Network Towers - What are you doing Right? What am I doing wrong?

[LegoMaster]

I have attempted network towers in twice, once at strength 8 and 6. Different campaigns, Commander/regular. I hope to one day be able to play this game Ironman style, thus my below post.

Some context: In both cases, I found them to extremely hard. I, shamefully, admit I saved scummed. 90% of missions I do not need to save scum. For the record, I have beaten vanilla Xcom on Legend/Ironman but as I learn LW2 I just don't want to deal with rookie/learning mistakes killing me.

The 1st run I found myself attempting to defeat EVERY wave of reinforcements. after the 4th-ish I figured out the reinforcements wouldn't stop. I eventually "suicide" ran my shinobi to the comm desk. I did save scum, so he was only injured. If I didn't save scummed I would have wiped due to my initiation and strategy.

2nd run- I attempted to stealth as much as the way possible, set up an ambush for an easy pod wipe. However, the explosions/noise ended up attracting EVERY pod. Again, I ran the shinobi to trigger the comm desk. I did try and stealth all the way to comm building but no matter what I did/scummed I couldn't make it. This leads me to believe you have to go loud sooner than later, but then you into infinite reinforcements and could easily wipe.

What are some of your successful strategies? What conditions do you take the networks towers? I have yet to try an HQ assault, I am scared shitless because of network towers.

Thanks!

[Lumberjacques]

I got lucky and was able to go in with lasers at strength 4, first time seeing a Muton that run. Rushing the first tower so ADVENT isn't really strong seems to work for a lot of people, meaning increased priority needs to be put on Liberation chain missions.

Getting a shinobi to the comms console is basically a win button if you've engaged a significant number of enemies. To do that, you have to make it a decent distance before going loud, and then find a way to sneak the shinobi past the activated pods and into blue move range (or orange if your officer is close enough) to the console. My squad comp was Sapper-Grenadier, Stealth-Shinobi with Scatteray, Medic-Spec-Officer with rifle, hail of bullets-Gunner and a crit-assault.

As for the HQ, there aren't reinforcements, so at least that's nice. Go in with a big squad, move slowly, make sure to engage behind LoS chokepoints so you don't inadvertently trigger pods. Retreating into overwatch is nothing to be ashamed of. You really can't afford to be aggressive until you've killed ~30 aliens. Bring medikits, gunners, flashbangs, and get ready for a slugfest.

[GavinRuneblade]

I send my stealth unit for the console and have my main force distract/pull for him. A sniper is very helpful for this.

Typically I can get pretty close before going loud, and he stays hidden with my guys, then when the time is right he ghosts and makes a dash for it.

Once the stun kicks in not only are ALL aliens shut down but reinforcements stop. So it is ok to take a big risk in positioning on that last move as no one will be attacking him.

I suck at most of this game, but I'm 3/4 on towers. The HQ afterward I'm 0/2.

>.<

Edit: forgot to add, there is usually a fork and lots of grenades and shooting on one side can leave the other devoid of defenders and easy for the stealther

[Tuhalu]

There is no timer and reinforcements do not start until you break concealment, so take all the time you need to get your guys safely into the control room. Survey the paths the patrols take for a while and you should be able to find a way past them. After the hack is done, no more reinforcements can come and you have a couple of turns to clear out the control room.

I don't recommend bringing a Gunner because his concealment radius is bad. It just makes it extra hard to bring him through. Technicals and Grenadiers are OK because you can equip them with SMGs for concealment and movement purposes. They also clean up stunned pods incredibly well.

On my best run tower run so far, I stealthed past the patrolling pods and hacked the objective while two patrols were on the roof. Then I moved up my Technical and Grenadier and mowed down a Muton, 4 Sectoids and an Advent or two with Flame, Grenades and firepower. After that is was a simple matter of overwatch camping the roof until the other patrols walked into my trap and (mostly) died instantly

[Randal Miser]

I too attempted to defeat every pod before accessing the console, thinking reinforcements were finite.

Best strat is to just, try and sneak your way in, whack the console as soon as possible, and murder the pod set to guard it while they are stunned, and then take your time clearing out the rest of the defenders.

To do this sometimes, you have to take risks, helps if you have an officer who can command a specialist to get in range, and dash a lot.

[Ketchup4684]

Basically what the other said. Slap an smg and spider suit on a stealth focused Shinobi and have him navigate to the console while the rest of your squad engages the enemy. Another immensely useful soldier to have is a Gunner, because man o man once that guy gets Danger Close, He can Area Suppress entire sections of the tower. Last tower mission I had, my Gunner Area Suppressed 7 units at once. And with Lockdown, Danger Close, Mayhem, and an Elite Hair Trigger, he was dealing 125% of his normal damage to any enemy that attempted to move, with the aim bonuses from Lockdown and the Elite Hair Trigger completely counteracting the Overwatch penalty. Borderline broken imo.

[trihero]

- you must bring a shinobi who is specialized in all the detection radius modifiers (ghostwalker, covert, smg). His direct goal is the console, but obviously don't make stupid moves along the way
- your goal is not to reveal yourself until you can hack the console in the same turn (prevents reinforcements, gives you easy open shots)
- it is very easy now since both bridges are guaranteed to be down and the pods don't seem to patrol into the side rooms of the console room, so you can hide there then blue move hack the console in one turn
- for your other characters, there are two approaches; one is very offensive in nature and works well in the early game. You pick everyone who can at the very least one shot anything in one turn (assaults, for instance because of shotgun flanks, chain shot/saturation fire gunners, SPARK shredder canon, serial on sharpshooter), scatter some troops near the front near the back then clean up everything during the stun from the console. You have 2 completely free turns from enemy fire, and you have initiative on the 3rd turn so aim to kill everything by that 3rd attack.

