Haven management strategy

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chaosxxxxx
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Haven management strategy

Post by chaosxxxxx »

Hi,i am just about to begin my first HQ assault,on veteran.Provided that i succeed,and liberate the region,what should i do next?Up until now,i had all my rebels on intel duty,and as a result,was really,really struggling for supplies.It's almost June,i managed to get laser weps for most of my A team,but that's pretty much it.My proving grounds is sitting idle as well,since i just do not have the supplies,pretty stocked on everything else though.My current income -50 (minus fifty),and it has never reached positive figures.And no,there are no faceless among my rebels,i managed to kill all of em on rendezvous. So,after liberation,i was planning to put all my rebels on supply duty,along with an engineer to make sure i make the most bucks,cause god knows how much i need them.
My questions are,
(1)what could be the possible consequences if i do that?How likely am i to trigger a retaliation?
(2)Does radio relay boost income,like vanilla?
(3)Is there any reason to not liberate a region?
(4)Is there any better way to get a hefty stream of supplies? (not counting raid,since its random,with drastically reduce infiltration time,even with everyone on intel duty;and can turn into a complete clusterf*** in the blink of an eye)
Feel free to provide spoiler information.I have no intention to spend 70-80 hours in a game,and then failing due to missing out a single piece of info.
Thanks in advance,and thanks Pavonis for this Gem that has taken an already awesome game to legendary level...
Tuhalu
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by Tuhalu »

Put them all on supplies for at least the first month. Past that, you can leave them on supplies until at least once adjacent region has 8 Advent Strength. At this point they have the strength to launch an invasion and you may want to be able to stop it through Intel. Or you could just keep pumping Supplies.

You also have the option to pump Recruiting, because a Liberated region has a chance to recruit Scientists or Engineers. Probably not the best choice if you are cash starved though.

I believe a radio tower makes every job in the region 20% more effective. 20% more money, 20% more mission research (intel) or 20% more recruiting speed.
Jacke
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by Jacke »

Since 1.1 fixed the Faceless spies eating all supplies, I find it best to put one or two rebels on supplies. Even on Legendary, start with researching Resistance Comms first and get a 2nd zone. 1 to 2 rebels each, total 3 to 4 supplies will keep you at least slightly positive. Putting rebels on Intel gets you missions as well as accumulates Intel for the 80 you need to contact a third zone. I've avoided spending Intel to boost infiltration as getting that third zone is so vital to getting the resistance established. Sell the excess in loot and corpses at the Black Market as well as having Engineers excavate the Avenger for early supplies to keep going. By the point you're getting to the end of that, you should be able to liberate your first zone.
trihero
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by trihero »

(1)what could be the possible consequences if i do that?How likely am i to trigger a retaliation?
(2)Does radio relay boost income,like vanilla?
(3)Is there any reason to not liberate a region?
(4)Is there any better way to get a hefty stream of supplies? (not counting raid,since its random,with drastically reduce infiltration
1) Retals can occur when advent strength hits 4. The regular retal requires a minimum of 5 working rebels, and has a precursor "destroy the alien relay" to preventa dataleak mission that avoids the retaliation if you succeed in it. The mini (job specific) retal requires a minimum of 6 of the specific type of job to trigger, but this minimum goes down with each faceless you have working on that specific job. Mini-retals cannot be detected before they hit, and the intel one is incredibly annoying hopefully it gets fixed. Once you hit the minimum, there's a dice roll for it to happen every so often; I don't know the exact chance but it seems to happen pretty frequently as long as you hit the minimum.

2) not directly, it bumps the output of all the jobs by 20% in the haven and reduces contact costs based on distance to relay

3) it may not be worth the risk on higher difficulties when advent strength is high. Infiltrating the HQ with a lot of men can take a couple weeks as well.

4) you make money mostly through rebels on supplies, or selling corpses. Occasionally sure a mission offers supplies as a reward or you get a hack reward, but those are infrequent. If you find it hard to liberate many regions, you can try contacting a bunch of regions and putting 4 rebels on supplies, rest hiding. This avoids retaliations in those areas (provided you weed out any faceless) thus securing you a trickle of income that is better with the more regions you contact, and you can only manage 2-3 regions with a lot of intel anyways in terms of sending men on missions.
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Devon_v
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by Devon_v »

ADVENT can't retaliate in liberated regions. They can only invade. Any rebel not doing something is a total waste at that point.

