XCOM 2 Mission Analysis: Retaliation Missions

Retaliations are introduced to the player relatively late by the game itself, but I'm starting with them for three reasons;

Firstly, Retaliation missions are essentially Terror missions from EU/EW. The qualifiers to this statement are things like 'off-screen deaths have different mechanics' and little more. Other mission types can have comparisons drawn to EU/EW, but no other mission type so strongly lines up with its closest equivalent in EU/EW -not even getting into how several mission types don't have equivalents at all.

Second, Retaliation missions are the mission category with the least janky learning curve. Retaliation missions behave fairly consistently throughout a run, where what you experience in your first Retaliation mission is basically accurate to what you'll experience with later Retaliations. Other mission types have one or more tripping points in their learning curve, because their behavior will be different the first time you do them in a given campaign, or the mission is modified by initial settings, or otherwise can have the early portion of a run mis-teach you the basic framework of the mission.

Third, and related to the prior two, Retaliation missions are actually one of the simplest mission types in the game. In the base game, they have exactly one variant, with War of the Chosen only expanding it to two. More broadly, their major details aren't terribly complicated to talk about, in part due to a lack of need to append local qualifiers to statements.

Anyway, on the Geoscape layer Retaliation missions are actually mildly unusual; most missions in XCOM 2 follow one of the following two patterns...

1: The mission generates periodically on a predictable schedule (Not fully predictable: there's some random variance), will quickly time out if ignored, and inflicts a direct punishment for letting it time out.

2: The mission cannot be accessed immediately, requiring at least one initial step be performed before you're allowed to launch the mission. On the other hand, the mission never times out and can be launched more or less anytime after you've unlocked it.

Retaliation missions are almost category 1; they generate at a pace outside your control, they time out quickly once generated, and they punish you for ignoring them. Specifically, you'll lose contact with the region they generated in if you ignore them.

However, Retaliation missions have an unstable schedule: the first one predictably occurs a few days before the end of your first month, but after that? Well, the next one will normally occur roughly a month later, but Resistance Informant can move it up by 2 weeks, and over the course of your run Retaliation missions will become increasingly widely-spaced by default -late in a run, you can see the game predicting roughly 8 weeks until the next Retaliation mission!

This semi-regular, semi-predictable schedule is unique to Retaliation missions, particularly from the perspective of the base game; some War of the Chosen additions could be argued as being pretty similar in this regard (Even if I would disagree), like the Chosen Avenger assaults. After all, they occur at a semi-predictable rate due to Knowledge accumulating at a semi-predictable rate, but are not fully fixed in schedule. In the base game, though, there's nothing else that could be argued as similar. (Well, sort-of-kind-of the Avenger Defense mission, by a specific interpretation of my words, but no, it's really not)

Anyway, note that losing contact with a region, while it refunds the Contact tied up in it, will cost you any Radio Relay you might've built in that region. This does also reduce the cost of your next Radio Relay appropriately, at least, but you're still behind on Supplies and on time if you need to re-contact the region and rebuild the Radio Relay. So you shouldn't be skipping Retaliation missions if you can avoid it.

A bit of jank here is that your initial region is impossible to lose contact with, which means you can actually skip your first Retaliation mission without this directly punishing you. You shouldn't, given Retaliation missions are one of two standard mission sets in which you get to loot bodies, but it's still an unfortunate bit of weirdness.

On that note, tactical stuff!

First of all, as I just said, you loot bodies in Retaliation missions. Among other points, be careful about Dominating enemies you want the bodies of, and similarly maybe avoid risking knocking such enemies Unconscious. ie don't use Rage Strike on them if you have the R.A.G.E. Suit, but also don't have Dominated Stun Lancers, Berserkers, or Mutons melee anything you want the body of, as any of these can result in instant Unconsciousness and you don't loot Unconscious bodies.

Second, it should be explicitly noted Sitreps can't occur on Retaliation missions. If you have Lost World trigger, you'll have The Lost announced as a Sitrep, but it's not a 'real' Sitrep. It's a little disappointing Retaliation missions don't do Sitreps, but on the other hand some Sitreps would be miserable or... pretty weird, in the context of a Retaliation mission, so in practice this is probably for the best.

