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Is there any need for intel in a liberated zone or can you go full supply here?

Want Missions & reasonable Infiltration times for your squads? You need Intel anywhere you wish for more -- including near Liberated regions.

Here's what i'd suggest as a test.. go to each of your havens and place all Rebels on the Intel task. Keep sending the Avenger to various areas & scan there for awhile (it's equal to four more Rebels on Intel)... and watch your Geoscape explode with multiple simultaneous Missions.

The trick here is to find a balanced approach to your global needs (Jobs can get prioritized by quantities) while maintaining a good grasp over Advent Strength values shown on any Regional Banners.

Then -- get a target Focus by selecting where to HIT first & again.. keep going.

It might be worth going Intel if you have neighboring regions that have 8 strength to try to fish out the invasion supply raid that precursors invasion, but from the numbers it is not an easy thing to detect.

Check this comprehensive Video by JoINrbs for more details on this subject ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76Px0bIe6cQ

Interesting video. If I understand all of you correctly, the only reason to go intel in a liberated region - and the only mission you can find there - is the prelude to an invasion. Never had an invasion so far. Is it worth to catch the precursing supply raid? Will it make the invasion more manageable?

Undershaft wrote:Interesting video. If I understand all of you correctly, the only reason to go intel in a liberated region - and the only mission you can find there - is the prelude to an invasion. Never had an invasion so far. Is it worth to catch the precursing supply raid? Will it make the invasion more manageable?

I did some math for this in a different thread - the short answer is it takes too many rebels on intel to have a reasonable chance to catch an invasion supply raid. With 1-2 rebels on intel you have virtually 0 chance to catch hit in time. You need 6 rebels on intel to have a roughly 70% chance of catching a supply raid before the invasion hits, and this doesn't break down how much actual time you have to intercept it, you might have to go in at 0% which can be just as bad as the invasion itself. You probably need those rebels on supplies. Invasions aren't the end of the world; you can collect corpses and they are on some kind of cooldown (after I beat one, I actually haven't seen one in 3 months even though I have adjacent regions with alert 10).

All retaliation missions have a precursor mission - if you beat it, the retaliation mission won't be activated at all.

Beating the supply raid will basically render void the coming invasion. And you do want to play the Raid mission instead of the Invasion one.

8wayz wrote:All retaliation missions have a precursor mission - if you beat it, the retaliation mission won't be activated at all.

Beating the supply raid will basically render void the coming invasion. And you do want to play the Raid mission instead of the Invasion one.

No, mini-retaliation missions do not have a precursor. Only the "regular" retaliations have a precursor (destroy the relay).

And you might not want to play a 0% supply raid mission, especially late in the game. It can be as disastrous or worse than the invasion. Beating the invasion also reduces strength by 2 points that I've seen.

When do you get "Haven Evacuation" missions and when "Stop the Massacre" ones, btw?
Is the Evacuation a detectable precursor to the Massacre?

Haven evac (stall for the skyranger to come) /stop the massacre (similar to vanilla retaliation) are two variants of the retaliation mission. Either one happens or the other. I don't know the precise conditions for a retaliation, but I do know it requires at least 5 working rebels in a region, and I think it requires advent strength (alert) level 4 or 5 at minimum. It also becomes more likely as strength goes up.

They are both detectable via a "prevent the dataleak" mission which involves destroying an alien relay.

Hey trihero,

What do you understand by mini-retaliation ?

To my knowledge all 5 ( 3 for each job and the 2 variants of Haven attack) retaliation types have а precursor.

Doing Supply raids is not bad if you have the proper team set up for them. But going at 0 means special soldiers/ equipment need to be at hand if you want to have a chance to get out of there alive.

8wayz wrote:Hey trihero,

What do you understand by mini-retaliation ?

To my knowledge all 5 ( 3 for each job and the 2 variants of Haven attack) retaliation types have precursor.

Doing Supply raids is not bad if you have the proper team set up for them. But going at 0 means special soldiers/ equipment need to be at hand if you want to have a chance to get out of there alive.

I've never seen the pre-cursor for the job specific (mini-retal) ones. I've only seen precursors for the regular (2 variety) attack.

You can see from this list here there is no precursor for the job specific (mini-retal) missions, they just show up and you have 24 hours to respond to it

http://ufopaedia.org/index.php/Advent%27s_Agenda_(LW2)

Hi trihero,

Well, that table is hardly finished. Will look at the files and try to update it.

From personal experience I ignored a Dataleak mission in my starting region and just hours later an Intel raid started. So all retaliation missions have a precursor to them.

8wayz wrote:Hi trihero,

Well, that table is hardly finished. Will look at the files and try to update it.

From personal experience I ignored a Dataleak mission in my starting region and just hours later an Intel raid started. So all retaliation missions have a precursor to them.

Nope, every time I let a dataleak go, a normal retaliation occurs. I can never prevent miniretals. So mini-retals do not have a precursor to them.

