops.
Contacted regions will receive troops. Contacted regions can send troops but you must wait a long time and not do any mission.
This is not good choice for early or mid game.
Supply raid and Troop columns are not even important missions. You will get them naturally by doing missions in regions.

If you want shitload of them concentrate most efforts on one region but be warned one Jailbreak or Scientist or Engineer or anything is far more important. This kind of missions get you stronger and supply raid is worth one good hack on lampost. That's all. If you missed one or 500.000 it is not important.

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2018 6:17 pm
by Nunya
I finally got a supply raid last night and now have an Officer that Tygan is cutting up. Was a bit surprised. Over 30 bad guys vs my 8. Did pretty well, 1 low rank soldier KIA and 1 soldier injured. Gotta love a suitable application of high explosives.

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2018 7:15 pm
by gimrah
Have a read of the Long War 2 ufopaedia. Also in the commander's quarters in the avenger there are some resources.

Sounds like you underinfiltrated that supply raid. In which case it will have more enemies and a tough command pod and you don't start with concealment. Generally do these with 5 guys vs very light or light opposition, getting to 100% infiltration with a boost. You can do it your way but on higher difficulties you may get your butt kicked.

You should mostly be running missions at 100% infiltration at ex light or very light with 5 or 6 guys.

Don't worry about officer / skulljack. The first plot arc you need to chase is liberation. It has 5 stages and will take several months. The first stage in unlabelled but will be a hack with only intel and no intel package as reward. Subsequent stages are marked as liberation. They will be tougher than other missions but are important.

In general do lots of missions to build the various rewards. That creates vigilance and makea strength rise and makes missions harder - but that's just normal. Expand to as many regions as possible until your whole roster can be out infiltrating at the same time. Have all rebels on intel in any region you want to find missions in. Recruit when everyone is busy and you can't do more missions. Supply when strength gets too high to run missions.

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2018 7:29 pm
by Psieye
Nunya wrote:I finally got a supply raid last night and now have an Officer that Tygan is cutting up. Was a bit surprised. Over 30 bad guys vs my 8. Did pretty well, 1 low rank soldier KIA and 1 soldier injured. Gotta love a suitable application of high explosives.
I am surprised to hear the Officer corpse from the Gatecrasher mission (the prologue) disappeared. Usually that's the one used for the Autopsy when it's time to do it (which then unlocks Mag-tier weapons). Still, if you weren't trying to do a Mag rush and you don't mind not unlocking Incendiaries (for the PG) quickly, then a possible alternative to get another Officer corpse: do the liberation missions - the HQ at the end of that chain is a no-evac-afterwards mission. The first full Liberation chain is typically finished around May~July, to give a sense of timing.

And yes, supply raids are typically dense in enemies (little time to infiltrate). Word of advice for the far future: when you have squads capable of farming supply trains and troop columns, exercise restraint until you've contacted every neighbour of the region you're doing that farming in. Vigiliance (which isn't displayed in-game without a mod) only decays in contacted regions. If XCOM hits Advent so hard they even took away the corpses, that makes even neighbouring regions concerned (read: raise Vigiliance). It's not nice contacting a region only to find it's already at Str 7 because you farmed corpses a couple months earlier.

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2018 10:00 pm
by Nunya
Good comments guys. Very helpful.

I had no time for infiltration on the supply run and almost aborted it. I ended up doing it with my "C" team, as my "A" & "B" teams were already infiltrating other missions. I thought of recalling them to do the supply raid, but then I thought "where's the fun in that".

I'm starting to get my mind wrapped around the intent of the game well enough. The comments in this thread have help a lot and I have been reading as much as I can on the mechanics of LW.

Thanks to All!

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2018 8:31 am
by Psieye
One other thing: be aware of how you get facility leads. Many a newbie lost a campaign because they didn't understand that the lead-giving missions are disguised to look like normal missions but with a much shorter timer.

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:53 pm
by Dwarfling
Psieye wrote:One other thing: be aware of how you get facility leads. Many a newbie lost a campaign because they didn't understand that the lead-giving missions are disguised to look like normal missions but with a much shorter timer.
Addendum: If you see a Rescue VIP mission that gives a Scientist and also an Intel Package, the Intel Package will very likely be a Facility Lead. So if you see a mission like that pop after... I dunno, May, give it priority and probably even use intel to boost. Also, those missions are more easily detected in regions with a hidden facility. You will know which ones those because they're announced when during Avatar Pip increases due to that facility. Take notes.

