Is La Resistance fundamentally broken?

[Trar]

I was thinking about getting La Resistance, if only so that UI button on the top toolbar isn't grayed out anymore. But according to recent Steam reviews, intel tokens disappear when you load a save. That's a pretty major issue that would prevent me from buying the DLC altogether. Is this actually the case?

 

[Dimmie_Dumm]

This is annoyingly common, yes, but it doesn't happen all the time. The bug is reported long ago with no motion on it.

 

[Trar]

This is annoyingly common, yes, but it doesn't happen all the time. The bug is reported long ago with no motion on it.

I don't think I'll buy the DLC until it's fixed then.

 

[General Tao]

Spies do randomly disappear, it's true. Most of the spy operations have very limited, if any, value except collab govts which are super strong.

The coordinated strike feature, which is supposed to serve as Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbour, is completely broken (AFAIK, since release) and does nothing.

Armoured Cars have been a waste of time and dead end technology since they came out, and to this day are still objectively worse at their primary role of garrison template than interwar light tanks are.

Code breaking is useful but a rather boring implementation, just a button click with no thought behind it.

On the plus side the focus trees are good. France, Portugal and Spain I think it was? All interesting trees.

So buy it on sale for the countries. The rest is mediocre to nonfunctional.

 

[FLUX2226]

Armoured Cars have been a waste of time and dead end technology since they came out, and to this day are still objectively worse at their primary role of garrison template than interwar light tanks are.

They were good for garrison duty on release, it's just that the tank designer was introduced in the following DLC already so they almost immediately got powercreeped.

The resistance system very likely wasn't designed with modular tanks in mind, which is why it only looks at hardness and nothing else. With interwar light tanks offering more hardness than armored cars while being able to save costs in every other area, it completely falls apart.

 

[Trar]

They were good for garrison duty on release, it's just that the tank designer was introduced in the following DLC already so they almost immediately got powercreeped.

The resistance system very likely wasn't designed with modular tanks in mind, which is why it only looks at hardness and nothing else. With interwar light tanks offering more hardness than armored cars while being able to save costs in every other area, it completely falls apart.

Interwar light tanks kind of were armored cars, in a way, but I digress.

 

[General Tao]

Interwar light tanks kind of were armored cars, in a way, but I digress.

And of course, with the tank designer, you can actually "make" an armoured car with non-tracked suspension...but then this produces something worse than an armoured car .

Not to be a Negative Nancy, but when I think about it, the double blow of LaR and then NSB probably did more long-term harm to the game than any other DLC. GoE pales in comparison to the wide-ranging balance inconsistencies those DLCs caused. Forget about anti-naval bias, this is anti-land bias.

Hmmm, then again, BBA did completely break the air war with the AI and an anti-air bias. It's a toughie .

 

[LordWahu]

The coordinated strike feature, which is supposed to serve as Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbour, is completely broken (AFAIK, since release) and does nothing.

It used to work. You could really rack up kills on that first day. But it is indeed broken right now

Due to some development footage from GTD, I think they intended to add naval raids (in the same vein of bomber/special forces raids), but will be pushing that idea back to this DLC since it's naval themed

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

I wouldn't let that one bug put you off buying LaR unless you want to punish PDX for not fixing bugs as a principle.

That bug only matters if you plan to invest a lot of espionage as a way to catch up with or overtake the AI's tech. That strategy might appeal to some players who like to puzzle out odd strategies (in the style of the YouTuber Spiffing Brit). It must be really infuriating if you've sunk ten hours into a game using that strategy and then it's bugged. It's inexcusable that PDX haven't fixed it.

But most of LaR is unaffected. You get interesting tradeoffs in how to manage Resistance. I mainly use spies to track other countries' NF paths (absolutely critical in alt-history games) and to prepare the way for my offensives. Signals intelligence gives your forces a huge boost if you use it properly. That's especially useful if you're a minor fighting a major. As a binge player, I usually rely on the subscription for DLC, but LaR was one DLC that I thought was worth the sale piece.

 

[KubiG37]

I'd buy it for the extra French, spanish and Portuguese content, and Intel mechanics, not at all because of spies or their (useless) missions.

Also if you like historical accuracy, without LaR Vichy France becomes a puppet of Germany and an active war participant after Germany capitulates it, instead of a neutral nation.

 

[BurningEGO]

The portuguese tree is a joke as far as history is concerned. They clearly didn't bother researching history, or actually know about history, in order to make a bloated tree where 50% of the content doesn't make sense and another 50% is simply ommited.

I will disagree with General Tao on spies though. Spying can give your troops good bonus, and you can use them for stealing tech easily. And there are a lot of countries nowadays with a ton of spies, Iran for instance can get +4 from the national focus and another +1 from advisor, so you can have a spy maintaining network and the rest stealing air/land tech happily all the time.

Frankly I am using spies all the time and I never noticed this bug (dissapearing intel tokens), but thats probably because I don't save scum and usually play lengthy sessions.

 

[Caeric]

I wouldn't let that one bug put you off buying LaR unless you want to punish PDX for not fixing bugs as a principle.

That bug only matters if you plan to invest a lot of espionage as a way to catch up with or overtake the AI's tech.

