So far I’ve been very lucky with explosive Chirons. I’ve only ever encountered a couple. The trick with them in the Citadel is not to open fire too early. They’re so far away that they don’t really notice you until you open fire. And when you do ‘unleash Hell’, make sure your Peeps are either on the cliff edge or in a vehicle - unless you’re very unlucky, at least 30% (and usually more) of the Chiron’s load will simply fly wide and miss you harmlessly - and the vehicle can cope with a couple of rounds of punishment.
The cannon is definitely enough, and I seem to recall that even when I was targeting it with the basic sniper the red skull and crossbones appeared. Actually, an RB with a pistol is enough to kill a Scylla once you strip the armor off the body part.
As I said before, I agree that Citadels at the moment are underwhelming, even without rage burst. Also, perhaps lairs could use some adjustments. Everyone seems happy with nests.
However, I’m against mixing them with each other. Nests are labyrinths with no verticality. Lairs are battlefields. Citadels are arenas.
The reason they each work - and the nests especially - is because they are short, self contained, specialised.
Mazes are generally not fun, not fun at all, because they are annoying obstacles on the way where you want to be. But in PP it works because it’s just the maze and nothing else. The thrill of having to separate your team to have them go down different paths, not knowing which is the right one. It’s great as long as I don’t have to think about another section, map, screen where they all have to converge.
I enjoy lairs because I think of them as large battlefields where the game is to maneuver my forces so that they go round the stronger defences.
And Citadels would be great if the arena concept was properly realised, for which I think the most expedient solution is a variation of the ambush mission.
Though I am also fond of the protective creature idea, because with PP’s ballistics it could be made into something really interesting (i.e. not kill the sectoid or advent trooper to remove the shield boost it is giving).
The idea with the protective creature is what makes the difference to other missions. The question is how (or by which means) you try to achieve to goal (killing the target and get away alive). Hack your way through with brutal force (NJ), infiltrate and kill the target with a surgical precise strike (infiltrator?) or any combination that meets your style.
All i wann to emphazise is, that attacking a lair or citadell should feel more like marching into the heart of darkness. From the storytelling aspect humans are the underdogs, trying to strike the enemy at its (or one of its) hearts. Something like Dolittles bombraid on japan directly after pearl Harbour.
To be honest, as the “protective creature” (a new Panda, or perhaps a variant of a chiron) is something that would require considerable resources to implement, I can see it in an eventual DLC.
Right now the fix I suggest is that the Citadel starts by waves of attacks by lesser Pandas until Scylla makes an appearance. Like in the ambush missions.
That would teach the likes of MichaelIgnotus not to let the lairs grow into Citadels 
Understood. What you mean is some kind of starship trooper style in trying to prevent being overrun.
I would like this scenario more in the haven defences. In case of lairs and citadells, we are the attackers and hopefully come in undetected. Especially the infiltrators could get their state in such situations. The only case i could think of are the „steal missions“. Sneak in, download the blueprints and try getting pur unharmed.
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Quite right too
Agree that it is not a development against tactics: progression of the aliens is linear in that they progressively get tougher objectively independently from the tactic being used by them or by the player
What I mena is: It is always benefitial for a Crab to get as much and think an armor as possible as it apperantly does not suffer any penalties by getting it. It does not seem ot get lower accuracy or speed due to the amount and strenght of its armor which makes the improvement objectively better in any scenario
If the aim is to get a dynamic interplay between alien equipment and tactics, each alien improvement needs to hold some serious disadvantage like in case of player:
- Heavy armo reduces speed by -3-5 and accuracy by 15-35% (depending on how many budy parts it is located on)
- Grenade launcher reduce speed by -2
- Bombard bug range reduced to the same range players have with grenade launcher while worms can be launched longer distance
- Detection of invisible bug much higher if it is armored
Sounds logical and doesnt need changes ot the layout. I like citadell as I finally dont have to wonder around aimlessly searching for the target for a change 
That should work. It would make it more of a point defence scenario, where you have to survive long enough - and with enough ammo - to take on the Scylla when she finally appears.
