XCOM 2 Mission Analysis: Resistance Requests/VIP Missions

Resistance Requests or VIP missions (Either description is consistently accurate) occur once a month, every month. Their primary purpose is to drip-feed the player Engineers and Scientists, as most variants involve rescuing an Engineer or Scientist who joins your crew if you save them successfully; you can get Engineers and Scientists from other sources, but Resistance Requests are how the game assures an RNG-resistant stream of both crucial staff. So long as you don't screw up the missions, that's +1 Engineer or Scientist every month -well, until you get far enough along, but that's for later in the post.

In the base game, there are exactly 5 mission variants in this category, and they share a lot of qualities: all five always use the City Center plot type (And in fact are the only non-Gatecrasher missions to use it, even into War of the Chosen), including attendant implications like the presence of hostile civilians, security towers, etc. All five start with a fixed Evac point (Denying you the ability to place one yourself) and a generous-seeming time limit, but where said timer running out terminates the mission, taking away any soldiers that haven't Evacced successfully. (Not to mention the VIP if they haven't Evacced) They also all five involve a VIP you're supposed to Evac with, though the details there are a little more variable.

They're also all presented to you by the Spokesman, somewhat oddly acting as the face of the broader Resistance. In a local sense this actually makes sense, as all five mission types are inside information being passed to you; it makes sense that the Spokesman would have an advantage at getting a hold of such inside info, and then he's somehow able to phone up the Avenger directly. Even so, the Spokesman actually acts as the face of the Resistance more generally, with some strangeness resulting. (It's just weird that he rates you each month, just like in EU/EW)

War of the Chosen adds three more variants, and these are very different. They all three involve rescuing a Scientist or Engineer by finding the VIP and bringing them to your Evac point -and all three deny you the ability to set an Evac point yourself, of course- which is broadly similar to the existing VIP missions, but none of them involves a hard timer (One of them has no timer at all, in fact), none of them uses the City Center plot type, and all three use non-standard rules when it comes to enemy composition.

These new variants are also not presented by the Spokesman, instead being presented by Volk, Betos, or Geist. This doesn't matter mechanically -though there's evidence suggesting it was supposed to- but nonetheless the game ensures that only a Resistance faction you've made contact with will ever have their leader selected to present the mission. (eg if you start a run in contact with the Templar and then never contact the Reapers or Skirmishers, Geist will present every such mission that generates)

Notably, these mugshots are your only really clear look at Geist, and one of two ways to get a good look at Betos. (The other being the final cinematic, which is still less good of an opportunity) Their talking portraits aren't very clear depictions of them, and other depictions of them -such as what you see upon completing one of these missions -invariably have the lighting obscure the details. (Or, in the final cinematic's case, Geist is wearing his helmet)

Anyway, War of the Chosen forces the first VIP mission to be an intro to Lost if you don't have Lost And Abandoned enabled, and so it will always be one of these new mission variants. (Though not any of the three, as one of the three doesn't have Lost) So it will actually take at minimum until the second month to see a base-game VIP mission when playing War of the Chosen, even though the base-game variants outnumber the War of the Chosen variants.

Also, in both the base game and War of the Chosen, your first VIP mission will always be to rescue a Scientist, as your first Engineer is handled in... a weird, non-standard way that's for next post. Past that I'm pretty sure it's randomized, though it's possible I'm wrong -I've never bothered to pay close attention to this particular detail, and wouldn't be surprised if it actually consistently alternates or some such.

Anyway, regardless of exact mission type, you never loot corpses. This is intuitive enough for the base-game variants, but is a bit eyebrow-raising with two of the new mission types -one of them it's actually possible to render the map completely safe, with no enemies present and none on the way, but you still can't loot bodies. Another example of War of the Chosen's rushed state letting issues and oddities slip through. Probably.

One bit of unfortunate learning curve stuff in War of the Chosen is that the game introduces the Sitrep system via forcing a VIP mission, which gives the impression VIP missions can have random Sitreps assigned. In actuality, VIP missions will never have Sitreps, it's just two of them are premised on Lost and so display appropriate info in the Sitrep infobox. Oops.

Anyway, specific mission types;


Rescue VIP From ADVENT Vehicle

The first of the base-game VIP missions, and thus always using the City Center plot type, having a fixed Evac point, having a fairly long timer (18~ turns) that will lose you anyone who hasn't Evacced if it hits zero...

In this case, you start the mission with squad Concealment, while the VIP you need to rescue starts somewhere 3/4ths of the way in the direction of the Evac point, inside a distinctive ADVENT truck. (The closest vehicle in the image above) The truck starts out sealed, with the back doors locked and requiring a Hack to unlock them. Strictly speaking, this isn't required to save the VIP; even just breaking the truck's walls or doors and getting sight on the VIP will result in you gaining control of the VIP and being able to walk them out of the truck.

That said, you should be reluctant to actually try to achieve this result. Your tools for deliberately demolishing terrain are all capable of setting the truck to explode, and if that happens with the VIP in or near the truck they will be killed by the explosion. It is possible to be careful about aiming grenades or the like so this doesn't happen, but there's largely not any reason to actually do so. It's mostly something to keep in mind on the level that missed shots will sometimes knock down one of the truck's walls -they're surprisingly flimsy- in which case you should focus on getting sight on the inside of the truck, not on Hacking the doors.

Amusingly, the doors being destroyed doesn't necessarily take away your ability to Hack the doors. I'm not sure exactly what underlies this, but the Hack interaction will sometimes survive the doors being destroyed. I've most often seen it when the truck exploded (Which wipes out all the destructible parts of the truck), but I've sometimes seen it when just the doors got destroyed somehow.

Also note that the doors can only be Hacked and opened from the two tiles in front of them, by which I mean that even though your soldiers can normally interact with doors when standing in Cover beside them, a soldier leaned up against the back-most spot on either side can't interact with the doors. Conspicuously, the contextual interaction images will appear on the doors themselves in such a case, but no, you can't interact with the doors from there. Even a Specialist or SPARK can't use their Remote Hacking on the door from there -they need to be somewhere behind the truck outright for it to count. So that's weird and annoying.

Further note that there's almost always a pod sitting right next to the truck, hidden behind the back wall relative to how our squad is liable to approach, which has the obnoxious quality of generally refusing to move from that spot unless one of your units gets in front of the truck's rear doors. If you're not aware of the pod, it's easy to get caught off guard by it, whether by activating it when you go to Hack the doors, or by it popping out while you're fighting another pod, or otherwise being an unpleasant surprise. If you have cottoned on to how normal it is for there to be such a pod but haven't figured out their weird 'patrol' behavior, it's easy to waste precious turns on trying to catch the pod with Overwatch, unaware this particular pod is content to linger there forever if you haven't spotted the VIP. Ideally, you'll approach the truck at full speed without getting sight to the other side, and then deliberately activate it once everyone is in position to flank any enemy who tries to use the truck as Cover.

An additional jerk move is that the VIP coming under your control will trigger reinforcements. Reminder: in the base game, the flare spawns immediately, and so the reinforcements will arrive on the very next enemy turn, while in War of the Chosen the flare will spawn on the next enemy turn and the reinforcements will drop in the turn after. In conjunction with the unusual, trap-like behavior of the pod sitting atop the VIP, it's easy to jump straight from everything being fine to having to deal with two full active pods, especially in the base game; you actually shouldn't be in a huge rush to get the VIP out of the vehicle, and should instead prioritize making sure the vicinity is free of enemies before you get the door open. Just keep in mind that if the truck starts cooking off you'll need to get the VIP out immediately.

