Many thanks for improved mission balance in 1.4

[justdont]

I know it's a little bit late, but I've spend some good amount of hours on 1.4 only recently. And I have to say - now the spread between mostly-stealth and mostly-combat missions feels quite right. Not to mention that thanks to relaxed hard timers, guerilla ops can often be played as combat missions quite safely (when alert level is sufficiently high, but you have to do it anyway).

About the only thing about the mission balance that I'd like to see improved a bit - is retaliation missions. I've played all of them several times, and I find them quite nicely balanced and fitting the theme. However, seeing that retals results in player's loss most of the time, it's no wonder that many players simply avoid them completely on the strategic layer - thus making all of the effort to tune and balance them go to waste. I think that avoiding retals shouldn't be THAT easy and clear-cut as it is now, and ideally, some rare and infrequent retals should happen even if the player reassigns/hides rebels any time alert level goes above 2 and 3.

[stefan3iii]

I know it's a little bit late, but I've spend some good amount of hours on 1.4 only recently. And I have to say - now the spread between mostly-stealth and mostly-combat missions feels quite right. Not to mention that thanks to relaxed hard timers, guerilla ops can often be played as combat missions quite safely (when alert level is sufficiently high, but you have to do it anyway).

About the only thing about the mission balance that I'd like to see improved a bit - is retaliation missions. I've played all of them several times, and I find them quite nicely balanced and fitting the theme. However, seeing that retals results in player's loss most of the time, it's no wonder that many players simply avoid them completely on the strategic layer - thus making all of the effort to tune and balance them go to waste. I think that avoiding retals shouldn't be THAT easy and clear-cut as it is now, and ideally, some rare and infrequent retals should happen even if the player reassigns/hides rebels any time alert level goes above 2 and 3.

I don't think avoiding retals is obviously good? I assume you mean hiding rebels, but there is a large opportunity cost. The retals aren't too hard once you learn how to do them. I've lost like 9 rebels total by oct on legendary.

That said, I second that 1.4 is awesome.

[justdont]

I don't think avoiding retals is obviously good? I assume you mean hiding rebels, but there is a large opportunity cost. The retals aren't too hard once you learn how to do them. I've lost like 9 rebels total by oct on legendary.

Not necessarily there's a large opportunity cost. While it's always beneficial to get intel or supplies, once you've contacted a few extra regions, you will always get considerably more mission opportunities that you can handle, so you can quite safely drop some of them by moving rebels from intel job to hiding job. As for supplies, I find that during early- and even mid-game it's more beneficial to surgically raise vigilance in some region then "farm" troop columns and occasional supply raid (plus ever-present s&g) rather than just farming supplies across the globe and dealing with faceless agents and supply retals. So supply job doesn't come with a particularly high opportunity cost as well - you can get rich through other means.

[stefan3iii]

I don't think avoiding retals is obviously good? I assume you mean hiding rebels, but there is a large opportunity cost. The retals aren't too hard once you learn how to do them. I've lost like 9 rebels total by oct on legendary.

Not necessarily there's a large opportunity cost. While it's always beneficial to get intel or supplies, once you've contacted a few extra regions, you will always get considerably more mission opportunities that you can handle, so you can quite safely drop some of them by moving rebels from intel job to hiding job. As for supplies, I find that during early- and even mid-game it's more beneficial to surgically raise vigilance in some region then "farm" troop columns and occasional supply raid (plus ever-present s&g) rather than just farming supplies across the globe and dealing with faceless agents and supply retals. So supply job doesn't come with a particularly high opportunity cost as well - you can get rich through other means.

Supply retals are the easiest ones, I think theyre more like a reward, giving some free XP or trial by fire levels. They're dps checks, everything should die the turn it spawns. I've done a bunch, and haven't even seen an alien take a turn on one.