Convoy map to hard

[sirg]

I have reached the point where I have a mission where a convoy is attacked by aliens. (normal difficulty setting)

OK, so here is my feedback - I really think this map is much to hard, not to say that 99% of the civilians are sure casualties, because there is no way of saving any of them.

The aliens are really overpowered, most wearing medium armor and particle beam rifles, sniping me from the other corner of the map, which is absurd.

The whole setup is an alien ambush, and after I spent hours playing it, I still can't win it (after 4 ppl from my squad are dead, there is very little that can be done). I have half of my men wearing the upgraded armor, and decent weapons, most having competent skills.

I want to tell the devs that I erased the game and I'm not thinking of testing it anytime soon, because it's quite frustrating to retry a mission for hours. I think the devs have done an admirable job, recreating a game with huge potential, but its potential might be ruined by raising the difficulty to quickly and other unbalancing (not to mention about ironman)

I really like most of the other aspects, and Winter's work with the setting, but the difficulty and ironman mode make this game a pick for hardcore players. The soldiers are just to wimpy compared to the alien's stats.

[mash]

the trick is to go back to your ship. wait a few rounds, they pretty much line up for you

[Sacrusha]

the trick is to go back to your ship. wait a few rounds, they pretty much line up for you

That is a flaw in the AI which might be fixed at some point.

I do have to agree with sirg on this. The balance in this mission is off, and without some abuse of the AI and/or specific equipment (lots of long range weapons) this mission is nigh impossible to win on the higher difficulty settings.

IMO the map needs more cover, more paths that lead onto the hills and also has to be smaller, in order to provide a fair challenge to the average player.

[sirg]

Tried. It doesn't work

Here is what I've tried so far -

1st time, I tried moving to the trucks, and using them as cover, then shooting. It fails because the aliens will ambush you from above, one shot one kill most of the times.

After seeing that tactic fail, I moved with 4 soldiers to the small canyon where there is a small shelter, to wait for the aliens to regroup and clear the high slopes. This failed too when most of the aliens remained near the trucks and when I tried to get some good positions they sniped me, because have more range with their weapons.

After that I reloaded the game, and requiped some of my squad with grenade launchers (HIT). This works better, after the aliens regroup near the trucks, I could bomb them with grenades from a slope. This fails too because the aliens have much more range and can shoot through slopes sometimes. Anyway, they can hit (kill) from very very far, which is pretty annoying. After I showered them with grenades from the launcher, I killed about 2-3 then both of my "grenadiers" got killed from very far, no matter how I tried to hide.

I kept a group in the aircraft, but that got sniped from above too, and they were quite useless to humanity anyway, because they couldn't hit any alien from that distance.

So after trying the described tactics many times, and a mix of them, I gave up quite irritated.
I'm not new to such games, actually I have played alot of X-COM, JA2, Fallout (including tactics) and so on... but I haven't seen this kind of map anywhere.

[Sacrusha]

The tactic I used was the following:
- Send 2 soldiers to the left (the camp) to take care of the lone alien there.
- Send 2 soldiers to the right (the trucks + hills). They will kill the two close aliens there and can then be used for recon, outside effective weapon range of the aliens.
- Send 4 soldiers along the column, but no further than the second truck. Always hide between the trucks, not alongside them.

The 4 soldier group might have to retreat to avoid casualities, if it cannot kill the aliens faster than they approach. In that case the other groups will have to reinforce them before the aliens reach them.

And you generally don't use reaction fire in this map, because you need all the TUs for running and firing that you can get.

[sirg]

Yes, reaction fire is quite useless because the aliens are so far away.

This map has almost no cover, except for the trucks, but even if you reach them, there are still aliens on both sides of the canyon (up), and they will snipe you no matter which side you chose to hide.

I don't know how many aliens are on this map.. but I managed to kill about 5 until they killed 1st of my men.

An other tactic would be.. hehe... going up on the slopes, or other "safe" area, and let them fire at you until they run out of ammo 
then they lose their biggest advantage - superior range - and you can kill them easy.

