Cyberweb heist map

[Stormtrooper]

Recently got an event about Cyberweb assaulting a military base and got hyped about fighitng around hangars, guard towers, sandbags, barracks and all that jazz. Well, turned out it's an underground base, but whatever, that in istelf is not a huge problem.

What is a problem tough, is that instead of spawning directyly in a base (like in a vanilla alien base assault, for example), you spawn above the ground and have to get down there before you actually can start fighting. This raises several issues:

• All enemies and "civilians" are in the base, meanwhile you are not, which results in base personnel getting sluaghtered during first few turns with player having exactly 0 options to do something about it. Even if all "civilians" die these missions still give very good scores due to plentiful enemies so from pure gameplay perspective it isn't a big deal, it's just frustrating because saving civilians in this game is already pure rng in most cases, but if you spawned on the same level as the rest of entities maybe you could at least save a few nearby people because you'd enter combat at first turn already.
• Getting down to the base - well, original xcom is (in)famous for its problems with visibility, line of fire and stuff but staircases leading downwards are a whole new league of "visibility problems". I don't know why people complain about chryssalids, aliens with mind control and blaster launchers, they're laughing stock compared to the danger of going down the stairs in this game. I won't go into details describing what's wrong with them - I can if asked, but I assume everyone who played this mission knows exactly what I have on mind.
• Thankfully this map also comes with two large holes you can use to jump down to the base (as much as lack of fall damage ruins my immersion when I see people casually jumping down from the roof of a 4-story block of flats and continue running as if nothing happened in this case I'm so glad it is the way it s), so on my second heist I just put small guarding force to kill enemies trying to emerge from main entrance and used these to access the battle instead, but they're far away from spawn so it still takes a few turns to get down.
• Combination of two previous points means instead of starting the battle instantly I have to spend 3-4 turns just moving all my soldiers without anything interesting happening, it's sooooo boring

So the conclusion of this post is a simple question: wouldn't it be better if the heist map simply got changed to remove surface and staircase entrance and just have your soldiers spawned on the same level as base personnel and enemies, maybe just in an "entrance room" separated from the rest of the base with a door or something? Sorry if this post came off as too much of a rant, I am really happy this mod exists and people can play it, but yesterday the Cyberweb heist has really put a dent in my enjoyment.

[psavola]

By far the best strategy for this map is to rush to the base entrance and park 2-3 dogs just outside it so that the dogs will stop anyone exiting through their reaction barks. Then you can stun/melee everyone coming out and get plenty of experience to boot (bring along your pepper sprays and boom  boxes as well).

You will just have to have a couple of snipers on overwatch who will shoot down the flying cyberwatch drones that exit from "flying" entrances. Those snipers should preferably have a plastic aqua armor or something else so that if a drone manages to shoot them, they won't get killed.

There is a map variant where there is a second entrance which is blocked by fences. If you get that map, depending on its location you may want to blow up the fences with dynamites/hi-ex and make a second barking station there.

After 50 turns or so, you may need to enter the base and find the stragglers. This is the most annoying part of the mission because it's a really annoying labyrinth.

[Stormtrooper]

That's exactly what I did. I didn't come to ask about strategy, rather why the surface level of this map exists at all since from my experience all it accomplishes is making the mission boring and tedious to play. I don't want to camp at entrance for 50 turns and then spend another 50 turns hunting down the last drone, I just want to go down there and fight and I'd rather be able to start combat at turn 1 instead of 5 as it currently is with having to go down to the base first.

[Vakrug]

Everything you described is intentional design, I believe. You are supposed to spend some turns on the surface while hearing screams of defenders being slaughtered.
And yes, main stairs are the trap, don't go there. "True entrance" are "ventilation pipes". You should clear all enemies there first before jumping on the bottom floor.
If you don't see fences, you can create your own entrance by blowing up TNT above "ventilation pipes".

[Stormtrooper]

Well, maybe it is intentional, but I guess I simply don't enjoy moving each of the 14 soldiers one by one for a few turns through empty map before something happens. Dunno what "ventilation pipes" are, but as I said, the map comes with two big holes you can jump to the base level which I used on my second mission simply because unlike stairs leading downwards it doesn't produce weird line of sight bugs that make descending a pain in the ass.