Third, Retaliation missions are the primary context you'll encounter Faceless, Berserkers, and Chryssalids. Faceless in particular are very nearly exclusive to Retaliation missions, as without the Alien Infiltrator Dark Event, a Savage Sitrep, or a Beastmaster Chosen, the final mission is the only other mission they can spawn in. And only the Alien Infiltrator Dark Event will have them start disguised as a civilian, outside Retaliation missions. (Not to mention it's the only one of these three to exist in the base game)

Fourth, Civilians: they have 1 HP, 12 Mobility, 50 Will, and no other relevant stats. (Not that their Will actually matters; the only Will tests enemies will aim at them are damaging effects, and so they'll instantly die) Particularly odd is that they're considered to be perpetually Panicked; this doesn't actually matter, but leads to the confusing point that a Solace Psi Operative passing nearby them will claim to have cleared Panic. This will sometimes change their animation so they're not visibly cowering, but outside that I'm not aware of this Panic state doing anything. Also, there's a hidden +20 Aim modifier for attacks against Civilians, so enemies will only very rarely actually miss Civilians they target.

Fifth, as I noted last post, Retaliation missions only use the Shanty plot type, though I've largely been over the tactical implications of that just last post so I won't go into it here. More interesting is that even though Shanty uses the biome system, you can't see Xenoform Retaliation maps; I'm curious if that's a deliberate exclusion or just a byproduct of War of the Chosen's rushed state. If Xenoform is meant to be environments hostile to human life, it would make sense for Resistance camps to not be living in the stuff, but on the other hand one can argue it would also make sense for Resistance camps living in marginalized conditions to include living in basically-unlivable environments as part of trying to hide from ADVENT. And given how blatant it is that War of the Chosen got rushed... yeah, not sure.

Sixth, Retaliation missions are one of a handful of mission types where the player's squad does not start with squad Concealment. I'll get into this a bit more with the individual mission types, though, as they have rather different implications overall.

Seventh, it should be explicitly noted that, strangely, Retaliation missions will never have enemy reinforcements. (Unless one counts Chosen summoning, I guess) This is actually pretty unusual for XCOM 2; most missions have reinforcements guaranteed or at least possible. Among other points, any map with security towers can have reinforcements potentially triggered by failing a Hack on a security tower, and Shanty can't have security towers, so that avenue for reinforcements doesn't exist. I'm not sure how I feel about this lack of reinforcements on a gameplay level, but narratively it feels very weird that this mission type is a rare exception to reinforcement usage; ADVENT really just flew in a dozen troops and then abandoned them to the murder spree? Bizarre.

To be fair, the Retaliation mission type is a bit narratively strained in the first place. If the goal is to simply wipe out dissidents, you'd think a UFO would just come in, hover over the camp, and strafe the area with plasma fire until everybody seemed to be dead, instead of troops on the ground sweeping the area that you can actually shoot to death with your own soldiers. This would've worked a lot better if ADVENT was trying to capture civilians to fuel the Avatar Project. Of course, that would've required a lot of additional work to get a sensible capture behavior system, code up logic, construct animations, etc... so it's sort of not surprising this jank exists given Retaliation is primarily a refinement of Terror missions.

But on to the individual mission variants, starting from the one that's all that exists in the base game;

Stop The ADVENT Retaliation

Basically a refinement of the prior game's Terror missions, including there being a cluster of enemy types readily encountered in Retaliation missions while being much more unusual outside them. Most of the differences in details are basically straightforward improvements of the 'this is how Terror missions would've operated in the first place in an ideal world'.

So first of all, the objective is to rescue at least 6 Civilians, with a total of 16 Civilians on the map to potentially rescue, placed fairly randomly with a tendency to not be placed on high ground. (Though high ground Civilians are more common than in the prior game) Like in the prior game, you save Civilians by having a soldier stand near them, and alternatively the mission ends if no enemies are alive, and any surviving Civilians are considered rescued in that case. Also like the prior game, rescued Civilians start to run off to safety and just vanish partway through their movement -this vanishing actually bothers me less than in the prior game, since XCOM 2 actually defaults to the Skyranger simply not existing on the map at all. (Lost Towers is the only time it's visibly landed on the map) Where would they even go?

Unlike the prior game, Civilians automatically use Cover they're standing adjacent to, erratically giving them a non-trivial chance to avoid being hit. Indeed, if enemies move near them (Or if a Civilian is killed nearby them), they will automatically and for free flee to a new position, attempting to end next to Cover. (Though they don't actually try to make sure the Cover is useful, unfortunately)

This is all particularly important because of the overhaul to 'off-screen' kills; instead of the game rolling dice to arbitrarily kill people (And then, if inactive Chryssalids are present, roll more dice on kills to see if the Civilian becomes a Zombie), the game will select one inactive pod that can currently attack a Civilian under normal attack rules (Exception: melee pod leaders don't require line of sight to their victim), have their pod leader attack once, and reveal this happening in the fog of war.

