Would you say that never trying a supply or troops convoy under 50% is fair, compared to the potential abuse of running them at 0%?
If not, what are your house rules, if any on these ones. I do believe that running them at 0% are breaking the strategic game, although I'm only playing at veteran/ironman level.
Playing it 'fair' (supply/troops convoy)
Re: Playing it 'fair' (supply/troops convoy)
My house rules -- no underinfiltrated supply raids. V/I.
I just started researching coil weapons and to do it I had to buy Alloys from the Black Market. I've been running every Troop Column as they arrive, but they only give 9 or 10 alloys, which is enough for at most 2 predator armors, let alone anything else.
Provided you're not abusing 0% supply raids lack of alloys are an EPIC choke-point that basically prevents gearing up much of anything beyond your A-Team. My B-Team has enough equipment that I feel mostly comfortable sending them on a mission, but C and D have fallen far behind.
I just started researching coil weapons and to do it I had to buy Alloys from the Black Market. I've been running every Troop Column as they arrive, but they only give 9 or 10 alloys, which is enough for at most 2 predator armors, let alone anything else.
Provided you're not abusing 0% supply raids lack of alloys are an EPIC choke-point that basically prevents gearing up much of anything beyond your A-Team. My B-Team has enough equipment that I feel mostly comfortable sending them on a mission, but C and D have fallen far behind.
Re: Playing it 'fair' (supply/troops convoy)
Supply raids I stopped doing after I managed to pickup a squad of MSGTs before the end of May. It doesn't just break the strategy layer and the economy, it breaks the whole damn game.
Troop columns on the other hand are actually something your meant to do. Let's look at the differences between the missions.
A 'Reinforce' mission is happening in response to your activities. It can happen at any alert or vigilance level and is most likely to happen when vigilance is high next to regions with available strength. This is how advent moves troops on the map. This mission has no cooldown but only one can be up at a time. It spawns with a 7-14 day timer. It takes 10 RebelLevels 1.5 days to even start detecting and would have a 3% detection chance increasing by 0.5% every 6 hours. By the 7 day mark the chance of detecting it is 14%. This is why they are often detected at fairly low infiltration times. They also pack a +3 alert modifier giving them an extra 3-6 aliens on the mission regardless of infil.
A 'TroopManeuvers' mission on the other hand spawns within a region between 4 to 15 strength and <= 15 vigilance. It has a cooldown of 18 to 24.5 days. This means you can only do roughly 1 per region per supply month. It spawns with a 9 to 12 day timer. It becomes detectable almost immediately after it spawns by even 1 rebel level. With 10 rebel levels the detection chance increase by 2.5% every 6 hours or 10% per day. It also adds a 0.5% detection chance per alert level in the region. On top of that it reduces the base infiltration time by 24 hours.
The Reinforce mission is obviously meant to be something that is not something you would do often if ever within a campaign. They are super hard to detect with reasonable time and come with an increased alert. The troop maneuver is the opposite. Great detection chance and an infiltration bonus. It is 'controlled' by giving it a hefty cooldown. Reinforce has no cooldown, which is why JoINrbs was able to do about a dozen of them in 2 months in the early game. That's more of a Legend issue that is caused by Legend having so much strength on the map, lower difficulties still have Reinforce missions but not at that frequency.
Personally, I don't do Reinforce at all. For troop maneuvers I'll base the infil time on how many I can send. I don't really go off infiltration times for these I use activity level instead as those are only loosely related. It depends on how many guys I can send.
Troop columns on the other hand are actually something your meant to do. Let's look at the differences between the missions.
A 'Reinforce' mission is happening in response to your activities. It can happen at any alert or vigilance level and is most likely to happen when vigilance is high next to regions with available strength. This is how advent moves troops on the map. This mission has no cooldown but only one can be up at a time. It spawns with a 7-14 day timer. It takes 10 RebelLevels 1.5 days to even start detecting and would have a 3% detection chance increasing by 0.5% every 6 hours. By the 7 day mark the chance of detecting it is 14%. This is why they are often detected at fairly low infiltration times. They also pack a +3 alert modifier giving them an extra 3-6 aliens on the mission regardless of infil.
A 'TroopManeuvers' mission on the other hand spawns within a region between 4 to 15 strength and <= 15 vigilance. It has a cooldown of 18 to 24.5 days. This means you can only do roughly 1 per region per supply month. It spawns with a 9 to 12 day timer. It becomes detectable almost immediately after it spawns by even 1 rebel level. With 10 rebel levels the detection chance increase by 2.5% every 6 hours or 10% per day. It also adds a 0.5% detection chance per alert level in the region. On top of that it reduces the base infiltration time by 24 hours.
The Reinforce mission is obviously meant to be something that is not something you would do often if ever within a campaign. They are super hard to detect with reasonable time and come with an increased alert. The troop maneuver is the opposite. Great detection chance and an infiltration bonus. It is 'controlled' by giving it a hefty cooldown. Reinforce has no cooldown, which is why JoINrbs was able to do about a dozen of them in 2 months in the early game. That's more of a Legend issue that is caused by Legend having so much strength on the map, lower difficulties still have Reinforce missions but not at that frequency.
Personally, I don't do Reinforce at all. For troop maneuvers I'll base the infil time on how many I can send. I don't really go off infiltration times for these I use activity level instead as those are only loosely related. It depends on how many guys I can send.
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