In my last LWR post, I had made it through June, suffering numerous pyrrhic victories, and coping with severe Barracks attrition. Typical LWR. That campaign ended a few missions later, sometime in early in July, when I misplayed an Exalt Extraction (3 more casualties), and finally decided to restart. The next campaign didn’t make it through March.
It took about 4 or 5 restarts to finally make it through June again, this time with a different starting bonus (Special Warfare School) and somewhat different builds. I suffered far fewer casualties, which was gratifying, but also felt compelled to switch into Commander’s Choice because I couldn’t buy a Support, which was demoralizing.
I’ve already written a detailed post for March - June, so in this post I am just going to cover a few of the highlights, and some adjustments I’ve made to my game plan.
Special Warfare School is Good
I like Assembly Line, but I wanted to choose a bonus that would give me a bit more help with the early Exalt Data Recovery missions, the hardest obstacle in my previous campaign, and the most likely to end the next one. I first considered Global Networking, which adds a soldier on Exalt missions, but determined that this would have a significant disadvantage - consuming more soldier time and thus increasing barracks fatigue.
I settled on Special Warfare school because it seemed like it would help with Exalt missions while also offering some economic bonuses. The pistol perks do indeed help your operative contribute on Exalt missions, and give your team a deeper pool of ammunition. That being said, Tactical Rigging is the real hero here. Not only does it improve your chances of winning missions and keeping soldiers alive, but it also allows you to carry Alien Trophies on more soldiers which improves the rate at which soldiers level. In March and April, putting Alien Trophies on every bio soldier is a good idea, and the resulting XP boost is not huge but also not trivial. Special Warfare school is a stealth bonus XP start.
The primary economic advantage is the reduced cost of OTS upgrades. These take awhile to actually come into play, and so they’re not all that exciting. However, there is a little more to it. Because you start with Tac Rigging, you not only avoid the project cost (base: $50, 10a, 120f, 80e), but can also skip Phalanx armors (base: $35, 25a), which is like saving one UFO’s worth of alloy, at a time when alloy is really important.
This starting bonus made the early game significantly easier. I only lost 5 soldiers and 2 SHIVs through June, and had much fewer injuries. This was remarkable given how unlucky the campaign was in other regards - I got few soldier rewards, no gifts, never got the Van Doorn or Hutch missions, couldn’t buy a Support supraclass soldier, and seemed to draw the tough missions sooner than usual. Perhaps my perception of luck at the strategy level is a bit off, but regardless, I didn’t have the great luck, that’s for sure, and still managed very well with Special Warfare School.
Forget OW Builds
Another adjustment I made was to abandon OW medics opting instead for tanks. I feel that overwatch builds are not great. They usually depend on enemies running the overwatch, and that is just too infrequent and unpredictable. Overwatch is an effective way to deter enemies from moving to flank, but this can be done without specializing in that ability.
Also, most early game enemies have some innate overwatch mitigation. Sectoid pods will mind merge wounded allies on the front ranks, who then pull the OW and thus negate it. Thin men have snapshot. Drones, Floaters and Chryssalids don’t lose their flying/innate defense when triggering overwatch (Floaters also regain tactical evasion). Mutons take little damage behind cover.
Exalt soldiers are probably the most vulnerable to overwatch. I can see using an OW build specifically for those missions - I’ve heard that OW infantry work well in that regard.
Mayhem Gunners are Good
Mayhem Gunners output a reliable but modest stream of damage - nothing too impressive. The big downside of this build is that it is only effective when Suppression is available (they can’t hit the broad side of a barn with an LMG), and so they are weak on every other turn. That being said, these guys are extremely effective against pods of floaters, drones, seekers, cyberdiscs and chryssalids - more than half of the early game enemies. If those enemies stay in formation when activating (pretty common), it is often possible for a suppression to hit 4 or more enemies. Clumped up enemies can be defeated more easily with grenades, but that is only when you can safely get your grenadier into range, and the targets are close to the ground - often that is not the case. In the early game, your squad has only 2 methods of crowd control at long distance or in the air; rockets and LMGs.
It’s also worth noting that when suppression is down, a Mayhem Gunner can break LOS to avoid being pinned by overwatch, then pop back up the next turn and suppress the overwatchers. In this way, Mayhem Gunners can make better use of their down turn.
Skipping the First Data Recovery
The first Data Recovery can get nasty. In a previous campaign I was unable to kill off all the starting Exalt forces, and found myself horribly OW pinned by the last set of drop-ins, and still facing 10 (out of 16) enemies. All this by turn 7. Below is a screenshot of the disaster.
These are incredibly precarious missions, with almost no leeway for mistakes, delays, or mismanagement. You need to be aggressive against Exalt - killing most of them quickly to get ahead of the drop-ins. But you also can’t lose any soldiers as you start with only 5 plus the operative. This is much harder to do in May with lower ranked soldiers, no officer, no MECs, weaker weapons, etc. Even if you have a bespoke squad designed specifically for Exalt, things can go sideways quickly.
If this is the very first Exalt mission, an alternative strategy is to just skip it. And this is what I did in my current campaign - I sent in a single SHIV, so that I could save my operative, and they both evac’ed immediately. I wanted to fight the mission, but I didn’t have the squad I needed, and I knew it. Skipping the mission costs an extra $200 to redo the Intel Scan, which then gives you the more manageable Extraction mission. (Note: this only works if this is your first Exalt mission. If you’ve already done an Extraction, you will get another Data Recovery 50% of the time).
A month later I got another chance at a Data Recovery, this time with a Marauder and an officer available, and I won it without injury, though not without risk.
Commander’s Choice
I have not used the Commander’s Choice second wave option in quite some time. It feels a little too advantageous, though really, stats aren’t that important in LWR. Taking what you’re given and making the most of it, is one of the challenges of this mod, and it can help you grow as a player by forcing you to consider different squad compositions and builds, and so forth, blah blah blah.
But this campaign it was f****** bullshit.
Here are the Supra class assignments of all my soldiers through late June:
Supra class Start Council Recruit/Request Current Dead
Marksman 4 0 10 13 1
Tactical 4 1 7 12 0
Weapons 4 0 4 8 0
Support 3 2 1 3 3
I bought like 20 rookies and only got one Support. Gah. It’s luck like this that makes LWR so frustrating - though most of the time it is at the tactical level. While the likelihood of rolling such a lopsided class distribution is low, it is not the only dice roll you need to make at the strategic level. A previous campaign ended in April when a single scout UFO did 60+ days of damage to my Hangar, survived, and called in a hunt. That’s a restart.
End of gripe.
Damn the Creditors
Another change I made this campaign was to avoid taking out loans for as long as possible. Sometimes you can save money when borrowing (such as when you use the loan to purchase satellites to launch), but most of the time it just makes you stronger now, but weaker later. By trying to save every penny, I was able to avoid taking out a loan through June, and this meant I had more cash later on, when I really needed it.
I skipped Shredder Ammo entirely, and all the bonus resource projects (Alien Metallurgy, Alien Nucleonics, Improved Salvage), which I had tried to fit in somewhere during other campaigns. I now feel that these projects are just not affordable, and skip them.
I also delayed the purchase of interceptors until after I got the North America Continent bonus. Pretty risky, but it worked out. Along with being a decent economic bonus, NA makes the air game a bit easier, and thus less likely to end your campaign.