I wouldn't bank on trying to detect the invasion, I'd try to actively draw ADVENT away from adjacent regions, or focus on running Troop Column Ambushes there so that it never happens.
chaosxxxxx
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by chaosxxxxx »

Thanks all of you for your kind responses... :D
I had another small question which i don't think is worth another forum thread.
What exactly is it that "engineering research" do?
Does it lessen the amount of stuff required to build items in proving grounds?
Or is it like a spare engineer?
Also,is it worth doing?
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8wayz
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by 8wayz »

The Engineering and Basic research just lowers the Scientists/Engineers requirements for projects and items.

In general you are likely to get more than enough Engineers and Scientists, but you for some reason you have just 2-3 from one group of them, the extra research might be worth doing.
rookie.one
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by rookie.one »

as far as i know that research also slightly lowers the research time (basicly adds another scienbtist towards reserch time if you do basic research) or very slightly for proving grounds (like 10% time decrease for the 1st time you research it, diminishing afterwards).

so basicly both are not really worth doing. if you liberate multiple regions, you get enough scientists, aswell as there is always the blackmarket. besides that, you're pretty much done by december with all research projects, so no need for basic.

similar reasoning for engineering research. you don't need that early on as you won't have proving grounds anyways. late in the campaign you might want to research that if you dont have the resources for the next important one, have enough intel so you don't need to research datapads etc.
Tuhalu
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by Tuhalu »

The science repeatable is OK depending on timing. Sometimes you'll just have nothing better to do and it does get your science done faster overall. The engineering one is pretty useless since it literally just lowers the Engineers requirement on Proving Ground projects by 1 and if you don't have 5 Engineers by the time you need 5 Engineers for certain projects, you are probably losing anyway.
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Devon_v
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by Devon_v »

Tuhalu wrote:The science repeatable is OK depending on timing. Sometimes you'll just have nothing better to do and it does get your science done faster overall. The engineering one is pretty useless since it literally just lowers the Engineers requirement on Proving Ground projects by 1 and if you don't have 5 Engineers by the time you need 5 Engineers for certain projects, you are probably losing anyway.
You can lose engineers in combat on retals. Edge case, but it can happen.
Tuhalu
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by Tuhalu »

Devon_v wrote:
Tuhalu wrote:The science repeatable is OK depending on timing. Sometimes you'll just have nothing better to do and it does get your science done faster overall. The engineering one is pretty useless since it literally just lowers the Engineers requirement on Proving Ground projects by 1 and if you don't have 5 Engineers by the time you need 5 Engineers for certain projects, you are probably losing anyway.
You can lose engineers in combat on retals. Edge case, but it can happen.
Sure, but you kind of need Engineers in the Avenger supplying enough work to handle the Power Plants, Resistance Comms and Proving Grounds. Unless 5 engineer PGs come earlier than that?
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Devon_v
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by Devon_v »

Tuhalu wrote:
Devon_v wrote:
Tuhalu wrote:The science repeatable is OK depending on timing. Sometimes you'll just have nothing better to do and it does get your science done faster overall. The engineering one is pretty useless since it literally just lowers the Engineers requirement on Proving Ground projects by 1 and if you don't have 5 Engineers by the time you need 5 Engineers for certain projects, you are probably losing anyway.
You can lose engineers in combat on retals. Edge case, but it can happen.
Sure, but you kind of need Engineers in the Avenger supplying enough work to handle the Power Plants, Resistance Comms and Proving Grounds. Unless 5 engineer PGs come earlier than that?
Pretty sure you only need 4 to keep the Avenger going, so if the RNG hates you you might have sent your 5th out to gather supplies.

