Was playing a rookie campaign, didn't lose anybody, then I get a UFO wreck mission late in the game.
I send in my A team, knock out the first pod of 6. Then while I was standing near the corpses, an unactivated, unsighted gatekeeper inside the UFO (I did NOT know they could do this) used that mass resurrection + aoe damage on the corpses, and hit half my squad for 7 points of armor piercing damage. One turn later, I activate an andromedon and couldn't lock it down, he launches his acid blob immediately 4 of my men die. Went from losing no one in months to losing 4 soldiers in the blink of an eye and they were highly trained in AWC perks as well
Most of military on missions, only 6 valid soldiers left. Ranked but good gear is missing : only spare laser weaponry, 1 predator, 1 EXO, standard stuff otherwise.
Got "Ambush Column Troop" in liberated region with 6 days timer. You know, I know what it means. Should I assume a full invasion or send the underquipped soldiers to their final, suicide mission ?
Western American Sector people freedom is at stake, I send them anyway.
Started out as a typical hack the computer mission with three soldiers... a specialist, ranger, and grenadier. Sneek to objective, hack, 'P' evac, retreat, smoke, and flashbang suppress enemy until evac. Only this time it just seemed like four or five pods converged on me at once plus reinforcements... WTF. Goodbye squad, damn that sucked but was great.
My Moment was probably during a rendezvous mission. I was cocky and would send low-level soldiers two head myhq. Out of nowhere the Rendezvous missions started having PODS of three extra faceless. They triggered and so did the Advent pod and so did the other faceless. A few turns later I lost my Soldier and all of my personnelle. After that I started having my Haven managers take decent armor with them and a good weapon.
Not really Breaking-News to most experienced Players.. yet, it's the very first time you realize such a gameplay twist can reliably happen under the same conditions often enough if not regularily... soooooo, here goes.
Once you start acquiring more & more Regions.. they trigger with a small amount of Rebels. Normal stuff.
Yet -- it is highly probable you'll have that initial Faceless/Spy mission.. within Hours or less than a week. Thus, if you didn't immediately assign a relatively solid Haven-Adviser to the place... THAT unskippable mission will (or should) spawn you with about 2-3 Low-Level Rebels, only.
Good luck with these odds while you would field Ballistics at most and nobody to soften up (enough) the pods for even some overwatch tricks by the handicapped Rebels (that miss so many shots) at hand.
This was at the beginning of on of my first campaigns, late April / early May if memory serves on one of the first missions where I was able to bring an officer along.
It was a VIP rescue mission and I managed to get to the cells undetected. Once the cells were opened, the VIPs made a break for the evac zone on top of the building across the street. Unfortunately, they were spotted through a window by a Pod with a Viper leader and ADVENT soldiers including a Stun Lancer.
One of my guys was pulled away by the Viper and another was stunned by the lancer. I managed to kill them without losing anyone or even taking any real damage as the grapple damage was absorbed by the armor plate. Unfortunately, the delay left me short of being able to make the EVAC zone on time.
On the last turn, 4 of my 6 guys were short of the EVAC zone and I was looking through everything to find a way to save anyone. Then it hit me, my leader could command one of them, let them take an extra move and I could save 3.
So I select my leader, scroll through his abilities looking for Command: Attack, Overwatch, Reload, Intervention, Comm . . . Intervention! Holy crap, that's right, he can buy me 2 more turns!
And that's how my Officer saved his whole squad on the first mission he ever went on.
Last edited by dragon95046 on Sat Feb 11, 2017 10:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
Yet -- it is highly probable you'll have that initial Faceless/Spy mission.. within Hours or less than a week. Thus, if you didn't immediately assign a relatively solid Haven-Adviser to the place... THAT unskippable mission will (or should) spawn you with about 2-3 Low-Level Rebels, only.
It's skippable, and in fact the faceless you would have killed disappear from the haven, you just miss the chance for corpses + loot. (not saying all the faceless in the haven disappear, but the ones you would have killed).
Not seen that type of mission yet - in mid Dec. When do they start appearing?
I don't know what the time gating on it is, but you actually have to do a first part which is "find a lead" with no intel package, and this gives you the location of a UFO. I've never seen it happen in the early game so I think there must be a time gate, even though UFOs are obviously reinforcing all the time.
