Holy smokes, that first tower mission?!!!

[infidel901]

Commander difficulty, half of squad has lasers, no upgraded armor, 3rd skill level, one officer.
How the hell can you do this with no casualties? There were 20 regular troops, with multiple serpents, mutons, sectoids, rocketeers, lancers, etc, ....but then even before I had reached the final bridge, there were two drop-in pods of 4 each, including rocket enabled mechs, more serpents, etc.

I just don't get it. With all that poison, rockets, panic, stuns, how can you possibly get trough unscathed?

[LordYanaek]

That mission and the next (last liberation) are tough
You are assaulting heavily guarded advent installations. You must be prepared for this.

half of squad has lasers

Or in other words, half the squad was missing laser. Laser for everyone is probably a must for this mission. You can do without armor but you must have some firepower.
Also try to keep your cover as long as possible. Reinforcements will only start when you break cover. When you hack the tower, all enemies will be stunned for 2 turns, try to kill them as fast as possible while they are helpless.

[trihero]

My current team for tower smashing is

1) Shinobi - you want to sneak him into that console room to hack ASAP for both stunning all enemies + lock out reinforcements. It's usually not very hard with skills like ghostwalker. Pause in one of the side rooms, then blue move and hack the console on the same turn. There are 2 bridges into the main building so pick whichever is cleaner. I think full covert spec is fine for this; I was going to try a blademaster but ghostwalker/covert are too convenient to sneak by things.

2) SPARK - dat shredstorm canon with rainmaker is massive aoe damage, and his gun is pretty impressive as well

3) Sharpshooter - have him sit on a tower and shoot enemies all over the place, which saves a lot of running around. Don't bring a holo-targeter, bring a death from above/damn good ground version.

4) Gunner - one of the best openers in the game is Saturation Fire. You can smoke 3 mutons out of concealment with this one move

5) Asssault - once it gets close, it should be able to one shot anything vipers, mutons, sergeants, etc, and the stun from hacking the console gives you a couple free turns of flanking shots

If you don't have the SPARK yet, take another assault. If your gunner doesn't have saturation fire yet, take someone who has a big concealment opener like grenadier. IIRC my first tower assault I used like 3 assaults 1 shinobi 1 grenadier, I took an injury on assault but that's ok because you don't really bring too many of those to the following mission. Highly mobile (or long range) big dick dps is what you need. As the game progresses you want to bring people with good AWC synergies, and possibly heavy weapons.

Idea is your shinobi makes his way to the console room while your team moves forward and finds a good ambushing position. Whenever you can do a good ambush then do so, and have the shinobi hack the console shortly after when pods are pulling towards you, then try to clean up as many units as you can with the 2 full turns of the enemy being stunned. Take note of where the pods are, like if one is near the beginning I'll leave the assault behind so he can charge in when the console is hacked, while the rest go help the shinobi clean up the mass of forces on the rooftop/around the main building.

[infidel901]

Don't you have to break glass to get past the first room? how do you maintain stealth?

[trihero]

Don't you have to break glass to get past the first room? how do you maintain stealth?

I haven't had a map like that yet. There is some variability but I've always had paths around buildings. I have encountered a path where you would have to break glass, but there was another path that didn't involve it. I have no special strategy for maintaining stealth, and I do not rely on special skills like conceal or ghost grenade.

[Devon_v]

Sounds like ADVENT strength was quite high. I did the tower in a strength 3 region and they had two snakes, two sectoids, and a muton for aliens and some trash ADVENT troops.

Strike where the enemy is weak. I feel if you're going to go for liberation, you do it all in one shot. Any delay will cause ADVENT to reinforce the region and may make the final missions too difficult.

[redscare]

WTF? I did it with basic guns. Zero problems. Veteran no-ironman so I indeed reload a save a couple times (I avoid save-scumming but will load a save if things go really really bad). 170% infiltration, though XD

You just need a shinobi, a sniper, and 3 guys to deal with reinforcements (grenadier, gunner, ranger officer in my case).

Take a good elevated position near the starting point, scout ahead with shinobi, blast every guy with sniper, deal with reinforcements with the rest of the team. No time limit, so who cares if sniper misses half the shots and takes a gazillion turns.

[trihero]

I think certainly a valid strategy is take 1 shinobi, 1 sniper, + 3 overwatch masters (rangers maybe 1 specialist if they use a lot of robots). Your shinobi will require the Conceal perk so he can make it back to the team without getting murdered. Your sniper + overwatch masters camp high ground and wait for the shinobi to hack the console then you just sit there and wait for things to come to your trap.

Recently with my more aggressive strategy I've come to realize it's quite valuable for the Assault class to have Close Encounters, meaning he can kill 2 enemies per round instead of just 1, it helps a lot during the stun period.

[infidel901]

I was doing it on Commander, and one of the several DE's that were applying to my squad, was rapid reinforcements. The setup people are recommending would not work when you constantly have pods dropping in on your snipers position.

[Goumindong]

I was doing it on Commander, and one of the several DE's that were applying to my squad, was rapid reinforcements. The setup people are recommending would not work when you constantly have pods dropping in on your snipers position.

Because of the way the bridges are designed it is not difficult to sneak the entire squad all the way through the mission*. Once you hit the buzzer reinforcements stop so you're clear to stomp the starting building during the stun then hold the high ground against weak cover options for enemies.

The alternate method of having a shinobi stealth while the sniper plinks is also reasonable of you have good overwatch specialists to deal with reinforcements.

*i literally just did this on commander, 200%infil, sharpshooter, technical, heavy, specialist, and assault all made it

[infidel901]

The weird thing is, i saw no way through for my shinobi, on that first room. Only way i could see would be to break stealth by smashing windows.

[Goumindong]

The weird thing is, i saw no way through for my shinobi, on that first room. Only way i could see would be to break stealth by smashing windows.

That is possible ( had a room like that i had to go around). But if you have a shinobi you can break it with a regular unit and then move the shinobi through the broken window

[trihero]

If you have a spider suit you can also grapple up without breaking stealth.

[guardian21]

Also, another thing about stealth:

When I was trying to get through some rooms, it stated that I would be noticed due to break glass / door opening.
However, if you blue move next to the door, open it and continue inside, you keep your stealth.
So, at that point while all my moves seemed to break stealth, simply opening the door was ok.


My strategy for the mission (veteran not ironman, team with lasers, advent strength 5) was to sneak the whole team past the first 2 pods. Then I accidentally revealed one, and got attacked by another, but at this point I held high ground with my team, while shinobi ran and hacked the objective.

[Fanguru]

That mission is always two runways. You should be able to go the other way if you are blocked by a glass.
I use the shinobi strat: bring 4 high damage troops, move him up concealed up to the terminal, leave the other 4 at the start.
-> no reinforcement
-> you know where enemy squads are and their composition
-> 2 turns to do as much damage as possible, then you got all the time in the world

In my current campaign, I did first tower in April with Shinobi (laser SMG, axe), Gunner (ballistic), Assault (ballistic, trench gun), Technical (laser SMG), Ranger (laser rifle). Advent strength was 3, 4 pods.
Credits to Xwynn for the strat, though he did it with a different squad comp, close-range oriented.

[Arcalane]

The weird thing is, i saw no way through for my shinobi, on that first room. Only way i could see would be to break stealth by smashing windows.

Are you sure the game wasn't also trying to get you to kick through doors? Remember that opening doors carefully (move up next to them and interact - which is a free action) doesn't break concealment, even if it's within an enemy's line of sight.

I had a similar situation where I wanted to go via the top of a small office shack thing, but the only way I could get up was to smash through windows at the back and climb up the outside. I had to sneak the rest of my team through the lower floor instead.

The fact that I then used an X4 charge to blow up the floor beneath a MEC patrol is besides the point...

If you're having trouble with getting hit with status effects, consider investing in hazmat vests (+3HP, immune to poison/acid/fire) and mindshields (immune to disorient/stun/panic/etc.). Medkits also grant poison and fire immunity regardless of remaining charges, giving you a way to heal your troops if they're injured.

[nightwyrm]

Medkit grants fire immunity now?!?

[Arcalane]

Medkit grants fire immunity now?!?

Don't quote me on that - it's entirely possible that I'm wrong and I think I might be, looking at something else - but healing a soldier extinguishes the burning status even if they're at max health. So that's still useful to have.

