No like I said you’re not screwed, you still have time to move to the other side and kill it before they kill you.
(also, as a minor point that is not to be misconstrued as the main point stated above, you can always save scum since the map layout doesn’t change once you’re inside)
If you burn a bunch of WP rushing to the wrong corner, you’ll likely not make it to the other one, as the sirens will be already be converging on you and you’ll be under the fire of two Chirons
I’ll stick to a more methodical approach.
I agree, I hate lairs more than anything in this game. It’s boring, the layout is confusing, it takes forever unless you do some cheesy stuff and the reinforcements just makes it take even longer.
Yep, my bad. I missed that part of your post, apologies about that.
There’s a perfectly easy solution to the “wrong corner” problem. Bring two Assaults. I usually have three. (One pure, one Asssult/Heavy and one Asssult/Berzerker). Any of them can reach the Spawnery in one turn when frenzied. Usually with 4AP left, but if not the Spawnery is dead on the second turn, no biggie.
When it comes down to it, I’d rather save scum and use conventional tactics than use magic power exploits. No judgement, just personal preference.
For now nothing hint it’s clearly exploit and not in design on purpose. The point is those exploits are relatively numerous.
For last patch with many changes/fix didn’t target my main troubles that are related a lot to UI, so I’ll wait anyway, and then it will be more clear what dev consider exploit or not.
I agree that the lairs are boring and a slug fest, but I am actually confused by reading people’s experiences in them. I’ve never had issues with running out of ammo (and i don’t even bring clips), never spent more than 30 min in one (although i think they are too long in general), and never had a problem with unreachable sirens and cheesy chirons (and yes, I’ve had plenty of interactions with sirens I could not see or reach messing with my stuff), and yes I play on the hardest difficulty.
The procedural generation of lairs is too random, which is part of the problem. I’ve had lairs where both reinforcement points were completely closed off and I could freely waltz over to the spawnery, and I’ve had maps where the spawnery could be perceived from a high spot from the entry way, and I could snipe it without having to navigate the lair. There really is no consistent difficulty with these missions.
Also, very confused by the siren hate. I might just make a thread helping people with sirens, because they really aren’t that bad.
For people who are frustrated by locating the spawnery, there is a cheesy method you can use, and it works for invisible tritons.
The tile the spawnery… spawns in is always the same, but that tile can spawn without a spawnery. If you mouse over the pit where the spawnery is, the grey outline of the tile will disappear if an enemy occupies that square. If your cursor is there, and you can see it in the bottom of the tile, then there is no enemy there.
This is the same for mist, or pain chameleon, if your courser won’t allow you to select a tile you can normally move to, it is occupied by a unit.
The tether from the movement indicator can also show you which way to go, so you don’t get stuck in the procedural labyrinth.
I actually agree, and think dashing should be limited to a maximum of one per turn. We know the mechanic is possible since it works for the rocket launcher.
I do however also feel that within the current system lairs aren’t fun to do in the non-cheesy way, so with the addition of things like maximum one dash I would also like to see a host of other balance changes.
Edit: I don’t find sirens that much of a problem either, they’re pretty much incapacitated if you take their head out. That combined with the new lose MC on recover makes them balanced in my book.
following other advice here on the forums, lairs are fairly easy for me now. Just have a sniper/heavy hybrid with jump pack. Once you kill the spawnery the first time, it’s easy to spot on the map where it will be from then on. You just have to rush the spawnery with jump pack sniper, and have a couple of rally the troops assaults to help get him there alive.
Actually someone, I forget the name, posted the perfect strategy to take down a lair or a citadel.
Squad of 6 - One heavy with rage burst and jet pack + 5 assault with “Rally the Troops”
Send the Heavy, using the Jet Pack to seek out the nest. ( in 7 lair battles its always in the top left all the way to the back) Use Rally the Troops to replenish the heavies AP. Once at the the spawnary , use the rage burst to take it out.
Avg time to win the battle is 2 turns.
I use an 8 man team with the addition of a priest and the mutated helm that generates 2 will points per squad member at the start of every turn + a sniper.
The entire squad is kept in the escape zone, simply because any chirons don’t land anything in that area. ( in my experience )
I also used this tactic to take out a citadel in one turn.
Is it cheating? I think not since the game is balanced in such a way to make save scumming normal.
Seriously, have you noticed how perfectly accurate the aliens are with their weapons? Especially their grenade launchers. Dead on every time. While our shots are wide, way past or short of the target and even if they do hit, they do terrible damage. We shoot a crab man for 80 damage, his return fire is 180 damage. Reversal of rolls and our return fire is a miss, a miss or maybe 20 damage.
Once the Pandorans have enough active nests, lairs and citadels it’s game over. Havens are being attacked almost every hour non stop.
I just find that uninteresting. I’d rather reload the mission multiple times and try to figure out a tactical approach that will succeed without spamming perks. It’s led me to appreciate the ways in which the game is balanced. There are methods that don’t involve getting the right power combination.
For example, one of the big problems with the lairs is choke points and pits that sirens can use to panic you to death, and that force you under the range of Chirons. I don’t know why it took me so long to think of it, but you can use the cannon and grenades to blast an alternative path for yourself. If you can take out one of the Chirons, which is usually doable, you can blast a path along the edge of the map (out of range of the second Chiron) that lets you fight your way through old school. Way more fun, IMO.