Even once you've gotten the VIP away from their explosive prison, you have to deal with the issue of the Evac point: it almost always spawns a bit beyond the truck, and it specifically almost always spawns atop a building. As I've noted in a prior post, the game does have a routine for 'what if the Evac point gets destroyed?' but said routine can easily dump the Evac point multiples turns worth of Dashing away from your squad, which is of course horrible if you've only got a few turns left on the mission timer and nobody has Evacced yet. So that's unpleasant, a point exacerbated by the fact that there's often a pod somewhere nearby the Evac point. The main good news is that you'll often activate them a little past the VIP's truck, and so usually won't end up actually fighting near the Evac point per se, minimizing the risk of it being destroyed and dropped elsewhere. The secondary good news is that the reinforcements tend to drop in near the truck, not the Evac point, further minimizing the odds of the Evac point getting shoved to a problematic place.

I'm very much not a fan of this VIP mission variant, if you hadn't guessed. To be fair, several of its issues aren't actually prone to mattering, but it's still a mess, and it really hurts its case that the following variant exists...


Rescue VIP From ADVENT Cell

This is essentially the same mission type as rescuing a VIP from a vehicle, to the point I'm honestly a bit surprised the game has them as separate mission types at all. The unfortunate thing is that the cell version is basically just the better-designed one; I honestly think disabling the vehicle version would be an overall improvement, as the truck being able to explode, its doors having weird behavior, and the pod that is basically abusing meta-knowledge (Why are they so consistently coincidentally on the side that hides them from your team?) all adds up to a noticeably worse experience than the cell version.

I do wonder if the missions were originally imagined as more different; there's evidence of attempts to incorporate moving vehicles into XCOM 2. Maybe the vehicle variant would've been distinguished in part by the truck actually moving?

In any event, I'm not going to repeat a bunch of what I said for the prior mission, as they really are extremely similar. Just go reread all the stuff about being in a City Center and all and you've got it.

What is different, of course, is the area the VIP is held in. Where the vehicle version has the VIP held in a bomb waiting to go off truck, the cell version has the VIP in a 3x3 room, which itself is inside a proper building. You're still supposed to Hack the door open, and once again just getting sight on the VIP gives you control so it's not strictly necessary to Hack the door, but unlike the vehicle version you actually can blast the VIP loose reasonably safely: they're always placed in the back of the cell, so blowing up the front door/walls is at no risk of killing them. Also unlike the vehicle version, the cell's Hackability doesn't sometimes survive the door's destruction; if you want a shot at the Hack rewards, don't blow up the door.

Like the vehicle version, there's always a pod assigned to guard the VIP. Unlike the vehicle version, the cell version has this pod pretty variable in their position, and in particular not consistently set up as a trap; they can be standing right in front of the cell, or on the roof of the building more or less above the cell, or down on the ground floor below the cell if the cell is in a raised area, and sometimes they'll actually be behind the cell while on the same Z-level it is. They also tend to actually patrol instead of sitting still indefinitely; it's entirely possible to wipe out all the pods on the map without having spotted the cell because the pod guarding it wandered a little afield and spotted you.

Also like the vehicle version, getting control of the VIP triggers reinforcements, with the reinforcements taking longer to arrive in War of the Chosen.

The actual cell location is surprisingly variable from a narrative/aesthetic perspective. You'll see it placed in obvious ADVENT buildings, of course, but it can also get dropped in side areas to buildings whose main area looks more like an art gallery or similar, and as I alluded to before it's surprisingly common for the cell to be transplanted into commercial buildings like cafes or department stores. I'm genuinely unsure if this is intentional hinting -a suggestion these civilian buildings are collaborating with ADVENT's darker elements, or are basically fronts for secret ADVENT stuff, or whatever- or if it's an organic outcome of map generation routines that the devs didn't notice or at least didn't explicitly put in. It's not like Bradford's dialogue is a hint in either direction.

Anyway, it should be pointed out that Turrets show up a bit more often in this variant than in the vehicle variant, since this variant can plunk down ADVENT infrastructure to put the cell into and then Turrets can generate there. It's not remotely guaranteed, but it is more common on the whole.

Oddly, another difference is that the cell variant strongly prefers to place the Evac point on solid ground, instead of atop a building... which in practice is basically another way it's the better-designed mission. Especially since there's often still a pod near the Evac point -in fact, the reinforcements are really prone to dropping in right on top of the Evac point, so you'll often fight two pods near the Evac point! But, y'know, without having to worry about a missed shot teleporting the Evac point halfway across the map.

This is probably my favorite of the base-game VIP missions, honestly. The rest are... consistently more flawed in certain ways. And the War of the Chosen additions have their own issues, but that's for later.

On a different note, it should be pointed out the if an Alien Ruler spawns into this or the vehicle variant, the Alien Ruler will usually be the pod loosely assigned to the Evac point... but for the cell variant they will sometimes be right on top of the cell. So be wary if you have Alien Rulers running about. By a similar token, if only one Sectopod or Gatekeeper spawns, it tends to be near the Evac zone, not the cell or vehicle... but this is much less consistent with the cell variant than the vehicle variant.


Extract VIP From ADVENT City

Broadly, this is a lot alike to the prior two variants: you need to get a VIP to a fixed Evac point before time runs out, it's in a City Center, all the implications therein.

Unlike the prior two variants, you actually start the mission in control of the VIP, with them mixed in with your squad. You also do not start with squad Concealment, which is unique in the base game for VIP missions, and even in War of the Chosen where it's technically not unique it still basically is.

Thankfully, while Stop The ADVENT Retaliation is pretty miserable as a result of not starting with squad Concealment, Extract VIP From ADVENT City is actually mostly pretty enjoyable, even without a Reaper or Ranger scouting. The map shape tends to be pretty square -this is actually a recurring thing with City Center maps, interestingly- but the mission design actually operates on 'corridor' design; you generally start in a corner, with the Evac point placed in roughly the opposite corner, and the other two corners are irrelevant. You end up advancing diagonally relative to the game's grid, but you still walk in a basically-straight line in a clear direction, and enemy pods tend to be placed so you'll encounter them one at a time. (At least until 4 pods on the map is normal; Legendary makes this noticeably more luck-based if you don't bring a Concealed scout)

Helping is the odd point that VIPs are a little weird about pod activation, though I don't know the exact details of this weirdness. I just know that I've repeatedly had a VIP briefly spot an inactive pod, with the target heads appearing for a second and combat music kicking in, but the pod not activating. Sometimes the VIP stops with the pod at the very edge of their vision without them activating! This makes advancing with the VIP erratically result in you being warned of a pod without activating it. As I haven't figured out the underlying rules to this weirdness I can't tell you how to best abuse it if so inclined... but I will note I've never seen this happen if it was an Alien Ruler the VIP spotted, and I've also never had it happen if the VIP ended their movement with the pod closer than the very edge of their sight. So it's certainly not flagrantly, effortlessly abusable.

This is actually true of all VIPs, it should be pointed out, but this particular mission type has it most prone to actually cropping up; the cell and vehicle variants tend to have most of the pods dead or active before you even get control of the VIP, after all, and the other VIP missions have different exact details but arrive at the same conclusion. This mission type, it's a lot more likely you'll advance cautiously, move the VIP somewhere a bit away from the squad, and oh no spot a pod!... only for it to not activate in your turn.

Anyway, the Evac point is, frustratingly, usually placed atop a building. This is particularly bad because there's always a pod assigned directly to the Evac point -they often will spawn inside the Evac zone, and refuse to leave it until activated! This is thus actually the mission type most prone to having the Evac zone shuffled somewhere problematic, unfortunately.