I'm pretty sure some of these features are artefacts from earlier iterations of the mod though.
shhfiftyfive
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by shhfiftyfive »

trihero wrote: If you find it hard to liberate many regions, you can try contacting a bunch of regions and putting 4 rebels on supplies, rest hiding. This avoids retaliations in those areas (provided you weed out any faceless) thus securing you a trickle of income that is better with the more regions you contact, and you can only manage 2-3 regions with a lot of intel anyways in terms of sending men on missions.
that sounds like a really great plan.

but don't you want every possible haven on intel until they are liberated, even if you do not have enough squads to go on all the missions, just for the extra chance of finding missions that will counter dark events and such?
trihero
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by trihero »

That's a really good observation shftityfive, here's my response:

You can't have everything. If you're interested in countering dark events, then you should have people on intel. It might help to read this information about dark events

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4_jI6 ... dya3M/view

For me, yes absolutely if there's a region I intend to liberate, I keep all rebels on intel there and I don't care about how many rebels there are. I will accept the risk of mini-retals, because the intel rebels will find troop ambushes, dark events, etc. In fact, some dark events are only researched in areas where you have spiked the vigilance high enough (look in the table with the missions, you see that strategic dark events can only be built in regions with vigilance >=3).

If you want a peaceful/quiet supply intake, then your expansion regions can be just 4 rebels supplies and leave it at that. But I do like to keep 2-3 regions "intel hot" so I can counter dark events and just in general send my guys on missions to get experience.

You can also consider doing something like 4 rebels intel 4 rebels supplies in expansion regions (initially start 4 recruit to get enough rebels). The magic number 4 allows you to avoid mini-retaliations (which are really annoying and undetectable), but when you have 5+ working rebels total it is possible that normal retaliations can now occur. However at the least, normal retaliations have the possibility of being detected (the precursor mission is a very simple kill the relay mission which is easily accomplished by sharpshooter/shinobi).
shhfiftyfive
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by shhfiftyfive »

so 5 is a magic number with no ways around it?
is there really no benefit to the "hiding" job when it comes to the magic number 5?
is 5 on supply/intel/recruit with 0 hiding
the same as
5 working and 10 hiding?

meaning, in either case, you're at 5 active workers, so you can trigger retaliations, regardless of the game saying that hiding helps counter balance suspicion or w/e.



also, you say vigil 3. the "vigil" is not something we can see a readout of in game, is it? just a part of a formula, i read in the wiki, but in game its just not visible...
trihero
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by trihero »

With respect to normal retaliations, 5 working rebels is the minimum required for the enemy to launch retaliations (they also must have advent strength level 4, as well).

With respect to mini-retaliations (intel/supply/recruit), actually 6 is the minimum required on that particular job.

If you don't want to deal with any types of retaliations, then 4 working rebels is the maximum magic number. No way around it.

But in fact, there is one exception which works against you, which is faceless lower the minimum number for the mini-retals (not the normal ones). It is possible to get a mini-retal with 4 rebels on supplies for instance if 2 of them are faceless, hence another reason why you should weed out faceless asap.

Vigilance isn't visible unfortunately.

The too long didn't read version is: if you have too many regions to manage, then organize them in your mind into regions you can handle, and regions you can't handle. The regions you can handle, should have majority intel in order to catch liberation and dark events. The regions you can't handle, just set 4 rebels to supplies rest hide and leave them be. You won't get retaliated (unless you have too many faceless) in those regions and you will get a steady income.
shhfiftyfive
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by shhfiftyfive »

understood.

i've started out doing pretty good finding jailbreaks with 4-6 personnel as reward. at least for some of my regions. i had been going with pure intel with all regions to start, then 3 supply +10 intel when i had enough. but now i'm going to switch it up because i can't defend everything at once. mostly i'm still trying to get enough supply to afford research and gear for more than 1 squad.

also, i need to rebuild my haven at my 1st region, because i skipped the "prevent data leak" mission and then the following retal was going to be a total loss so i just ignored it and let it go... wiped it out. but good news is my advisor who worked there got captured, and i just got an easy mission to go save her now...

but its really a bummer that so many dark events happen per month. i think i found and stopped 3 last month, and i had 2 activated on top of those because there wasn't enough time to counter them... and it feels like sometimes i can't do anything with my squads except counter... like most of the month.

now if i go with A LOT less intel workers (maybe 4 instead of 10, because the advent strength is so high already), i wonder if i will be in worse shape down the road for the change..

i mean... i just made contact with a new region, and it started at 7 advent strength... so i don't think i'll be doing any jailbreaks there any time soon. and yet i feel that place will be bad news if i don't get some intel there asap. idk.