I think the current configuration would have to be tweaked a little to give the Pandas more cover to hide behind, otherwise it’s just another type of Turkey Shoot.
I just want it to feel like the end-of-the-progression Boss fight it’s supposed to be. Remember BB1, when that baby-faced monster came tearing over the bridge? That was proper scary! You didn’t just sit there, smoke a cigar, wait for it to get into range and toss a coin to see which of you would get the fun of taking it down this time - which is exactly how Citadel missions feel at the moment, even without cheeses.
Good point: the scenario can be made scarier by generating mist on the sides, the Scylla charging right at the player. The runs preceding this might also be random 2-5 so the player does not know exactly how long they need to hold out this time and preserve WP and ammo
It’s when I read stuff like this that I regret not being a backer…
Rage burst wasn’t found in BB%… probably because most people… myself included couldn’t get that far without game breaking bugs…
I tried capture a Scylla in a Citadel, once paralyzed no end of mission, so I decided kill all enemies. It allowed capture the Scylla and win the mission, but also it was a fair fun too.
It made me wonder about Aliens defense, real defense, not spamming attacks, that would be fun, alas it probably require a lot of work on AI.
So, I’ve just paused another attempt on a Lair after 2+ hours. I reckon I’m about halfway through, I’m about to evacuate my 2 Infiltrators cos they got spotted and dumped on, and I’m in severe danger of losing Beany, the Berserker support to my Heavy.
While it is very challenging and enjoyable (in a masochistic kind of way), this simply confirms what I said at the beginning: Lairs do not feel like the mid-range Panda Base. They’re so tough that they should be the Third Tier base, which you only get to if you haven’t shut down the first two beforehand. At that point, most people would accept their difficulty, because they are essentially the Boss Level, which you’re trying to avoid.
Based on the feedback on this Thread and others, any attempt to up the difficulty of Citadels without first reducing the difficulty of Lairs will simply result in a mass revolt of most players. The problem’s not that Citadels feel too easy (though they do), it’s that Lairs are way too hard for what they are - and that comes from someone who wants this to be tough.
But as things stand now, I’m just going to leave the Lairs to mature into Citadels and then go have a Turkey Shoot 
I can see them as tier 3 base for sure: Map size is larger then that of the current citadel and can imagine the main bug in the citadel to settle down and become a hatchery
But yeah: even as tier 3 they take too much time and sometimes impossibly difficult
In all honesty, I see the point of last tier, but I don’t want it as the game works, too often I’m not fast enough and need manage with last tier, if it was Lairs and Lairs and Lairs I would have been totally bored. Now Lairs are fine for me because I do very few. Put them last tier and it will increase the number to manage, no way.
Actually, it won’t. It should do the opposite.
At the moment we get lots of Citadels because Lairs are so hard to take down, you don’t have enough men, resources, time or patience to deal with them all. So you sit back and let them mature into Citadels.
If Citadels became Lairs and Lairs became Citadels, you would be incentivised to take out the Tier 2 bases more often, and so you would get fewer Tier 3 Bases to deal with.
Also, you’d be like: “Shit! I’ve just let a T2 slip through the cracks - now I’ve got a fight on my hands with a T3,” which is much more immersive and no-theme than: “Shall I wade through that Tier 2 that’s just popped up? Nah, let’s wait until it turns into a Citadel and then we can take it down, ‘eazie enough’ 
.”
IMO it’s not the map that makes lairs more difficult, but rather Panda deployment and reinforcement.
What kind of deployment and reinforcements are you getting?
Ok that’s in part true but I noticed it’s only in part, I have a long series where I wanted play a Lair and failed and was too late.
Lairs are too insane to not be only rare even if you screw up, the final tiers will never fit.