[19.6 HF2 Ground Combat, Insane] Ceasian medium base is unable to be completed.

[Went]

1. There are legion of aliens in final room (with hologram globe), about 10 or more. I don't see any way to kill them - their reaction fire kill anyone who comes closer. Smoke don't works (they anyway hit and kill me) and there are no other entrances to this room.

2. "or destroy all energy cores" - what is "energy core"? I have ruined all the base, but mission hadn't completed.

So, I uninstalled Xenonauts until release.

Edited August 8, 2013 by Went

[Matthew]

Thanks for the report.

Well that's another way to beat the game

[Chris]

You have to actually go back to the landing room and abort the mission once you've destroyed the energy cores to get the victory (the research description on capturing a base does explain this).

If it ended automatically then players wouldn't get the chance to clear the base if they accidentally blow up the power cores.

[Waladil]

Might be worth noting that I've never seen this "research description on capturing a base does explain this" you mention. Is it not in yet, or not fully functional? I've captured small, medium, and large bases and don't recall any post-base researches.

[Tobbzn]

It's actually on the mission start intel screen, saying something like "We've landed at Sebillian base medium. If you can kill all the aliens we get lots of tech, if you blow up power cores and then pull out, you won't get tech, but the base will still be destroyed. Good luck commander."

[Went]

You have to actually go back to the landing room and abort the mission once you've destroyed the energy cores to get the victory (the research description on capturing a base does explain this).

If it ended automatically then players wouldn't get the chance to clear the base if they accidentally blow up the power cores.

It will be nice if I will see objectives with their completion level during the play. I don't want to guess what is "energy core" and what will happen when I'll push "abort mission" button. But even worse problem is horde of aliens in control room which are impossible to kill. Each of them has about 250 hps (like my armored tank, lol!) and heavy plasmas/snipers. Please tell me - which assault tactics intending developers when create such tough alien opposition?

[Waladil]

Went, I cleared out a Large Caesan base. Aside from the 20-odd enemies I fought getting TO the control room, there were eight Caesan Elites with battle rifles (plus two plasma cannoneers and an officer. Oh, and a praetor.) firing on my Wolf-clad troops. My tactics were to remain outside of LOS where possible and pour heavy fire onto their positions. By the time the room was clear, most of my troops had emptied two clips each and most people had a brand-new plasma hole.

Only one person needs to be risked to reaction fire at first to establish LOS. Then fire from outside of LOS at known enemy positions and cover spots. Burst fire is useful here to suppress enemy troops allowing for safer scouting and less reaction shots next turn. Remember that most weapons have a range of 20 yet LOS is 18 tiles, so you can suppress from outside dangers of reaction fire. Sometimes I even fired at where they were last turn in order to suppress enemies before moving in to get confirmed locations.

[StellarRat]

Went, I cleared out a Large Caesan base. Aside from the 20-odd enemies I fought getting TO the control room, there were eight Caesan Elites with battle rifles (plus two plasma cannoneers and an officer. Oh, and a praetor.) firing on my Wolf-clad troops. My tactics were to remain outside of LOS where possible and pour heavy fire onto their positions. By the time the room was clear, most of my troops had emptied two clips each and most people had a brand-new plasma hole.

Only one person needs to be risked to reaction fire at first to establish LOS. Then fire from outside of LOS at known enemy positions and cover spots. Burst fire is useful here to suppress enemy troops allowing for safer scouting and less reaction shots next turn. Remember that most weapons have a range of 20 yet LOS is 18 tiles, so you can suppress from outside dangers of reaction fire. Sometimes I even fired at where they were last turn in order to suppress enemies before moving in to get confirmed locations.

I've not played such a monumental battle yet. Would firing a zillion stun rockets/grenades into the room to totally blanket the area be a viable tactic?

[Waladil]

Rockets maybe. Grenades no. Range on grenades (even with max strength) is far too low to be viable. Problem with rockets might be that enemies at that level take a lot of stunning to go down so it might be completely impractical to carry that much hardware into the battle. Could work, though.

