Triggering phase 2 (refugee camp)

[Tobold]

*SPOILER Alert* This is a discussion about how major game events are supposed to happen.

I have tried different strategies for the early/mid game, and it seems to me that there are two phases to this game: The initial phase, where your enemies are mostly Legion troops, and the second phase, where your enemies are mostly regular soldiers, which are a lot tougher.

Now in one run I triggered the second phase as early as end of May. It seems that capturing a second mine triggers an event where the Major announces that he will go after Biff in A8. And if you intercept those troops and then go to A8, you will be asked to visit the refugee camp, which then triggers phase 2. Both A8 and the refugee camp are extremely hard fights, and the game spikes significantly in difficulty from then on.

But in a different playthrough I just ignored the attack on Biff. I that run I had three mines, and was accumulating a lot of money. So I did a little experiment where I was simply holding my position, checking whether at any time the simple advancement of time would trigger phase 2. That doesn't seem to be the case, I got until mid-October and phase 2 never happened. I hear phase 2 triggers if you approach the Major's camp, but there doesn't seem to be a timer.

Which makes me wonder when phase 2 is *supposed* to happen. Going to A8 seems to be a terrible option, there doesn't seem to be a good reward for doing so. You can't actually hire Biff, at best you can get his green diamond. I hear people have simply intercepted the troops going after Biff, *without* visiting A8, and that way they didn't trigger phase 2 either. That seems to be the much better option, as you can play through most of the game and do many quests against much easier opponents; and you can still visit Biff later and get the info from him. Is going to A8 to save Biff some sort of hidden option for hardcore players, and us regular guys are supposed to not trigger phase 2 until much later? It seems somewhat stranger that there seem to be two very different ways with much different difficulty to play through this game. Is this intended?

[Rhapsody]

How you assist Biff affects the ending slides you get. He can help you testify, or you can, outside of dialogue (I didn't get an option for it anyway), let him die or kill him yourself to get the diamond. The diamond can then be delivered to Emma before the attack on Port Cacao and everywhere.

[stretch]

You can trigger the invasion if you go through the canyon or the cavern to get to the major.
This pretty much skips the refugee camp and biff altogether. If you go hard you can get to the major straight away, save the president and then most everything in the game goes on easy mode. Outposts are nerfed big time and so on. Saves a lot of effort.

I fear you are looking to make sense of something to which there really is very little sense to be made of. You can do it many ways and bypass stages and alter the course of events easily.

There does seem to be an intended order to do these things in that really does make a lot more sense than any other way but because of the open world nature of the game they had to squeeze in a number of other scenarios so people couldn't break the game.

[Dreepa]

I would also like to know the exact triggers for Biff/Camp for my 2nd playthrough.

You say it's getting the 2nd mine?
So I will try to stay on 1 mine as long as possible and see what happens.

[Alkpaz]

It is a second mine. It doesn't matter what mine. I played through it twice to see if the mine made a difference, it doesn't. Even if you get the mine through attrition like for the communists, or you capture the second mine near Port Cacao. It starts a stream of events after that second mine capture.

[archmag]

Originally posted by Dreepa:

I would also like to know the exact triggers for Biff/Camp for my 2nd playthrough.

You say it's getting the 2nd mine?
So I will try to stay on 1 mine as long as possible and see what happens.

2nd mine is certainly not a trigger (or maybe just one of the triggers if you avoid going north). Most likely getting close to a certain area north of Refugee camp is. My first mine near Fleatown run out, I had 100k. I went north, passed Refugee camp, completed some quests in it, wanted to take outpost further north next. Event with Major and Biff triggered and legion squad appeared marching to Biff's area. I captured the outpost north of Refugee camp, trained militia in it, started moving my mercs north to Biff's area, intercepted enemy squad with outpost, cleared Biff's event. Went back to Refugee camp, found it was too difficult, reloaded. Went to neutral mine north east of the camp which has a quest related to diesel. Completed the quest and only then finally got my second mine. After that I just avoided Refugee camp, captured everything else, finally I passed the cave leading to Eagle's nest and Refugee camp event triggered automatically and the final part of the game started.

[uncle nick]

Yeah, I'm also blocking at D10 with Raider & Raven. The A-Team is working their way down the savannah. 3 mines, H7 mine just run our now, going for 4th mine now. Avoiding SHTF, just making good money for the PMC company. Doing something different as well, training Limewire and Mouse to see how high their marksmanship can go. Buns has already trained Grunty, and now Grunty is like a one man army. I'm getting ready for the Army SHTF scenario.