The other is the overwatch grind approach which works better in the late game, you keep your non-shinobis together and wipe a small area clean preferably on high ground, then when the stun is over, you overwatch trap (rangers are boss for this) and poke pods one a time into it with your sharpshooter + shinobi scout (hacking doesn't break concealment on this mission for some reason, and if you lost concealment on shinobi hopefully you learned conceal by the mid to late game)

Try not to bring supportive builds (specialists, flashbang grenadiers), it's more about dpsing things down. Think about it this way - you have 5 men, and 1 of them is a naked guy waving a stick around (shinobi), so firepower matters a lot, especially when the ratio goes to 20 aliens to 5 men. I'm not giving the shinobi enough credit - he can actually do a fair amount of damage with the alien hunter weapon and fleching around and tossing the axe, and he doesn't have to worry about muton retaliation while stunned. With reaper he can help quite a bit with the mopup.

[aimlessgun]

Both towers I've done really did not seem stealthable with a full squad, (though who knows maybe if I'd waited 50 turns something might have opened up). So I just tried to delay contact and then move fast once I went loud. You have some time before really getting the reinforcement flood so I just fought through as best I could. If you think you'll attract a bunch of pods when first going loud just try to pick a good defensive spot.

I consider this mission harder than the HQ, but I havn't made a determined stealth effort.

[Sines]

I've actually been able to stealth a friggin' SPARK into the command center. That was probably no small amount of luck, though.

That being said, if you're not going to have a Shinobi stealth to the console, then you need to keep in mind that, once you break stealth, that console is still your ultimate goal. SPARK overdrive or Command can give a soldier the actions they need to make it to the console and hack it, ASAP. SPARKs and Specialists are particularly good at this since they can hack from a distance. Being able to take hits isn't bad either. Again, SPARKS (if you have any) are superb at this, if you can somehow sneak them decently far into the mission.

Unless you break concealment very early, you need to push that console with everything you can. Bring one character who can manage this. You want someone with high speed and survivability. Fortify can do lots of good here. You don't need the soldier to make it all the way to the console once they're inside. An Assault can Run and Gun up to the back wall, blast one of the command pod units, and then make it to the console on their next action.

Once you have the console, consider hiding in the command room. It has a lot of high cover, and enemies will have to rely on low cover coming up to it. I'm not sure if you can stop 'announced' re-inforcements with it's activation, but assuming you can, you just leave one soldier in range to activate it, while the rest of your troops gun down enemies in your highly defensible position. Best to hide at the doors, however, so that once you activate the console, your guys can immediately rush out to take advantage of the situation.

Lastly, bring methods to hit lots of enemies at once. You want to take advantage of the stunned rounds as well as you can, or kill enemies as fast as possible to more safely rush the console. Grenadiers and Technicals are the obvious solution here, but Rangers, Gunners, and Assaults all have solid AoE options as well. If you don't have many alternatives, there are certainly worse things than outfitting your squad in EXO Suits and blasting your enemies with Shredstorm Cannon. You give up some survivability, but being able to burst enemies that hard is a big deal.

[Dwarfling]

Commander difficulty. I sneak a long range squad into the comm room, sniper, gunner, ranger, etc. All you need is patience, as in, if you see you won't be able to pass thru, backtrack and try the other route. Sometimes there's a turret on top of the comm room so bring a good hacker to disable it. If there's a pod on top of the comm room try not to engage it first. They'll come to you after you start the fight against one of the pods close to the bridges, and that's when you activate the objective and wipe that pod close range.

[food]

Commander difficulty... I kick in the front door and keep on banging. You can push through the 'office tower' area without engaging the far side of the map, usually. Ranger, gunner, grenadier and two specialists get it done.

[knrp]

Commander ironman, 2 towers so far with assault, technical, grenadier, ranger and gunner. The first in july, the second in august.

200% infiltration gave me light activity at advent strength 6, then just ran through one side of the map killing everything until the console was in run and gun range. one 3 man reinforcement pod the first time (dropped after the hack so not stunned, annoyingly enough), no reinforcements the second.

View any ability with a cooldown as single use and just wipe the small pods like you were playing vanilla.

[Valaska]

Commander Ironman here, third tower now took one down at S7, one as S9, and now going into S4 so pretty sure this will work out again lol.

You don't need to sneak if you don't want to, a ranger, 2 specialists, shinobi, and a gunner with a wild card which in higher strength can be nice to have a Spark or another ranger. You want to by applying concerted constant damage, sneak to where you have an extremely favorable position and then wipe a pod out. Let a couple pods come and just decimate them. The reinforcements take abit to come so I don't get why people are so panicky about the towers, they're exactly the same as every other mission.

Its good to engage mid way up so the teriminal is there if you need it, but likely you are gonna pick up a mec friend or turret friend to help out. The last pod is really all I would worry about, it often has an andromedon or something in it. Everything else is advent typically, couple sexy snake ladies here any there but they all go down easily enough. And again mec's are easy to either shut down or be your best friend.