Intel allows you to stop reinforcements coming into the region and launching the invasion... Which I forgot to set up West Asia to do and I am now facing invasion.

It takes too many rebels to reliably detect the supply raid precursor, and you may have to do it at 0% infiltration which I don't think is necessarily a better idea than the invasion itself.

trihero wrote:It takes too many rebels to reliably detect the supply raid precursor, and you may have to do it at 0% infiltration which I don't think is necessarily a better idea than the invasion itself.

It only takes 4-6. An invasion forces you forward constantly which is the most dangerous thing XCOM can do in a fight, supply raids are fought on your terms, no provisional government to protect, no relay. Just kill, maim, burn.

As I demonstrated in another thread, 6 rebels only gets you the precursor mission 70% of the time, and I don't think 0% supply raids are in the interest of your health at the point in the game invasions start happening because of the nasty types of enemies that spawn.

So what you are doing is sacrificing half your supply income in a not-so-consistent way to trade an invasion for a 0% supply raid. Don't blame me if I'm not excited by that proposition.

So I just had my first Invasion mission. I think I got quite lucky with my map spawns. The map was tiny with the Alien Relay well with sight of my starting position and most of the civvies spawned clustered around my dudes.

The mission also literally began with me being surrounded on all sides by aliens. Luckily my first move was grappling my Shinobi to a ledge which allowed me to see four pods. Moving my soldiers 2 squares in almost any direction would've triggered one of the pods.

One of the pods was either a pod of 8 or two pods standing together. In any case, it had a blue MEC, Muton Elite, Muton, 2 Codice and some random Advent and it was on my flank so it had to go. My Holo Sniper multi-targeted them. Rapid deployment of Sting grenade managed to Stun most of them. Next was a Overdrive Shredstorm from my Spark. Finished off with a Street Sweeper from my Assault.

Then I move my support grenadier to get a better angle to throw another Sting on a pod of 3 MECs, which instead triggered a pod of 4 led by a Sectopod which I totally did not see. Sting grenade again saved the day by Stunning the Sectopod and some Advent. Moving my other grenadier who was demo spec'd to cover triggered the pod of 3 MECs I was originally going to target next. One of them jumped on the roof and luckily came in sight of my Specialist who managed to Hack Control it with a 68% Full Override. The other two ate a plasma grenade, a Spark shot and bombard and a Chain Shot from my gunner. Rapid fire from my Ranger and a shot from my DFA Sniper took care of a Shieldbearer who was with the Sectopod. That was freaking turn one.

On the alien's turn, 2 pods of Chrysalids each lead by a giant Chrysalid soldier showed up and an Advent pod of 3 who were guarding the Alien Relay got triggered and moved in. Massive applications of plasma grenades, shredder guns and shots from my Gunner/Ranger/Snipers took care of most of them along with the Stunned Sectopod.

On turn 3 I finished off the stragglers and started having my Snipers take shots at the Alien Relay. On turn 4 the Reinforcement warning sounded, but my two Snipers killed the Relay and the mission ended. Mission ended in 4 turns with 23 aliens killed and most of my men didn't move more than a blue move from their starting position. Intense as fuck but I don't think I want to do it again.

As noted, the Invasion mission is not something you would like to dabble with, mostly because of the reinforcement waves (and the crazy pods you see there).

A Supply raid mission is always preferable.

You can keep 4 men on Intel and 9 on Supplies. This should still give you a good 50% chance to detect the Supply raid and try to stop it.

Even better if those 4 men are level 3 Operatives.

Think of it this way - the time that soldiers will spend in the med bay being wounded after an invasion takes place they can spend on some extra missions that might not only bring you supplies, but weapon mods, Elerium cores and corpses.

As noted, the Invasion mission is not something you would like to dabble with, mostly because of the reinforcement waves (and the crazy pods you see there).

0% supply raids are not something you want to dabble with at that point in the game. You can watch xwynn's most recent upload which was a legendary invasion, and he did just fine (no one died). I doubt he would have done well on a 0% supply raid with 50+ mobs. The invasion was only barely 30'ish.

I'll just have to keep repeating this point over and over.

Just because you detect the supply raid doesn't mean you will have favorable infiltration.

Think about it this way: are you going to take more losses against five-six 8 man pods, or scattered 3/4 man pods as you see in xwynn's play through?

I'm a little bit lost as to why you think 4 rebels on intel would give you a favorable trade; 50% of the time you missed the supply raid anyways so you just literally sacrificed income to do absolutely nothing, and the other 50% of the time you are facing a tougher mission. Seems like a really bad deal to me. I think in your head you have overestimated invasions and underestimated supply raids with low days remaining, at that stage in the game.

I just wish some of these stories included the difficulty level and whether there were any significant mods added in. Some of the tech sounds like stuff you wouldn't have until late in the game, while the threats were ones that would come much earlier.