I need advice for LWOTC

[Pauzeman]

Veteran Campaign
As of posting this, the game clock is at June 5th, 2035.

Firstly, I need tips for how to reliably get standard resources for equipping your soldiers with laser weapons and predator armour. I have the technology, but I'm scrapped for cash. I'm starting to fall behind on the tactical layer, so this is important.

Secondary, I need help determining a reliable strategy for dealing with large groups of enemies. Even on light missions, pods have a tendency to bunch up, forcing me to evacuate, but not before the shear number of shots wounds most of the squad. As a result of the increasing force level, situation has started killing more soldiers.

Thirdly, how many soldiers and deaths are expected in a campaign. I currently have 27 soldiers, have taken 11 deaths, and typically have around 12 wounded at any given time. Given that I only expect the number of available missions to increase, and the death/wounded toll is accelerating, I worry that I simply wont have enough manpower. I have the infirmary staffed, but it still isn't enough given fast pace missions are given at.

Finally, I need to know whether it is better to deploy a larger squad of 6-8, and deal with a heavy mission, or deploy a much smaller squad for a light or very light mission. When I deploy a full squad, I get overwhelmed by alien forces. When I deploy a small squad, I find I'm lacking to flexibility needed to destroy powerful aliens effectively.

I could simply search up the answers to these questions, but I like hearing the advice from currently active players, if only for a different perspective.

[Synopse]

Sounds like your are in the death spiral already. Check this guide for planing your next attempt.

https://xcom.substack.com/p/long-war-2-opening-strategy-outline

Check this guide to have a better idea, how to setup your squads for missions.

https://xcom.substack.com/p/long-war-2-quick-start-guide

[Pauzeman]

Originally posted by Synopse:

Sounds like your are in the death spiral already. Check this guide for planing your next attempt.

https://xcom.substack.com/p/long-war-2-opening-strategy-outline

Check this guide to have a better idea, how to setup your squads for missions.

https://xcom.substack.com/p/long-war-2-quick-start-guide

Thank you. I'm going to continue my attempt until failure, but I'll have a look at this afterwards.

[Heau]

First, let me mention that there is a dedicated long war subforum(on steam) to post these questions in.

Then, I will say at this point I haven't played Veteran for a few thousand played hours so some of my comments or "benchmarks" may be a little off mark but still useful.

Originally posted by Pauzeman:

Firstly, I need tips for how to reliably get standard resources for equipping your soldiers with laser weapons and predator armour. I have the technology, but I'm scrapped for cash. I'm starting to fall behind on the tactical layer, so this is important.

Your options are
1. A more agressive strategic layer plan, including running full intel in more regions to have more variety in missions offered and fewer units sent per mission in order to run more missions
2. A more agressive black market sale strat
3. Improving your tactical layer to be able to grab most loot drops during missions
4. Rushing vulture harder

In rare cases, on lower difficulties, you might be able to push a lib5 in May and get some supplies via resistance personnel around early June for that region but its rather uncommon and doesn't always translate into a better overall game if the liberated region was still a mission farm.

1.) Open contact regions up to your maximum (before building a comm link) as soon as possible and keep running full intel for missions to higher strength/vigilance, accepting to deal with the periodic terror missions. A steady supply of missions helps mitigate rng on mission rewards. I say this because when I started playing I would shut down regions into hidding very passively to avoid chosen retaliations and it took me many playthroughs to stop hitting a death spiral before coil weapons. This helps you find Advent Troop Column missions and Supply Raid missions for additional loot. At this point, I keep regions on full intel until STR 5 or 6 and run the occasional ~5 vs 13-15 missions if I lack that specific reward.

2.) Some examples - I sell every trooper body except 1, I sell all viper corpses early, I hang on to 1+#specialists officer corpses and sell others. It takes some time to get used to it because a few bodies are key for crafting important weapons and equipment but again as a beginner I would often sit on several hundreds of supply worth in bodies because I was too scared to sell the wrong thing. Some QoL mods, or the wiki, can help with that.

I also tend to sell a lot of basic PCS and basic weapon mods because I value an extra laser weapon over 2 guys with +3 aim pcs for example. Elerium cores are eventually needed in bulk very late game but you can sell them pretty agressively early. Just make sure you always hang onto a few for research or PG projects. Datapads are also generally sellable when you adopt an aggressive strategic layer because you'll have more intel reward missions to run.

3. Needle grenade grenadiers go a long way towards this for beginners. They are early game powerhouse too. Improving tactical layer enough to keep your shinobis in stealth until the last pod as often as possible also goes a long way towards grabbing loot without engaging inadvertently. Stealth play is a lot longer to learn than just pushing more needle grenadiers.

4. Make sure you chain mission on some select units and prioritize spending 150 supplies on vulture as soon your first unit turns SGT. I almost always get it through my starting hero. It's worth equiping a Will PCS to chain missions if needed.

Originally posted by Pauzeman:

Secondary, I need help determining a reliable strategy for dealing with large groups of enemies. Even on light missions, pods have a tendency to bunch up, forcing me to evacuate, but not before the shear number of shots wounds most of the squad. As a result of the increasing force level, situation has started killing more soldiers.