[eleazar]

I'm sure i'm not a master player, but i didn't find this especially hard.

On 2.2 Difficulty: either "Easy" or "Standard"  i honestly don't remember what i set it on, and can't seem to find out.


I sent one soldier to the tent& campfire to the left, since there's one alien there that kills the 3 campers.

4 soldiers go to the right up onto the hill.

3 guys (including the sniper and bazookaman) take cover on the road supported by a flame-thrower.


It seems like most of the aliens jumped off the hills into the sunken roadway before i could get by guys above into range.  Eventually i was throwing grenades down on them from above.  The firefight below was pretty intense.  My sniper was down to 1 health at one point.  The trick is (i think) to hide behind the trucks only popping out to fire, and saving some TU to get back under cover.


Of course most of the military "civilians" died.  There's no way to get down to the end of the road fast enough.  But i did save some.  None of my soldiers died, thanks to the medipacs.

[Sophisanmus]

Hmm... I actually enjoyed the convoy mission.  At that point I had my whole squad with the improved armor and mostly Laser weapons, with two Snipers and a Grenadier.  I had considerable success with the following (facing from the dropship on up the road):

Two men up front, crouched behind the front bumper of the first truck; Rifle on the left, and Grenadier on the right.  Each would creep around and take their shots, with the grenadier reserving for one reaction fire.  Third man (Sniper) supporting, ducked in the alcove to the left of the dropship.

Two (Rifle) men along the rest of the convoy on the right, at first behind the truck, then taking positions behind the jeep (or was it a Humvee?).  Third man peeking out the right side of the dropship, eventually joining them, and taking up cover behind the well.

Two men (one Rifle, one Sniper) around through the left canyon to take the alien by the campers.  Then took up cover in the trees, eventually jumping down to the dropship to add more firepower to the truck corridor. 


The trucks were probably the most desperate section; there was honestly no way even stiff Laser fire was going to halt the armored alien advance alone.  Fortunately for me, my Grenadier was able to catch their advance when it had almost entirely shifted to an alcove on the left, and a few Timed salvos ripped them up.

The guys on the Left took out their single target with reaction fire at medium range, and the ones on the Right never needed to break cover against their targets on the hill.  All the other aliens eventually ended up dead on the road.

Saving civilians was a joke.  For a 'military' convoy, they didn't do squat, and apparently all spawned around the aliens.  Though I admit the 'free turn' I got while the aliens massacred the civilians was nice, it was still a joke of an objective.

[sirg]

Hmm.. I reinstalled the game  and I managed to get through this mission without any of my soldiers dieing.. but part of if was luck.

I brought lots of HIT grenades and 2 competent/proficient guys with explosives, and hid them behind the nearby cistern and humvee. I took a machinegun guy and hid him  between the cistern and the rockwall, and I brought a high TU soldier for scouting (good thing that aliens don't have RF). I ignored the alien at the camp, and with luck two of my snipers left in the dropship shot it dead.

After a while, almost all aliens were at the trucks on the road, all together. Time for some grenades - 3 down the others almost, and I killed more with the guy with the machinegun hiding near the cistern. I repeated the tactic until most of the group was either dead or wounded, then one ortnok paniced, and it was killed easy, leaving only one reptile left. I teased it with a soldier at high distance until it ran out of ammo  ... after that the alien surrended to a grenade.

 This map would be great if:

- there would be some rocks to hide behind
- military guys would fight (at least for our fun)
- trucks would blow up
- campers will stop running to the alien 

[Surrealistik]

Lol. With laser rifles, rocket and grenade launchers this mission is cake. Seriously.

[tobbe]

Lol. With laser rifles, rocket and grenade launchers this mission is cake. Seriously.

You dont even need rockets. Lasers, perhaps a few bolters and grenade lauchers really do the job.
(Most of the time I go for 2 grenades, 3 laser rifles, 2 snipers and 1 bolter)
-> both granades, 1 sniper and 2 lasers up the hill on the right and the rest covering the long alley, with a short trip to the left lone alien... 