You can get UFO missions early game. I had one in April on Commander difficulty. I think it's a lot more unlikely though, as the aliens send fewer UFOs early, so you have to be very lucky to get a lead on it.
I've not been following up on leads missions unless I want to start liberation. I will do a few see what happens.
As for a story, last nights mission was a blast! Cleared all but 2 pods on a facility mission - shinobi recloaks and finds the gatekeeper pod on the facility building and another 8 pod including sectoid commanders, 2 muton elite and some snakes to the right of the facility. So I position for next turn and the 8 pod dash away from facility onto a derelict buildings roof. All of them. Clustered tightly. I have my rocket spec technical. In range! BOOOM.
Oh it was glorious damage and shredding followed by fall damage. I laughed my ass off and now have a save titled "don't walk on roofs its dangerous".
Then positioned ready for the gatekeeper and friends. Opened with second rocket, again all but the keeper fall to their deaths - except for a bizzare floating muton, but he got shot down in short order. Rockets are so often underwhelming, but not last night they were both spectacular
Just did a mid-game supply raid. It was a 0% infiltration with some 50+ enemies to be found.
I was mowing down everything that came up on my ledge quite handily, when suddenly all the Advent Corpses were animated at once. I had at least 20 Psi Zombies just out of melee range to deal with. Fortunately, I was able to deal with most of them using Shredder Cannons and overwatch fire, while a few more were held up by a frost bomb.
On the next round I identified the location of the Sectoid Commander and frost bombed him so I had time to deal with his pod. He animated a few more zombies as he came out of the Ice (Frozen targets are immune to Stun apparently). In the end, I had 82/83 enemies killed (somehow?) with 4 wounded.
Late game troop ambush.
I have a 6 man team.
I expect a fairly easy mission when suddenly 2 sectopods appear in my view.( first time I encounter them).
I back off to the corner of the map, thinking of evacing.( my whole team is still concealed).
One sectopod runs into my gunner cover, destroys it and proceeds to die on the advent turn, just due to reactive shots... My gunner had guardian perk and it procced 6 times in a row ! He almost soloed it without me telling him to do anything....
So... I discovered that Long War 2 has a hard enrage timer. As background, a Destroy the Monument mission popped up (I think this is mid-August) with 1 day 16 hours left. I was feeling brave, so I attempted to have 2 stealth-specialized Shinobi Tech Sergeants infiltrate the mission. One had a Stuttermag, gas grenade, and incendiary grenade; the other an arc blade, smg, and mag pistol (he has Fan Fire, Return Fire, Lightning Hands, Gunslinger, and Clutch Shot). Both were wearing chameleon vests, reducing infiltration time down to 1 day 15 hours.
To my damn pride, I'd managed to almost run through the entire mission. 3 pods- one Advanced Officer/Advanced Trooper/Trooper, one Advanced Officer/Shieldbearer, and one Archon/2xMuton/Heavy Rocketeer. I did this through a combination of Conceal and breaking line-of-sight shenanigans. There's 1 Muton left, burning and at half hp and... then I found out that Long War 2 has a hard enrage timer. Long story short, this was the result.
Just this evening. Had a fairly standard jailbreak mission - send in a squad of 5, 3 high level experienced soldiers (assault, specialist and shinobi) and 2 squaddies (ranger & grenadier) there for the experience. The intention was to stealth as far as possible.
It's going pretty well, 5 turns in I've snuck past 2 pods (one standard advent, the other sneks and a shieldbearer) when I get flanked by a single drone on patrol my Shinobi missed and activated the advent pod. I end up needing to use a grenade which draws in the sneks and shield bearer. I wasn't really wanting a fight so it got a bit drawn out before bribing my shinobi out of concealment on a full 20 square dash Flèche, only for it to graze and not kill the snek she should have dissected in half. She survives, remarkably when the return fire 82% shot misses her but by this time there are only 4 turns left and we need to leave urgently. I clear up that final snek with run & gun on my assault but they are half the map away from the evac point, my specialist is in the jail hacking the cell and my ranger is on the roof already half way to the evac.
