Ambushes and Supply Raids kicking my a**

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trihero
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Re: Ambushes and Supply Raids kicking my a**

Post by trihero »

Plus it's pretty entertaining when your top sniper gets a 'graze' for 13 or 14 damage that outright kills the intended target anyway. Perks of using high-caliber weaponry, I guess?
Yup, that's why I like alpha mike foxtrot even though serial is probably a better choice. You can count on one shotting most things even if you graze.

Yeah the method I found is tedious, but it's fundamentally reliable (suppression + cover = you have very low chance to get hit, and you use grazing fire and just volume of fire to hit them in their cover), in fact I'm already exhausted of it and another supply raid came in one week after the first so it's omg again? And this is the second month T_T

I think there's a point at which you don't need to farm supply raids anymore, and that has to do with enemy composition and your economy, but that comes much later in the game. I can't really imagine this working out too well when codexes show up, or even just a bunch of yellow alert longbows would be annoying AF.
Jacke
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Re: Ambushes and Supply Raids kicking my a**

Post by Jacke »

trihero wrote:Ok, I have some insights having beaten my first 0% 10 man supply raid on legendary (it was April when it hit, forgot exactly the date). I will admit straight up I did save scum, but I'm ok with it for learning purposes and only reloaded when I made a stupid pull or whatnot, I did not micro-save scum to hit every shot possible and dodge every shot possible. It's a first learning step to figure out what the general picture is and what stupid things to avoid. My end result was 4 wounded soldiers and none dead, if that holds any weight. I never reloaded when I took a hit, nor when I missed a "sure" hit.

TLDR: half the team is gunners constantly area suppressing, learn grazing fire. Gradual siege with high cover + suppression you will win the day as long as you don't pull more than 1 pod at a time.

- I did not bring a shinobi, and I did not bring a sharpshooter. ....

- The "build" I used was 5 gunners, 2 technicals, 1 ranger, 1 specialist, 1 grenadier.
Whoa, that's quite something, dude.

In retrospect, what combo of troops should you have brought?

Making me look at my Legendary campaign currently at March 28. Have 1 LCpl Gunner with Grazing Fire. Have a Cpl Specialist but went with Overwatch build.

It's given me a lot of food for thought. Medic Specialist early. More Gunners. Changes to builds.

You wanted Hail of Bullets on your Gunners, but they were just LCpl. Problem is later in the game, there's a need for Shredder Gunners. Have 2 builds in about equal numbers? Even if Hail goes up to 5 rounds expended in 1.2? Then matched with what later skills?

Anyhoo, don't think I'll be in shape to take on something like this soon. But thanks for sharing. It's help us all.
Tuhalu
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Re: Ambushes and Supply Raids kicking my a**

Post by Tuhalu »

trihero wrote:
A 25% shot is still a 25% for a full hit and you still have the basic 10% graze band (unless you changed the number in options).
I change it to zero, forgot to mention I hate the graze band, so I suppose grazing fire is more valuable in this circumstance.

I'm not even sure what you mean if I kept the 10% graze band, because a 25% shot is a 15% for a full hit with a 20% for a graze, but whatever. I thought 10% is the half-width of the graze band unless I completely misunderstood how it works.
I'm not 100% sure about the graze band myself. It could on a 25% hit that 10% graze makes it 15-35% is a graze or it could be 20-30% is a graze or it could be 25-35% is a graze. I haven't poked into their code and the ini doesn't really explain it that I can see.
trihero wrote:
I've found that the game loves to put you at one end of the convoy and usually on the side with the least room. I try to rush to the wider side of the convoy using starting concealment and then search that side for good cover/elevations at either end of the convoy. It takes a long damn time to get setup, but once I have, I can be sure that the aliens are going to be walking into a deathtrap rather than the other way around :)
How do you accomplish this with the massive ayy detection radius/ o.O
Maybe I've just been lucky, but hugging the map edge in cover has been relatively safe. The aliens are usually two patrol moves away from revealing the tiles I want to use. So I send my shinobi over with Ghostwalker to confirm and then yellow move like a crazy man from cover to cover.
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Arcalane
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Re: Ambushes and Supply Raids kicking my a**

Post by Arcalane »

trihero wrote:
Plus it's pretty entertaining when your top sniper gets a 'graze' for 13 or 14 damage that outright kills the intended target anyway. Perks of using high-caliber weaponry, I guess?
Yup, that's why I like alpha mike foxtrot even though serial is probably a better choice. You can count on one shotting most things even if you graze.
Serial's cute and all but late-game most enemies are tough enough that the extra firepower from AMF is preferable for oneshots. The only time I'm going to see enemies weak enough to oneshot otherwise is if they're all mid-low tier ADVENT goons, which rarely happens.

