Terror Missions

[andreasg]

The feel of terror missions are quite off, in my opinion.

Just played through one, and after many tries I basically figured out that the only viable strategy is simply to hug the dropship and wait for the entire map of aliens to rush you.

Moving out also leaves you without time units for reaction fire, which you need when the entire map of civilians and soldiers will come at you as zombies. Also, if a zombie is killed during reaction fire, it will spawn an alien that gets to move during the same turn, making it very likely that it will zombify your troops the same turn.

I am not sure how I would change the terror missions, but in my opinion they need to be looked at. At the moment is simply impossible to move out and save the civilians, doing so is suicide. I'm not saying that terror missions should be easy or that one should expect to go through them without casualties. But at the moment terror missions simply feels like base defense missions.

[legit1337]

Terror mission aliens should not know automatically where xenonauts are on the map. They should be busy searching for and slaughtering civilians.

However, once you engage an alien they SHOULD swarm you. The xenonauts have become the largest threat in the area and it makes sense the aliens would want to eliminate your troops ASAP.

[ventuswings]

@legit1337

I concur, but swarming toward Xenonauts only works because of their superior number. Many are willing to venture onto open field, undergoing suicidal charge, only to be shot down. There's not enough aliens with alternative behaviour like setting up defensive perimeter on secure location (why would they have to move toward Xenonauts defensive position and not vice versa?), ambush etc.

Though the recent 'reveal all map' feature does make some tactics like ambush completely obsolete... Is there plan to make that optional btw?

[andreasg]

Yeah, the reveal also works to make it more optimal just to sit in the dropship and wait.

[Chris]

I'm going to reduce the number of aliens on the Terror missions slightly, removing Aggressive ones. I've played a few and they do indeed turn into proper battles...but it's a bit too much.

I must admit I've not played one with Reapers yet, but the change you're asking for is already in the works because I suffered a squad wipe earlier in the game from that.

[andreasg]

Maybe it would help if the aliens spawned further away from the dropship, but patrolled around killing civilians.

How many civilians spawn on these terror missions? And how are you punished if you die? Maybe there should be more. At the moment the terror missions are not that different from any other ufo ground mission.

A completely unrelated thing, I don't think I've ever seen aliens use the 1st or 2nd floor yet.

[kabill]

A completely unrelated thing, I don't think I've ever seen aliens use the 1st or 2nd floor yet.

Aside from UFOs, I don't think they can spawn on a level above ground level. So they need to move there. In theory, the AI has some preference for moving to higher levels, but it might not be strong enough to encourage them over other things or perhaps isn't working?

[lemm]

I usually just touch down and lift off from terror missions.

[andreasg]

I usually just touch down and lift off from terror missions.

Just had a terror mission against blue robots. By the time I had cleared around 1/3 of the map, I had spent 10 turns and the map was revealed. The remaining 2/3 of the map was swarming with them, lol. Simply no way I could clear the map without going down to the last man.

One step is reducing the number of aliens, sure, but it also seems wrong that you can just hit end turn 10 times to get the rest of the aliens revealed.

IMO the aliens should be patrolling around killing civilians, so that if you just stay at the dropship for 10 turns, you are penalized by a bad score.

[Gauddlike]

If the score is important maybe it could just get reduced slightly each turn?

Waiting in safety for the map to be revealed would be the easy option but even if no civilians get killed you would still have the turn penalty to make that a sub optimal strategy.

The funding nations would surely be expecting your troops to react quickly once they were on the ground and not waste too much time containing the threat.

[llunak]

There currently seems to be +$15k for successfully completing a terror mission and no change for just landing and abandoning immediately (and -$90k for not showing up at all), so I don't see that working unless the scoring of terror missions works better first. Probably no point in trying to fix one possible exploit when there's a much easier one.

[Caaygun]

It would be nice if end of mission score affected funding relations good or bad. Currently it makes no difference at all whether you take or don't take crashsites or how many civilians you save in them or terror sites.

[mrsisk]

I just played my first of these on the latest stable version of the game...end of November game time, squad of 8, about half in Jackal armor and starter weapons...no lasers but with alenium rockets/grenades. Normal mode.

2:1 odds. 14 Caesans and 2 light drones.

I only got my soldiers about a block out from the dropship before they were swarmed. I very nearly crumbled, but was able to fall back half a block and set up a killing field. Basically the map (it was a shopping district with a big grocery store and a marketplace) allowed me to funnel the bad guys into one area. However, there were several turns during which every single one of my soldiers were under suppression.

Miraculously, in the end I completed the mission with one soldier barely injured and two others down to about half HP. Rockets and grenades took out 5 of the 16. The rest were done the old fashioned way (I had 3 guys with nothing but pistol/shield!).

I must say, it was the most intense and awesome bits of gameplay in this game so far. Yes, it's early in the game, but if this level of difficulty was sustained throughout the game as our troops get better gear and the aliens get tougher, I'd be completely happy.

[Nibelung44]

Just got my first terror mission in early december. 8 xenonauts in Jackal/Wolf with advanced ballistic weapons (that's a mod, I would say this is equivalent to laser tech in power).

I got swarmed right off the bat, a lot of Sebillian close to the dropship, on the 3 sides, all were in black armor, I think they are elite right?

An officer appeared rapidly and then 2 reapers.

I got my arse totally handed, full wipe. I managed to kill 1 Seb on turn 1 (they take 180 damages to be down, that's not nothing for my squad), then 2 on round 2 and again 2 on round 2. But then with their 100% regenerative power, I could not concentrate enough to kill one so it amounted to nothing.

So I'm probably too newbish. I plead that my squad had perhaps not enough preparation. Also I tried to help the civilians so went out of the dropship and deployed but this seems to be an error from what I read. This is not realistic (and courageous) behavior though, to stay in dropship while the civilians get butchered.

And then, why all the aliens are deployed very close to the dropship? Also Sebillian regenerating 100% of their damage is just OP I find.

So I'll probably end up touching down and aborting the mission. Not very interesting and my very first disappointment in the game. I imagined a hard mission, but not this ganging up against my squad as soon as they touch down, I thought the alien would do as in XCOM:EU, they would hunt down the civilians and be spread on all the maps. This sounded like Alamo.