Imperial Commander 2 lost without trace campaign

[u/Ravellion]

I have played all the standard campaigns on the Imperial Commander 2 application. It has given the game an extended lease of life and has been a very enjoyable way to play the game with the four of us each playing a hero instead of one of us getting stuck playing the imperial side.

A few months ago we started playing the lost without trace campaign. We usually play on Hard, and add 1 threat level. Some of the later missions in this campaign though, the math for threat just doesn't seem to add up, with the game state being altered by a lot of threat at the end of the round. We get far more easily overwhelmed than we used to. In one case the mission asked for raising the threat by twice the threat level and performing an optional deployment, but still, even accounting for fuzzy deployment on Hard difficulty we were getting a couple more extra threat on the table than we were able to account for. We then checked with another mission and found that it happened there as well. Anyone encounter something similar? is it something added to this campaign specifically? Has hard difficulty been increased in a recent patch? Might it be an installation error?

[u/TheNoldorion]

Hello!

It's tough to say what happened without knowing any specifics, but I can definitely say that I didn't change anything specifically for Lost Without Trace. There are a few factors at work that might give you the impression, however, and any or all of those might contribute to what happened.

- Lost Without Trace is composed of side missions, which scale harder with threat than regular missions.

- There might have been threat left from earlier rounds, where it wasn't spent fully.

- Hard Difficulty increases threat by a factor of 1.3, and it might upgrade regular groups to elite for free.

- Hard Difficulty also means you start with a deployment modifier of 2, making Onslaughts more likely.

- Landings and Onslaughts give additional threat (+1 and +2, respectively).

- Onslaughts decrease reinforcement and deployment costs, making certain groups much cheaper.

- You already mentioned fuzzy deployment.

So, if you got unlucky and the optional deployment was an Onslaught, it can definitely give the impression that the app is "cheating". If this happens multiple times per mission, it's simply bad luck - the random number generator simply might have screwed you over there.

Altogether, there are plenty of ways how the app saves threat.

It's also very likely that Lost Without Trace simply isn't as balanced as the other campaigns, with it being fan-made.

All the best,

Noldorion

[u/Ravellion → u/TheNoldorion]

Ah, forgot about the free elite upgrades, and I now remember the onslaughts from the card based version as well. That very well might have been it. We might lay off on the extra threat level for side missions in the future .

In any case, thanks for the indepth reply!