[Sacrusha]

Lol. With laser rifles, rocket and grenade launchers this mission is cake. Seriously.

I didn't happen to have any laser rifles with me, so I had to abuse the AI by placing soldiers so they could not be seen from the road to make the aliens line up on the road without taking cover. A trick that obviously a few of those who posted used without considering it to be cheating.

While I never thought of deleting the game because of it, it was the only mission that took me 3 retries, and my impression is that it is out of balance with the other maps because of the wide ranges with zero cover, that make the difficulty very dependant on the equipment you carry. All other maps are more or less equally balanced for very different sets of weapons.

I stand by my opinion that the map is unbalanced, and I think it will be far more obvious if the AI gets smart.

[sirg]

Lol. With laser rifles, rocket and grenade launchers this mission is cake. Seriously.

It's not easy, and many people have said in previous posts that is challenging and unbalanced.
You barely have any cover at all.

However, if you know what to expect (like doing the campain for the 2nd or 3rd time), you know to equip your squad properly for this mission, with launchers. The launchers are quite good, and I don't think you can win it without launchers. I had 2 skilled soldiers with grenade launchers and lots of ammo, blasting the aliens from far away, but I had only one laser rifle at that time.

I had to reload the game, and requip the squad properly for this kind of mission, after many failures. But, if the AI would be smarter, this mission will be quite hard.

Devs- add 1-2 more cover points, like rocks, and it will be fine.

[kh]

Good to see that I'm not the only one on this, if this is the same military convoy we're talking about, where a number of trucks are being ambushed in a valley. I was able to complete all missions with zero casualities so far, but I am totally impossible to do the same on this map.

I always send one guy over to the campfire in the south, that's enough to kill the enemy which is slaughtering the goons there. I tried taking the hills to gain the high groundwhich seemed like the aliens' biggest advantage, but due to the AI specifics that the aliens run away from your line of sight it doesn't really matter. And AFAIK you are unable to climb up the plateau to the south, so unless the aliens climb down eventually you'll have to snipe or smoke them out from afar, somehow. But before that, I'm eventually getting decimated. The best result I had was to send two snipers into the chimney cave-in about half way up the street and have them crouching with RF on. Then they shoot through the bottom of the trucks standing there, killing aliens that are trying to pass by. But I moved them a little forward after a while, and they were promptly killed by other aliens shooting through the trucks, too.

I honestly think that this mission is too hard unless you maybe abuse the AI "tactics" to your advantage, and an extremely unfun blocker in the game.

[Mayhem]

I honestly didn't have much of a problem with it, on standard difficulty in 2.2.

My standard squad at the time consisted of

2 plasma pistols
2 Grenade Launchers
4 Bolters

2 Pistoliers to hunt the 1 or 2 aliens at the camp-site.

1 GL and 2 Bolters taking cover in front of the 1st truck, not entering the canyon.
1 GL and 2 bolters going over the hills to the right.

Take it slowly and cautiosly, and generally stay hidden, not relying on reaction fire to take out aliens.  Use the fastest bolter-carriers to peek out from cover, see what's approaching, and if nothing very close, hide again.  As the aliens get close enough, rain auto-fire grenades onto any group, take out any survivors with cannonade fire.

***

I haven't had this mission since restarting with a 2.3 dev, and now my standard squad has only 2 Bolters, having replaced 2 with dedicated coil guns.  With these, I'd be much more confident about using long-range reation fire on this mission, as in the hands of at least a semi-skilled sniper they get a very large proportion of 1 shot kills even on snap-fire. 

***

The only way it is too hard is if you consider it a failure when civilians get killed.  Frankly, if none of my men get killed, I consider that a win.  The civilian behaviour is so random that I pretty much ignore their presence on the battlefield, except to ensure I don't hit them with stray grenades.