Then the reinforcements drop. A mec, a rocketeer, advance trooper and officer. No time to fight so I have to dash - the assault has lightening reflexes but is so slow, the shinobi dashes out of LoS and conceals. The ranger and specialist converge on the evac with the VIP thinking at least some of them can get out. I let the VIP go, but stand my specialist & ranger in the open on overwatch while the assault runs the race of his life, but still some distance short of the evac. He beats suppression and over watchshots, the shinobi comes in concealed and goes and we've got one turn left to evacuate. In the alien turn my ranger takes out the on-rushing rocketeer with overwatch, the final 3 advent have to dash to keep up and can't get a shot off. I get the assault to the evac zone with the final move of the mission before the timer expires.
The dash to freedom will keep that assault in drinks at the bar for some time I can tell you.
First time I encounter a Sectopod, it comes charging into view on the alien's turn while I'm still fighting another huge pod. I'm thinking I'm in no way prepared to deal with one of these things right now so its time to abandon the mission and just GTFO (luckily my evac was ready and waiting). Then my sharpshooter starts taking overwatch shots at it. 3 shots and 3 crits later the Sectopod is an exploding wreck. I just stared at the screen in disbelief for several minutes. I really do love the AWC.
Last night, Swarming regional HQ. Took the outer buildings, started clearing out the pods in the middle of the map, and Sloth and his entire command pod just walks up on my right flank. Wut.
This was actually about the dumbest thing he could have done as my entire battle line wheeled around and unloaded every cooldown and resource attack they had on him and his buddies. Turns out he's really easy to kill when he walks into range of a rocket, two grenade volleys, a hail of bullets, two steadied Laser Lances, four Laser Rifle blasts, and is taking cover behind an explosive barrel. Half the pod didn't survive the "rocket and explosive barrel" part.
Edit: Oh, and we were Focusing Fire and we had the high ground. I don't think any shot at him was less than 70%.
Couple nights ago, I took on a tower mission. I hate the infinite reinforcements mechanic on these maps, so I usually try to get to the objective unspotted. Now, admitedly, I do tend to savescum... a lot, but the only time I did so this time was due to a bug with the "command" skill and movement. So, if not for the bug, I would have done this straight through.
Anyway, I try to sneak my 5-man team all the way to the objective. Well, I don't get spotted, but only my gunner, shinobi, and officer ranger (not a good choice for officer, btw) make it to the objective. My grenadier and assault get stuck between three pods. They're able to stay hidden, but it seemed like their window to get through had passed. I could have waited, but I wasn't confident they would be able to stay hidden.
At this point, I kept thinking to myself. If my troops get spotted, the grenadier and assault are going to die. I was really tempted to start the mission over because of how poorly this could end up. As I was looking, I looked over the map many times. Then it hits me. Two of the pods near my grenadier and assault were bunched, so my grenades could hit up to seven of the eight enemies. Then the other pod, a 3-man (woman?) viper pod would have to be handled by my assault. But wait! Doesn't finishing the objective stun the enemies for two turns? Oh my.
So, ideas filling in my head, I move up to my shinobi and officer ranger. The shinobi was in a yellow move of the objective. And my ranger can give him a third action this turn, while staying unspotted from the single pod guarding the objective (as for the bug, soldiers can't move over obstacles after being given the third action. Got me spotted since I didn't realize this initially, hence the 'savescumming.') So, I scoot my shinobi right up there, give him the extra action, and complete the objective stunning all the enemies. And then it was fun time.
If ironically, it took both turns for my gunner, ranger, and shinobi to kill the pod that was defending the objective. Now, the grenadier and the assault? They needed both turns as well, but they did a lot more for just two. The assault rushed up and shotgunned the stunned viper pod, killing all three before they could wake up (the stun counts for two enemy turns, and when I stunned them my assault hadn't moved yet, so technically, he got three turns to kill them). Then the grenadier dropped some nicely placed nades right in the other 2 pods. First grenade hits seven enemies, and drops one. The second grenade hits the seven remaining enemies, and kills six. Oh, that was satisfying.
Besides the four-aforementioned pods, there were no more, and because I finished the objective, they never got any reinforcements. In other words, before the enemy could MOVE once, let alone attack, I had killed all of them but one--an half-health advent officer. Due to some minor mistakes, the officer got a whopping two (missed) shots off before I ended him.