This is a huge improvement; no longer are you arbitrarily incentivized to keep line of sight on Civilians as a nonsensical form of protection (Because EU/EW only selected Civilians you couldn't see in an attempt to maintain the illusion that actual enemies were performing the kills, rather than the reality that they're spontaneously keeling over for no reason), no longer does the game kill Civilians even when all inactive pods are nowhere near all out-of-sight Civilians... it also actually makes sense that you'd have some idea where weapons fire and death screams and whatnot were coming from, and depending on how distinctive the attacker's audio was it also makes sense to potentially be able to know what made the attack, so gaining sight on the attacker, though bizarre in a literal sense, is much saner functionality in outcome on that informational level.

It also has the benefit of being clearer communication on the actual rules for out-of-sight Civilian deaths, allowing a player experiencing the game blind to rapidly work out that only one inactive pod a turn can kill Civilians. That's a big improvement over EU/EW having really opaque mechanics for Terror missions, among other points letting XCOM 2 have clearer, tighter tuning on the design; the game can assume a player has at least a rough grasp of the rules because the rules are being pretty openly displayed to them. EU/EW hiding the rules meant it basically had to account for a lower bound of plausible competency, because players wouldn't necessarily know they were playing sub-optimally and wouldn't necessarily ever figure it out due to the opacity. (As opposed to playing sub-optimally by virtue of being unwilling to work on improving or something else that shouldn't be given accommodation; failure is what should happen if a player actively refuses to learn the game)

It's still imperfect; among other points, Sectopods break the 'one Civilian kill per turn' rule, and it's also an example of managing pod activation being much more important than I think the devs want (Certainly, more than I want), since active pod members can target Civilians without regard for the 1/turn rule inactive pods are held to... but seriously, it's a massive improvement, one of the things I was most immediately, unambiguously positive on when I was first playing the game.

Anyway, a particularly obvious change is of course the introduction of Faceless, where some portion of the Civilians you need to rescue are Faceless in disguise. I've been over this before in detail, but some points worth covering here; first of all, Faceless are not included in the surviving total Civilians at any point. If you're at 5 Civilians rescued and only 1 alive listed, that means there's an actual Civilian to rescue on the map, no matter how many Faceless are still in hiding, and you can thus actually succeed at the mission.

Second, Faceless counts in Retaliation missions are surprisingly un-random. Below Legendary, there will be one Faceless on the map until you're late enough in the game, at which point there will be two Faceless, no random variation, while Legendary starts at two Faceless and eventually adds a third. (I assume a specific Force Level threshold controls this, though I've never bothered to determine which one it is) As far as I'm aware this count never increases a second time, either. In the base game, this makes Faceless have particularly predictable corpse counts, since Retaliation missions have a not-quite rigid schedule, Faceless don't normally spawn in other missions (Except the final mission, but that's irrelevant to how many bodies you loot), and Retaliation missions always have you loot the bodies. War of the Chosen adding Savage and Beastmaster makes them a little more variable, but not much.

Third, it should be emphasized again that Faceless have a crucial nerf in War of the Chosen: in the base game, a Faceless that manually breaks its disguise can immediately act, whereas in War of the Chosen it will have to wait another turn, making it best to stop near Civilians but not try to rescue them if you're tied up in a fight already or your squad can't be counted on to immediately kill a Faceless. (Such as because the squad used up most of their turns winning a fight)

Fourth, it should be emphasized that in Stop The ADVENT Retaliation Faceless placement is basically just as random as Civilian placement. The game won't usually place two (Or three) Faceless close together, but that's not an actual rule the game holds itself to. (Or possibly it's supposed to be, but if so it doesn't actually work) So don't treat finding one Faceless in a group of Civilians as some kind of confirmation that the rest of the Civilians in the group are safe to approach; that's not actually guaranteed.

Also, something specific to Stop The ADVENT Retaliation that's somewhat Faceless-related is that the ability to rescue Civilians is actually a hidden ability found only on X-COM soldiers and SPARKs. That is, if you take control of enemies (Via Domination or Haywire Protocol), they can't rescue Civilians for your squad, nor can most units generated by your units (eg a Dominated Sectoid makes a Psi Zombie: the Psi Zombie also can't rescue Civilians), and if you mess with mods you'll find quite often that modded units also can't rescue Civilians! (Because the modder didn't remember to tell the game that eg SHIVs count) Conversely, disguised Faceless will still reveal themselves if such a unit passes nearby; you can still check for Faceless with these units.