[Cenotaph]

whatever causes this level scaling, it's really annoying. I'd prefer the areas on the map increase in difficulty instead of time based or event based scaling.
It really ruined my playthrough and im waiting for a mod to fix this

[ChaosKhan]

Originally posted by Cenotaph:

whatever causes this level scaling, it's really annoying. I'd prefer the areas on the map increase in difficulty instead of time based or event based scaling.
It really ruined my playthrough and im waiting for a mod to fix this

Why waiting for a mod if you can just fix it yourself by never going to the Major? The game bypasses the Refugee Camp events only if you come close to Eagles Nest. You can literally conquer the whole remaining map and as long as you stay 3 paces away from Majors camp and don't go to the Refugee Camp, everything will be fine.

[Econ]

Originally posted by Cenotaph:

It really ruined my playthrough and im waiting for a mod to fix this

Why did it ruin your playthrough? The army attack your militia - why is that a big deal? Just take the sectors you lose back.

In my first playthrough, I delayed triggering the event until I had largely secured the landmass with the refugee camp etc on.

In my second playthrough, I responded immediately. I did not notice a big difference in difficulty.

[archmag]

Originally posted by Cenotaph:

whatever causes this level scaling, it's really annoying. I'd prefer the areas on the map increase in difficulty instead of time based or event based scaling.
It really ruined my playthrough and im waiting for a mod to fix this

How can your playthrough be ruined by this? Were you on ironman and lost the whole team in refugee encounter? Otherwise you can: 1. not trigger it until the very end, 2. just finish few battles after triggering it, you only need 3 more + any ports/adjanced areas that you may need to reach those three. You will always need to activate the event to complete the game. It's like a final boss in any game, you can avoid going to it or you can deal with it and complete the game finally.

I'd prefer the areas on the map increase in difficulty instead of time based or event based scaling.

You didn't say based on what you prefer. Based on the distance from initial area? They already become more difficult the further from tutorial island you are. The event just activates the final part of the game and that's all.

[pRaX]

Actually, the Legion never goes away. You only be facing the Army Death Squads by triggering the phase which will be attacking all your conquered sectors and ofc when going for the objectives involved with that questline.
Every Legion soldier on the map does not get replaced by Army troops.

Another forced trigger is simply going eastwards up to a certain point so I don't know what archmag is claiming there.
Maybe straight up ignoring absolutely everything and beelining for him right away doesn't activate the East trigger?

Most of the other triggers are tied to the amount of mines you've conquered and/or talking to anyone who can give information about the "traitors".
Conquering the Mfumu mine for example is also the only way to get invited by Blaubert and iirc, talking to him will add the "Conspiracy" quest to the log, effectively activating it. This is just one example.

The Biff situation can be delayed indefinitely by destroying the death squad that is coming for his sector.

The Refugee camp situation sadly will play out eventually as soon as it's active.

I got over 130 hours in the game and I've spend two days worth of that testing out pretty much all of these triggers.
There is sadly no way to visit every sector without triggering it.
But conquering the entire left half of the map is certainly in the cards.

[archmag]

Originally posted by pRaX:

Another forced trigger is simply going eastwards up to a certain point so I don't know what archmag is claiming there.

I meant that second mine couldn't be the only trigger for Biff's event because I got second mine long after clearing the event itself. Going eastwards or north certainly can be a second possible trigger, I was going northeast from refugee camp when radio event with Major/Biff activated.

[pRaX]

Originally posted by archmag:

Originally posted by pRaX:

Another forced trigger is simply going eastwards up to a certain point so I don't know what archmag is claiming there.

I meant that second mine couldn't be the only trigger for Biff's event because I got second mine long after clearing the event itself. Going eastwards or north certainly can be a second possible trigger, I was going northeast from refugee camp when radio event with Major/Biff activated.

Oh I was more getting at this part.

1. not trigger it until the very end

[archmag]

Originally posted by pRaX:

Oh I was more getting at this part.

1. not trigger it until the very end

That was about actually activating Refugee camp event that summons an army wave. You don't have to go to the camp after you get invited there after Biff's event. So you can complete the whole map except for the camp itself and A20 corner (and 1 tile radius around it) if you just ignore the camp. If you get next to A20, Refugee camp will activate automatically and you will just get radio notification about it and army will appear.

[RasaNova]

I'm not sure what triggers biff/refugee camp but it's not having 2 mines, it's not moving too far north, it's not a certain time. In my game, I had 3 mines, and 1 had run out already. It was still May, I had not been to the camp, in fact had not been further north than the outpost NW of Fleatown. I got the Biff call while doing Port Cacao side quests in the south.