Infinite reinforcements can be game breaking

[NephilimNexus]

So I'm doing the Advent Tower mission. About halfway across the map I get hit with a wave of reinforcements. "OK, I can handle this" I think and buckle down to deal with the problem. Once dispatched, I made my way to the doohicky and encountered the last "real" pod. I got them down to one enemy left & hacked the console, thinking this would be the end. Nope! As I moved in to kill the last alien (who was still stunned at the time) a second reinforcement wave showed up. "OK now this is annoying" I thought as I set up to deal with these guys too. As I was still fighting them, a third wave arrived. Then a forth.

Keep in mind my team is only five soldiers, as limited by the mission rules, and Advent was dropping four guys on me every other turn, and this is a mission where part of the victory condition is to "Neutralize All Enemies."

At that point I just sighed and went back to a save before the mission even started. You guys might want to re-think this whole "infinite reinforcements" thing. Or at least take it out of missions where we're required to clear the map.

[Zymos]

That's the entire thing about the tower mission. It's smack dab in the middle of an Advent city and can thus be reinforced much faster and more heavily compared to normal missions.

They are very hard.

[Thatsxcombaby]

Wow this does sound game breaking. Hopefully they remove the infinite reinforcement code from the neutralize all enemies victory condition in patch 1.02.

[8wayz]

There are a few tricks to the Tower mission:
- Reinforcements will only start dropping once you exit concealment.
- Once you hack the console, all pods will be stunned for 2 turns. You can use this time to clean up the area.
- If there is even a single alien alive, reinforcements will continue spawning. Turrets are also counted for this.

Be aware that after X number of turns the reinforcements will start spawning every turn, and it will be a 8-unit pod. On each turn.

My guess is that you did not manage to kill all the aliens and there was one hiding somewhere. The objective should only count original aliens that are part of pods, not reinforcements, but do not quote me on that.

[thejokerr]

You can delay the reinforcements (not sure how much, but I had 8 turns or more no reinforcement) via an changed .ini entry. When I am home later I'll look it up. I reverted it back to normal after the tower mission because I changed the value which applies to all missions.
From my point of view the tower mission is just too random. You have no chance to get to the console if 1 of the 2 bridges is up and you have to use the other way. On my 2nd tower both bridges were down and usable and I was not even detected until I hacked the console.

[mattprice516]

I believe that map has been altered such that both bridges should now be down the vast majority of the time.

[Arcalane]

From my point of view the tower mission is just too random. You have no chance to get to the console if 1 of the 2 bridges is up and you have to use the other way. On my 2nd tower both bridges were down and usable and I was not even detected until I hacked the console.

The 1.1 patch made it so both bridges are down to help avoid that randomness.

[nightwyrm]

I think at the very least they should change the reinforcement to stop once you hack the tower. Lib4 is way harder than all the other missions on the Lib chain. You only get 5 men, can't evac and the map is small and full of chock points. Depending on the map layout, there may be place you HAVE to go thru and if there's a pod standing there, you're gonna have to go loud early. And then you have to hack and clear the map while reinforcements continue to arrive. It's a bit much I think.

I find it somewhat amusing that PI took the prime example of a sneaky, get-the-objective mission from Vanilla and turned it into a giant slugfest while going the other way for the rest of the game.

[MacroNova]

There are a few tricks to the Tower mission:
- Reinforcements will only start dropping once you exit concealment.
- Once you hack the console, all pods will be stunned for 2 turns. You can use this time to clean up the area.
- If there is even a single alien alive, reinforcements will continue spawning. Turrets are also counted for this.

Be aware that after X number of turns the reinforcements will start spawning every turn, and it will be a 8-unit pod. On each turn.

My guess is that you did not manage to kill all the aliens and there was one hiding somewhere. The objective should only count original aliens that are part of pods, not reinforcements, but do not quote me on that.

I had no idea that reinforcements keep dropping after you hack the tower! I was sure hacking it cut them off.

I didn't get any more reinforcements on my Network Tower mission, and xwynns didn't either in his let's play video, after hacking the objective. Are you sure about this one? Or were we just quick enough after breaking concealment?

Sorry for quoting you after you explicitly asked us not to, but I'm now really curious whether we win the mission after we kill the last original enemy even if there are scores of reinforcements around.

[code99]

I hate this mission so frkn much. I had to resort to some save scumming to finish it off and even then things just got stupid with huge pods dropping every single turn and i was left no other choice but to rush the objective with my shinobi that wasnt even concealed sadly and came 1 tile short of the objective ...

I admit, i used the teleport command then to move my shinobi one tile ... i was risking wipeout ...

Im pretty sure there were no reinforcements after i hacked the thing.



Anyway, i think this mission is just stupid hard and should not be. I will look into ways in making it easier ... ill check the inis, maybe ill find something.

[8wayz]

I am not sure about the reinforcements after hacking the terminal, I cleaned the rest of the map within the 2 turns.

I can very much assure that they will keep coming your way if you do not hack the objective though.

I had to restart the mission since I took a bit too much of my time and was swarmed by 8-unit pods each turn.

The mission is already easier - both bridges should be down, so you have an alternative way to sneak in. You can also use a Spider suit with Shinobi to get to the objective unseen.

The mission would be extremely easy once you get a Spider suit actually.

[MacroNova]

If the mission works the way I think it does, then it seems quite fair.

- No reinforcements until you break concealment
- Hacking the objective cuts off reinforcements
- Kill all remaining aliens after hacking the objective to win

It means you can take your time and sneak most of the way to the control room, manage your activation, work for the objective, and mop up without being overwhelmed. I suppose if you're unlucky and get spotted while sneaking and you're still a ways off from the control room, you are kinda screwed, so the mission is binary in that sense.

[GavinRuneblade]

Something that saved me on this mission was the officer command that delays reinforcements. I could only do it once, but that was enough in my case.

[Tuhalu]

As far as I can tell, there are no reinforcements after you hack the tower. I had killed one pod of reinforcements on the way in and ignored a second pod (as it was well behind me) on the way to the hack. After the hack, I took up positions in the building and overwatch camped until they ran into me one at a time. It took several turns. No new reinforcements came.

[Devon_v]

When I ran the tower last I was able to get four turns in without any reinforcements. They started dropping what seemed like three turns after I was spotted, and after hacking the obective and taking out the stunned groups no additional forces appeared on the sixth turn after breaking concealment.

It's a surgical strike at a heavily fortified enemy position, it's not supposed to be something you go slow on.