Anyway, I noted earlier that Retaliation missions don't do squad Concealment, but the implications are different between the two variants. In the case of Stop The ADVENT Retaliation, it's one of the most important mission types in the game to try to bring your own Concealment into: you can't just advance cautiously, because Civilians are getting killed every turn most of the time and there's no guarantee the enemy will be close enough for a cautious advance to reach them in time. You can't just pick a direction and walk, because Stop The ADVENT Retaliation maps are generally very square, starting you in a corner, instead of the 'corridor' design a number of other missions use; it's easy to move someone to Cover and activate a pod who is now flanking that soldier, or even flanking multiple members of your squad if you moved several people before stumbling into the pod. A Concealed scout can let you quickly search for pods with minimal danger to the squad, and in fact can make it easy to outright ambush them with Overwatching soldiers standing just out of their sight; the sooner you start activating and killing pods, the better.

On a different note, a curious quirk of Stop The ADVENT Retaliation is that Alien Rulers are actually forbidden from attacking Civilians while inactive. (And have no interest in deliberately targeting them once active, for that matter) This is overall pretty useful, as it slows the rate at which Civilians get killed (Because if the Viper King's pod ends up the only one able to attack a Civilian in a given turn, no attack will happen, where it probably would've still happened if a regular pod had been generated and patrolled the same), and if you know about this quirk it can actually give you advance warning that an Alien Ruler is present. (eg if you deal with a couple pods, and then three turns pass with no further Civilian attacks... probably an Alien Ruler is the only pod remaining)

On the other hand, it does otherwise actively hide the Alien Ruler's presence, especially if you're not aware of the quirk to thus become suspicious when Civilians fail to die multiple turns in a row. So that can be pretty nasty for a learning player; indeed, Stop The ADVENT Retaliation is, in my opinion, the second-worst mission type to have an Alien Ruler spawn into, because you don't have squad Concealment, are pressured to hurry anyway, and the Alien Ruler can spawn basically anywhere on the map due to Stop The ADVENT Retaliation being weird about how it places the 'objective zone'. It makes it very easy to start the fight with an Alien Ruler off on the wrong foot, which can snowball into catastrophe, especially in the base game where Alien Rulers Ruler React basically anytime anyone does anything.

(The worst mission type is actually five mission types, but we'll get into that next post)

Overall, Stop The ADVENT Retaliation is one of my least favorite mission types. It's a fairly straightforward port of Terror missions, which I was already not very fond of, it adds narrative jank with unpleasant connotations (I really do hate how rescuing Civilians increases your Supply intake permanently; couldn't we have recruited these people into the Avenger instead?), and while the loss of Concealment makes thematic or narrative sense (ADVENT is already in a warzone, ready to shoot anything that moves and isn't clearly a friendly) it really hurts the gameplay in conjunction with how Stop The ADVENT Retaliation maps have a more chaotic, open design. It's absolutely possible to do stuff like pull two or sometimes even three pods on the first turn through no real fault of your own, in a way that's simply not possible on almost any other mission type, as almost all other mission types have better control over spacing and squad Concealment gives the player some ability to mitigate worst-case scenarios anyway. (eg you spot two pods while still Concealed, and then move the squad so only one pod is visible before engaging)

I much prefer...

Haven Assault

Haven Assaults at first glance appear to be a pretty mild variation on Stop The ADVENT Retaliation: you still need to rescue 6 Civilians for the mission to qualify as successful, there's still Faceless hidden among the Civilians, inactive pods get to attack while inactive, you don't start with squad Concealment, they're restricted to Shanty and can't have their biome be Xenoform...

... surprisingly, though, once you dig into the details they're radically different in execution.

So first, the overall framework is substantially different. In Stop The ADVENT Retaliation, Civilians are randomly peppered about, enemy pods are randomly peppered about, and enemies wander around pretty randomly. (That is, they 'hunt' for Civilians through fairly blind patrol routines; they don't actually know where Civilians are, not even if they've actually seen said Civilians) While the map will often generate to look like a reasonably coherent camp, placement of Civilians and enemy pods doesn't involve sensible rules you can intuit; Civilians don't deliberately hide in buildings or anything of the sort.