Burning is basically the most damaging status effect that isn't a straight-up Stun, since all you can do is Move and Hunker. No abilities, nothing. Poison is also really rough due to the aim+mobility penalties.

[trihero]

Medkits don't provide passive immunity to fire. You can use a medkit while on fire, as xwynns demonstrated in his legendary play through.

[Antifringe]

This is how I did it, using only ballistic weapons and Staff Sgts, on Commander level.
The team:
Shinobi: Specced for infiltration
Technical: Specced for fire (carries SMG for extra mobility)
Sharpshooter: Specced for accuracy (DDG, Death from Above, best stock, best scope, etc)
Gunner: Specced for supression/overwatch
Geranadier: Specced for explosive damage

The Shinobi breaks into the control room and hides right next to the console. Sharpshooter is positioned where she has hihg ground and can see into the control room and also has vision on at least one patrolling pod. Gunner, Technincal, and Grenadier are each stalking one pod. Try to time it so that at least two pods are clumped together so your solidiers can support each other, and make sure one of your non-Sharpshooters can see into the control room so you'll have squadsight (the Shinobi will likely not have vision on the control room crew from her hiding place).

Hack the console, putting all of the aliens into 2 turns of stun. The tech runs down a pod and flamethrowers it. The Grenadier has two turns to lob grenades at her pod, ensuring a pod wipe. The Gunner shoots the most dangerous alien in his pod (Stun Lancer first, then Officer, then whatever), looking more to soften enemies than necessarily score kills.

The control crew was 3 snakes and a sentry. I tested the waters by having the Sharpshooter fire at a snake. Got a crit and kill. I was now confident enough to have the Shinobi Fleche into one of the other snakes. She doesn't get a kill, but she will be able to slash +fleche next turn, and with the Sharpshooter supporting her, she can clear the room.

When the stun is about to wear off, the Gunner switches to area suppresion on his pod. The aliens are all in the open, the tough ones are wounded, and the Gunner is specced for killing guys that run suppresion. They all die. The technical has already burned out his pod and is positioning to fire a rocket at the control room if things go bad there (they did not). I won without the aliens ever firing a shot.

[Kizaray]

Everyone is saying yo use shinobi to hack but this is one of the missions you can get enemy protocol on which permanently increases hacking stat. For that reason i always get my specialist to hack it if i can. That payoff is huge

[mattprice516]

Don't you have to break glass to get past the first room? how do you maintain stealth?

The custom network tower maps created for that mission should usually allow a path through without breaking stealth. Emphasis on should, ensuring something with randomly generated maps is kinda hard.

Getting through all the patrols without getting spotted, though - that's hard.

After attempting one with same conditions as the OP (half lasers and no predator) and failing miserably, I resolved not to do them before at least full lasers, and probably not before Predator either.

[trihero]

They get super hard really fast on legend. I peaked in a network tower mission on legend in october in a strength 10 advent region (this is about average at this stage in the game for regions you have done missions in), and holy smokes...21 hp elite officers with 1 armor pip....scouts with 100 aim....15 hp elite sidewinders with 25 defense on top of their dodge. And I barely finished coil guns for that o.O

I can see why joinrbs just prefers to skip network towers past the first 1 or 2 on legend.

[Jacke]

They get super hard really fast on legend. I peaked in a network tower mission on legend in october in a strength 10 advent region (this is about average at this stage in the game for regions you have done missions in), and holy smokes...21 hp elite officers with 1 armor pip....scouts with 100 aim....15 hp elite sidewinders with 25 defense on top of their dodge. And I barely finished coil guns for that o.O

I can see why joinrbs just prefers to skip network towers past the first 1 or 2 on legend.

Yikes! That's Tactical Dark Events doing that, isn't it?

But what happens if when playing the player's liberated zones were lost? Is the campaign lost? Or can the player build up faster than the TDE's pile on? Or should they just pursure the Avatar Project and the endgame?

[trihero]

I think you only lose if the avatar bar fills up.

You can't build faster than the DEs. They just go come too fast and on legend you can't expand far enough to catch all the missions. They are nerfing the rate and effectiveness of tactical DEs in 1.2, if that's comfort to you. I hate it when they get both scopes + veteran upgrade, that's +10 aim. High cover feels shaky after that.