Yay for impossible light missions in LW2!

[dragonsrl6]

So this was fun. Got a mission with light resistance and fully infiltrated. 8 turn cooldown and hack the work station, no big! get in, oh neat the enemy has 8 vipers, 3 sectoids, 5 advent soldiers (1 is a shield guy) and 1 robot. ok, i guess this is light, i can do this, just explode everything! oh look, they are calling in reinforcements on turn 6, ok no problem.... awesome a muton and a robot with 3 advent soldiers..... i can do this.... .♥♥♥♥ YOU MORE REINFORCEMENTS! ♥♥♥♥ OFF! ..... NO I DONT WANT A THIRD WAVE OF REINFORCEMENTS!!!!! ♥♥♥♥! *activate save scum and abandon mission*

[TheSuit]

One of the biggest things to keep in mind with LW2 - is you gain the most XP from the mission it self. So you don't need kill every alien.

Try and sneak your way as close to the objective as possible before starting WW4.
Then if you have a technical just get into LoS of the objective and they can hack station from a distance. ( I actually hacked a 2nd floor station, from the 2nd floor of the adjacent building after breaking the window of the toher building with a gernade ). Before you hack drop a flare on the outside near all your guys.

Remember you can drop a flare before the mission is even over - especially if you have to wait a few turns to evac this helps a lot to let you evac immedietly after beating the mission.

While they hack just throw flash bangs around - disorient the enemies - provide some cover fire and escape. The slower you move and the longer you spend trying to kill enemies you are just digging your own grave. Assault with run and Gun are great for quick picks and having snipers in high ground with damn good ground + Stock attachment on weapons let them get kills + a bonus of +20 for next shot.

[Dies Fourth]

Originally posted by dragonsrl6:

So this was fun. Got a mission with light resistance and fully infiltrated. 8 turn cooldown and hack the work station, no big! get in, oh neat the enemy has 8 vipers, 3 sectoids, 5 advent soldiers (1 is a shield guy) and 1 robot. ok, i guess this is light, i can do this, just explode everything! oh look, they are calling in reinforcements on turn 6, ok no problem.... awesome a muton and a robot with 3 advent soldiers..... i can do this.... .♥♥♥♥ YOU MORE REINFORCEMENTS! ♥♥♥♥ OFF! ..... NO I DONT WANT A THIRD WAVE OF REINFORCEMENTS!!!!! ♥♥♥♥! *activate save scum and abandon mission*

I feel your pain !!

1st couple i tried to fight it out figuring they HAD to stop reinforcing................ i was " dead " wrong !! Now if i get more than 2 purple snowball in a row im outta there !!

[BigRowdy]

Originally posted by The | Suit:

One of the biggest things to keep in mind with LW2 - is you gain the most XP from the mission it self. So you don't need kill every alien.

Try and sneak your way as close to the objective as possible before starting WW4.
Then if you have a technical just get into LoS of the objective and they can hack station from a distance. ( I actually hacked a 2nd floor station, from the 2nd floor of the adjacent building after breaking the window of the toher building with a gernade ). Before you hack drop a flare on the outside near all your guys.

Remember you can drop a flare before the mission is even over - especially if you have to wait a few turns to evac this helps a lot to let you evac immedietly after beating the mission.

While they hack just throw flash bangs around - disorient the enemies - provide some cover fire and escape. The slower you move and the longer you spend trying to kill enemies you are just digging your own grave. Assault with run and Gun are great for quick picks and having snipers in high ground with damn good ground + Stock attachment on weapons let them get kills + a bonus of +20 for next shot.

This is absolutely correct. the thing about Long War is, players tend to forget you are resistance fighters going against an overwhelming enemy. The Long War Mod REALLY, REALLY makes the game like this. AND there ARE times you just have to ABORT. This is BY DESIGN. Vanilla xcom2 does not really simulate the overwhelming odds very well and it becomes a game of Group A vs Group B. Long WAR creates the world where you cannot go in guns blazing all the time.
** Remember despite some success in other missions, The XCOM force is just a FLEA on the DOG that peed on the whole world and claimed it as its territory. Stealth always, run away..even if you really, really, really want/need the reward being offered. In LW it is not expected for you to win 80+ % of the missions.
Live to fight another day....