Haven Assaults instead organize the map into two distinct phases, each tied to a separate location, one not much more than a Dash from your starting position, while the other is several turns of Dashing away and specifically beyond that closer one. The closer of these is phase 1: a cluster of 4 Civilians, guarded by a pair of Militia, with two enemy pods descending upon them, while the further is phase 2, a cluster of 9 Civilians guarded by 4 Militia, with four enemy pods descending upon them either a couple turns after you cleared phase 1 or after too many turns have passed in general.

Oh yeah, the Militia; these are friendly soldiers with their own phase after the enemy phase, who contribute some weak gunfire to the defense. Militia have 6 HP, 85 base Aim, 12 Mobility, 50 Will. They technically have 5 Hack and access to Suppression, but they'll never get an opportunity to Hack and they'll never use Suppression. Their damage is 2/4/6 based on how far into the campaign you are, with crits adding 1/2/3 damage. Their rifle, curiously, only has 3 ammo, unlike your own Rifles. It also doesn't have Aim climb, so their impressively high base Aim -better than most of your Colonels!- is deceptive, as they'll actually still miss point-blank shots 15% of the time.

Their AI is kind of frustratingly terrible, unfortunately; they have the usual AI obsession with spending an action point on movement, even if it's not productive, including they rarely reload in place when out of ammo and so often effectively skip a turn. They're also not very good at picking relevant Cover, and are prone to not flanking enemies, probably in part because they refuse to move too far from their assigned area. They also share the usual AI propensity for abandoning high ground quickly, exacerbating their issues with accuracy. They'll still often contribute a fair amount of work, mind, but they're pretty bad -and it's really obvious they're bad, because the game permanently reveals their combat zone once their phase activates and always shows them shooting even if they're in a non-revealed location, so you'll unavoidably see their dubious decisions. Oops!

The Militia having their own phase, by the way, is because they're technically their own faction, much like Lost are. Unlike Lost, they're willing to spontaneously exchange fire with enemies in the shadows -in fact, one of the main bugs of Haven Assaults is that phase 2 Militia often open fire on phase 2 pods before phase 2 has properly started!- and notably this interacts with enemy pod activation the same way Lost do: if you have a Concealed soldier in the area able to see the pod being shot, the pod will activate in response! Whereas if your soldiers can't personally see the pod being shot, the pod won't activate in response to being shot. So, uh, don't run a Reaper ahead to watch Militia valiantly defending their charges; you will actually make things worse with your voyeuristic stalking.

Unlike Lost, Militia are friendlies, and don't have pod activation mechanics of their own. (Well, the phase 2 Militia sort of do, but my point is they are perfectly happy to move about and fire even if your squad hasn't spotted them yet) Indeed, not only are they friendly, they're actually counted by the game as Civilians for rescue purposes, bringing you to a total of 19 rescuable folks instead of 16.

Speaking of rescuing, this is also different: you do not rescue Civilians in a Haven Assault by standing next to them. Instead, the (surviving) phase 1 Civilians -but not the Militia- are automatically rescued all at once as soon as the two pods assigned to attack them have been wiped out. (Reminder: if a Codex clones itself, or a Chryssalid cocoons someone, these new enemies are not tracked for determining whether the phase 1 group is safe to run) The (surviving) Militia will instead run on ahead to the phase 2 group -by 'running' I mean 'running the full distance instantly, out of turn order', not 'manually spend their turns trying to run to phase 2'. It's... weird.

Anyway, as for the phase 2 Civilians -and all the Militia- you never perform a mid-mission rescue of them. You simply win once every enemy is dead, with all survivors treated as rescued, exactly as will happen if you kill every enemy in a Stop The ADVENT Retaliation mission. Notably, since you can only rescue 4 Civilians mid-mission, and still need 6 Civilians to avoid mission failure, this means you haven't removed the possibility of failing the mission until it's actually over. (Mind, you could always fail a Stop The ADVENT Retaliation by virtue of your squad wiping...) I very much approve of this change; saying the player has completed their objective of protecting civilians as soon as less than half are... wherever they run to... is honestly pretty weird, and opens up unpleasant questions in conjunction with the ability to Evac from most missions; a player might honestly think they can simply Evac as soon as six Civilians are rescued and get full credit for success that way, even though that's narratively somewhere from 'extremely gross' to 'flagrantly nonsensical' because the mechanics seem to imply it's an option...

... and by the way, they'd be unpleasantly surprised by discovering that actually Evaccing automatically fails any mission that doesn't actually require the squad Evac. Whoops!

