This is the mission where one is to rescue a unit. I tried a couple of reloads in hopes that the placement of the unit and the enemies would cause a no way to succeed playing field. Not the case, it was a total no way one can win situation.
The unit in question is placed in the middle of the map. While the player’s units are tucked in a corner near the evac location. One can’t move the unit to be rescued anywhere safe and they are in the open to begin with. No matter where one moves the unit, the enemies all start swarming on him from all directions. Assault units just dash to a position where he is killed on the first enemy turn. Even with a team of 8 there is no way to stop the enemy from swarming in.
I would expect the unit to needing rescue to be holed up somewhere safe not hiding out in the open.
Now I remember why I didn’t recall this mission from my previous play through. This time since the game crashed before I could retry a 3rd time. I went back a bit further in my saves. This time whenever I deployed for the mission, as soon as it started the mission FAILED. No reason given, no chance to even scan the map. This is what kept happening in an earlier play through.
There is a YouTube video of this mission (about 26:09 in). Dates back to Dec 15 last year. It’s interesting in that the mission states the person is being held by Anu and yet in the video the base is New Jericho. I wonder if one of the patches fixed the base location to Anu but kept the placement of the enemy and the person to be extracted in similar locations on the map grid as New Jericho.
I managed to complete that mission with two assaults and four snipers IIRC. First turn I ran the civilian as far toward PP troops as I managed, including two Rallies from assaults. He did get badly damaged regardless, but survived that first turn. After that it was just a matter of keeping the civilian out of sight.
When I played that mission, it was still on the New Jericho map even though all the mission text said he was being held by Anu. It is very possible that the map grid location where the scientist is supposed to spawn was kept the same but the map was updated/fixed to the correct Anu map.
As such, I can’t speak to the difficulty on the Anu map - but the New Jericho map had more cover and was basically “run the civilian to you as fast as you can while using snipers and heavies/vehicles with rockets to keep enemies at range while extracting”. Vehicles were a big help on that mission because I could move the vehicle almost all the way there, then load the civilian into it (or at least hide the civilian behind it as portable cover).
There’s more than one rescue special mission, I think one is on Anu map, another on NJ map. In both, I felt them weird. Won NJ map by raging, scam loading restart, and finally luck still got one soldier death. Won Anu map with one Infiltrator and 3 turns.
I think those rescue missions can be great but need a lot more work on design and procedural management. XCOM1&2 rescue missions are a lot better done.
Yes, I finally played this mission. It is effectively impossible to win. I had three squad members with Rally the Troops. I had the guy run to cover, then rallied three times for 3 more AP, and had him run into what looked like really good cover inside a temple near the evac zone.
But the AI are poorly programmed to ignore ANYTHING but the civilian guy. And they all rush from their spawns to that temple, ignore my squad. Several of them made it into range to hit the guy, and killed him all in one turn.
Broken mission. All missions involving a VIP are broken like this because of how insanely dogg-ed the enemy AI is. They will refuse to shoot your Squad, and snipe or rush the VIP from across the map until he is dead. And the VIP can at best take a single hit.
First time I tried this mission the dude was literally inside the temple surrounded by Disciples. In the words of the venerable DSP there was “absolutelty nothing I could do” about him getting blown to bits turn one. Save scummed and rerolled that shit and second time all the Disciples spawned on the roof of the temple while he had the same starting spot. This time it was super easy, don’t think he ever even got spotted.
I think this might be one of those situations where a vehicle would be very useful. Drive an Armadillo over to the VIP, have him get in, then drive off. Lots of armor and health protecting him. If I remember this mission correctly, you don’t need to kill the opposition, just evac with the VIP.
Sure it can works, or not when the VIP need go though buildings from inside, when the Vehicle won’t reach the VIP fast enough.
It depends a lot of procedural generation, some can be quite nasty and then probably only decoy could distract enough, but even then a decoy could not survive enough shoot, perhaps two then.