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2018 5:53 pm
by Nunya
Just a follow-up:

I have since liberated my first region and am about to liberate my second region. Soon, I will have a whole continent liberated. I now understand what missions to concentrate on to advance towards liberation. I have located the first Blacksite, but it may be awhile before I am able to investigate it, as the route through continents have changed and I have to make contact with about 4 regions to get to it.

So far, I am very happy with LW2 and will likely not play XCOM2 without it anymore. I am liking the very easy difficulty for my first run through, but am looking forward to trying the more difficult levels.

Thanks again for all the help.

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2018 7:51 pm
by SonnyWiFiHr
You will be surrounded by high strength regions if you liberate to much very early.

1st You will add ton of Vigilance on map. They attract Strength
2nd Every liberated region Advent will try to cut off by adding strength to neighboring regions. With more vigilance they will end up in 8+ strength regions. They will just dump Strength there.
3rd You Will get Global Threat Severe and above, the aliens gain access to a "Super Reinforcements" activity which creates twice as many Strength points.
4th Non contacted regions do not release Vigilance. Next region after your whole continent Liberation will be hard to do.

Even on Easy this is to much.
Whole world liberation have special event. Aliens will retake everything.
Wait some time and liberate world after you - build up everything

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Thu Apr 05, 2018 8:00 pm
by SpinDoctor
I've found out that 2 liberations is plenty. Three, if the timing is right and you have nothing better to do. After having done two, and setting them to supply you should be focusing on the storyline missions, not more liberations.

Like Sonny said, you will be surrounded. And crushed. I'm doing my first campaign and like you, I though the idea was about liberating regions... Nope. It's to liberate enough, to get supplies so you can win before Advent puts a boot on your neck. Or somewhere...

I started doing my 3rd lib run after raising all kinds of Hell, and Advent sent so many UFO reinforcements, that I couldn't make a move anywhere. I had a retaliation mission on a map so small that even before the mission started, my troops began saying, "we've got Advent here". Literally EVERY enemy unit could see ALL of my troops on turn one and I could see ALL of the enemies. Every single one... There was a Sectopod, looking inside the window on my haven, every rebel having a gun trained on it... It was ridiculous. And retaliations came ALL the time. I actually tried to run that mission, but it was impossible. I ended up loading another save and it loaded a normal sized map. That small map was maybe, what, 20 X 30 tiles? Any soldier could see the whole thing from corner to corner.

So anyway, I had to more or less shut every thing down and let it cool off. It was a tough time in my campaign...

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2018 9:38 am
by Psieye
There's been much advice on the bad side to liberating extra regions. Also consider what the payoff is for liberating extra regions: +20% on the supply job. That's not a lot. Sure, you're also free of mini-retals and retals (not to be confused with invasions) for working in a liberated region. But the mini-retal against the supply job is considered a boon as you feed your soldiers EXP with zero infiltration time. The mini-retal against the recruit job is more annoying but that's also the most expendable of the 3 rebel jobs so deliberately failing it while getting all your soldiers out (with EXP) is an option.

The benefits of the HQ mission itself (i.e. corpses and other resources) can be found elsewhere. When you have the midgame tech advantage and are hungry for corpses, it's good to think about how much attention you'll get a couple months later if you haven't contacted all neighbouring regions. Kiting out everyone in shiny midgame gear means you'll need to draw even more attention to buy lategame gear later.

Re: Am I going in right direction?

Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2018 12:30 pm
by SonnyWiFiHr
I was thinking more about late game Liberation. But this require to detect 4-8 Strength per month. Half of region in this case should not have even Liberation 2 completed (transit regions) and few Tower Regions (traps). But cost is very high on intel and supply job.
My current try is failing because advent reinforce new regions and move troops to my traps. So every new contact region is high vigilance / strength and more to come. This mess detection. 10 rebels + Sci can't detect doable missions and intel cost of 200 per region is screwing my research. I have no supply so research in the end is not issue.
I have to cool off Global Vigilance or I will be in 60+ legions pretty soon and then I can say goodbye to my campaign. I m not "strong" enough to jump in to 5 strength region.

My advice is keep Advent Legions at 40-44 this is max before Magnetic. Any difficulty. Hit Severe in beginning and than stop doing missions in some regions. Cool down to High. Repeat cycle if you lag behind in Alloys and Crystals.
Then in late game if you can keep Legions around 60-80 just start to liberate everything if you must. Lose few havens and extend campaign