So this change is nice for avoiding that mess.

Also, in Haven Assaults Civilians will never move (This doesn't include Militia, to be clear), unlike Stop The ADVENT Retaliation Civilians being willing to scramble for Cover. This makes them on average a little more reliable about dying, as the game doesn't make any effort to plant them adjacent to Cover; usually some of the phase 2 Civilians will be adjacent to Cover, and it will intermittently even be relevant Cover, but you shouldn't count on it and phase 1 Civilians in particular are basically always completely exposed.

Anyway, we're not done, though. Still lots of differences to cover!

So next is Faceless: in Haven Assaults, all Faceless always spawn among the phase 2 Civilians, never among the phase 1 Civilians. (Nor will they be disguised as a Militia) So feel free to wander near the phase 1 group. Faceless are also really pathetic in Haven Assaults, thanks to the fact that unlike Stop The ADVENT Retaliation it's not actually inherently desirable to approach Civilians. In conjunction with War of the Chosen removing their ability to act on the turn they reveal themselves, they're extremely unlikely to ever hurt your troops unless you're specifically meleeing into the phase 2 Civilian mob. In fact, a Faceless revealing itself in a Haven Assault often results in its death before your turn, as Militia are quick to shoot them and take their turn after the Faceless reveals itself but before your turn, and Faceless don't use Cover nor have innate Defense; Militia thus find them to be a very attractive target by virtue of reliably hitting them. (As Militia AI does, in fact, overall prioritize making accurate shots, same as most XCOM 2 AI)

Then there's the opposition more generally.

First of all, I should immediately point out that in Haven Assaults enemies are not held to the 'one inactive pod per turn' rule for attacking Civilians and Militia. Every inactive pod can attack every turn. Furthermore, Haven Assaults have special pod counts completely divorced from Force Level and difficulty: they simply generate 6 pods, no matter how early or far in the game you are and without regard to whether you're on Legendary or below it.

"Wait," I hear some of you mumbling in horror as you crunch the numbers and realize they give mission failure on turn 3. "How do you win, then?"

Well, first of all Militia can actually survive being hit, at least until you're later in a run. (And unlike Civilians they don't effectively have negative 20 Defense, and in fact are semi-reliable about pursuing Cover, so they get hit less consistently too) More importantly though, as I implied earlier enemy pods are tied up in the phase mechanic: initially, you're in phase 1, and only the two pods assigned to phase 1 are allowed to carry out their task of charging their phase's Civilians and attacking them. The four pods assigned to phase 2 have to wait until phase 2 starts -and unlike the phase 2 Militia, phase 2 pods do not buggily make attacks earlier than intended. Indeed, even once phase 2 starts, the pods assigned to it take a turn or two before they properly wake up and attack.

Furthermore, the pods of both phases usually start a decent distance from their targets; it's not unusual for them to spend a turn on advancing even once they 'wake up', needing another turn to get in range for actually attacking. Dedicated melee pod leaders often need two turns of advancement.

It's also worth pointing out here that ranged pod leaders cannot attack a Civilian the turn they stumble into your squad and activate. This is actually true of both Retaliation missions, but it's a lot more useful in Haven Assaults, as the pods have a clearly-defined location they actually try to advance on -and phase 2 of Haven Assaults usually has most of its Civilians hidden inside a building, vehicle, shipping container, or other object that substantially blocks line of sight, forcing them to get closer so they can actually attack.

Unfortunately, melee pod leaders absolutely can charge into view, killing a Civilian, and activate now that you've seen them. This is one reason why Haven Assaults sometimes deciding Berserkers should lead every pod is so problematic; because it curtails your ability to actually throttle back Civilian death rates by forcing pods to activate in the form of stumbling into your squad on the enemy turn. They still can stumble into your squad and thus 'lose' an attack, but you can't actually force it.

Anyway, an extension of this unique pod generation behavior is that Chryssalid loner 'pods' that Burrow on the first turn can't occur in a Haven Assault -at least, not normally. (I've yet to have Infestation trigger and then see Burrow-pods in a Haven Assault, but am unsure if it's impossible or I just haven't had it happen yet) This makes Burrowing noticeably rarer in War of the Chosen -it's not unusual for a War of the Chosen run to only see Burrow-pods in the Psi Gate mission, since Chryssalids are so prone to spawning in only one Retaliation mission, and all the new ways for Chryssalids to show up in War of the Chosen are not Burrow-pods. (Though of course they can still elect to Burrow if they lose sight of your squad) I'm unsure if this is an intentional reduction to Burrow's relevance or a happy accident, but I appreciate it regardless, given Burrow's mechanics are janky in such an unpleasant way; even if Burrow's bugginess was resolved, it would still have design issues. (Like that it's basically melee Overwatch, only it ignores anti-Overwatch tools and lacks Overwatch penalties) Reducing its presence helps some.

