I’d be fine with “respawns” if you could stop them. As in, have Spawneries on the map that produces a critter every third or fourth turn, and make them destroyable. Then have the current spawnery be promoted to a Spawnery nexus or something like that, and it will retain it’s current function.
That way you’ll have it tougher in the beginning of the mission but can turn the tide and even remove the respawns completely.
Also a good idea.
I agree totally. One guy said he had a method of taking five guys with ‘Rally the Troops’, and a heavy with a jetpack. The heavy does a jet jump toward the spawnery, then everyone just ‘wills’ him there from the entrance point, so he can jump multiple times on his first turn. When he gets there - ka-boom.
This is ingenious, but it’s cheesing around like this that we shouldn’t have to do. The inifini-spawning is loathsome.
I too have had a couple of lairs that ended up like the final episode of Blake’s 7, so I feel your pain.
I use most of my team to kill what ever comes in sight.
My Infiltrator finds the building.
Then my heavy jumps there (1-2 jumps) and the building is no more in a few turns (there is usually a ledge around the building so my heavy ca not be easily targeted there) (the rest of the team still tries to survive).
That’s hilarious!
That said, I find the nest missions to be pretty manageable, at least in the early game. You just have to destroy the sentinels, which can lead to some pretty fast missions.
Though I’m hearing a distinction between the term “nest” and “lair”, which is making me realize that I might just be talking about something else entirely from the OP lol!
Yeah, nests and lairs are totally different. Nest are caves while lairs are… I’ll leave it a surprise…
It seems to me that the devs never really tested those missions without their dev tools (cheats). I can´t explain to myself how else such imbalanced mission could be possible…
Yeah, nests are like the BTEC alien dwellings. Lairs are a whole different sausage sandwich. Citadels - well, we don’t hear much about them, as I’m guessing everyone is avoiding them having had such a nightmare with lairs.
I like this task best. It can help me quickly increase the favors of all factions. How can I finish the task quickly? You just need a strong, fast crazy warrior
Absolutely agree that reinforcements make lairs and spawneries a boring, endless slog. It’s ok to have reinforcements, maybe just delay them somewhat? Or make the speed with which they appear dependent on how many alarms you’ve tripped?
The way I approach lairs is to first pan around and find the most likely spot for the spawnery, and then basically make a rapid push toward that corner, making sure that my snipers are always in LOS of wherever the sirens are coming from. It’s not difficult to sort of… lead the siren and force it to take certain paths to get to you. And I don’t use specialized teams. Two snipers, a heavy, and preferably a stealth spider boy to scout ahead. The rest can be whatever.
That being said, they are utterly boring and I don’t particularly like doing them. Especially when they spawn you in perception range of a screamer. Like wtf. I can’t take a single step in any direction without triggering a screamer right from the start? That’s bs
No, actually citadels are good. Big Fun Stuff shows at turn two, and you of course can cheese it with heavy\sniper with rage burst, but, honestly, there is no need to, at all, it is manageable without it. If there is going to be some abiities cheese nerf, citadel will still be managrable. Lairs? Not so much.
So you hate Jagged Alliance series, I mean JA1&2. But I can add a ton of tactical games, the point is respawn allows combats map be less huge or combats be less short.
It’s possible that OP get a point, but it’s more a tuning to do than remove respawn. The point here is only kill one enemy, but survive other enemies. The idea isn’t bad and can work only with respawn.
But perhaps some tuning are needed. I played this mission only once, but I can imagine the troubles if respawn enemies get an harassing flow, your soldiers are too fragiles and if enemies rush in too fast, you need kill most of them despite you have only one target.
That’s not actually true. On the tactical map, neither JA1 or JA2 had respawns - once the enemy team was dead, they were dead. It was possible for reinforcements to arrive from other sectors while you were mid-battle (how spawning on the strategic map was handled I’m not sure), but I know that all parties (at least in JA2) spawned in or around cities. Enemies had to travel to engage you, and you could see this happening on the strategic map.
The point is that there were no tactical respawns.
Thanks, I was wondering if I was remembering it wrong thinking there were no (damn) respawns in JA2. I really dislike the mechanic as well, although I can understand why it’s there I prefer if it’s managed in a more fun way (like destroyabel spawneries).
On the subject of the OT, I’ve started finishing lairs on turn 1 as well. Assault with shotgun and high WP+Speed. Cue Frenzy and dash to the location the Spawnery is believed to be. If I pick wrong I send the second assault. Fun? Only the first time. But no slog involved anyway.
The lairs are difficult, but remember, you only have to kill the spawner. There are a few approaches, 1 - heavy with JP to jump to it in 2 turns and use ult on it. You don’t have to kill everything.
Not finding them much of a problem from those I’ve done now that I know you need to defend havens to spawn them.
I typically have at least 2 of my units with NJ Shotguns, a heavy with a grenade launcher, Anu Berserker/Priest Hybrids and a sniper (Edit: Now expanded to include 2nd Anu Priest, because fishy mind powers are awesome, but not done a nest attack since including the 2nd priest yet)
Berserker/Priest is able to break individual targets willpower from a distance for things that pose a long distance threat, even with the later armoured mutations a NJ shotgun hit from close-medium distance will take down or heavily cripple most targets so 2 units with shotguns can clear up a lot, and the heavy and sniper act as mass limb dismemberment when needed.
As the missions are about destroying the hatcheries not cheese turtling a spot (which is what the spawns are meant to counter), as long as I keep my units moving through the lair looking for the hatcheries then taking them down promptly then the missions go pretty well.
There have been a few bad turns where a stray grenade launcher has heavily wounded one or more of my units, but some swift disabling, healing and pushing to the next hatchery works out in the end.
It also helps that you can move a unit with a shotgun right up to one of the hatcheries and blast the top of them with a full volley for over 200 damage which pretty much leaves them needing a single pistol shot from my sniper to finish off.
I just had a glorious, revelational, vindicating moment. I’m sure this is common knowledge but I hadn’t tried it before. So I’d been nursing three Synedrion stealth dudes, letting them level up back at base, taking them out on the occasional sortie. Two of them reached level 7, and a lair popped up nearby.
I took them both (and only those two) to the lair, and stealthed my way to the spawnery. They both had Psyche poison crossbows. Bingo - first go, no hassle, lair down. On the final turn a Siren came over and mind controlled one of them, but I just kept pumping the meat sack (can I say ‘pumping the meat sack’?) full of green stuff, and that was it - mission over.
I like this approach, not least because it doesn’t involve any cheesing; you’re using a game mechanism as it’s intended, within the scope of its limitations.
+1 love back for the game.
I struggled at the lairs too at the start.
Then I realized I simply misunderstood the type of map they are.
Those are not labyrinths. Those are a timed obstacle course. The objective is always in the left top corner. You bring your cursor there, and it shows you a line of a path you have to take to get there, through all the invisible terrain.
Next thing you do is you squish that cat rush that route. Once I had a priest with frenzy on my team, and enough phoenix points to max my speedy Gonzales assault/heavy will and speed, lairs became 2-turn business.
That’s just words and in your minds, it’s reinforcements coming from maps borders, PP is right like that, just don’t pretend it’s coming from enemies movement on a global map. This second element is JA2 only but doesn’t change it has reinforcements, PP has no respawn at at least didn’t noticed any, only reinforcement from map borders.
But ok you are saying that for Lairs reinforcement system is automatic and respawning your kills, you aren’t totally right but on that (I think I quoted counter cases) but you are perhaps partially right, and then those reinforcements are like respawns.
I would say if they are respawn to change the design, not remove the reinforcements, this mission type need them, but ensure it’s not more or less a basic respawn.