Same setup problem as Reaper, kinda.
Tuhalu wrote:
trihero wrote:
A 25% shot is still a 25% for a full hit and you still have the basic 10% graze band (unless you changed the number in options).
I change it to zero, forgot to mention I hate the graze band, so I suppose grazing fire is more valuable in this circumstance.

I'm not even sure what you mean if I kept the 10% graze band, because a 25% shot is a 15% for a full hit with a 20% for a graze, but whatever. I thought 10% is the half-width of the graze band unless I completely misunderstood how it works.
I'm not 100% sure about the graze band myself. It could on a 25% hit that 10% graze makes it 15-35% is a graze or it could be 20-30% is a graze or it could be 25-35% is a graze. I haven't poked into their code and the ini doesn't really explain it that I can see.
This Thread (link) has a visual breakdown or two showing how it works.
trihero
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Re: Ambushes and Supply Raids kicking my a**

Post by trihero »

You don't really have that much luxury in terms of troops early on to bring an "optimal" build to the first supply raid due to GTS taking 14 days to make then 10 days to convert rookies, so I think the dudes I took was a fairly reasonable representation of what the suppression-style creeping looks like that early in the game. The more gunners/technicals the better.

I don't learn hail of bullets on everyone; right now I have 8 gunners on my roster. I plan to make 2 of them shredders. Mutons/mech armor is pretty annoying especially if you don't have enough grenades to spare early on.

I beat my second supply raid in the same manner; it felt much the same as the first. This time I brought a sharp + shinobi + 5 gunner + gren + tech + spec due to injuries. It went ok; the shinobi/sharp allowed me to pull one pod in a nice manner by letting me snipe the gunner out of the pod before it activated, but I had to expose the shinobi on the 4th pod, which kind of defeated the purpose for it pulling the 5th.

On my third supply raid, it had a crazy 9 day duration and I got a little tired of overwatch creeping, so I decided to send in a 6 gunner team with 95% infiltration to see what it's like. Ironically, I still think that going in 10 men at 0% is superior. With 6 ppl at 95%, I had to face down four pods of 4, and the last pod was still a pod of 8. I took 3 injuries. With 10 ppl at 100%, you'd be facing all five pods at 8, taking roughly the same number of injuries but more corpses and you level up more troops. The point is you still have to face a pod of 8 even if you get infiltration high, and it's better to face that sort of thing with 10 men than 5-6.
This Thread (link) has a visual breakdown or two showing how it works.
I already knew this, but thanks. I think the graze band discussion is a massive distraction from the strategy of supply raids here, that began with the nitpicking of a point I wasn't even wrong about.
Aildiin
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Re: Ambushes and Supply Raids kicking my a**

Post by Aildiin »

Arcalane wrote:
trihero wrote:
Plus it's pretty entertaining when your top sniper gets a 'graze' for 13 or 14 damage that outright kills the intended target anyway. Perks of using high-caliber weaponry, I guess?
Yup, that's why I like alpha mike foxtrot even though serial is probably a better choice. You can count on one shotting most things even if you graze.
Serial's cute and all but late-game most enemies are tough enough that the extra firepower from AMF is preferable for oneshots. The only time I'm going to see enemies weak enough to oneshot otherwise is if they're all mid-low tier ADVENT goons, which rarely happens.

Same setup problem as Reaper, kinda.
Tuhalu wrote:
trihero wrote:
I change it to zero, forgot to mention I hate the graze band, so I suppose grazing fire is more valuable in this circumstance.

I'm not even sure what you mean if I kept the 10% graze band, because a 25% shot is a 15% for a full hit with a 20% for a graze, but whatever. I thought 10% is the half-width of the graze band unless I completely misunderstood how it works.
I'm not 100% sure about the graze band myself. It could on a 25% hit that 10% graze makes it 15-35% is a graze or it could be 20-30% is a graze or it could be 25-35% is a graze. I haven't poked into their code and the ini doesn't really explain it that I can see.
This Thread (link) has a visual breakdown or two showing how it works.