A bit of a mixed bag is the consideration of Alien Ruler/Sectopod/Gatekeeper placement. You might intuitively expect from the 'objective zone' name that these would tend to be the pod assigned to the Evac zone... but, oddly, this actually isn't so. They usually get placed somewhere around the halfway point of the map; they'll often be the second, or sometimes even the first, pod that you encounter. On the plus side, this means you usually don't have to worry about a Sectopod or Gatekeeper casually Wall Smashing through the Evac zone... at least, not until you're very late in a run so two such pods spawn on the map... but on the minus side it's another way the Alien Rulers can throw you for a loop; you noticed they tend to show up at the end of the map, and are planning around that being true here too? Surprise!

In War of the Chosen this isn't too bad, but in the base game where they Ruler React hyper-aggressively, it's the kind of thing that can result in half the squad dying not because you played particularly poorly but because you had the misfortune to happen to have the Archon King spawn into this mission type.

The issues with the Evac point's fragility and Alien Rulers ambushing you at the midpoint aside, I actually do like this mission type. It's a nice change of pace and surprisingly well-tuned so long as neither of its specific issues comes into play. It's pretty unfortunate that they're so awful if they do crop up, though...

Also, this and the prior two missions are Part One of the missions I was talking about being tied for 'worst mission to encounter an Alien Ruler on'. You're on a time limit that will lose you soldiers if you're too slow, pressuring you to rush into the Alien Ruler, their failure to consistently spawn near the objective makes it much harder to get prepped for them in particular, you have to juggle protecting/managing the VIP on top of handling the Alien Ruler...

... and crucially, these missions are fairly optimally designed to make instant Unconsciousness particularly problematic.

First of all is precisely that element of pod positioning: in most mission types Alien Rulers can show up in, they're very likely to be the last pod you fight, or the second-last if the objective triggers reinforcements. Thus, a soldier being KOed is basically them being dead for exactly one fight, and then the mission ends and it's off to the Avenger; you won't need to fight further pods while down a soldier.

This is exacerbated by point two: that being forced to Evac at a specific point under a rigid timer means that, if you can't revive a KOed soldier, you're not only down that soldier but also have to disable another soldier by having them carry the KOed soldier. So having 1 out of 6 soldiers KOed in one of these missions often means you end up fighting a pod while down two soldiers -and if 2 of your soldiers are KOed? You're in serious trouble.

You can set bodies down, of course, but this expends an action point. A body-carrying soldier advances to be in sight of the enemy pod, sets down the body... and is done until the next turn. This makes it really hard to wipe out future pods before they can attack at all, when your squad is almost certainly already widely missing HP from the Alien Ruler fight; even with a dedicated mid-level medical Specialist, it's easy to end up healing 4 people and end up with a couple people still missing HP. (You did use Revival Protocol so you at least aren't carrying two bodies, right?) And then you activate a pod and someone dies.

Notably, you'd think the VIP could reduce the pain by carrying a KOed soldier, but alas, these people are apparently either incapable of carrying a soldier in full kit or unwilling. (To be fair, a soldier in full kit is legitimately heavy) Either way, they can't help with this issue, and in fact it's possible for the VIP to be knocked Unconscious and also have to be carried.

And reminder; all three of these missions like to set a regular pod near the Evac point. You're basically guaranteed to have to deal with these issues unless you, say, Repeater-killed the Alien Ruler immediately.

Retaliation missions, by contrast, retain the issues of 'difficult to know when the Alien Ruler will jump you' and 'you'll probably have to fight regular pods with at least one soldier KOed and the others injured', but your response to KOed soldiers you can't revive is to just leave them where they fell: they'll automatically be scooped up and returned to the Avenger when you win. That drastically reduces the impact of instant Unconsciousness -it's still a heavy impact, mind, but it's nearly halved in its ability to cripple your squad. That's a big difference.


Neutralize Target

This is a bit of a weird one. It's still centered on a VIP in a City Center, but you're here to deal with a hostile VIP.

In a lot of ways, it's like Rescue VIP From ADVENT Cell; a VIP placed inside a building (Though Neutralize Target is much more consistent about the building being an unambiguously ADVENT building), a fixed Evac point (Though it's generally on the ground here, thankfully), usually there's a pod very close to the VIP...

... but the VIP being hostile immediately changes several things.

First of all, as the VIP is hostile, you obviously don't deliver them to the Evac point by taking control of them as a friendly unit. Instead, the first time a given run gets sight on a hostile VIP, the game pops up a microtutorial (Even if you've gone for the tutorial-minimizing settings) informing you that soldiers can KO a hostile VIP. Once KOed, you will then need to have someone carry the body to the Evac point and Evac while holding the VIP.

The KOing action is actually a normally-hidden special ability all of your human soldiers share, which inflicts Unconsciousness on the VIP (And no damage, crucially) and only works on the VIP. Put another way, enemies you take control of can't do this (Not even the humanoid ADVENT units) nor can SPARKs; if you're doing an all-SPARK run, you'll need a token human-type soldier to KO the VIP and then carry the body.

Also, the KOing action spends one action point without necessarily ending the turn. As picking up a body is actually a free action (But not setting a body down; that costs an action point), it's actually possible for a soldier to start their turn next to the VIP, bang them on the head, pick them up, and then walk one action point worth of movement.

A pleasant surprise is that all this business with KOing the VIP isn't actually the only legal way to kidnap the VIP: if you Dominate the VIP, you can then have them toddle on to the Evac point and Evac all on their own, and the game will in fact recognize this as a successful kidnapping! This is honestly one of the clearer uses of Domination, as it lets your squad fight at full strength while performing the kidnapping, instead of being down a soldier.

Also, an interesting quality of Neutralize Target is it, somewhat unusually, actually has multiple valid resolutions. The best state is to KO (Or Dominate) the VIP and Evac with them alive, of course, but you actually are considered to succeed in the mission if you kill the VIP and extract the squad. Doing so will get the Spokesman to rebuke you that you 'can't get intel from a corpse' -which is actually an accurate description of the mechanics! Succeeding at the mission always gives a modest Supply reward, but successfully making off with the live VIP will additionally add a fairly sizable Intel reward, which is pretty clearly the primary point of the mission. There's other missions where you can achieve a partial form of success -all Supply Raids, for example- but this and its nearly-identical cousin are some of the only mission types in the base game where you can have a mission objective explicitly fail without that automatically meaning the mission is considered a failed mission overall. (Secure The Disabled UFO is the other example, but that's for a later post)

Anyway, returning to the mission itself, KOing, killing, or Dominating the VIP will always trigger a wave of reinforcements. As usual, this wave takes longer to show up in War of the Chosen; if the Evac point is close enough to the VIP, it may actually be possible to Evac the whole squad before the reinforcements even arrive. Not so much in the base game.

Also, this is Missions Alien Rulers Are Particularly Awful In: Part Two, as you've got basically all the issues of the prior three missions, only now you already need to commit a soldier to carrying a body. It's entirely possible for a six-soldier squad to be effectively reduced to being one (!) soldier, by virtue of 2 soldiers KOed, 2 soldiers tied up in carrying those soldiers, and 1 soldier tied up in carrying the VIP. 

Also, I've never identified the exact timeframe, but this and its cousin I'm covering next are not actually allowed to be picked until you're a few months into a run; the game will trickle some Engineers and Scientists your way before it becomes valid to get these missions.

I have mixed feelings about this, as Neutralize Target is actually one of my favorite missions in the game to actually play and it takes so long to show up; a successful run might do it twice, and probably not more than that.

As for its cousin...

Neutralize Target In ADVENT Vehicle

... I very much do not like Neutralize Target In ADVENT Vehicle.

Broadly speaking, this is basically the same as Neutralize Target. The only difference is that the VIP is standing next to a car, with a bodyguard pod sitting right on top of the VIP.

