Okay, so I’ve a haven defence mission for NJ that I am on very good terms with (about 52%) that I just can’t crack with my current team.
Enemy team consists of 2 Sirens, 1 Scylla, 3 armoured Crabbies (guns) and 2 Tritons. (Or on a reload - Sirens change to Chirons everything else is more or less the same).
I’m using 2 Snipers (lvl 4,5), 3 Assaults (lvl 3,5,6) and one NJ heavy (lvl 3) good level of weapons NJ AP superior assault rifles, Anu Shotguns, incendiary grenades, Laser sniper rifles.
So I can’t beat it - can anyone help with some tips?
Worth knowing.
No time to send another transport.
I need to save the Haven in order to try and save my game.
Don’t want to restart the Campaign again as this is my Third attempt.
Don’t have a save close enough to change the tactics.
In other words - do or die. Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.
Reroll until you have all Chirons or only one siren. I favor fighting Chirons, though neither is pleasant.
Getting your team under cover will help protect you from the Chirons while you kill the other creatures first.
Stay under cover until the chirons stop firing. I find that after six shots most chirons seem to be out of ammo and then you can draw closer and kill them with accurate fire. Note that going into melee range can expose you to a danger stomp/daze attack so I don’t recommend it unless you are out of ammo or need to apply a finishing blow.
With sirens the thing to remember is that you can reduce their willpower somewhat by 1) disabling their head and 2) killing other mobs. This makes it more difficult for them to MC your troops or, notionally, to sustain an MC, although I’ve never seen MC break for lack of willpower from a Siren. My usual limb priority when fighting Sirens is head/arm/arm then body shots to finish them off.
@Protro - thanks, but that won’t help me now! At least not in this play through and I’ve a feeling Monday’s patch might change things at bit.
If it’s released on time of course.
@aihnsa - thanks I’ll give that a shot, the Chirons have been using Fireworm attacks which frankly, on top of everything else, makes it nearly impossible.
It would have helped if I could have brought my ‘Alpha’ team, but there’s no chance the haven would be there by the time they arrived.
I stopped using any mixed teams after my 3rd playthrough. Now I go with full team of heavy assaults with hellcannon and pretty much any siren that comes into view dies on that very turn. Sad to say, unless you save scum like a biatch, I dun see how you can survive that. Its X-Com baby, squad wipes are part of every x-com game.
The thing with the fireworm Chirons is to keep moving. The worms are slow and they bunch up. It’s much easier to kill several with a grenade after they chase you than try to shoot them one at a time.
If it’s only one Siren, it’s doable. Sometimes I’ll dash up with a shotgunner to get the damaging close-range shot with the expectation that he’ll be mind controlled. Just make sure you’re in position to take the Siren down the rest of the way on the next turn (the Chiron won’t bomb a mind controlled soldier).
Two sirens, you need to concentrate on one while moving away from the other. The Chirons you just have to ignore until you can deal with them.
Sometimes it’s easier to bash the worms than shoot them. if they are bunched up and close to you this will only take three actions points…as opposed to shooting which takes between 1 and 3 actions points per worm, and might miss.
Forget the extra objects and just stay safe while taking out enemy units one by one. Always start with the Siren. The Scylla usually gets stuck somewhere, especially if you are inside a building, or at the roof of it. Keep your distance.
The map and positions are important. Does the chiron are nearly a big building ? In that case you can use the building as cover…
I often use Warcry behind walls… it can prevent MC from sirens if they have to move.
However the levels of your guys seems too low for such ennemies. You should probably let the heaven face his fate… PP is not firaxis xcom, you can’t win every time. i think it’s probably one of my main error and you are probably in the same case.
Now i carefully avoid any high threat heaven mission if i have not a very good roster… too dangerous for my guys. Rage burst alone can completly change the course of a battle… PP is like that for now… flee to live another day and come back with a team of overpowered Rage burst guys…
Without a doubt I am guilty of playing this like Firaxis XCom, hence why I’m on my third play through.
I learn fast, but sometimes not fast enough. I genuinely considered leaving the haven to die - but I am strangled by the lack of resources. I had been doing Raids on Anu Havens but due to bugs - I would complete them only to get nothing at the end, and that happened repeatedly.
Something else against me is my fondness to use just about everything available to win, which often lead to an expensive trip to manufacturing afterwards. To be honest I like this side of PP but sometimes it does feel a little too punishing!
Play around your snipers. Sirens are actually fairly straightforward as long as you can land two headshots on them; this should break their head, which will drop their will to 0, which also means that as long as you kill something every turn, they will panic while bleeding out (and thus can be ignored). With good positioning and quick shot, one sniper can shoot the head off of a siren each. After the siren heads are broken, you want to focus on dropping at least one enemy per turn (snipers shooting off limbs of the armored guys works well, or if you can manage it, burst into tritons at close range - preferably from behind to destroy torso if they are pain chameleon variant).
So try to drop two headshots on the sirens before they can mind control (generally this means holding everyone back until the snipers can do their job). Use your assaults in close proximity to the snipers until the sirens are neutralized (though…snipers are just better barring specific builds in this game). This is also a lot easier if it’s a placeables defense mission since you don’t have to worry about morale loss from civilian deaths. This also usually means the Scylla is busy just destroying buildings for a while.
It’s also easier without Chirons in my opinion since you don’t have enough snipers (one sniper with pistol can essentially neutralize one worm-throwing Chiron, while explosive Chirons have virtually no counterplay to begin with).
Ultimately though it comes down to prioritizing your snipers, since they are the only ones that can consistently damage most of the enemies - siren heads, then enough to kill weak enemy per turn, any spares to finishing the sirens and then finally the Scylla. If the Scylla decides to actually come for you at the beginning, you probably don’t have enough firepower; you have to hope the Scylla is busy destroying objectives until you can clear the others enemies from the board.
I’m not sure which type of Scylla you have encountered , cause they have variety of mutated types.
each one needs different tactics to deal with
the easier to handle with is the one with flat belly (spawn multiple mindfrags after death) and two cannon on its shoulder. this one just use its cannon to spit mist every turn, which you can totally ignore The one with 2 smashers is the most dangrous, cripple it , or snipe it’s head and torso in order to force retreat.
keep on mind your primary goal is eliminate all enermies (without time limit), It’s not XCOM, you can always dodge dangerous fight, dont bother with civilians’s survival or key buildings’ integrity if you are the underdog. as long as you have the pandorans wiped out, the haven will survive.
*Chirons are easier to handle with (compared to Sirens).you could literaly leave them be until they run out of ‘ammo’ .
P.S, share some tips of my own , I got a legend walk through with 58% dooms meter progression. I use secondary class squads combined with Tech/Sniper, Priest/Tech, Priest/Heavy, Infiltritor/Assault with Amor vehicles (6 man squad or 3 -1 cavalry squad) to deal with haven defense missions. It’s quiet effective. Generally you need 2 AP riffles as main damage dealer, (hit Crabbies).
Priests are used to mind control worms or injured Crabbies.you can control worms one by one then explode (or attack the pandorans insdead if you have enough willpoint to keep them) or control a fireworm to explode the acid ones.
You dont need too many snipers in this type of mission, use Techies insdead, auto turrets = extra guns 1 Heavy to deal with Scylla. Thats all. Vehicles are useful when there are sirens or mindfrags around. use it wisely to avoid mindcontrol or acid/fire damage.
Infriltrators/Assault with drones and AP rifle is the VIP in this mission.
