4 Likes
Well played, anyway, i think they should patch this also and when an Hoplite is killed unguard sleeping, all the others in the map should awake and start looking for invasors. It would difficult the mission.
I would want to agree with this, but… All the enemies have devastating attacks that will disable your soldiers or kill them if more than one hits, and have no problems firing from across the map. It would be a fine suggestion if everyone tackled these with stealth all the time, but that’s just not the case, and we’d end up finding a lot more complaints all of a sudden of “Why am I being targeted by 14 lasers after attacking an enemy? This is impossible.”
These missions were horribly rushed and designed by the looks of it. None of the enemies are interesting and all virtually do the same thing, and mimic the most basic of enemies (The Arthron) but are slightly better. The “Guardian” turns out to be the easiest enemy in the mission (because that makes sense, right?) and as the video shows, the entire thing can be done with stealthed units and rendered into this pointless clicker game. You know, those games where you just click on the screen as fast as you can, because that’s all there is to it? That’s these maps when done with stealth. Without stealth, they’re even less fun and it’s just a good thing that they’re not even needed to beat the game.
Interesting map aesthetics though. Fighting Pandorans on these maps prove to be more interesting and fun, but it’s a shame that rarely or never happens. Used to be a thing, but people complained and they took it out. 
IMO they should’ve just took out the entire DLC. It was clearly a cash-grab, but now its just included as pointless content in the “Year One Edition” as if it’s an interesting extra that people get to have.
2 Likes
What was taken out? Maybe I missed something.
I think that orichalcum aura (the one with 90% invulnerability to direct damage) is quite interesting concept. Promotes burst weapons. Also aura that charges enemy with every hit taken is fine. Promotes single hit powerful weapons. 
The LoA sites being attacked. I assume it was taken out (despite Factions threatening you) because I haven’t seen a single attack on these things since the release of LoA (then again, I also rarely actually do these missions… usually just to get 1 rebuke and then leave it be. which just requires the refinery and mutane field). I do remember once doing a defense against Pandorans though and thought it was far more fun than fighting the actual ancients.
Mmm. I’ll give them that too. The aura concept is nifty. Some interesting buffs on enemies. The fire one basically almost guarantees a kill if it hits a soldier. The shield one like you said is neat. Then there’s the daze one that doesn’t make any sense. A daze on melee attacks? Those melee attacks that generally are guaranteed to kill your soldiers on Legend if for whatever reason you find yourself accidentally waking them up with no AP to run away? What’s the point of that? I’m assuming it has some sort of use on Easy mode though, but I still don’t see how that can be considered good design.
I just find it kind boring that there’s only 3 types of enemies that barely stand apart from one another. Two of the enemies spend their turn firing a giant laser at you and blowing apart the scenery typically (and this sounds VERY weird to me, along with the odd music), followed by deploying a heavily armored shield to protect themselves. The third spends its turn moving around and firing a giant laser at you. I didn’t even notice there were actually two types of enemies with shields the first time (despite there being visually distinct differences) simply because they looked similar and did the same thing as one another each turn).
It’s the only missions where I can agree with people who think vehicles are useless, because against these enemies they truly are, which is fine though, I don’t necessarily believe a vehicle should always be useful. But it sucked to find that out the hard way, because the evac zone was on the other side of the map, and of course I just reloaded and brought different troops instead. Then you figure out that they don’t respond to stealth and begin to wonder why the missions exist at all?
Even if the stealth exploit was fixed, I don’t understand what’s supposed to be fun about going up against a team full of Snipers with Shields and very poor aim exactly… and 1 giant thing that basically offers up an aura and does the same attack as the rest of the enemies, but is easy to destroy rather quickly considering how easy of a target it is.
That meme comes to mind to epitomize these missions… you know which one I’m talking about.
So the one thing that really only came to my mind that would be a preferred and easy “fix” for these maps is to just load them full of Pandorans AND keep the Ancients on site. Ancients and Pandorans fight each other and you, similar to that mission where the Pure and Synedrion fight one another. You can let them hash it out or try to exploit weaknesses as it progresses, and it would probably be far easier, but at least more interesting than “BEEEOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRNRNNNNN…” over and over again.
… and at least give them some additional abilities like grenade launchers (Rebuke) on the Guardian (that prefer to target vehicles). Removal of the laser and shield on the drill-hoplites (so a hundred lasers don’t shred the vehicle apart in a few turns), replaced by something similar to the Crystal Crossbow (minus the piercing), so they instead try to use cover against you and close in instead of focusing on the vehicle… You know, something different than all of them standing out in the open doing the same attack repeatedly if they even see a hair sticking out from cover, otherwise just walking directly towards you and deploying a shield.
yep, they could use more abilities for sure. And maps should be redesigned to not allow stealthy sniping.
Finally some time to reply. 
Yes, this one is the least interesting. But still presents a threat, if enemy will manage to reach you it is almost guaranteed to stun thus taking your operative from next turn - This creates need to having at least 2 or 3 soldiers close together so the other will rescue that one dazed. And it also creates more risk to approach them in close range.
For me it creates immersion that they are powerful, while blowing environment in such way.
I kind of like it. Surely different than other parts of the soundtrack.
And I like that part. Players need to employ different tactics to overcome their defences. Maybe it sounds weird but I would really like to see something like that on more than a half of enemies… Of course not that the half of enemies should have tough shields. But they should have something preventing player from killing them in one of the ways.
Oh and this
@Rainer this is the way I would like to see almost all the missions, not just ancient sites. Situations where there are at least 3 sided of the fight. And that sometimes you have possibility to ally with one of them thanks to diplomacy.