But what a horrible difference this small change makes!

The crux of the issue is, of course, that all vehicles in XCOM 2 are filled with TNT (It's really too bad ADVENT didn't ban this practice when they took over the Earth), and the hostile VIP stubbornly insists on standing directly adjacent to their presumably-expensive vehicle (I'm going to pretend they're emotionally invested in their very expensive purchase for the sake of my sanity), rather than running to somewhere less likely to get them killed. Their escort will similarly, on activation, usually have at least one member of the pod take cover against the car; thus, if you take shots that miss, or throw a grenade at the enemy in question to Shred them, or otherwise try to deal with this active enemy... you're risking the car exploding. If you don't deal with them, you're risking them taking an action that sets the car off. Either way, the VIP will die if you don't scramble them out of reach. As KOing the VIP takes an action point, and soldiers only get two, most soldiers will take a minimum of two turns to approach the VIP, KO them, and then pick them up. You have to use Run And Gun or action point gifting to have a single soldier handle all that and escape the bomb.

Or Dominate them. This mission is honestly one of the best arguments for pulling a Psi Operative out of the closet early; Domination lets you get them out of the way immediately, and since it works from a distance the Psi Operative won't be adjacent to the car (Though they can have Fortress to not care anyway...), doesn't need to expose themselves to a flanking risk, can do it as soon as the VIP and their pod is visible...

... furthermore, it avoids a nasty bug that actually applies more generally but is infuriating in this mission in particular: that the game, on a crucial internal level, does not actually update the location of a body that has been picked up until the body is dropped elsewhere. Which is to say that if you pick up the VIP and carry them away from their car ready to detonate, and it explodes without you setting them down? They die!

This is true even if you Evacced them before the explosion!

So it's pretty problematic that the VIP always starts inside a potential explosion's blast radius. The  other Neutralize VIP mission can have this crop up, but it's far less likely, requiring combat occur near their starting location, and specifically that an explosive get used and overlap the exact tile they started in; this has happened to me once in all my play, vs the dozen or so times a VIP in this variant has been killed by their car exploding.

Aggravatingly, this is one mission type War of the Chosen actually makes worse. In the base game, Andromedons and Archons are the only enemies that can set off the car really trivially while being allowed to be in the bodyguard pod. (Gatekeepers and Sectopods can't be in the bodyguard pod) In War of the Chosen, Purifiers can be in the pod, and at that point your options for being completely sure the VIP doesn't die to their car exploding are very limited. They exist -you can still Dominate the VIP, you can use Frostbite to try to pull the Purifier away from the car, you can use Justice to pull them away (Though if it has a miss chance it will probably detonate the car on a miss), and Templar have multiple skills for safely manipulating enemy position- but it's a tiny handful of tools, no other situation in the game gives you reason to arrive at using these tools in a similar way, and for one reason or another it's easy to just not have any of them. (Skipped Psionics, haven't killed the Viper King yet, ignored the Templar's pure position-manipulation tools because they're otherwise a bit low-value...)

By a similar token, this mission is Missions Alien Rulers Are Particularly Awful In: Part 3: The Misery Intensifies. The Archon King is the worst offender since he's the most directly able to detonate the car -or even hit the VIP directly with Devastate!- but any of them showing up restricts your options and basically forces you to focus on them in particular, which can easily result in the bodyguard pod detonating the VIP's car where you had no good choices for avoiding this outcome aside 'don't buy Alien Hunters in the first place'.

On top of all the issues already present in the other Neutralize VIP mission type, remember.

As an additional bonus of (subtle) awful, an absolutely bizarre quality of these hostile VIPs is that they don't actually use Cover. This matters because of what is usually a kindness of XCOM 2; it orders enemy target icons from left to right in descending order of accuracy, meaning the leftmost target icon is the thing to click on if you're looking for the most reliable shot from your current position. In the case of these hostile VIPs, they will almost always be occupying that far left slot, making it easy to go picking a safe target, and out of habit click the far-left icon and confirm without checking and whoops the VIP is dead!

This actually is an issue in the other Neutralize Target mission, but far less often, as it doesn't consistently spawn a pod right there with the VIP; it's very normal to end up not actually fighting enemies while the VIP is visible and conscious in the other Neutralize VIP. This one, on the other hand... it's a constant problem. Especially because inexplicably the VIP also has the highest priority for being on the left; say you have a Ranger go flanking an enemy hanging against the vehicle, and their Shotgun has a 100% chance to hit the enemy. The game will default to targeting the civilian if the Shotgun has a 100% chance to hit them as well, which it probably does.

By a similar token, if you click a melee icon, it will default to targeting the VIP if they're in range. As melee targeting is particularly sensitive and prone to interpreting your inputs as a confirmation when you were trying to, for example, click on a different target icon, this makes it incredibly easy to accidentally melee the VIP to death.

Taken altogether, Neutralize Target In ADVENT Vehicle is up around the top of the list for 'most horrible mission in the game'. I'm genuinely amazed I've never found a mod to hard-disable it -Neutralize Target is the same thing, but with a massive reduction in unpleasant jank, so it's not like an interesting mission type would actually go missing.

I really hope the devs don't repeat this mistake for XCOM 3. Come on, get rid of the cars loaded with explosives, or at least stop designing missions as if they aren't bombs if you're going to keep having them be bombs!


Rescue Stranded Resistance Agents

Our first VIP mission added by War of the Chosen, Rescue Stranded Resistance Agents has the unique quality of being a mission type in which you will normally not encounter standard enemies at all: unless the Chosen decide to show themselves (Or possibly an Alien Ruler; I'm not actually sure whether they're allowed to spawn into this mission. It hasn't happened to me as yet, but I haven't found clear evidence of them being forbidden), the opposition is always nothing but Lost. It thus announces itself as having The Horde Sitrep.

As with all missions that force Lost presence, Rescue Stranded Resistance Agents always utilizes the Abandoned City plot type. It also has the misfortune of having the most limited map selection of such missions; if you play War of the Chosen enough, you will eventually start recognizing which exact map you're on from just seeing the initial area. Even the Lost initial spawn locations will be something you end up memorizing! ("Oh, this one. Okay, don't go through the building directly north as there's a Brute inside that will come out on its own...")

On the plus side, The Horde is inherently a somewhat flat situation anyway, so it's not like a more varied map range would cause the mission to gain serious replayability. If a mission had to suffer this fate, this is one of the best missions to be suffering it.

Anyway, Rescued Stranded Resistance Agents has a whole bunch of oddities.

First of all, it has a fixed Evac point, which is actually placed right near where your squad starts. This isn't actually unique behavior, but the other mission that does this has that Evac point as a placeholder, and will replace it later in the mission; in this mission, that actually is your real Evac point, where you need to head out to the VIP and then run back to where you started to evacuate everyone. So the way it gets used is unique.

Second, it's the only new VIP mission where you don't start with squad Concealment. As I've noted before Overwatch ambushes are worthless against Lost so this is actually all positive, preventing players from making bad decisions because they haven't cottoned on to how pointless Concealment is in a mono-Lost mission. It also has some side benefits, like preventing Infiltrate from freezing the timer, which is good because that wouldn't make any narrative sense.

Speaking of the timer, it's the third weird thing; most timers in XCOM 2 mark the point at which you've failed the mission, or at least failed a specific objective. In this mission, instead what's going on is that once the timer hits zero, from then on forth a Lost wave will generate every turn -and in response to every explosion! Note that standard Lost wave generation is not suppressed by the timer still being active; it's actually pretty normal to have a regular Lost wave generate before the timer runs out.