[Zyrrashijn]

That's Long War, baby!!

[dragonsrl6]

I did try to sneak around back, just to see what was there outta curiosity. The objective had 6 of the 8 vipers and the sectoid right on top of it. nothing could be done especially when the vipers dodge 4 outta 4 shots. yay for viper dodge! ; ;

[MikeHB]

I never warmed to Long War 2, so I understand all the complaints. There's no need for them to use terminology such as "light" or "extremely light" and it just throws potential fans off the scent. In fact, it's very unclear what a lot of mechanics actually do, and you essentially need to already have a working knowledge to have a chance (or, at least, to not get frustrated). Even beyond infiltration as stated above, haven jobs, stolen resources, etc., even just the enemy abilities are learnt through trial-and-error or Google, which I think is bad game design. I only remember two instances of that from vanilla, one being Muton counterattack and the other being a Gatekeeper nuke-zombing my VIP. Neither broke the game experience.

To be fair I never played the EU/EW Long War so I don't know if this withholding of information (or forced research into game mechanics) is consistent to form, but it just feels like bad game design to me and makes me worry about their standalone game. Hopefully having complete freedom of design, as opposed to shoehorning into XCOM, they can clarify all the game mechanics properly while keeping it difficult. Dark Souls over Bad Rats.

The thing I like from Long War is the need to have more than one squad, but I have that in vanilla now by modding in exceedingly long recovery times.

[Zyrrashijn]

Yeah, Dark Souls is a very good example for not explaining anything to the player. I remember the old days and all the whining about the graveyard... In comparison, Long War 2 is fully documented and holds your hand.

[bpb21]

I'm down with the research, what with the prevalence of wikis and blogs dedicated to games these days. But, what I really don't get about infiltration is: what are they doing while infiltrating?! Shouldn't you NOT have fog of war when the mission begins, considering you've been infiltrating the site for several days beforehand?
Just a thought; I do like the mod although I'm absolutely terrible at it!

[alangriffith]

Originally posted by bpb21:

what I really don't get about infiltration is: what are they doing while infiltrating?! Shouldn't you NOT have fog of war when the mission begins, considering you've been infiltrating the site for several days beforehand?

During the infiltration time your troops have been getting *to* the site (a site which is after all only a couple of city blocks in an alien-controlled city, or a few hundred square feet of wilderness in a vast alien-patrolled wilderness) - bypassing enemy perimeters and patrols, learning patterns or running decoy interference (like the explosion bradford sets off in the intro video) to draw off the enemy so you don't get the vastly more 'swarming' numbers you get with 1% infiltration.

You can actually see the building layout in the fog of war and you know where the objective is via marker, so possibly the site has been checked out or at least mapped from blueprints, resistance informant reports etc. But whern your team go in at the time of fewest enemy troops, with all decoys set off, they don't know exactly what forces have been left behind or rushed in.

All in all it makes an awful lot more sense than the 'fatigue' mechanic in Long War 1.

[bpb21]

Yeah, I can see that. And you don't see them roping in from the Skyranger as you used to. So I suppose I can go with that. Drawing away enemy forces and being a nuisance elsewhere until mission start makes some sense.

[chritopher_keith]

Originally posted by dragonsrl6:

So this was fun. Got a mission with light resistance and fully infiltrated. 8 turn cooldown and hack the work station, no big! get in, oh neat the enemy has 8 vipers, 3 sectoids, 5 advent soldiers (1 is a shield guy) and 1 robot. ok, i guess this is light, i can do this, just explode everything! oh look, they are calling in reinforcements on turn 6, ok no problem.... awesome a muton and a robot with 3 advent soldiers..... i can do this.... .♥♥♥♥ YOU MORE REINFORCEMENTS! ♥♥♥♥ OFF! ..... NO I DONT WANT A THIRD WAVE OF REINFORCEMENTS!!!!! ♥♥♥♥! *activate save scum and abandon mission*

This is a TRAP mission once advent strength hits 7 in a region.. you will get these types of missions.. they are always hack the data or steal the data from a train.. you will find overwhelming numbers waiting for you. Don't take these missions in high advent strength regions.

[SamBC]

You also usually get suspiciously long times to infiltrate them.