Alien Facilities

[frdnwsm]

I keep getting messages something like "Alien Faciltiy detected in XYZ", and Central telling me I should attack them, but they never show up on the map. What do I need to do to pinpoint these? Put more havens on Intel production?

On, and some places mentioned don't even exist. "Alien facility in New China". Umm, there is NO New China on the global map; do they mean one of the Asian provinces, perhaps?

Addendum: I looked up a few forum discussions and the folks there were a bit confused also. Leads vs facility leads etc.

[frankie60]

Those announcements that an "Alien Facility has been detected in XYZ" don't really matter. Nor does it matter where they announce the facility is. Don't worry about that. It's just general info. Even if you get a real facility lead, the facility could be anywhere. Once you get a "real" facility lead, you have to research the lead (only takes Tygan a few days) then you will know for sure where it is. After that, you STILL have to contact the region the facility is in to gain access to the mission.

Now, to get a facility lead, you have to run your usual intel in the regions you are doing mission intel in and pray that you get a mission that contains one, but as usual in LW2, it's hidden. It's not the "Blah, Blah mission, find a lead". Nothing is that straight forward here.

All you really have to know and remember is that facility leads are almost always found in missions where you rescue a Scientist AND he has an Intel Package. ALWAYS run those missions. The intel package in those cases is usually a facility lead.

Remember: It's usually a Scientist + Intel package mission.

That's all you need to know. Simple right? ;-)

[frankie60]

Oh by the way. You can only get a facility lead mission AFTER you have liberated at least one region. If you haven't liberated a region, you will never see the missions that give you a facility lead.

[frdnwsm]

Scientist + Intel package? Bah, I can't recall ever seeing one of those. I'll keep an eye out for one, though.

[frankie60]

I had a run of 3 back to back. Pretty lucky, but they are out there. VIP rescues are not usually found in regions with high vigilance, so your best bet is to run the intel in low vigilance areas.

[frdnwsm]

OK, now THIS might be why I haven't found any facilities. If all the scientist + Intel missions are like this, they are seriously difficult. 23 hours infiltration time for 10-12 enemies? You just KNOW that with that short an infiltration time, there are going to be upwards of 30+ Advent present.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1677881477
If you guys hadn't told me that this was a facility lead mission, I would never even consider such an absurdly short infiltration time.

[frankie60]

Yeah they have short timers but you can't run that. If you do, good luck...

[frdnwsm]

Well, I'm sending a decent squad to go take a look. If the situation seems totally out of control, I can always abort and go home. Or, if the EVAC point is near the entry, I might even enter combat for a few turns, score a few kills, and then book like crazy for a pick up. With a fixed EVAC area, there will be no wait for Firebrand to arrive, so we can just disappear instantly.


Needless to say, if the EVAC area is way off on the other side of the map, we just turn around and go home. We can make our brags to the others about how many Advent we killed, but oh gee, the last bunch were too numerous, so we retreated ... and no one will be able to contradict us.

[frdnwsm]

Amazingly enough it worked! I gave some troopers suppressors, and spent the usual Intel to get the Advent status from impregnable to a "mere" fortified. But the longer I thought about it, the more possible it seemed. Would it really be worse than the Blacksite raid? Half of my squad were veterans of that assault, and they had managed to squeak out a win there.

As it turned out, the opposition was actually a lot weaker than the Blacksite defenders. No Andromedan, no Hive Queen, no Gatekeeper and best of all, no bloody Sectopod. The worst things were a couple of green and blue mechs, a single Centurion Muton, and a pod of 3 Viper Elites; all the others were various flavors of soldiers; stun troopers, gunners, officers and troopers. They didn't even have a shieldbearer! At the end, we killed the last defender with 2 turns to go before forced withdrawal and with Advent reinforcements inbound.

Not that it was a total walkover. We took a bunch of wounds; my Shinobi in particular was discovered halfway through the battle and got quite beat up, but our Specialist kept healing him. The evac area was indeed all the way across the map from the entry point, but the mission was 22 turns long, so we had enough time to maneuver in the usual back and forth manner.

Several things stood out.