The timer itself is conceptually actually representing ammo: narratively, what's going on is that the VIP is supposed to be manning a turret, using it to fend off incoming waves of Lost, with the timer hitting zero being the point at which the turret is out of ammo. This is actually held to more broadly; firstly, once you get close enough to bring the VIP under your control (Marked by a very large circle, thankfully; you can't stumble into this accidentally) the timer goes away, a Lost wave generates immediately, and the aggressive Lost wave generation behavior kicks in for the duration of the mission. (Even if you kill every Brute -or every Lost- on the map, this behavior will continue forever) Secondly, in the event that the car the turret is mounted on blows up, that also kills the timer and switches over to the hyper-aggressive Lost wave behavior, which is a cool bit of attention to detail.

The next weird thing is that this is a new mission type with a fully optional objective; the VIP narratively had an escort, who got seriously wounded or something, hence why the VIP is fending for theirself. In-game, this takes the form of an Unconscious soldier on the ground near the VIP, who will join you permanently if you manage to evacuate them; the default way to do this is to pick up their carcass with one of your soldiers and haul them back to the Evac point like they're a hostile VIP. The more convenient way to do it is to have a Specialist wake them up with Revival Protocol, so they can fend for theirself.

The soldier in question will be a random standard class, equipped with Conventional gear (No matter how advanced your own gear has gotten), and with only Squaddie skills. Their rank is actually higher if the mission generates later in a run, but they won't have picked any skills, leaving you free to take whatever you want once they're back aboard the Avenger. Not that you'll care about any of that mid-mission unless you revive them, of course.

Or you can leave them behind to be gnawed on by Lost, as rescuing them is a totally optional objective, with no reward beyond the soldier.

You monster.

Anyway, the optimal thing to do (If you didn't bring Revival Protocol) is to stop someone somewhat outside the blue circle, end your turn, then on the next turn move in, grab the body, and have them and the VIP book it. Your other soldiers should be getting placed on high ground if possible, and while you're running they should at least try to keep the Dashers under control; a Dasher is so fast that if it ends its turn next to a standard soldier, and that soldier then Dashes their maximum distance, the Lost Dasher can catch up and hit them. The regular Lost can be ignored if you don't mind giving up experience; they'll never catch up unless you let them.

Overall, this is a mission that can be intimidating when you're learning it; I imagine a lot of players do a slow advance with Overwatch and have the timer run out before they reach the VIP, unaware this is terrible play in this one mission. Even ignoring that it risks missed shots blowing up the car -that's not hypothetical, I had that happen to me twice before I really grasped the implications of 'nothing but Lost'- it's just wasting time and ammo given the way Headshots work. As non-Dashers are horribly slow and can only attack in melee, there's also no reason to worry about activating pods as you advance; certainly, you shouldn't open a turn by Dashing -that could get someone punched- but if nobody's first action point activates any Lost, the second action point won't put them in actual danger unless you're being careless with line-of-sight-blockers. Which means the 5-turn timer is far less tight than it seems.

Naturally, Templar, Sharpshooters, and Rangers all shine here; Templar in particular are a great candidate for picking up the body if you fed them a couple Rend kills, so the squad doesn't have to wait for them as much. (Or, at higher levels, you could have someone pick up the body and the Templar swap with them to speed things up while leaving the Templar free to fight) Conversely, Reapers are utterly wasted on this mission, and Skirmishers are less than ideal, while Grenadiers are okay so long as you don't make the mistake of thinking grenades will solve your problems.

Note that Chosen can spawn into this mission. It can go weird places; among other points, they still stop the clock once in range, which in this particular case is spectacularly bizarre given what the timer represents. The Assassin is usually pretty straightforward; she charges you so fast you'll probably end up fighting her before you even see the VIP. The Hunter and Warlock are more prone to hanging out somewhere beyond the VIP, making it difficult to engage them without triggering the Lost wave generation stuff; if one of them spawns into this mission type, you honestly may be better off simply running away without trying to fight the Chosen.

This is totally an option in any mission where 'kill all enemies' isn't necessary to win, but most of the other mission types where it's possible -such as the other VIP missions- it's not really sensible to actually do, as the Chosen will generally actually be in your way. This mission is extremely anomalous on that count.

Overall, I like this mission more for The Promise Of XCOM 3 than I do for the mission itself: I very much like seeing War of the Chosen experimenting with alternate mission types, and in particular experimenting with mission types that are premised on not trying to kill everything on the map. I hope XCOM 3 takes such experiments and runs with them; for narrative and gameplay reasons, it's good if not every mission is a mild variation on 'murder everything'.

But the mission itself is a bit tiresome to do yet again once you've got a few runs under your belt. Even aside that issue, the execution doesn't work out in several ways; XCOM 2 mechanically builds itself on kills=experience, making it problematic to have a mission where you're expected to run instead of fight, and the mission takes inadequate measures to avoid this issue. (The mission would need to disable kill experience and then pass out a good chunk of experience to all participants, or something) The idea of needing to run from the infinite zombie hordes is a cool idea -actually hearkening back some to the fear factor of classic X-COM- but then once you get a handle on how sad Lost are as enemies it's just unthreatening busywork.

On the plus side, it's brisk; a recurring issue with War of the Chosen's new missions is they tend to drag on longer than base-game missions, sometimes much longer. This mission is, once you understand it, actually one of the quickest mission types in the game. So that's good.

Also good is that its placement of the VIP and Unconscious soldier escape the issues with Neutralize Target In ADVENT Vehicle: in spite of the VIP being conceptualized as manning the car-mounted turret, both the VIP and their escort are actually placed a little away from the car. Thus, if it blows up, it doesn't kill either of them. Hopefully this is a sign that if XCOM 3 returns to objectives placed near piles of dynamite disguised as cars vehicles, it will consistently avoid problems of the sort I've laid out here.

Also, this mission is a good example of how missions that supposedly force specific Sitreps aren't actually running the Sitrep in question; I've noted before that Lost Brutes don't actually spawn if The Horde is rolled, in spite of the Shadow Chamber's predictions. This mission presents itself as being a The Horde mission, but has a few Brutes consistently start on the map. So no, it's not actually running the Sitrep, even though the mono-Lost part is shared.

Also, it should be noted you get a modest injection of Intel for completing this mission, in addition to the personnel. I've no idea what the in-universe explanation for this could possibly be intended to be, and honestly wouldn't be surprised if the devs didn't come up with one at all in this case, if only due to War of the Chosen's general rushed state.


Gather Survivors From Abandoned City

The second VIP mission added by War of the Chosen, it's another Lost-forcing Abandoned City mission to rescue a VIP and their escort, with a fixed Evac point.

There's a lot of differences in the details, though.

First of all, this isn't a mono-Lost mission; Lost show up, but so do regular enemies. Related to this is that you start with squad Concealment and should in fact endeavor to use it to get the drop on a non-Lost pod -reminder that Lost will intercept attempted Overwatch ambushes, and that pods that have already activated in response to each other can't be ambushed at all.

Second, the whole thing with a timer and ultra-aggressive Lost waves is just not a thing here. It's standard Lost mechanics: combat generates waves intermittently, killing all the Brutes will eventually stop the waves, etc.

Third, the Evac point has a more typical placement at the far end of the map from you, rather than near your starting position. There's also no timer whatsoever, so aside your real-life time there's no reason to not be slow and patient about clearing the entire map.

Fourth, there's actually two soldiers to rescue, and neither is Unconscious: instead they're each placed somewhere on the map, standing around with a 'rescue me' blue circle; once you stop a soldier in that radius, that soldier will immediately come under your control. Prior to that point, enemies will actually blatantly ignore them. Otherwise, this works like the Unconscious soldier: they're pre-leveled but don't have skills pre-bought, they always have Conventional equipment, you need to Evac them to recruit them but can also just leave them to die (You monster), etc.

