ignoring supply raid

[Icedfate]

why does ignoring a supply raid cause you to lose the regional contact?
i understand why ignoring a retaliation strike makes you lose the region, because they are directly attacking the region, but a supply raid is you making the move against one of the enemy transports moving through the region. it doesn't make sense the ignoring it should cause you to lose the region. . .

[ZumZoom]

That's why I play with this https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1130972839

[Icedfate]

i didn't lose anything right now. i just ask why those supply raids are so essential that the game does not let you ignore them and then penalizes you by taking away one of your regions?
i was looking for a logical in game explanation.

now, i do see a message, it says "due to your lack of activity and not taking action against advent forces, the local resistance got scattered"
but then, it was just advent moving supplies through, wasn't it? or is it because i failed to disrupt it, they got their essential supplies they needed so they could scatter the contacts?

[ZumZoom]

It's probably just an arbitrary game mechanic. It becomes really annoying when you get to late game where you might just want to skip time to do some completionist tasks without being distracted.

[Amanoob105]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

i didn't lose anything right now. i just ask why those supply raids are so essential that the game does not let you ignore them and then penalizes you by taking away one of your regions?
i was looking for a logical in game explanation.

now, i do see a message, it says "due to your lack of activity and not taking action against advent forces, the local resistance got scattered"
but then, it was just advent moving supplies through, wasn't it? or is it because i failed to disrupt it, they got their essential supplies they needed so they could scatter the contacts?

Mechanics wise they are generally important because they are a way of, as the name implies, getting a hold of a large amount of, often needed, supplies.
As fights go they can be some of the more relaxed ones as because there's no time limit 'overwatch creep' is back on the menu.

The game wants you to keep advancing forward, so if you ignore a fight, it gives you a penalty to "discourage" you from doing that".
And a severe penalty is the easiest way to pull that off, plus these games have never advertised themselves on the idea of being easy. Mistakes are punished, and harshly.

----

Lore wise it's likely because you aren't the only one benefiting from this. The resistance also needs resources if they are to be able to keep helping you. Let alone themselves.

On all of these maps (except the one where you need to grab boxes) you will notice that the convoy or the train with the loot on it was waylaid in some way. Trains had their tracks blown up and roads where blocked off.
The resistance are the ones that found Advent were sending resources though this area and send word to you while often doing what they could to stall Advent long enough for this attack to be possible.
Fun fact, most of these maps will have, somewhere, a building that has some sort of communications equipment on it. Often one of the large dishes or an antenna pole with a red light on the top. The resistance outpost they were camped out in that found Advent and you were called in from.
But what they can't really do, at least not as well as we can, is take on Advent directly. That's where they need you.

So for us (xcom) to just turn around and go "we won't help, don't feel like it" they will just reply "if you won't work with us, then we won't work with you".
These people care about survival, not politics.

Some people that play these games seem to forget, we're the underdog. It's us that are the new kids on the block in this fight that most of these other groups have been fighting for some 20 years now.
Our fancy name? Is the same one as a group that already failed to save save the world once already, assuming any of these people even already heard of it in the first place.
Our flying ship? Just means we can run away from fights that they would otherwise be forced to stand their ground in.

It's us that have to prove ourselves to them if we want them to work with us.

[Veritas]

well, basegame mission generation is pretty sparse to be fair. Not as bad as XCOM EU/UW but honestly there aren't that many missions per month. The supply raid is meant to both give you resource injections and disrupt ADVENT operations narratively, i.e. denying even some of these resources is implied to have an effect on the aliens.

But yeah not being allowed to skip missions just because there's so few per month was always pretty underwhelming to me. I kind of can't stand playing without Covert Infiltration anymore lol

[Icedfate]

yeah, i get it. they basically also did it that way so i can't just put it off until i get better gear. they are like a "progress check" to see how well you planned out reasearch and it's like "here's a mission. ya gotta do it. oops, you had 1 day to go before unlocking mag weapons? too bad, you have to do this now. . or suffer the consequence. .maybe next time, you will plan better. ."