Probably the biggest contribution to the victory came from my Sharpshooter. He had all the good perks ... double tap, snap shot, deadeye and precision shot. I gave him bluescreen ammo and stuck him on top of a 3 story building in the center of the map. From that vantage point, he absolutely dominated the entire map for about 90% of the battle. In particular, he is the main reason none of the 3 Advent mechs ever fired even a single grenade at us.

My specialist, using gremlin heals and a nano-medikit kept my shinobi in the fight. Gremlin heals can be sent to anyone, anywhere; the targets don't have to be in the line of vision, and she could do it 4x per mission. So useful!

And even revealed, the squad's shinobi did some mean damage with reaper. He'd take some damage, but then get healed immediately by the specialist. The shinobi that wouldn't die ... sounds like the title of a bad horror flick.

Everybody else contributed to the victory, of course, but the sharpshooter predominated, with the shinobi/specialist team coming in second. So, now I (finally!!) have a lead to an Advent facility. Haven't turned it over to research yet, so I don't know where just yet. That can wait until tomorrow; I'm exhausted from yet another grueling mission. I suspect they will all be somewhat similar in the future; no more milk runs.

[frdnwsm]

Ouch!

Overconfidence leads to failure. I did another mission with very short infiltration time ... I figured it would be another easy run. Nope! I must have lucked out the last time; the mix of enemies was a lot nastier, and basically we ended up hightailing of out of there. The poor scientist was totally abandoned and the squad will be in the hospital for weeks.

Pride goeth before a fall.

[frankie60]

Yeah. Short timers will have your squad members reconsidering their life choices... Anything less than 5 days and it has to be super important before I run it.

[frdnwsm]

Well, the one 23 hour infiltration mission I ran was a facility lead one, scientist and Intel package reward. Then ANOTHER one came up, of the same type! A chance to get a second facility lead in the same week? How tempting! Heh, the timer this time was 11 hours.

The terrain was a lot less favorable ... no fantastic perch for my sharpshooter, among other things .... and the enemy pods were all over the place, with much nastier Advent forces. There were also more of them (Advent readiness was rated as Impregnable as opposed to the Fortified of the first one). "Impregnable" turned out to be a pretty accurate description. We never got within sight range of the prison where the scientist was being held.

Luckily, the EVAC zone on this mission was fairly close, so we were able to run like bunnies, and get to the exit without actually losing anyone. But 4 of the guys will be in the infirmiary for close to two weeks.

Terrain and enemy force composition made all the difference; the first mission made me quite overconfident. Will try not to make that mistake again.

[prokolyo]

Wow, you made a 23 hr mission work!! That's awesome, I wouldn't even look at them, should at least try I guess... Very true about the terrain though, no high ground and the ss is of no use.

And there is no New China, you must've misread.

[frdnwsm]

I suspect I lucked out on the 23 hour mission. Good terrain, and a favorable mix of Advent forces. Like I said, the worst things on that run were 3 green/blue mechs, and my sharpshooter with a gauss long rifle and bluescreen bullets chopped those guys to shreds from way out of their visual range. In fact, he killed something like half of the 24 enemies from long range, meaning that when my more close range troops got into combat, half the work was already done. Of course, my super stealth shinobi was scouting way up front and spotting for him.

The 11 hour mission was an order of magnitude harder.

As for New China, that is exactly what the message said. Mind you, it wasn't the result of a detect facility mission, just a message letting me know that a facility had been found ... somewhere ... so I'm guessing it didn't have to be particularly accurate.

[frankie60]

I can see you've worked in your tactics. Nice work.

[frdnwsm]

Heh; the 11 hour mission was a horror show. If my guys were real instead of toons, they would have had to launder all their shorts when they got back to the Avenger.

Let's me think ... I recall seeing two Berserkers, 3 Muton Centurions, a Grand Archon, a Gatekeeper, 3 viper elites and a crapton of troopers, all concentrated in and around the prison cell with the Scientist. I know there were more ... the mission statement said 22-24 ... but I didn't stick around to check for an exact count.
Everybody started yelling "Nope nope nope nope" and ran to the extraction site.