Fifth, the VIP is consistently placed in a high ground building area. In most cases this will be in the upper portion of a proper building, but it can also be a blob of shipping containers jury-rigged into a fortified hideyhole; the latter case is a lot less defensible, and a lot more likely to have the VIP suffer fall damage from combat in the area collapsing the ground out from underneath them, so be careful if you get that variant.

It's actually often possible to reach the VIP without breaking squad Concealment, but I don't recommend trying, as the game is buggy in a couple ways here. The first bit of bugginess is that the game has inconsistent behavior in regards to Concealment when reaching the VIP; I usually retain squad Concealment and have the VIP folded into the Concealment (Which is interesting, and actually works with the rescuable soldiers as well), but sometimes squad Concealment breaks in response. I have yet to identify a rhyme or reason to this issue.

The other bit of bugginess is that for some reason Concealment behaves weirdly with some of the Abandoned City plot type's upper floors -for whatever reason, the area where the VIP gets placed is particularly consistent on this issue. By 'behaves weirdly' I mean that I've repeatedly had soldiers spotted through solid floor, sometimes in response to opening a door (Which is normally a safe action that can't break Concealment), wasting the squad Concealment. As an additional bit of weird, the pod doing the spotting usually doesn't actually activate! It's just their detection radius slipping through a crack.

So I'd honestly recommend trying to get squad Concealment broken getting a jump on a pod and then going to retrieve the VIP.

The only reason I even feel the need to specify this is due to another oddity of this mission; that if the VIP does spawn in a proper building (As opposed to several shipping containers converted into a makeshift fort), the map almost always generates such that you can climb up and go directly to the VIP without meeting any enemy pods. As opposed to the usual thing of the game endeavoring to force you to encounter most of the map's pods before you're in sight of the map's primary objective. So that's weird.

This mission also has a bit more map variety than Rescue Stranded Resistance Agents. It's still on the limited side, but honestly I imagine most players don't do enough runs for it to really intrude on the experience. It also helps that the variety is more substantive -I've referred to a shipping container fort, and that's tied to a seaside map variant that's very obviously very different from the other variants in several major ways. Rescue Stranded Resistance Agents feels even more repetitive on maps than it technically is because the differences between its maps largely don't change the experience...

Anyway, overall Gather Survivors From Abandoned City is... one of War of the Chosen's least smooth bits. It is, once you know what you're doing in detail, honestly easier than all of the base-game VIP missions; zero time pressure, the Lost can often be ignored to distract regular enemies you failed to kill, access to squad Concealment still usually lets you get the jump on your first pod...

... but for a player still learning the ins and outs of Lost mechanics, Gather Survivors From Abandoned City is liable to be where a lot of horror stories come from. Attempting to Overwatch ambush a pod with Lost in sight, unaware that Lost inexplicably get priority on pod activation, and so ending up with the entire pod ready to fight and few or no Lost to act as distractions. Scouting with a Reaper, not realizing a Lost wave generating can activate a pod only visible to a Concealed unit. Activating an Overwatch ambush on a pod with no Lost in sight, only for a member you can't see running off into the shadows because, unable to see your soldiers, they charge the enemy they can see: some Lost in the shadows you had no idea existed. Chucking a grenade at regular enemies, confident the Lost wave will spawn too far away to present an issue just yet, only for them to come pouring out of a shipping container and now 16 Lost are in a position to attack your squad. Letting a Viper be the last regular enemy alive, because Bind and Poison Spit aren't too bad, only for it to Tongue Pull someone and then some Lost attack the soldier instead of the Viper, killing your poor soldier.

There's just so many ways the game mechanics are a little weird when it comes to Lost and regular enemies being present, and the game's design is such that not knowing these can get soldiers killed with no warning. It makes for a fairly steep, very unpleasant learning curve.

But once you know how to avoid all these nasty surprises... it really is slanted much more in your favor than the base-game VIP missions.

One piece of advice: maybe leave the Reaper behind. They can absolutely be useful in this mission, but what's good play with them in other missions tends to cause you trouble in this mission, and it's easier to just do without and play cautiously than it is to juggle learning how to use a Reaper safely on top of everything else. And even once you know what you're doing to avoid shooting yourself in the foot, a Reaper just isn't a high-value choice. (And can get really tedious with Headshot chains triggering Shadow rolls over and over...)

Note that, if you have Lost And Abandoned disabled, either this or the prior mission type will be forced to be your first VIP mission, as an introduction to Sitreps/the Lost. 


Recover Resistance Operative

The third VIP mission added by War of the Chosen, and very different from the other two.

Where the other two new VIP missions take place in Abandoned Cities and force Lost presence, Recover Resistance Operatives uses the Sewer or Subway plot types -that's right, it's always underground!

It still has a non-standard approach to enemies mind, but that requires actually getting into the mission framework to properly contextualize.

Unsurprisingly, it's another mission to rescue a VIP, who will be an Engineer or Scientist added to your cause if successfully rescued. In this case, you have a relatively conventional first part to the mission, with your squad starting Concealed and you needing to find the VIP... but there's no time pressure at this stage, so that's unusual. Ideally you kill every enemy on the map before approaching the VIP -this will usually happen naturally, but the Chosen make it particularly important to state, because the Hunter and Warlock often linger on top of the VIP.

The VIP themself is always hiding inside a little enclosed space I'm just going to call a building even though we're underground and some of the possibilities aren't terribly building-like. The building itself always has a rooftop area you can climb to, with Cover at the edges and a commanding view of the area -which is actually important. Once you have somebody get within the VIP's large rescue circle -specifically on their Z-level, note- the VIP enters your control as usual and it's time for phase 2 of the mission!

Phase 2 is that a short timer starts (4 turns), and two reinforcement flares immediately spawn. ('Immediately' meaning 'literally in your turn', unlike most War of the Chosen reinforcement flares) Generally, they spawn on opposite sides of the VIP's building, and they're consistently placed where Overwatch fire from atop the building can potentially catch them. Your objective at this step is to keep everyone alive until the timer runs down, at which point an Evac point will spawn at a random point nearby and it's time to evacuate everyone.

Those first two reinforcement flares are just the start, though, as enemy reinforcements continue to arrive every turn. Only one flare worth per turn past that initial wave, and all the reinforcements tend to be only two enemies at once, and normally they're behind the quality curve (eg regular ADVENT Troopers when the game has otherwise moved on to Advanced Troopers), but still every turn. The reinforcements actually stop for one turn the turn after your Evac zone spawns -I've never seriously tested what happens if you keep stalling beyond that, so I don't know if reinforcements are literally infinite or what, but it's clear the goal is to get out before you're overrun. Legendary and Beta Strike runs in particular find it easy to 'fall behind' the tide of reinforcements, where trying to kill everything isn't going to work, but even in non-Beta-Strike-Commander difficulty runs it's not worth sticking it out.

For one thing, these reinforcements will never drop loot. For another, you don't loot bodies in VIP missions, so it's not like you can stockpile corpses this way. For a third, this is War of the Chosen; your troops are more likely to get Tired if you let them stick around for reinforcements.

Notably, this mission consistently shows off War of the Chosen's new underground reinforcement pool. The one that includes aliens up through Andromedons, instead of just ADVENT troops. If you get this mission early in a run, the reinforcements will be primarily ADVENT Troopers with some Sectoids mixed in, but late in a run you can be having Andromedons drop in multiple turns in a row. Even for a standard Commander difficulty run, that's difficult to sustain killing everything every turn, and Andromedons are dangerous to leave alive at all. So late in a run, that's another reason to try to escape as soon as you can.