Compared to the first time I did a tower mission, where I ended up fighting nearly 40 enemies, save scumming at least a dozen times, and still took significant injuries, I say that turned out pretty well!
GameGlitch wrote:snip tower mission shooting fish in a barrel.
I had one of these, except I managed to sneak my Shinobi unto the objective and camp there until next turn for the reveal.
I didn't even see any enemies on the way to the objective. The objective guarding pod were on the middle of the roof on the objective building, the other pods were in the houses on the other approach side to the one I used. I'd parked my DFA sharpshooter on a roof, went to town with serial. The Shinobi cut up the squad on the roof(3 sectoids), grenadier, assault and ranger made short work of the other pods. Everything dead without having even a chance to fight back.
GameGlitch wrote:snip tower mission shooting fish in a barrel.
I had one of these, except I managed to sneak my Shinobi unto the objective and camp there until next turn for the reveal.
I didn't even see any enemies on the way to the objective. The objective guarding pod were on the middle of the roof on the objective building, the other pods were in the houses on the other approach side to the one I used. I'd parked my DFA sharpshooter on a roof, went to town with serial. The Shinobi cut up the squad on the roof(3 sectoids), grenadier, assault and ranger made short work of the other pods. Everything dead without having even a chance to fight back.
...no clue how you managed that. I literally hit a network tower I started infiltrating 3-4 weeks in, and the map was covered with far too many enemies for me to be able to sneak it- I had to brawl my way through. Like I couldn't get past the first raised building on the left, because there was a solid wall of 3 pods with no way past.
Ithuriel wrote:...no clue how you managed that. I literally hit a network tower I started infiltrating 3-4 weeks in, and the map was covered with far too many enemies for me to be able to sneak it- I had to brawl my way through. Like I couldn't get past the first raised building on the left, because there was a solid wall of 3 pods with no way past.
It was early and low-strength, enemy presence was pretty low(very light IIRC, could've been light).
No pods down the left path, 2-3 pods on the right path, 1 pod on the objective roof, no turrets.
...no clue how you managed that. I literally hit a network tower I started infiltrating 3-4 weeks in, and the map was covered with far too many enemies for me to be able to sneak it- I had to brawl my way through. Like I couldn't get past the first raised building on the left, because there was a solid wall of 3 pods with no way past.
What advent strength were you at? When I have a fully specced stealth shinobi (ghostwalker/covert, which doesn't require max rank), there's always a way to sneak past even if you have to wait for the patrols to shift a little bit. I have run into trouble when I tried to use a shinobi without ghostwalker/covert, then there are some times when it is impossible to sneak to the control room without activating a pod.
I try to play this game without abusing the stealth mechanics too much.. So when i hit a network tower mission in April during a new 1.2 campaign i loaded up my best 5man squad - some laser rifles and not much else - infiltrated & launched.
Butchered the first 2 pods of 3-4 advent inside the first 3 turns when i had reinforcements kick in, 4 guys.. no probs. Pushing forwards and dragging back pods we'd encountered into abit of an overwatch trap was working well along with the reinforments i was dealing with every 2 turns. Was pretty evident this was a trap. I was 2/3 of the way through the map when the 4man reinforcement packs turned into 6man containing atleast 2 sneks & sectoids. Oh crap, the 25turn softcap sneaks up on you sometimes. I ran for the console in the hope i'd have enough time to cleanup the remaining with the stun.. It didnt pan out. squad wipe after the stun was over and a wave of 5sectoids & just as many snakes rushed out of the darkness to mindcontrol / bind and just plain decimate. Thought i'd killed somewhere near 40enemies and was reasonably happy with how the 5man team performed..
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Desslok wrote:Thought i'd killed somewhere near 40enemies and was reasonably happy with how the 5man team performed.
That's a lot of dead aliens. And you've only lost 5 troops, but beyond the failed mission that must be a lot of experience and gear lost. It reminds me of this.
The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one other such victory would utterly undo him. For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders; there were no others there to make recruits, and he found the confederates in Italy backward. On the other hand, as from a fountain continually flowing out of the city, the Roman camp was quickly and plentifully filled up with fresh men, not at all abating in courage for the loss they sustained, but even from their very anger gaining new force and resolution to go on with the war.
— Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus
