What's More Difficult For You?

[EtherImp]

Rate these 4 in order of difficulty:

 

1- Terror mission

2- Base attack

3- Base defense

4- Battleship

 

 

That is the order for me.. Each of them has terror units, but on Terror missions terror units seem to play a much larger role, and terror missions must often be played at night, and alot of times they can pop up when you're really not prepared to take on a mission of that scale.. They also happen early in the game.. Regardless of what enemy I'm facing, they are hard. Obviously the least bothersome is the floater terror missions, but even those can be a pain. Ethereal terror missions are wowowowowow difficult.. Snakeman and Sectiod can both be difficult in their own rights.. Muton, not so bad, but no cakewalk either unless you have good Psi.

 

Base attack missions I only rate higher than Base defense because base defense you pretty much know where the enemy will be and it's easy to play defensive against them.. you can camp in rooms and lock down chokepoints.. Where as base attack you have an objective to complete other than saving your own skin.

 

Battleships I find the easiest because of the middle elevator.. If aliens took reaction fire down elevators it would be much more difficult. They also seem to clump up there. I usually get a good 8 or so kills just in the few rounds it takes to clear that shaft.

 

So, what do YOU have the most and least difficulty with?

 

Honorable mention goes to downed Terror craft, btw.. They can be tough cookies to crack. I try to avoid even caring about what's on the ship. I am more worried about destruction. Blaster bomb the heck out of those damn sectopods/crystallids. Punch as many holes in the hull as possible and take advantage of opportunity fire.

[Paladin]

Mine is slightly different:

 

1- Terror mission

2- Base defense

3- Base attack

4- Battleship

 

Simply because the base defenses happen only in early games, where your soldiers are not necessarily ready to face that, with whatever equipment get jumbled in the 80 item limit!!

Otherwise, I usually hunt down all the retaliation battleships, so there's not much trouble with base defenses.

[Snakeman]

1 Terror Mission

2 Base attack

3 Base Defense

4 Battleship

 

That's the difficulty for me from worst to least worst. As stated, terror missions come at you at random in the beginning, usually at night as also stated and when your unprepared. Its also one of the mission types where most often there are aliens camped near or around my ramp where nasty things can happen I've had terror missions before where I've taken an Avenger with 14 troops and 3 HWPs. I ususally send the HWPs out first of course to deflect attack from my men inside with the idea that they'd clear away the closest opposition so that can happen and sometimes one right after the other would get destroyed. If that happens I toss a coin whether to continue or not, as I still usually have the 14 guys left, or dust off. Also as others' strategies would suggest, weapon loadout is more imperative on these types of missions I feel than any other (uh, now where'd I put my darn incindiary rockets, flares and smoke grenades?)

 

Terror missions are the kind where you find yourself needing to use weapons types you wouldn't normally decide to pack. Base attacks are similar but not as drastic. In those you can just remember to bring lots of things that blow stuff up. Though I suppose that's technically true of any mission for some In terror missions for example, I find using proximity grenades slightly counterproductive cause you can kill civies by accident (which is also true of other weapon but none moreso than these). If you do a terror site, bring the normal or alien variety of grenades in place of those. At least if civies die, they won't die because of them tripping a booby trap before you wanted it to happen (another trick I've heard you could try, is use a stunrod or small launcher on them as you find them to avoid them becoming killed or zombified). If you do bring proxies, give 'em to a guy you expect you'd want to remain with the ship and then have him booby trap the entryway to dig in better there.

 

Base attacks are second for me, but if you have the right assault gear and soldiers, it shouldn't be as bad (depending on alien type - anything that has Psi guys or crysaliad dudes might get tricky) and you don't have to worry about civies. I find these to be more of a fun challenge given that lack of civilians as opposed to the more scary challenge of terror sites

 

I basically feel the same way about base defense so I won't get into those.

 

Battleships, again, more of a fun challenge. I actually prefer assaulting the ship after clearing the area around it (and if I have it, using psi on them to borrow as scouts while I do it). They can still be surprising to me from time to time. Generally on these missions, there's always that special unit of theirs placed randomly in or outside the UFOs. One time, that room on the second floor adjacent to the top corner of the main lift that you take if you use that alternate lift, I had reaper stuck in once with no way out. I sent someone inside and he got blasted to bits I knew I hadn't found the special unit yet which was why it spooked me. I never would have thought they'd put a large unit in a room that had a small door

[Sergio]

Yeah I have struck that once too on a battleship. In exactly the same place, middle floor, first door on northwest hallway, and then the first room on the right! One random Terror unit in this case one a Cyberdisk. Man that gave me a fright as I have never, ever encountered anything in that room before. I don't even know why I checked it this time.

 

I definitely rate from hardest at the top:

 

Terror Mission

Alien Base

Terror Ship

Battleship

[Tsereve]

Terror missions are absolutely killer! Etherials are heck!! Sectoids, I don't mind--it's the Cyberdisks that get me. Once, I had just fitted the Triton with Heavy Plasmas, when a Sectoid Terror Mission came up. First guy off the ramp, turns, sees 3 cyberdisks + a Sectoid, gets killed by reaction fire. Second guy comes out, Hev Plas blazing, one of the Cyberdisks takes 5 direct hits, then kills the guy. Everyone else hangs back, primes grenades, a cyberdisk floats INTO the Triton! four men dead, but the cyberdisk gets destroyed. . .and takes another 2 soldiers with him as he and the dropped grenades blow up! Next turn: Three guys are sent out, toss their 3 grenades, open auto-shot, both remaining disks down. Invisible sniper kills one of my new heroes, another still in the triton gets psied, not much more to say.

 

base defense missions are a breeze if you took the time to create as many chokepoints as possible. My bases tend to revolve in a spiro, giving my at least 3. base attacks are easy with an Avenger's cargo capacity, battleships are fine as long as there's no psi involved.

 

Worst- terror

battleship

base attack

Easiest- base defend

[[stewart]]

Hardest = Terror ( The aliens can be anywhere, mind you if you consider civies just part of the landscape it gets a bit easier )

2nd Hardest = Alien Base

2nd Easiest = Battleship ( Camp by the door )

Easiest = Base Defense ( I consider them gimmies )

[Paladin]

I consider the battleship to have far too wide doors to stay camped outside of it... I prefer to enter it (by a side-pod blasted open if possible), and clear the ground level before sending a Rocket/Blaster bomb to clear the second floor central lift... After that it's a cakewalk to the 2nd floor large hallways (with 6 guys with full TUs on top, it's not so bad, use 'nades liberally )

[EtherImp]

hehe.. I just camp like 3 guys on each side of the doors at a distance (between the landing pads) watching the exits, then have 4 guys moving in and out of the large doorways firing up the lifts.. Quite simple really.. Almost never lose any soldiers this way.

[Paladin]

hehe.. I just camp like 3 guys on each side of the doors at a distance (between the landing pads) watching the exits, then have 4 guys moving in and out of the large doorways firing up the lifts.. Quite simple really.. Almost never lose any soldiers this way.

Mhmmm

Maybe you're right. I should camp a bit more when there's no PSI involved... Tehn again. I usually hate doors, and I tend to storm past them so I won't have to get through them more than once... -_-

I also tend to hit 'em hard with explosives first (Alien Grenades, Large Rockets, Blaster bomb if necessary) and then use only HeavyPlasma/Laser Rifles, since I don't want to destroy the corpse's valuable equipment...

That's why I tend to storm in and buldoze everything that's in my way...

[[stewart]]

Don't forget you can leave guys around-the-corner too. If you position right they probably won't be struck by your reaction fire. And it gives you a second crack at the aliens as they step around the corner.

[Admiral Harkov]

1- Terror ship?

2 - Alien base

3 - Terror mission

4 - Battleship

5 - Base defense

 

The base defense is easy, maybe the easiest of ALL You know where they'll com from and so you can quite easily control them. If you have some kind of tank, just one is 90% of victory. I have just have difficulties with last, a sectopod with no lasers, more than eight hits (and more than twenty shots) to kill it. Buf!

 

Battleship, with the center elevator is easy. I haven't found any ethereal, which should be the harder. One I fear is mutons, they're so accurate shooting!. But I place a proxy in one side and a couple of soldiers wathcing one corner, so they control both doors. And two enter, see and exit until the aliens are all dead or the last doesn't exit and I have to enter.

 

Alien base and terror mission are near, but I have more success rate in terror, by far. Blasters are special problem in alien base. In terro it's almost a matter of finding the aliens. Only in case of chryssalids I use proxies, because I prefer killing a civilian than get a soldier infected.

 

And terror ships, I've meet few of them (matter of luck), my firsts combats were pretty hard, almost impossible, very high losses (only one or two survivors each mission), but in the last game I've built plasma hovertanks, before I had elerium problems and I prefered the area effect of a rocket launcher to the plasma, but well, I had one more and it was worth its weight in gold. It was one of my faster and easiest missions!. Only two losses and more by bad luck than aliens doing good. And it was snakemen ship, so chryssalids.

[Paladin]

Terror ships are FAR easier than Terror site IMHO, you get the very same crew, but no civies and far less cramped quarters (especially considering that I've never even seen a landed Terror ship, so the interior is always blown up...

 

What difficulty level do you play on??

 

Because I can tell you that Cyberdisks/Mutons/Sectopods are FAR more troublesome in Superhuman...

And you usually get a Base defense mission in the first two months... :o

[X-Heiko]

1- Terror Missions

 

As mentioned often enough:

 

*nearly always at night

*played with low-tech, you can intercept the ships later in the game

*you have to take care of some dumbass civilians

*can't be ignored => nearly inevitable

*Dead civilians => low score

 

BUT:

 

#If there's anything good in terrors it's that you COULD capture terrorists alive. I wouldn't count it as a "but", though.

 

2- Base Defense

 

*If it comes, it comes unpredicted. If I defend bases, I use six structures: five fusion ball defs and a grav shield. That's impregnable for battleships. An XCom base is a mess to defend - either you rush it by taking the hangars and the lift within the first three or four rounds or you are left to look into every little corridor (of which there are enough!)

*80 items limit. 75% of my soldiers once had to wait for the psi guys to arm them with enemy equipment.

=> *requires useless research of weapons you don't want to research (seriously, WHY PLASMA RIFLE?) so your unarmed ones can use them

*Inevitable

 

BUT:

 

No buts. BD's suck.

 

3- Battleships

 

*Lots of rooms to look through

*dangerous assault action

*Big disappointment if all the four UFO Power sources are gone (Daaaaaaamn! My Avenger's in repairs for the rest of the month for ZERO elerium? Craaaaap!)

*Nearly the only mission where Aliens successfully manage to use blasters.

 

BUT:

 

#Possibility of much Elerium!

#Commanders to capture!

 

4- Base Attacks

 

*Plant rooms

*Plant rooms

*Plant rooms

*Plant rooms

*small plant rooms

*big map, need to scout out much terrain

 

BUT:

 

#Objective is easy, you can quickly find the center. After the center assault, the rest of the aliens are panicko-fried!

#SCORE!

#Elerium (sometimes)!

#Commanders to capture!

#hyper-easy with psi

[Adun_Toridas]

Base Defense.