Conversely, this mission actually has a sub-standard enemy count for initial deployment; early in a Commander run, where you're expecting 3 pods of 3 enemies apiece, this mission will normally have only 2 pods of 3 enemies. Of course, it has a lot more enemies in total than most missions thanks to the many reinforcements... correlated to this is that the Shadow Chamber is pretty useless here, as its predictions never take into account reinforcements. You should thus bring a less targeted team than you otherwise might; just because no robots are showing on the Shadow Chamber doesn't actually mean that Bluescreen Rounds should be left behind.

This is a really cool, distinct mission, finally providing a proper defense mission. The X-COM Base Assault in Enemy Within and both Avenger Defenses in XCOM 2/War of the Chosen are conceptually you on the defense, but none of them are really played as defensive missions -the base XCOM 2 'defense' is about running out, smashing a key threat, and then running away, while the War of the Chosen 'defense' is about running out and quickly killing everything. This is a mission where you hold a position for a while, where ranging out aggressively is actually often a mistake -a Ranger who Slashes a target will often be out of position for the next batch of reinforcements, as they tend to alternate sides. That kind of thing.

Among other points, this mission gives Overwatch a more legitimate design niche; instead of it being used by players to get the jump on pods in a way the design isn't actually built around (The ability to fairly reliably cause inactive pods to walk into Overwatch walls for free damage is clearly an accidental byproduct of introducing Concealment, not something the game is balanced around) and secondarily used to make a joke of the occasional reinforcement, this mission is designed around the idea that the player sets up on high ground and catches reinforcements with Overwatch as they come in.

It's too bad it's the only mission in the game to do this and is a mission you'll see maybe twice in a run because VIP missions are only one per month and have eight variants for the game to cycle through; if you take seventeen months to complete the game you're just blatantly stalling. This constrains the value of 'Overwatch has an actual place' and also means this really cool mission type just plain doesn't get much opportunity to shine.

As it's not a Lost-using mission, it's also not valid to be your first VIP mission, so the absolute earliest you'll see it is month 2. If you're prone to, say, starting new runs to try out mods or the like without really sticking out individual runs past the very early game, this makes it even less likely to be seen.

In any event, its nature as a defensive mission with a focus on Overwatch has some obvious and not-so-obvious class implications.

First of all, Templar are just plain dubious to bring. Autopistols suffer severe accuracy penalties at the ranges reinforcements normally show up at, and their melee focus is a problem; they can at least Momentum back toward the building to minimize the odds of failing to contribute, but it's easy to end up with a Templar just not contributing on any given turn. A Bladestorm Templar is more appealing since they can stand in a flare for free damage, especially if they also have Fortress so Purifiers exploding on them isn't a concern, but this is one of the missions you're probably best off just benching your Templar.

At the opposite end, Specialists are a very solid choice; at base they like being on high ground, taking free shots, and as they level up they pick up Cool Under Pressure, Threat Assessment, and Guardian, making their Overwatch more accurate, able to crit, able to chain-fire, and letting them pass out even more Overwatch. Ever Vigilant can also be nice, but is usually not necessary; the roof area is generally designed so you can spend one action point to jump from 'ready to fire on Flare Zone A' to 'ready to fire on Flare Zone B', rendering it unnecessary -but some variants have it possible to readily matter, and the reinforcement flares are genuinely randomized in their placement. So it can help.

Grenadiers are a middling choice; they too appreciate high ground, Holo Targeting makes it easier to kill enemies during Overwatch, Shredder can really help if you're late enough Armor is cropping up... with Salvo, they're also great at blasting away enemy Cover to then follow up and finish off survivors, which is good as this mission's maps default heavily to the reinforcements getting to run to High Cover that is pretty easy to destroy.

Sharpshooters are, disappointingly, pretty underwhelming. The flares bouncing back and forth forces them to move a lot to contribute, limiting Sniper Rifle usage, while their Pistols suffer from trying to hit targets at a distance. The high ground is particularly beneficial to them, but that's about it... until you have the Hunter's gear, at which point they bounce up to being one of the best choices for this mission, basically purely on the basis of the Darklance solving their movement problems and synergizing so dramatically with Death From Above. (Not to mention solving their ammo problems)

Skirmishers are uneven. Justice from high ground is pretty great, assuming valid targets are dropping in, but its cooldown is too long. Waylay lets them output more Overwatch fire, but they're inaccurate at range, and the need to bounce back and forth means you won't necessarily benefit from Waylay past that first wave. They can Reckoning or Wrath down and then Grapple back up, but cooldowns mean you'll only get to do this once. They're not necessarily awful, but they'll usually be one of your worse choices, especially early on -and especially if you don't have both a Superior Autoloader and a Superior Expanded Magazine on them to avoid them running through their ammo so quickly they stop contributing as consistently.

Reapers are, unsurprisingly, outright terrible. If you deliberately break their Shadow before kicking off the defense and have them stand atop the building with everyone else, they really resent the inability to crit on Overwatch, they slightly prefer close-range shooting to high ground shooting, the only Overwatch skill they have is Kill Zone and it's both overpriced and not even all that great in this mission (You're not catching both pods in the first wave, for one), and none of their skills functions as a trap or greatly appreciates height. Banish is also unlikely to be attractive unless you get this mission late enough Andromedons are dropping in; the reinforcements can't include Sectopods or Gatekeepers, after all.

If instead you keep them in Shadow and range out to finish off weakened targets, you're running into the melee issue of tending to be out of position for at least some of the reinforcements. You also won't get free Overwatch shots from the Reaper, cutting into your ability to kill reinforcements as they arrive, and the primary draw of Concealment -avoiding risking pods before you're ready for them- is completely irrelevant to the defense phase.

Either way, a Reaper is one of the worst choices for the defense portion, and not even terribly beneficial for the first portion -with only two pods on the map and infinite time to work with, you can use squad Concealment to engage only one and then advance cautiously to basically-safely activate the other, no need for Shadow.

(You might notice that's 3 for 3 where a Reaper is actually a bad choice to bring into a War of the Chosen-added mission. 4 for 4 if we count Haven Assaults. Yeah, uh, whoops! Reapers help solve the problems with old missions, but then War of the Chosen's new missions tend to endeavor to avoid those problems and in the process make Reapers much less valuable, the game working at cross-purposes with itself some)

Rangers are, at baseline, pretty bad choices... but first of all, you can give them a Rifle so they aren't eating accuracy penalties at range, letting them sit atop with everyone else well enough. Second, Implacable and Run And Gun both dramatically improve their ability to contribute consistently; Implacable lets them walk back toward the building after a kill, while Run And Gun lets them contribute at Dash distance one time during the defense. Third, the Arashi makes a Ranger much better at contributing from the roof without having to switch to a Rifle's inferior damage. Fourth, a Grapple-capable Armor can let them zip back up to the roof in a pinch -this is true of everyone, but a Ranger gets to combine it with Implacable and Run And Gun, where one turn they stay in relevant reach via Implacable, then the next turn they Grapple to get back in position, then the turn after that they Run And Gun to reach a target you need dead. Put altogether, such a Ranger is very unlikely to actually have a dead turn in the defense.

SPARKs are pretty great at the defense phase, especially once you're high enough level for Hunter Protocol. They can be positioned wherever you want since they have no use for Cover, their ability to jump straight up wherever gives them more freedom to hop down if you need them to (eg Striking a nearby enemy, or flanking someone in nearby High Cover or someone the rooftop doesn't provide line of fire to at all), they're liable to be higher level than your other soldiers while already having better Aim than usual and so are actually more reliable Overwatchers than most (Cool Under Pressure Specialists still win, of course), and Overdrive plus their other tools gives them tremendous flexibility in a pinch. (eg Overdrive, use a Heavy Weapon to blast an enemy and their High Cover, then shoot twice on the exposed target... or Overdrive, Strike to next to a tough target that got close, shoot twice... the possibilities are manifold) And Hunter Protocol of course ensures they get even more free shots, not even requiring them to be in Overwatch -they can be out of ammo, walk to position, reload, and still end up making shots.