at least now i am at a point where i feel i can pick and choose missions, because i no longer need engineers/scientists rewards. now i just need supplies and i can focus manpower on liberation chains (and counters). intel currency is becoming low now though. we'll see. i haven't been able to do any supply raids (short timer). only a few troop columns, but the loot was pretty mediocre.

but for supply raid, i guess some people load up max squad size and don't care about infil or # of enemies, because they can spam overwatch in spawn all day. idk.



does anyone have a favorite soldier class for the haven advisor role, and for the squad officer role? i'm kinda stuck, because i like ranger for both roles, which means i need to get a lot more rangers... although, my opinion might change if rendezvous do not bring any exotic enemies... if its just the same old advent corpses that i find less use for, become less important, then i can just bring w/e and blow stuff up in rendezvous.

also, i guess i should NOT put a soldier advisor in a haven unless it has more than a few rebels staffed there. i just had a mission where my advisor had 2 rebels, so it was 3v6 or something. i had to save scum it.
trihero
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by trihero »

but its really a bummer that so many dark events happen per month. i think i found and stopped 3 last month, and i had 2 activated on top of those because there wasn't enough time to counter them... and it feels like sometimes i can't do anything with my squads except counter... like most of the month.
Well my short reply is that in the next patch (1.2) they are making some dark events easier to counter, and some dark events just weaker out right. The devs know dark events feel punishing overall. So help is on the way. :D
also, i guess i should NOT put a soldier advisor in a haven unless it has more than a few rebels staffed there. i just had a mission where my advisor had 2 rebels, so it was 3v6 or something. i had to save scum it.
Here's a little trick for if you get an "unbeatable" rendezvous - start the mission, but then immediately evac it. The faceless will be gone from your haven. It's actually an intended mechanism...the idea being you saw who the faceless are so they can't return. The cost is you don't get exp/loot/corpses obviously, but if the intent is just to hunt faceless, then it's a 100% safe way to get rid of them with a 1 or 2 man squad. So you should ALWAYS have a soldier advisor in a haven even if he's by himself.
shhfiftyfive
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by shhfiftyfive »

yeah, dark events are absolute garbage now. even be game breaking. i just now had advent complete 3 more new ones (2 Tactical) all back to back in about 3 days time, and a 4th one pending which i learned a counter mission... with a whopping 1 day left to infiltrate... what a great use of 5 intel, right! this is soul crushing... i want to liberate, but right now the advent are so strong it seems like suicide with these events active. and now a UFO is hunting me and idk if i can dodge him for a month or w/e. hope he despawns maybe.

does having 5+ haven workers contribute to increasing regional advent strength? or is is strictly used to grow chance for retaliations?
trihero
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by trihero »

Well just so you know, the tactical events generally affect a low % of enemies. Like the explosive armor thing only affects something like 1/6 officers/avatars/grenadiers. And they are getting even weaker than this in the next patch. The UFO is also getting nerfed to only chase you for 14 days instead of a month.

The number of workers you have only directly is checked for retaliations. Advent strength is a complicated mess but does not directly look at number of rebels working; the easiest way to affect it (raise it) is to successfully complete missions in the area. This is the most obvious way to raise it super fast. There are no obvious ways to decrease it other than to do supply raids/liberation/troop ambush. Hiding rebels or having less rebels alone with no other factors, does nothing to affect advent strength. There are other factors I've noticed like

- if you put a radio relay in a region, it seems to attract more strength than other regions even if you aren't doing missions
- if the blacksite/forge is in a region, it seems to attract more strength in general than just other random regions where you aren't doing things
- neighboring regions to "hot" regions get strong because they are trying to transfer troops, and also the UFO reinforcements hit two adjacent regions at once
shhfiftyfive
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by shhfiftyfive »

yeah, the advent strength thing is pretty undesirable in its current form.