[Amanoob105]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

yeah, i get it. they basically also did it that way so i can't just put it off until i get better gear. they are like a "progress check" to see how well you planned out reasearch and it's like "here's a mission. ya gotta do it. oops, you had 1 day to go before unlocking mag weapons? too bad, you have to do this now. . or suffer the consequence. .maybe next time, you will plan better. ."

As the old and venerated saying goes; "That's Xcom baby!"
If you ever catch yourself thinking "things are going pretty good". Give it a few moments and....
3....2.....

There is a trick to grabbing that latest thing you want before a next mission, but it can be a hell of a gamble.
There is a few hours after a mission turns up before you auto-fail for not showing up (I don't know the exact time limit, but I've always assumed it was "not long"). So if those mag weapons were just an hour or so off.... You might have still been able to make it to the party, if a bit late.

Needless to say, I wouldn't recommend this idea to anyone that isn't ok with a little bit of "well, that didn't work" levels of savescumming .

[Raider Deci]

I despise the missions with the supply-crates. I have no issues with the supplies from the train, ufo or transport. Just the one where you need to hurry up to tag supply crates while a chosen often is gunning for you

[Icedfate]

i hate that one too, because the crates are spread out so far apart and then it only gives you 1 turn to get the ones the enemy marked and then it forces you to run intodanger and possibly trigger more pods.
I'm watchning a YT series of someone playing legend ironman and they say to just grab 1 crate and don't worry about the others. only 1 crate is needed, unlike the civilians when you need to save at least 6

[ZumZoom]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

unlike the civilians when you need to save at least 6

It's hard to fail on those missions. You should ignore running up to them, and just deal with enemy pods, the remaining civilians are considered saved automatically.

[Amanoob105]

Originally posted by Raider Deci:

I despise the missions with the supply-crates. I have no issues with the supplies from the train, ufo or transport. Just the one where you need to hurry up to tag supply crates while a chosen often is gunning for you

There's two thing that can help with this.

The major one is that Advent will only start taking them once you have either first revealed yourself, or grabbed your first crate. So this gives you a chance to find and position yourself to grab several in one go.

The minor thing is that in order to "win" the mission you only need to have grabbed one crate. So long as you have that, anything else is just a bonus and all that matters is staying alive until the end.

[mk11]

Originally posted by Raider Deci:

I despise the missions with the supply-crates. I have no issues with the supplies from the train, ufo or transport. Just the one where you need to hurry up to tag supply crates while a chosen often is gunning for you

Once you have spotted the Chosen, Advent stops picking up supplies. You can take your time to kill all enemies or run around tagging all the remaining crates and then evacuating.

[Icedfate]

Originally posted by mk11:

Originally posted by Raider Deci:

I despise the missions with the supply-crates. I have no issues with the supplies from the train, ufo or transport. Just the one where you need to hurry up to tag supply crates while a chosen often is gunning for you

Once you have spotted the Chosen, Advent stops picking up supplies. You can take your time to kill all enemies or run around tagging all the remaining crates and then evacuating.

that's not true. there's almost always a chosen on that mission and the crates still continue to get marked and picked up.
i have seen people say the mission timers get stopped when a chosen appears, but that also isn't true. i had a mission to destroy a communicator and it was 7 turn time limit. and on 4 turns left, a chosen appeared and it still counted down to 3 and then 2 and i just barely got to it in time

[Veritas]

the chosen don't pause timers until they are put into their in-combat state, rather than their passive out of combat one. on supply extraction missions i think the crates will always keep beng marked though. otherwise you could stall and just grab them all, and you're not really intended to get all of them anyway tuning wise.

[LukanGamer]

Originally posted by Snazzy Dragon:

the chosen don't pause timers until they are put into their in-combat state, rather than their passive out of combat one. on supply extraction missions i think the crates will always keep beng marked though. otherwise you could stall and just grab them all, and you're not really intended to get all of them anyway tuning wise.

helpful + that bold part is something many fail to understand and sadly have a inability to cope with.