Keeping shinobis in stealth longer helps a lot. Sharpshooters sniping one enemy should trigger only one of the two pods helping you separate them off. You can also sometimes use cheeky max range + T2 grenade launcher or launch grenades over LoS to deal damage. If you move your shinobi out of sight of the pod you launch a grenade on, it won't trigger (it will turn to yellow alert though so its a risk/reward strat).

Specifically, snapshot sharpshooters with high mobility, as opposed to DFA builds, tend to almost always be in a good position to split pulls on your terms. They've grown on me for revealed start missions over time.

The other more or less obvious are to run more AoE classes/builds for larger missions. Grenadiers(boomer or support), technicals(Napalm-X), trench gunners (I don't play those personally). Sparks and psi ops also have a good early game kit to help with larger pulls. Gunners with lockdown are also useful to stall a few units but it often results in low tempo so you can get caught up by reinforcements or mission timers. Very early game, any unit with a flashbang while everyone is in full cover will also go a long way.

Originally posted by Pauzeman:

Thirdly, how many soldiers and deaths are expected in a campaign. I currently have 27 soldiers, have taken 11 deaths, and typically have around 12 wounded at any given time. Given that I only expect the number of available missions to increase, and the death/wounded toll is accelerating, I worry that I simply wont have enough manpower. I have the infirmary staffed, but it still isn't enough given fast pace missions are given at.

My threshold for soft reset is pretty low still. I'd have reset at 11 deaths. But in practice, it's usually less about number of units and more the quality of the units that died. You have more units and more rookies available on Veteran so you can afford to lose rookies and squaddies early with it not being catastrophic. For so long as you have ~20 playable units that are staying relevant exp/level-wise, you can press on. But if your deaths were near the top of your barracks, it becomes very difficult to keep up with enemy progression. An SSGT with a laser is more valuable than 2 squaddies with a mag weapon to succeed a mission in June.

As a benchmark, I'd say that for so long as you can run steadily 6 missions between supply drops, you are on track for vet/cmdr. If you manage to run a few more missions here and there and pull a touch ahead, you'll have a buffer to recover from a bad string where you have to run fewer in a given interval due to injuries for example.

For what its worth, one of the mistakes I made as a beginner was to try to keep my entire barrack leveled similarly, rather than constantly try to keep my best troops busy. But in practice, with the number of rookies available to you on veteran, you'd need to push in the neighborhood of 8-9 missions per supply drop interval to run such a large barrack and be "on curve" xp wise - and running every rookie you can get on veteran also means you will have to run at least that many mission each interval to have the resources to afford their upgrades. Instead, use trial by fire to catch a few late units to replace deaths but keep your core busy and prioritize gearing them.

Originally posted by Pauzeman:

Finally, I need to know whether it is better to deploy a larger squad of 6-8, and deal with a heavy mission, or deploy a much smaller squad for a light or very light mission. When I deploy a full squad, I get overwhelmed by alien forces. When I deploy a small squad, I find I'm lacking to flexibility needed to destroy powerful aliens effectively.

For timed missions, I'd recommend to just stay away from anything larger than 13-15 or "light". They are situationally takeable with larger squads but in practice, the quality of the units you send is often more important than the number.

Like I took a 16-18 with the Lost with spark+skirmisher+grenadier+shinobi in a recent playthrough to counter a dark event that I felt might be campaign ending. But the skirm and grenadier were far ahead of the level curve and the entire team had brand new weapon tier and best armor avail, The spark could hack the objective from afar and the plan was to try to sneak around pods, hack, call the evac and just hold off and escape, not to run it like a regular mission where I often try to kill everything.

Lib3/lib4 are sort of the only exceptions since they are both baseline 13-15 missions. Sometimes you have to take the risk of a 16-18 either to get the free tower relay (lib4) to reduce the intel cost of the next contact region, or to push lib5 timing. But since those are fairly predictable, you can save your best crew until the mission spawn in the region.

For full salvage missions, you can usually push the enveloppe and they are typically workable with at least a sharpshooter+shinobi to just take a good defensive position near the start and chip away at pods with your sniper(s) from very long distance. You just need to make sure you have a good mix. i.e. at least one good AoE for the advent rainbow pod, either a tool to reliably kill a prio target or stall a prio target. Gunners with lockdown + hail of bullets can kinda do both. Psi ops are also pretty good at stalling with insanity or finishing off with soulfire.

As some additional pointers/benchmarks:

-changing weapon tier every 2 months is a fine pace/benchmark. i.e. advanced lasers by may, advanced mag by july, coil by september and so on.

-Basic mag before t2 armors is generally a wise choice. Gauntlet #2 on technicals is a massive - and cheap - power spike. Don't try to build t2 armors on everyone too quickly, they are a massive ressource drain. Save the few for risky missions or low health, highly experienced carry units you really can't afford to lose and run nano vests and/or +hp PCS for weaker low hp units.

Rushing Trial by Fire by chaining missions on your earliest officiers to help XP catch up (by contrast to spreading the work) is very valuable. 1 offier + 2 strong carries + 2 weaker units usually work. 1 officer + 6 squaddies is often a bad idea, even on a 7-9 mission.

The BM also gives you a benchmark for experience. Your core units, like the ~20 "playable" units I alluded to, should pull ahead of the purchasable BM unit level and increasingly so as the game goes on. If you open BM and see an SGT unit and your barrack has like 5 SSGT, a bunch of SGT and CPL, you have probably spread your experience too thin (too few missions run for the size of your barrack).