Unless I'm just having exceptionally bad luck to me it seems like i get less breakthroughs running tech stealing than just hard research without any boosts due to how poorly that system was implemented in GtD. Being punished for better research speed or stealing techs outright seems like peak clumsy implementation to me..

 

[GSP Jr]

Try it for a month before you decide, can't you subscribe to it and play test it yourself?

Wouldn't actually playing it be the best way of deciding??

 

[LastButterfly]

Spies do randomly disappear, it's true. Most of the spy operations have very limited, if any, value except collab govts which are super strong.

The coordinated strike feature, which is supposed to serve as Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbour, is completely broken (AFAIK, since release) and does nothing.

Armoured Cars have been a waste of time and dead end technology since they came out, and to this day are still objectively worse at their primary role of garrison template than interwar light tanks are.

Code breaking is useful but a rather boring implementation, just a button click with no thought behind it.

On the plus side the focus trees are good. France, Portugal and Spain I think it was? All interesting trees.

So buy it on sale for the countries. The rest is mediocre to nonfunctional.

That's an outstanding description.
They were so keen on not adding any complexity for the player that Espionnage was literally designed to not be used. Few mechanics in the game are as forgettable. Waste of money and time - you won't get any entertainement out of this one.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Spies do randomly disappear, it's true. Most of the spy operations have very limited, if any, value except collab govts which are super strong.

most of the other operations are pretty bad yeah. stealing blueprints has been somewhere between viable and broken depending how far back you go. intel networks + modifier from intel in combat can be pretty significant, especially given how modifiers stack.

 

[jimfinbinlin]

I was thinking about getting La Resistance, if only so that UI button on the top toolbar isn't grayed out anymore.

Huh? When LaR is disabled, the button is not greyed out, it's non-existent.

BTW the intel tokens are irrelevant. The spy minigame is trash, and the only operation worth doing is collab government (which is broken OP, compared to not having LaR and having to capitulate certain nations the hard way).

After having read the rest of the comments, I concur with all. LaR is overall a trash DLC.

 

[Bailing_Out]

The only thing I found useful is spying in the area I'm going to attack. Even leaving it to my AI general as Japan the Soviets just melt away. I've not figured how/what/whatever about collab governments. Never bothered to do Pearl Harbor, the game tells me it out of range many times. So most of my playthroughs as Japan end up with the US just sitting there supplying me with aluminum.

 

[Kanitatlan]

I'm going to try and cover what makes spying useful.

Everyone agrees that collabs are good. They can be rather expensive but on any country of any significance they can be immensely valuable. They have two important effects, they make it easier to trigger the target country to surrender and they give you a starting collaboration level.

Code breaking is useful because it gives you some general bonuses. Personally I break the enemy codes and then sit on them without taking the temporary bonuses that get your code breaking discovered. I've never seen anyone making any serious discussion ayt using it differently.

General intelligence levels give you global bonuses and this is useful. I'm not sure how significant it really is as it is a bit too easy in single player to have intel advantages.

The effect of spy networks on planning and dug in bonuses is useful and appears to be considered important in multi-player. I find that in single player it is difficult to make this have much effect as your inherent superiority as player tends to make the front move away from the spies too quickly.

On a slightly different tack, there are videos of players playing a spying only game and demonstrating that if you focus completely on spying you can use other missions to defeat your enemies without ever going to war. I suspect that is only really possible in single player where the AI fails to adequately respond to your foreign interference in their internal affairs.

As others have said, steal blueprints used to be rather valuable but these days is a bit rubbish. For it to be useful again it could do with some changes so you could be a bit more specific about what you want to steal.

As one poster mentioned. There is the issue that when playing on historical you know what everyone is going to do but if you play ahistorical then spying can be real useful to get a bit on insight into what other countries are up to and planning. It can also be quite comforting to establish good visibility on enemy forces and general strength although I don't think I've ever really been in the position where the difference between good and bad intel made any difference to my military plans.

The armoured car thing is a bit unfortunate. They were the optimum solution for occupation forces for about 10 minutes until the tank designer turned up and ultra-cheap light tanks took over.

Oddly, I have at times used spies to suppress resistance but only in very special cases where I wanted to run specific occupation patterns in states with very, very high resources. That was just a few edge cases and it is general something you wouldn't use.

 

[BurningEGO]

As others have said, steal blueprints used to be rather valuable but these days is a bit rubbish. For it to be useful again it could do with some changes so you could be a bit more specific about what you want to steal.

How is it rubbish? You can get a 2 years ahead of tech bonus, a 300% bonus or a random technology all of a sudden.

Its still great, as far as you can spare those spies.

Collabs are great but only for major countries. Try to play as a minor and you won't give a damn about collabs 90% of the time, and what you will want is technological thieves (or stealing tech via spies).

 

[LordWahu]

How is it rubbish? You can get a 2 years ahead of tech bonus, a 300% bonus or a random technology all of a sudden.

I believe this has been patched to only provide a 75% bonus instead of a 300% one. You can still get an unresearched tech, but if you have all the opponent's techs the reward is far lower

And that's on top of the way special project breakthroughs want you to be researching for a long time, and stealing techs don't provide breakthroughs