So far I’ve played about a week - maybe 2 - of game time and I’ve explored about two fifths of Asia.
I’m about halfway towards the next Red Mist zone, and to date I’ve only encountered Sirens & Chirons in the EXG scenarios, not in the campaign.
I’m wondering if this is due to my policy of exterminating any Nest that appears in my Red Zone the minute it pops up - hit 'em when they’re not reeady and stomp on 'em when they’re down. So I’ve yet to allow a Queen to spawn.
Do the Chirons and Sirens only appear once a Queen is on the map, or am I just plain lucky?
It is. Bigger aliens appear if you don’t take care of their nests Maybe in second mist you will find them. But if not just let them grow in the first mist area. It will take something like a week or two for lair (spawns chirons and sirens) to appear, maybe a month for citadel (brings the queen to play).
I have a feeling that you will get hit by them sooner or later. In my second game, I was attacking the nests every time they popped too and the game was kind’ve slow.
Then I had one massive mission with a queen, Chirons and crabmen out of the blue. I am not 100% sure what started it but now think it was because there was a second red mist zone in Asia.
I expanded from the Americas to Europe and was close enough to be attacked from there. If there are uncontrolled nests in that second mist zone, they might force the game to escalate if we control the first zone too hard.
The down side, after the first queen mission, all queen missions are broken. They will not let you join the mission from the geoscape. Hopefully gets patched soon.
So if I want the more challenging Nasties, I need to stop playing sensibly…
I have no doubt they’ll balance that better once they’ve stopped using us as guinea pigs - and I should reserve judgement on this until I encounter the spawn of the second Red Mist in this campaign.
And interesting thought: I kinda know what’s coming, so my guys spread out at the start of any new mission to avoid presenting too big a target. I wonder how a Noob is going to fare if presented by the kind of Chiron assault detailed by Dazz in his Chiron post…?
I am sure this is all just testing as part of the backer builds as you have said. Once we are no longer guinea pigs What we get in the real game will probably be totally different.
I will be very interested to hear if others get a queen mission when they expand closer to the second red mist zone as I did. I am still trying to work out what triggered the queen mission to kick off. Ever since that mission, all missions have had a Chiron or Sirens in them.
The Chirons with rocket launch attack I have now countered because the amount of heavies RNG gave me. I just rocket attack them to death as my turn one. When there are 2 in a mission things get a little more difficult. If you leave 2 rocket Chirons alive after your first turn, you will be spammed with two rocket barrages… You will need a mop and bucket to get your squad home
I am sure once the game is sorted this will all be balanced out so noobs will not rage quit and spam the forums… I hope
I have just started playing the EGX challenges as I cannot enter any Queen missions in the campaign any more and found the new Chiron types.
Chiron Spoiler below (sure you have all seen it but just in case)…
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The two new attacks of the Chiron are a little easier to deal with then the rocket barrage.
One squirts acid slime goop on everything. If you get your soldiers under cover, you are pretty safe. Smash them with rockets ASAP still but if you cannot do it in one turn, just finish the turn under cover. (edit: Turns out the Goop is not acid, it just sticks your soldier in place)
The second spams you with with fire worms. A pain in the butt to be sure but at least not insta-death.
I’m pretty sure the main reason is probably the fact that Alien bases are automatically revealed as soon as we defend a haven, pretty sure it wont be like that in the final game and much more effort would be required to locate them. In the original XCOM the player mostly find bases on pure chance most of the time.
OK, started a new campaign and can confirm a few things…
Only have 2 radars but left all the nests alone in the red mist circle. After using time lapse for a while I got a queen attack mission. Since then all the missions have queens and sirens in them already.
If you cannot join missions with queens in them restart the campaign and it fixes the issue.
Last campaign I was really struggling to find soldiers. This time I have spawned in ASIA and have a full squad (with 2 spares) within 2 radars. Probably just RNG with what is in the bases you land on. Even though I have 10 soldiers… I only have 1 heavy…
The missions with the big nasties in them are about 100x harder without the heavies to spam rockets
If you lack heavies in your squad roster just multi class another class that your have an over abundance of into a heavy, in my last campaign most all of the extra recruits I got were almost all assaults. I ended up with about 9 - 10 assaults in the end. So I ended up multi classing a few of them and completely switched their load outs into the other class.
Also, an assault in heavy armor armed with shotgun and jetpack is pretty awesome.
The just don’t have the range to counter battery fire across the map. I have taken to loading up the techs with hell cannons and sending them to the front. If they cannot see and blast the queen in the face they help remove a couple crabmen every turn.
Yea, I think last time I was just unlucky. I have only pushed out 2 radars worth of map and yet have more recruits than I had from the whole of the USA last round. All the recruit havens might’ve been just one more haven away.
I need to try that I have been having fun with the tech/hvy combo. I am just not far enough into the campaign to have enough levelled up soldiers to combo them.
Since deliberately leaving the nests, every mission is a queen/boss fight. Way more fun but WAY more ammo! Impossible to get the $$ together for another radar because I need to fill the ammo after each fight!
Maybe in second mist you will find them. But if not just let them grow in the first mist area. It will take something like a week or two for lair (spawns chirons and sirens) to appear, maybe a month for citadel (brings the queen to play).
What we get in the real game will probably be totally different.
I have been having fun with the tech/hvy combo. I am just not far enough into the campaign to have enough levelled up soldiers to combo them.