Another consideration is to do with Chosen and Alien Rulers: in both cases, they always spawn over by the phase 2 zone, never the phase 1 zone. The Chosen completely ignore all this phase stuff, though; they will teleport in on the first enemy turn and immediately do their usual thing. They do not wait for phase 2 to properly start. (I'm actually unsure how Alien Rulers behave on Haven Assaults; I've had them spawn into them far too rarely, and mostly early on before I had a handle on the mission division)

So yeah, very different framework from Stop The ADVENT Retaliation.

Which in turn means different implications!

So perhaps the most striking implication is that a Concealed scout isn't actually that important to Haven Assaults, especially once you've got a good amount of experience under your belt; Haven Assaults have a low amount of map variety, and the starting positions of enemy pods are actually fairly rigid. Thus, if you're on your sixth WotC run, you're probably going to be recognizing a map fairly quickly and by extension already know roughly where the pod is.

Even for a newer player, though, Haven Assaults lack the 'often, but not always, there's a pod just out of sight, in an unpredictable direction' quality, and phase 2 in particular is very consistent about placing enemies so they're fanned out largely behind the Civilians from your perspective; you can and should simply Dash until you're in sight of the phase 2 area once you're done with phase 1, because there will never be pods in between to risk activating. The combination of Militia shooting revealing them and their target, inactive pods shooting revealing them, and the phase 1 and phase 2 zones having a noticeable area permanently revealed also means you often have basically all the info you need to engage pods in a controlled way without any need for a Concealed scout.

In conjunction with the risk of 'wasteful' activations, where your Concealed soldier witnesses a pod being shot by Militia and so the pod activates having probably gotten to take a shot while inactive, there's a decent argument for leaving your Reaper(s) behind if you get a Haven Assault, or to be aggressive about breaking their Concealment once they've reached the phase 2 zone if you do bring one. (eg Banishing someone) This is a stark contrast with Stop The AADVENT Retaliation pressuring you to bring a Concealed unit to make up for the lack of squad Concealment!

By a similar token, though much less drastically, your melee attackers tend to perform much better in Haven Assaults than Stop The ADVENT Retaliation missions; it's much easier to control the risk of activating pods, you don't have to worry about waking up a Faceless unexpectedly, and the need to quickly advance to the phase 2 zone makes the ability to attack while moving really useful.

Conversely, Sharpshooters oriented toward sniping are even more erratic than they already were in Stop The ADVENT Retaliation; on the one hand, the phase 2 zone is almost always a nice bit of high ground that offers a perfect sniper's nest for hitting every attacking pod. On the other hand, Sharpshooters are not great at an advancing offensive, and Haven Assault maps usually space phase 1 and phase 2 widely enough you can't set up in the phase 1 zone to snipe the phase 2 zone. (Your accuracy will be nearly nonexistent) Using the high ground in phase 2 also often means being dangerously close to Faceless while standing on destructible high ground, and often the best sniping position is prone to activating all the pods (Because said position is 'atop the place the Civilians are hiding in'), which you don't want to be doing.

Enemy-wise, Mutons should actually be one of your highest priorities in Haven Assaults: Civilians in phase 1 and phase 2 are always pretty clumped up, and a Muton does in fact understand that its Plasma Grenade can be thrown at grouped Civilians. Thankfully, they won't do this while inactive, but once you've activated a Muton that's anywhere near the Civilians, you should treat it as one of the most dangerous things possible -because a couple of Mutons remembering their Plasma Grenades can instantly result in mission failure. (Which is another reason Berserker spam is so miserable; they will be followed by Mutons, resulting in a lot of Mutons you need to urgently murder) The only good news is that they often get distracted by Militia, since Militia don't try to stay out of their melee reach.