Stairs are the trap but not for something I'd describe as intended gameplay reasons (aka "entering a chokepoint defended by enemies" and so on), but rather because if you go down you barely see shit, 99% of tiles remain black even if you stand directly in front of them, sometimes you can't move your soldier to an "undiscovered" the and end up wasting tons of TUs rotating to finally reveal the one tile you can then go to to continue the tedious process. Honestly staircases in this game are so freakin' bugged your soldiers behave as if they were literally blind when going down one. It takes at least 2 turns to finally get down to the end. Meanwhile if you already have the area at the bottom mapped and simply order your soldier at the top to go down there, suddenly traversing the stairs only consumes a fraction of TUs because you don't have to fight line of sight issues and your soldier automatically paths to the selected tile at the bottom.

[psavola]

The stairs as such are not a problem, but going down on them is, and what you discover afterward. The area down there is rather open without too much cover. There are also holes in the upper level from which enemies can drop down to the lowest level, creating nasty surprises. At the point the mission occurs, the enemy units can often one-shot you (except flying drones). Many enemy units also have snap shot weapons and can reaction fire. There are quite a few enemy units (up to ~50 with superhuman). The mission would be brutal if you started or immediately went down to the base proper. The alternative would be a complete redesign of the mission. IMHO the most pressing thing that should be changed would be labyrinth corridors part of the mission and the resulting bug hunt. But obviously whether anything needs to change and what the priority would be is up to SS.

The same things also apply to Dr. Alpha's Island and Syndicate archives raid which use essentially the same map (STORMMOUNTAIN* calling SIBERIABASE). Though with Dr. Alpha's island you will need to go down earlier, because there will be 2x2 units there that you will need to deal with and there is 1 sanity loss per turn.

[Solarius Scorch]

Maybe I should add another staircase or something.

[Stone Lake]

I don't see problem with stairs per se. You can move the rat above ground and over stairs. It has psi vision of 1-2, but it's "infinite" in z-direction. Meaning, rat can see anything under or above it. Used together with motion scanner, it makes most mutli-levels layouts, such as HQs, stairs, bases, this one, etc., really easy.

Sadly, mechanisms / robots are invisible to psi, and that's when it becomes find-last-bot circus. Most annoying map in the game, given the robotic faction, that is also fairly annoying.

[Stormtrooper]

Solarius no, I don't think another stairs are needed, the base already has two entrances. The problem I have with stairs in this map comes, I'll state it again, from the bugged as fuck line of sight/fog of war/tile discovering/whatever you gonna call it of the original game. Countless times I had an issue where parts of a map remained pitch black despite somehow spotting enemies there (jungle ones are notorious for this) and then having loads of fun scanning black screen with the cursor trying to discover what "undiscovered" tile exactly does the enemy occupy or which path should I take to reach this area.

Narrow staircases like the one in this map are particularly nasty in this regard, because sometimes I can have a soldier standing right in front of a given tile and it still won't show up, it remains pitch black aka undiscovered/hidden behind fog of war. Combined with narrow space and the fact you can't rotate map to see better, descending the stairs requires a lot of turning around to hopefully display yet another tile and frantically moving around trying to discover where the next part of stairs leading down yet another level are and spotting them among blackness and walls obstructing vision even in already discovered tiles. Throw some missclicks into the mix and you end up wasting tons of TUs to descend and even outside of gameplay consequences like taking more time than you should the descent it's just something unpleasant to interact with.

Given the above description, rats won't help at all because knowing there is an enemy in this particular tile (black like all the others) doesn't magically solve pathfinding/fog of war issues.

However, having played cyberweb factory mission already, I think what might actually help is replacing stairs with the ones from factory map, staircases there don't have these issues because they're broad enough that you instantly discover tiles leading down as you approach them and can see clearly where are you moving your soldiers instead of fighting eternal tile blackness.

[norpan83]

You can hold alt key to see spotted enemies on dark tiles.

[Solarius Scorch]

@Stormtrooper: OK, thanks for the feedback. I don't have much issue with these staircases, I'm more concerned with the long and complicated network of upper tunnels. But we all have our personal preferences.

But what do you mean by cyberweb factory map? Which mission exactly is it?