[ViniJones]

I prefer to keep 2 heavies(predator+plasmacaster) out of the fighting and save their armor for the last room. It is hard, but I rarely lose people there.

I dont think rockets are the answer, you still need to get the angle, if you do that and survive, might aswell use rapid firing guns with lots of ammo, rather than the few rockets you can carry.

[Went]

My tactics were to remain outside of LOS where possible and pour heavy fire onto their positions. By the time the room was clear, most of my troops had emptied two clips each and most people had a brand-new plasma hole.

Ouch, bad news for me. Of course, I have used this tactic in the beginning and killed one or two Caesans in control room. And I got many plasma holes with my troops and emptied almost all ammunition. But then I just tired to do this I want to play, but not to waste my life on the boring, repetitive grind.

[maackey]

I just had my first alien base attack today, it was a small ceasian, on veteran difficulty. I was scouting with my charlie full of my regular strike team, one of them however was wounded and stuck back at base, and none of them had rocket launchers. (I was scouting with the dropship because my foxtrots couldn't make it over to east russia to spot the base)

I lost everybody except for two (started with 7), but I cleared out the base. The first two of them died to an alien rocket launcher out of the blue (the first time I've ever seen the heavy plasma rifle! wow was I surprised and demoralised... blew up my heavy cover and half the room besides -- that explosion may have been a bug though, there were times flashbangs and smokes set off similar explosions) The third died legitimately to some plasma bursts. I had four troopers remaining by the time I reached the last room (with that *dreadful* hallway) There was a new Ceasian I've never seen with a helmet that one-shotted two full health elite commanders (one in wolf armor) with reaction fire. He had around six buddies with plasma rifles to boot.

Before I had even reached that room I was running out of ammo, and was collecting weapons and clips off the ground to keep my shielded assault guy stocked. (He would have died too if he didn't have a shield *and* wolf armor) Long story short, I dumped all my ammo down that corridor into the room, mostly because the alien device still gave 100% cover even after being destroyed -- I couldn't shoot through its footprint. I won by using my *last* alenium grenade and only had 6 rounds for the sniper rifle left (all the alien pistols/rifles had been emptied as well).

I sorta knew about blowing up the power core could win me the mission, but I didn't know what it looked like, there were sooo many alien doodads around the base. I also wasn't sure if blowing them up would make me lose out on selling loot. In retrospect it may have been the giant doodad the aliens blew up themselves in the first big firefight that was basically my crew in the double wide room firing at the alien crew in the other double room adjacent to it. But it didn't have any big explosion animation (it may have but it was out of los at the time) and I didn't get any notification that something important got exploded. When I got to the last room, I thought that maybe that was the power core, but the same thing happened: I blew it up incidentally, and nothing special happened, aliens kept shooting at me, so I kept shooting back.

TL;DR:

The alien base missions are really fun and difficult, but victory conditions need to be made clear to the player, eg. popup text saying, "The alien power core has been destroyed, chopper awaiting evac. Mission success. Optional objective: Take out the commander/command station"

P.S.

Next time I get another alien base attack, everyone is bringing rocket launchers, and I'm hauling ass as soon as the power core is kaput. I didn't have any with me this time, but the only reliable kills I had were with grenades, which wipe out loot anyway. Is it possible to effectively assault an alien base without blowing up all the tech? I don't want to loose all my guys next time, but I also like selling the alien artifacts because I can always use more money.

[Chris]

Yup, better signposting of the objectives is a perfectly valid point and we may well add it in before release to make the victory conditions clearer. It's not a bug, though.

Also, the number of aliens in the command room may well be unbalanced given how tough they are but again this is a balance issue rather than a bug and it'll almost certainly be tweaked before release.

[StellarRat]

Well, he was playing at "INSANE" level! I would expect that to be impossible or very close to it.