Theoretically, other grenade-carrying enemies should be just as bad, but I've never seen Purifiers throw their Incendiaries at Civilians (Though they'll sometimes toss at Militia, even when it's a Militia standing alone in the open), and I've never seen a Trooper or Officer use their grenade on Civilians or Militia at all. (Except a couple of ambiguous cases where they caught Civilians, but where their actual target seemed to be my own soldiers)

It's also worth pointing out that, while Faceless often die without getting a turn in Haven Assaults, they're actually fairly capable of killing Civilians in one if you're careless: they still won't target Civilians, but if you charge someone in among the phase 2 Civilians and wake up a Faceless, it's very likely it will swipe at your soldier and catch one or more Civilians in the process. After all, they don't run from a Faceless getting close the way Stop The ADVENT Retaliation Civilians do! So don't dismiss Faceless entirely just because you're in a Haven Assault.

ADVENT Mecs and Heavy Mecs are weirdly erratic. They seem to be another enemy that won't actually deliberately aim at Civilians with an area-of-effect attack (Their Micromissiles), instead choosing to volley at your troops or Militia... but if a soldier of yours or a Militia trooper is in among Civilians? That can instantly wipe a bunch of Civilians. So they should still be priority targets, overall.

Also, I'm not convinced this is an actual rule, but I've yet to see an Archon break out Blazing Pinions in a Haven Assault. So... they might be safe-ish to ignore? I wouldn't count on it, personally, but if you're in a situation where your squad can only kill one of a Muton or an Archon, not both, I'd certainly prioritize the Muton. At minimum, you can shoot the Archon some to try to trigger Frenzy, which would definitely disable Blazing Pinions -indeed, part of why I'm unconvinced 'no Blazing Pinions in Haven Assaults' is an actual rule is that Militia taking potshots is so prone to triggering Frenzy before the Archon has even activated that I'm not sure I've ever had an Archon in a position to go for Blazing Pinions anyway!

If you're into mods and strongly prefer Haven Assaults, it's worth noting a mod exists to force Retaliation missions to all be Haven Assaults. This would be pretty understandable, honestly; while Haven Assaults are more blatantly buggy than Stop The ADVENT Retaliation, they make more narrative sense and are a much less frustrating base design. (Outside the occasional 6 Berserker leaders issue...)

Indeed, if XCOM 3 returns to Terror/Retaliation missions a third time -which seems likely- I really hope that Haven Assaults are used as the foundation and that the EU/EW/Stop The ADVENT Retaliation-style goes away entirely. It was a functional first attempt, but the Haven Assault style really is much better if we discount bugginess. (Which would presumably be fixed)

On a more narrative note, another low-key bit looking like yet more evidence of War of the Chosen being rushed is that Bradford will always open a Haven Assault by informing you that 'one of those Chosen is leading an assault...' -yet there's no mechanical enforcement of such. The game doesn't, say, generate a Retaliation mission, roll for whether a Chosen is in the mission, and force it to be a Haven Assault if the roll succeeds. Nor does Retribution generate Haven Assaults, or any number of other possibilities. Indeed, Haven Assaults can spawn even once all the Chosen are dead, and Bradford will still insist a Chosen is leading an attack on a Resistance camp. Whoops!

I'm curious what the intent would have been as far as that goes. Tying Haven Assault to the Retribution action would be bonkers -up to 3 Haven Assaults per month?- but maybe Retribution wasn't originally imagined as the basic Chosen spam action? It's really difficult to guess what was intended, is the point.

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On a different note, it's worth pointing out that XCOM 2 endeavors to cycle you through mission types over the course of a run. This is hidden somewhat by two major factors: firstly, it only operates within a mission category's overall pool to do this, and secondly, as we'll be seeing next post, near-duplicate missions show up often enough it's easy to think you got a mission twice in a row while you actually got Type A and the nearly-identical Type B and just didn't realize they're internally distinct mission types.

Which is to say that in War of the Chosen, if your first Retaliation mission is Stop The ADVENT Retaliation, than your second Retaliation will be Haven Assault. This 'loops' as well; once you've had a Haven Assault and a Stop The ADVENT Retaliation, the game picks between the two randomly, but then your fourth one will be whichever wasn't picked a second time.

Most mission sets have a wide enough variety relative to their pace that this largely isn't too conspicuously weird -and Guerrilla Ops have a crucial wrinkle I'll get to when we get there- but WotC Retaliation missions are an unfortunate exception, where a player who does enough runs is liable to start feeling like their distribution of its two variants are a little too consistently even.

I'm not sure how absolute a rule this is, I should note, but it's definitely a strong enough weighting effect to be noticeable just playing the game, especially if you're already aware of the phenomenon to keep an eye out for it.

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Next time, we move on to Resistance request missions. (Or VIP missions, if you prefer)

See you then.