- like if i do kill a troop column, then the region advent strength goes down by 1... but it also gives a 50% chance that a neighboring region will go UP by 1... like.. what?! 50% chance i'm wasting my time shuffling things around, instead of liberating... idk how pavonis determines all this is required to form balance.
trihero
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by trihero »

This game isn't Risk where you are expected to crush all enemy strength down to zero. I think their goal is to simulate you a ragtag band of rebels hitting the enemy where you can but they have overwhelming numbers. They try to respond to your actions is what they're simulating, what they're not simulating is you being able to reduce advent strength reliably or at your convenience.
shhfiftyfive
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by shhfiftyfive »

yeah. its just a poor unimmersive simulation...

the xcom2 game begins years after advent have taken over Earth.. and so this new "advent strength" in LW2 is just insane... if it is supposed to be a LONG war, then it should not escalate so quickly.

thematically speaking, yes - you pop off a gatecrasher incident and all of a sudden the advent start beefing up their strength. but then then the wheels get stuck in the mud...

they keep offering you these extremely light missions that bore you to death, just to give them justification to escalate their difficulty. meanwhile they've sacrificed those missions just to keep you busy so they can complete this mysterious avatar project that ends the game. effectively, advent is baiting you with easy mission and it is boring non-story telling. they effectively turtle you and completely avoid telling a story, other than the story is: you're a sucker if you think winning missions has made any impact on their strength... it only makes them stronger.

i'd be fine with the premise, if it had some story and balance to it. i mean i felt the terror missions and exalt missions were good in EW... but here these retaliations are broken and don't tell a story... (except that "hey, this is unwinnable, try back in 6 months when this is fully baked") and if the game didn't continuously throw dark events at you to prevent you from tackling the avatar project and liberations... but then also, it isn't much of a "long" war when this is a constant race.


i mean if we're just some rebels of no real bother to the advent, then why do we cause them to escalate their strength so quickly?




i very much like the old movie Red Dawn. there was a story. why can't this game tell a good story like that??
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NoDebate
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by NoDebate »

shhfiftyfive wrote:i mean if we're just some rebels of no real bother to the advent, then why do we cause them to escalate their strength so quickly?
What it sounds like you're suggesting is a Marathon mode.

Hard to balance within the scheme of Haven management. Increased region contact times? Decreased productivity? Decreased research times (obviously). Same quantity of missions could potentially break the XP/resource economy. A lot of variables to consider over the predecessor. But, if escalating ADVENT strength is your foremost grievance, a slower paced campaign would surely remedy your issue.
Steve-O
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Re: Haven management strategy

Post by Steve-O »

shhfiftyfive wrote: they keep offering you these extremely light missions that bore you to death, just to give them justification to escalate their difficulty. meanwhile they've sacrificed those missions just to keep you busy so they can complete this mysterious avatar project that ends the game. effectively, advent is baiting you with easy mission and it is boring non-story telling. they effectively turtle you and completely avoid telling a story, other than the story is: you're a sucker if you think winning missions has made any impact on their strength... it only makes them stronger.
The obvious answer to this particular problem is "stop trying to do ALL the missions."

There are - on purpose - more missions than you're able to handle. I gather this is a large departure from vanilla (I started on LW2.) You have to pick and choose which ones are worth doing and which should be ignored, based on your current strategic objectives. You need to liberate ONE region to reveal the Avatar project timer. Liberating more than one region is optional. If you focus on contacting regions as quickly as possible (and generally moving towards your story missions - eg Blacksite) but not necessarily on trying to liberate each and every one along the way, then the story-telling aspect of the game will keep moving.

I admit it's easy to get bogged down in micro-managing havens and generally trying to win every mission you can handle. There's LOTS OF STUFF to think about. The lesson to learn in this game is how to keep your eye on the ball, so to speak.

In XCOM1 (LW), you were a boulder rolling downhill, picking up speed via research and plowing through (almost) every sign of alien activity on your way to repulsing the invasion.

In XCOM2 (LW2), the aliens have shattered the boulder, and now you're more like a shower of pebbles, raining down chaos where ADVENT is weak, looking for the chinks in their armor, and avoiding detection where they're strong. You no longer have the resources or manpower to be the boulder you once were. In order make progress, you need to spread resistance contacts across the globe quickly AND THEN decide where to strike (wherever ADVENT strength is low), instead of trying to expand slow and steady from your starting point and lock down every region as you go.

If you need to get into a region where ADVENT is strong, that's what the "Get Advent Attention" missions are for. Do one of those in a region far away and Advent should begin (slowly) moving strength that way.

At least, that's the way it seems to work for me, as I put more and more hours into the game myself. =)
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