Serial works fine but you have to team your sniper with a grenadier.

Start with the grenadier to damage enemies and shred the armor and then go to town with serial.

This two man combo can take care of an 8 man pod by themselves in late game.
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Arcalane
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Re: Ambushes and Supply Raids kicking my a**

Post by Arcalane »

Aildiin wrote:Serial works fine but you have to team your sniper with a grenadier.

Start with the grenadier to damage enemies and shred the armor and then go to town with serial.

This two man combo can take care of an 8 man pod by themselves in late game.
Thank you for that completely unnecessary giant quote. :P

Also yes, that is the 'setup problem' to which I was referring.
gimrah
Long War 2 Crew
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Re: Ambushes and Supply Raids kicking my a**

Post by gimrah »

My squad for these would always include at least one sniper, preferably two. If I'm going hang with 10 men, then maybe even three.

Sneaky shinobi is still useful for scouting. If you have a holo sharp at SGT with phantom, that's even better because he can do something useful while stealthed.

You need crowd control: support grenadier can be pretty useful. Gunners are essential, providing crowd control as well as killing.

Shooty rangers for killing stuff.

Specialist is nice if he's a good hacker, otherwise probably unnecessary - unless you built a medic, in which case that might be quite handy.

Assaults are bad because you can't move about without activating. Technicals ditto for flamethrower and the rocket will draw every enemy on the map because it's so loud.
moroniccinamun
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Re: Ambushes and Supply Raids kicking my a**

Post by moroniccinamun »

Welp, OP here after things went on a massive tangent.

I have started a new game, rookie difficulty. Things are going well, almost liberated first region. Then I do an ambush and the Viper King shows up, total fucking squad wipe every time, no matter what.

I'm thinking I might have to start again and disable the dlc (I'm not even sure how). The Viper King is ridiculously too strong, meanwhile all the items it adds with the exception of the axe are minor upgrades at best (the pistol), hot garbage otherwise.

I don't want to shit on the hard work Pavonis did, and I try to recognize I'm a total moron and they are constrained by what Fireaxis has present, but I'm really considering just completely abandoning Xcom2 for awhile, at least until there are a few more updates live. It's not like my bug reports are noticed these days.
moroniccinamun
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Re: Ambushes and Supply Raids kicking my a**

Post by moroniccinamun »

P.S. I tried to have snipers and scouts, absolutely doesn't work on this map because the high ground is almost nonexistant and is swarming with enemies. Viper King can see through concealment a half mile away, which doesn't help at all.
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Arcalane
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Re: Ambushes and Supply Raids kicking my a**

Post by Arcalane »

moroniccinamun wrote:I'm thinking I might have to start again and disable the dlc (I'm not even sure how). The Viper King is ridiculously too strong, meanwhile all the items it adds with the exception of the axe are minor upgrades at best (the pistol), hot garbage otherwise.
You can fully disable any DLC by flipping Steam into Detail View (leftmost View icon in the Library) so that it displays Friends, Achievements, DLC, etc.

Scroll down to the DLC header, then uncheck the stuff you want to uninstall.

Alternately you can right-click XCOM2, select 'Properties', go to the DLC tab, and again uncheck anything you want to uninstall.

I disabled Alien Hunters as well- the Nest was an alright setpiece but as a whole the Rulers are either too effective or a total joke. The weapons/equipment are gimmicky (although I liked the Frost Bomb) and the armour is just ridiculous. :?
gunnergoz
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Re: Ambushes and Supply Raids kicking my a**

Post by gunnergoz »

I deactivated SLG & AH DLC's as I'm still learning LW2 and have my hands full as it is. Plenty of challenge & not much missed. If I get good, I can always play a Glutton for Punishment game with them on.
Manifest
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Re: Ambushes and Supply Raids kicking my a**

Post by Manifest »

moroniccinamun wrote: I have started a new game, rookie difficulty. Things are going well, almost liberated first region. Then I do an ambush and the Viper King shows up, total fucking squad wipe every time, no matter what.
What month/year?
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