Mission Types

Scavenging missions

- Resources - Recruits - Vehicles

Destroy the Nest

The mission to destroy a Nest becomes available once the Pandoran structure is discovered after a succesful Haven or Base defense mission, or as a result of a Satellite Uplink scan from a PX base after researching Pandoran Citadel.

The mission is triggered once the player sends a manned aircraft to the Nest. Multiple aircraft can be send to the same Nest to assign up to 8 operatives to the mission. The player can equip the operatives and augment them, as well as spend excess SPs right before starting it.

The Nest is a procedurally generated cavern map, with Fog of War and tight passageways. The enemies are eggs with different kinds of worms or Mindfraggers in them, Arthons, Tritons and between 1 and 3 Hatching Sentinels, which mass-activate nearby eggs if approached by PX operatives. The objective is to destroy the Spawn Sentinels: once all of them are destroyed, the mission will end.

Pandorans (Arthrons and Tritons) will continously spawn at the reinforcement points.

Destroy the Lair

The mission to destroy a Lair becomes available once the Pandoran structure is discovered after a succesful Haven or Base defense mission, or as a result of a Satellite Uplink scan from a PX base after researching Pandoran Citadel.

The mission is triggered once the player sends a manned aircraft to the Lair. Multiple aircraft can be send to the same Lair to assign up to 8 operatives to the mission. The player can equip the operatives and augment them, as well as spend excess SPs right before starting it.

The Lair map is a procedurally generated, large and open battlefield, with Fog of War. The enemies are eggs with different kinds of worms or Mindfraggers in them, Arthons, Tritons, Sirens, Chirons and Terror Sentinels, as well as the Spawnery. The objective is to destroy the Spawnery and to evacuate the PX operatives.

Pandorans (Arthrons, Tritons and Sirens) will continously spawn at the reinforcement points.

Ambush

It can be triggered any time a PX aircraft explores a POI. The player will not be able to equip the troops before the mission starts, therefore it is important to have all the operatives ready before initiating the exploration.

Any Faction or subfaction can be the attackers (who they are will be shown on the mission screen).

The PX operatives will spawn in the middle of the map, surrounded by enemies. After 3 turns, an evac zone will appear at one of the edges of the map. At that point enemy reinforcements will start arriving, and continue to do so each turn until all the PX operatives are removed from the map (evacuated or dead).

• These missions are designed to be easy; they are meant to discourage exloring the Geoscape with an undermanned or underequipped squad.*

• Only items picked up by the operatives will be recovered from the mission, except any deployed turrets which are always automatically recovered. This means that you will lose the armor of any operative who dies during the mission*

Base defense

It is triggered when a PX base is attacked by Pandorans and there are PX operatives or vehicles at the base.

The player will be warned 24 hours in advance when the base will come under attack, and a timer will be displayed on the right hand corner of the Geoscape.

The player can choose not to defend the base, in which case all its facilities will be damaged and require repairing.

**There will be no opportunity to equip the operatives before starting the mission, so you should equip all your troops at the base before the timer runs out**

The Pandorans will spawn in the hangar from where there is a only single access to the rest of the base, creating an ideal choke point.

PX operatives and vehicles will spawn randomly all over the base map, some inside the hangar.

The Pandorans will try to reach the rest of the base to damage its facilities.

The mission is won when all the Pandorans are killed, and is lost if there are no remaining PX operatives or vehicles at the base.

• • These missions can be very easy if the player successfully utilizes the access corridor from the Hangar to the rest of the base to create a choke point. All area of effect attacks (explosives, fire, mind crush) are particularly effective. **

• Any items dropped during the Base defense will be automatically recovered by the player upon successful completion of the mission*

Haven defense

It is triggered when a Faction Haven is attacked by Pandorans, the Foresaken, another Faction, or the Pure (with the Blood and Titanium DLC).

The player will be warned when a revealed Faction Haven comes under attack. The attack will have some numeric value, and if it's higher than the defense value of the Haven, it will eventually succeed and the Haven will be destroyed unless the player intervenes, sending a squad to the Haven in time and destroying all the enemies in the defense mission.

• If the defense value is higher than the attack, the attack will fail even without intervention of the player, though the Haven will suffer some casualties and damage, reducing its defense for the next attack*

• The defense value of the attack is determined by the Haven stats (see What's in a Haven?)*

There are two variants: prevent structures from being damaged and prevent civilians from getting killed.

However, failing these objectives but destroying all the enemies still counts as a win - the only penalty is that your operatives will receive less experience points.

The map on which the mission takes place varies depending on the Faction and the type of district under attack.

There will be a number (from 2 to 4?) of allied Haven defenders, which you can take full control of by approaching them.

• Note that you can take control of a Haven defender using your own operative, another Haven defender under your control, or with a spider drone, but not with a civilian under your control*

Bear in mind that the death of allied Haven defenders and civilians, even if not under your control, will result in all your operatives losing WPs.

Evacuating civilians does not grant any advantages beyond ensuring that they will not be killed.

Upon completing the mission, the player will receive a reward in the way of resources and rep boost with the Faction and with the Haven leader, but also incur a rep penalty with the other Factions.

• The size of the reward will depend on the difficulty of the mission - the higher the difficulty the higher the reward*

A successful haven defense mission against a Pandoran attack has a chance of revealing the location of the Pandoran base from which it was launched: if the Pandoran base is within the scanned area of a PX base or a PX base was attacked, this chance is of 100%. If not, it's 50% on the first successful defense and 100% on the second successful defense to an attack send from that base. The player can then send a squad to destroy it.

• Any items dropped during the Haven defense, including by allies (including auto-turrets) will be automatically recovered by the player upon successful completion of the mission*