To each there own I suppose. I am on what is laughably called “story” difficulty which I usually play the first time around to see how the story unfolds. But in order to do that, it’s required to win more than lose my temper.
There’s a simple solution to the “wrong corner”: bring 2 berserkers. This is methodical as you seem to require. Cannot screw up like this.
Can also bring a priest just behind, if someone gets mind controlled, your priest can panic the unit until the siren is taken care of.
It’s weird, because lairs don’t feel particularly unfair or challenging, they’re just tiresome. More rewards would probably add some enticement, but slower reinforcements sounds like a good option to allow non-cheese, traditional move-your-squad-and-shoot-into-position runs.
Error to delete, todo
So, while I completely agree that the respawning rate needs to be slowed down (I don’t mind that it’s infinite, kinda makes sense), you don’t have to completely cheese your way through a lair to win.
TL;DR The enemy can be shepherded where needed, a lone soldier can kill the spawnery
I got a little tired of them (slogging through the “conventional” was doesn’t work, you can’t make progress with infinite enemies, by grinding them out) so I set up a designated lair-strike-team. [Admittedly, I’m fairly far through the campaign and have allied with all 3 faction] but my team consists of 3 jump troops, a sniper, an engineer and an infiltrator.
The theory has worked a number of times now, with little effort.
Run the infiltrator out one direction (well, it’s usually through the centre first, till you find out the path), I run mine with a gauss machine gun, for the needed extra damage. [An assault rifle should suffice, dual classing them into assault is a great idea anyway]
I then jump my team of 3 heavies in another direction, off to one side (often the side I DON’T think the spawnery is on!) away from the infiltrator. Set them up where necessary and/or keep jumping when you can.
And finally, I have my sniper and turrets. They stay around the entrance, and make as much noise as possible (shoot everything!)
So, the idea is this. The enemy will be drawn to one or both of my visible groups. Any I kill will respawn and do the same. 90% of the time, my infiltrator gets an easy path though to the spawnery. In the other times, my jump team makes it there and deals with it instead. The reason I use 3, is you can often lose 1 or even 2 (to a siren, or too wounded and needs to hide+heal) and still kill the spawnery. Each is capable of doing it alone.
Finally, (added to all my other ramblings). I have 3 factions to draw from. From the Anu, I have a priest with the willpower aura and a heavy suit. They jump along side the other 2 and all of the willpower needed for jumping is “freeeee”. Which means, you never have to stop
In general, the amount of Mind Control, and overall loss of control over your soldiers is through the roof in this game.
At the very least, the Firaxis XCOM series allow you to Flashbang the MC abuser if you cannot outright kill them to gain control of your soldiers. You exchange 1 soldier action to bring another one back, and it feels like a fair trade, no questions asked. I also can produce Flashbang grenades on the Day 1 if I want to. The game also offers you an early access to a Mind Shield, which makes your soldiers immune to these effects if you are having hard time against them. I respect the fact that Firaxis developers acknowledge just how annoying MC and control loss mechanics are, and give the player tools to deal with them.
Phoenix Point, unfortunately, does not give any proper tools to deal with Mind Control abuse. Much later on, not 100% efficient, and still late enough for the player to suffer the full indignity of it.
Right now all my soldiers are Berserker/X, simply for the Ignore Pain and immunity to Panic and Mind Control. This just to show how much MC mechanic is taxing and annoying in large amounts the game throws it at the player. Guilty as charged, but sorry Snapshot, I simply don’t want to deal with MC in these ridiculous amounts.
I honestly wish developers have toned the amount of CC (Goo Chirons) and MC (Sirens) ways the fuck down in Phoenix Point, or at the very least give player some proper tools to deal with it (a helmet with Mind Shield like in Altar games UFO:After… series comes to mind) - instead of “ok how many Sirens I got spawned now?”, to make it more tactical game and less of a frustration.
This is pretty good, let me tell you!
PP is flexible enough, so in my current run (my first!) after a few tiresome Lair fights, I’m making a special squad for it, and I was thinking in similar terms to yours.
I don’t know if I’m being too close-minded here, but I do think that a conventional run should be hard and gritty, but doable. The way I’ve been dealing with Lairs is to blitz my way through to allow my heavy to drop in on the spawnery directly. That means breaching spaces, making room for my squad, and then having the heavy do their thing while the rest of the team protects them. I’m still getting a hang of positioning, and I realized I kinda shot myself in the foot by playing my first campaign on Hero difficulty, but I’ve had modest success with this style. Even then, with so many enemies dropping in at once and going at your squad from weird angles, it doesn’t feel desperate and thrilling, it just feels like a bother. Killing enemies doesn’t feel meaningful, it just feels like clearing out landscape. Obviously, we’re dealing with feelings here, which is much more difficult than if the mission was outright impossible, or badly balanced. A slower rate of reinforcements would, at the very least, make the kills feel more meaningful, because you can make openings where there aren’t three or four more enemies right behind the one you just killed. That chance to do something other than shoot would make things feel better, I think.