You really blew the final mission

[Doomer]

Hi,

I'm a X-com veteran since the 90's and had a great time with your game around 2016 and 2017. I've been stuck in the last mission for 2½ YEARS! I've tried to finish it like few times a year. Finally I gave up trying and edited the configuration files so movement would consume only 1 AP. It wasn't enough, then I modified the grenade throw distance and shooting accuracy. That too wasn't enough. Finally I found the settings for armor and increased them by 1000% making my soldiers invincible. Finally I was able to beat the mission, altough because the reapers were unleashed all my soldiers died.

 

This is the hardest last mission ever made in any game and it partially ruined the experience for me. I don't see myself going back to the first game ever again.

[Solver]

This is an interesting perspective, since I would have the opposite complaint about the final mission. It's too easy. It's easier than some other late-game missions (Carriers, Battleships, the largest alien bases), and to me the Xenonauts final mission has usually felt like a show of your own superiority. That's as long as you have end-game gear. Enemies are clustered close together, a singularity cannon can wipe out most of each cluster, and magstorms finish off the rest. If you have a full team of soldiers with mixed Predator/Sentinel armor, a couple of Singularity cannons and mag weapons for everyone else, it's pure dominance.

[Ninothree]

I think the last mission is hard the first time you play it. You are warned there is a time limit, and even if you bring some heavy weapons you don't know how much ammo to conserve. And the big boss is pretty bossy. Still, as far as final missions go, I wouldn't say it was too different than most. 

[Chris]

6 hours ago, Doomer said:

Hi,

I'm a X-com veteran since the 90's and had a great time with your game around 2016 and 2017. I've been stuck in the last mission for 2½ YEARS! I've tried to finish it like few times a year. Finally I gave up trying and edited the configuration files so movement would consume only 1 AP. It wasn't enough, then I modified the grenade throw distance and shooting accuracy. That too wasn't enough. Finally I found the settings for armor and increased them by 1000% making my soldiers invincible. Finally I was able to beat the mission, altough because the reapers were unleashed all my soldiers died.

 

This is the hardest last mission ever made in any game and it partially ruined the experience for me. I don't see myself going back to the first game ever again.

I'd love to see a recording of how you play the game because I honestly cannot comprehend how you'd not be able to beat the side objectives and win a flawless victory with troops that could move 50+ tiles per turn and are effectively invulnerable...

[Solver]

I'm also interested in how it's actually possible to get to the final mission without being ready for it. The final mission requires a captured Praetor. That means at least one successful raid on a Battleship or an alien fortress. You can't really manage that without a team of experienced soldiers and good gear. And you don't even get to see Battleships unless you've developed some decent tactics - if your tactics are subpar, then I think Landing Ships is where you lose the game.

[Doomer]

13 hours ago, Chris said:

 I'd love to see a recording of how you play the game because I honestly cannot comprehend how you'd not be able to beat the side objectives and win a flawless victory with troops that could move 50+ tiles per turn and are effectively invulnerable...

I was so full of it by that time that I didn't play it from the start with the edited files, I just loaded a save where my troops were about halfway through the map went for the boss and two turns after that the reapers were unleashed.

I didn't have highest end gear, no Singularity cannon for me. Just mix of sentinel and predator armor, plasma rifles, plasma casters, precision plasma, rocket launchers with fusion rockets..

[Chris]

The singularity cannon does make it MUCH easier, as does a Hyperion with the MAG-tier main cannon. Were your Predator guys using MAGSTORMs too? That tends to make them pretty monstrous once they get their accuracy to the 65 or 70 mark. But I think even without top tier stuff you should be able to just blitz straight down the middle and kill the boss before the Reapers appear.

As I said it's kinda hard to provide much useful feedback because I don't really know how you play the game on a turn-by-turn basis. I suppose if you play in a particularly slow and methodical way then perhaps you'll find the final mission much harder than someone who plays more aggressively, due to it being the only mission with a hard time limit?

[Solver]

1 hour ago, Doomer said:

I didn't have highest end gear, no Singularity cannon for me. Just mix of sentinel and predator armor, plasma rifles, plasma casters, precision plasma, rocket launchers with fusion rockets..

This definitely makes you underprepared for the mission. Singularity cannon makes the mission much easier, but is still rather optional. Plasma weapons mean you likely don't enough gear - mag weapons are quite necessary, and Magstorms especially are great to have. It should be possible with plasmas if you play aggressively enough, but going in without mag weapons and without singularity cannons really complicates things.

[Doomer]

7 hours ago, Chris said:

As I said it's kinda hard to provide much useful feedback because I don't really know how you play the game on a turn-by-turn basis. I suppose if you play in a particularly slow and methodical way then perhaps you'll find the final mission much harder than someone who plays more aggressively, due to it being the only mission with a hard time limit?

You can't play aggressive in the last mission. There is plenty of cover for the aliens to gun the troops down if I did that. Also there are those two doors leading to the reactors which have 4 androids and other aliens effectively killing your troops in the crossfire. Farthest I got without cheats was to kill the aliens near the doors, not blowing them open and then trying to push ahead.

Edited October 4, 2019 by Doomer

[Chris]

On 10/4/2019 at 7:50 PM, Doomer said:

You can't play aggressive in the last mission. There is plenty of cover for the aliens to gun the troops down if I did that. Also there are those two doors leading to the reactors which have 4 androids and other aliens effectively killing your troops in the crossfire. Farthest I got without cheats was to kill the aliens near the doors, not blowing them open and then trying to push ahead.

As Solver points out, though, there are five tiers of weapons if you include the starting ballistic weapons and your troops only have tier 3. I'm not surprised you're struggling if you're still using mid-game tech like Plasmas on the final mission, as you're effectively bringing a knife to a gunfight. This isn't a complete clone of X-Com / XCOM; the tech tree doesn't stop with plasma weapons.

Get MAG Weapons and the Hyperion Hovertank (with a MAG cannon) and you'll find the mission much easier, and get a few Singularity Cannons as well and you'll probably be able to do the mission with your eyes closed.

[Wyldefyre_CP]

It has been a long while, but let me dig in my brain for what seemed like a working strat ... I do remember having the singularity cannon and mag weapons but never used the Hovertank on this ....

First orders of business were to get those 2 side missions done ASAP ... it seems to me I used my units with the most APs to gallop over and put an end to those and then race back to their comrades ... can't remember how many I used for each side mission, it's been 2 long, but I used as few as possible on each side, b/c I employed a pile of people to slowly plod up the main hall while they were busy, setting up plenty of opportunities for reaction fire along the way.  Once I had my side quest units back I think we had to turn on the jets to get the mission done, and it was a bloodbath on both sides most times I did it, but we always had at least a few survivors to toast the fallen along the way ....