Cleaner storyline milestone 2 - Review/first impressions pacing

[Cheostian]

Spoiler Alert! 

Don't read below if you don't want potentially to have content spoiled.










So, I noticed I just achieved 50% clean network progress in milestone 2 which surprised me because I feel like I have barely done anything yet.  

I did the atlas base mission, captured instead of killed the General and some cleaners.  researched cleaner corpse and interrogated a cleaner.  I rescued two of the three soldiers in a mission, and just finished an ambush mission.  I think I completed maybe one release hostage mission.  It's 21 days in so far.

I am just kind of surprised I've already got half the network finished when I haven't even made it to the end of my first month yet.  I feel like that progress is really fast and somehow it should be expanded a bit or something.  I am currently working on a engineering project to test weapons on cleaners, but I am now worried it was a waste of time as the network will be shut down before it's any use.  Also they are already fairly easy to drop (which is okay at the start, I did lose a soldier or two so far).  By the way I am playing on soldier (what I consider normal) difficulty.

One other note.  I felt like the ambush missions was interesting but to easy.  I literally murdered them all and destroyed no trucks in turn one, still with one more soldier left unused with full tu's.  I think an option would be to push the ambush deployment zone a bit further away from them to reduce accuracy and possibly add one or two more cleaners.  I would expect to have at least a few cleaners survive to turn two of the ambush.

Posting this for feedback to the dev's related to the recent changes in milestone 2

[Cheostian]

So, I've found the final cleaner base.  It's day 58.  Between the start of the game and now, I've shot down one I think unmanned drone ufo and one small manned scout ufo.  Every other mission has been cleaners.  I just got my second radar dish base going (one in europe and one in north america)  I feel like cleaner missions should be stretched more than two months with a bit more meat with them.  I want the first goal of clearing their base to feel a bit more important and special.  Maybe add some toughness to them by giving them a few "boss" type cleaners in robotic exoarmor or they have like a tank or something crazy.  I also think the alien missions should overlap with the cleaner missions more.  It felt like I was getting to many cleaner missions.

Maybe hide a few of those cleaner data desks in a couple of the normal alien missions like the downed alien ship happens to have a building with some cleaner data around once in awhile or something.

Once again, just my impressions on it as I go.

[Pathfinder]

Cleaners were very easy targets. Even assaulting theirs main base was easy, except command room, which contained aliens. However, spamming flashbangs and using auto fire from MGs sliced them like a butter. I feel that there should be more cleaner missions, with larger variety, to make this First Act of the game much more enjoyable, because it is actually very fun part, and could be more.

[Alienkiller]

We will see what the Devs do for making the Cleaners more interessting. A lot for them have been done for them in Milestone 2.

But I give you right, the Cleaners are an interessting Enemy together with the Aliens since Milestone 2.

Edited December 12, 2023 by Alienkiller

[Pietje666]

I know the rewards for clearing the HQ. Still i never launch the final attack, cause they are good target practice for rookies. And finishing the Cleaner story isn't necessary in the game. Still they improved the Cleaner part very much in Milestone 2. 

[Vitruviansquid]

1 hour ago, Pietje666 said:

I know the rewards for clearing the HQ. Still i never launch the final attack, cause they are good target practice for rookies. And finishing the Cleaner story isn't necessary in the game. Still they improved the Cleaner part very much in Milestone 2. 

I agree with this.

I think the Cleaners being so easy to shoot on missions, but their base being difficult to attack makes a perverse incentive where you don't actually want to finish the Cleaners off, but instead want to keep "farming" the Cleaner missions to get money and experience for rookies.

There should be something about the Cleaners that puts a clock on the players to attack their base.

I've proposed in another post that, once you discover the Cleaner base, then other Cleaner missions should stop spawning, and instead the Cleaner base should passive create panic so long as it's there and not destroyed. I've also proposed that Cleaner missions should continually scale up in difficulty so that players feel like it'd be easier to nip the Cleaner faction in the bud rather than having to keep fighting stronger and stronger Cleaners.