Psi Operatives are better than Reapers here, but only a little. Their gun hits harder (Especially since it's probably a better tier), and they have tools that are nice for dealing with survivors... but their Aim is bad, Rifles are still the worst standard primary weapon for damage, and literally none of their skills is relevant to Overwatch. Being able to Dominate someone for an extra Overwatcher is honestly the primary reason I'm willing to say they are better at the defense portion than a Reaper.

On a different note, I've actually never seen an Alien Ruler in this mission. I honestly don't know if they're actually forbidden from showing (I'd buy it, but I don't have firm evidence) or if things have just never quite lined up for it to happen to me -it's not a mission type you get many shots at, after all.

The Chosen absolutely can show up, and indeed can be pretty frustrating since you'll want to be careful to avoid getting too close to the VIP while fighting them. Admittedly, I haven't tested what happens if you start the defense phase with a Chosen active, but I have doubts the behavior is desirable, whether the Chosen stops the clock on your Evac showing up while having no effect on reinforcements, or doesn't interact with either portion... I suppose it's possible they just suppress both reinforcements and timer until dead, which wouldn't be so bad, but I'd be surprised.

Anyway, the dialogue for this mission is another blatant example of War of the Chosen being rushed, as Bradford will talk about the 'Resistance faction' sending help, but no such thing happens. Indeed, I'm fairly sure all three of the new VIP missions were originally imagined as the Resistance faction who makes the request providing material aid, like Reaper versions of Militia or a Volunteer Army sort of effect but with generic versions of Resistance soldiers (eg a fixed Templar who doesn't have levels and doesn't join you afterward) helping for the mission or something else where they have troops in the area that help fight; the Horde mission has Bradford talking about a Resistance faction having sent an expedition into an area teeming with Lost, for example, suggesting the escort was supposed to be a Reaper/Skirmisher/Templar rather than one of your standard classes.

Whatever the case, I actually like this mission a lot and hope XCOM 3 comes back to the general idea again. It would be great if Overwatch more generally got reworked into being 'the shoot action you use in defensive missions', instead of its current and historical state of being primarily a way to get action economy advantage through exploitation of pod activation mechanics, among other points potentially giving Overwatch specialization an actual design niche.

But even aside those qualities, it's a fun change of pace that gets you thinking of your existing tools very differently. And it's surprisingly polished -the worst I can say about it is that its map variety isn't the greatest, which is a recurring problem with War of the Chosen-added missions, not something about this mission in particular, and pretty obviously caused by the rushing.

... okay, and that it's one of the missions that's pretty miserable in Beta Strike, especially if you're fool enough to do a Legendary Beta Strike run. But that's really more on Beta Strike than on Rescue Resistance Operative; there's quite a few mission types that become horrible with Beta Strike on.

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The War of the Chosen VIP missions are something I have mixed feelings about.

On the one hand, I appreciate the subtle rolling-back of X-COM's ability to strike deep into enemy territory. One of the ways the base game's tone rubs me wrong is that you're supposed to be a guerrilla force that can't afford to get into open combat with the omnipresent oppressive police state, and yet every single month like clockwork you strike into a City Center. As your actual monthly-per-se mission cycle is one VIP mission and one Guerrilla Op, this means your standard mission rotation involves just as much time thrusting into the heart of ADVENT territory as it does skulking at the periphery. Supply Raids and Retaliations complicate things, but Retaliation missions are you fending off an open assault by ADVENT forces (I actually prefer Long War 2's approach on this topic, where your goal is to evacuate the civilians and have your squad escape), while Supply Raids are only every other month. So overall, you spend a lot of time brazenly fighting ADVENT where they're supposed to be strongest, and not that much time skulking in the shadows, striking where they're weak. War of the Chosen's new VIP missions ablate this some by replacing a portion of your time hitting City Centers with entirely different missions -Rescue Stranded Resistance Agents in particular doesn't even involve fighting ADVENT.

I similarly do significantly appreciate not being handed a mission by the Spokesman once a month, every month. The artificiality of the schedule is difficult to overlook, and the Spokesman acting as the face of the Resistance who assigns you missions constantly is fairly dissonant.

On the other hand, from a more raw gameplay perspective I think stuffing them into the VIP mission pool ends up pretty unfortunate. 8 different missions in a rigid once-per-month pool is a bit bloated; 5 was already enough variety you saw little repetition in a run, where some other mission types -like Retaliation- would've benefited more overall from an expanded pool.

So... mixed feelings.

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Next time, we move on to Guerrilla Ops.

See you then.

Comments

  1. Recover Resistance Operative can definitely spawn an alien ruler in it. In my current WotC run - non-integrated DLCs with the DLC missions enabled - the Berserker Queen first appeared in such a mission. She was in the same room as the VIP.

    It seems to me that the base-game VIP missions is actually where most of the XCOM 2 timer hate comes from. Especially the VIP-in-vehicle variants, especially if you have Alien Hunters. On my first playthrough I got a Neutralize Target mission. The map was really small the the evac zone was maybe 2.5 or 3 turns of dashing away from the starting point; the Skyranger landed the squad next to a large building and the VIP was on the other side of the building. So I was like oh nice maybe I can finish this mission quick. Cue the Berserker Queen being right next to the VIP. I didn't know it at that point that it was an Alien Ruler but I can see the untriggered enemy with multiple health bars from the get-go. Then as I was about to enter the building, a pod that was hidden around the corner of the roof patrolled into my squad, I lost concealment and the Berserker Queen ended up triggering at the same time. "Mfw..." as kids these days say! Had two downed soldiers (unconscious), so all my still-standing human soliders ended up having to carry someone to the evac (the aforementioned plus the dark VIP) and the SPARK cleaned up the reinforcements. Ended up managing to get out of there alive, was a total miracle that may have involved a moderate amount of save scumming.

    One nice thing about the WotC variants is that the two that could spawn first also provides you with additional ranked soldiers if you care enough to rescue them; crucial in WotC early game with the tiredness mechanic and not being able to recruit from the generic Resistance HQ anymore.

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  2. I've been suspecting Rulers can simply because the game tends to conflate Rulers and Chosen when it comes to mission rule stuff... probably actually one of the better mission types for them to show up in overall, simply due to the lack of hard time pressure.

    I'd totally buy that base-game VIP missions drive most of the timer-hate. The timer is very hostile (Hurry up or you squad wipe!), and I certainly found the psychological pressure of that fairly unpleasant initially, where with Guerrilla Ops it was frustrating to be, say, two turns away from timing out without having spotted the objective, but no more than that. And I know people tend to take emotional experiences and output mechanical statements -that a mission putting heavy pressure on the player's psyche is much more likely to be reviled as a Terrible Mission than one that's filled with unfair, unfun stuff like carefully-designed traps to punish reasonable-as-far-as-you-can-tell play. Never mind that a given player failed the latter ten times due to arcane nonsense and got through the former in one try.

    (To be fair, I think they legitimately needed work as well -the fixed Evac point has zero narrative justification and is tied directly into a lot of the most unpleasant ways the missions can play out, and of course this post has covered at great length the issues with 'VIP standing beside bomb we call a car')

    Yeah, I'm mostly-certain WotC added free soldier opportunities in part as a safety net to offset Fatigue. I rarely need it nowadays, but for my first few runs it was very appreciated.

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