EXALT?

[Simple Man]

Playing EW after finishing a couple EU runs, enjoying it to bits, fancy additions and everything.

One addition i didn't see coming tho, was EXALT. I got my first mission vs EXALT, sent in the agent, once he was done, went in for the mission. 6 soldiers, 3 captains, lasers, a mix of scopes and grenades, 2 heavies with shredders, 4 rockets, a support and an assault.

I start the mission, so far so good, a couple turns in, first 3 drop, next turn, like 6 more drop, next turn, more are dropping, and then another 3, now theres already like 12 EXALT on the map, and more are spawning still, its just downright raining EXALT at this point, theres exalt everywhere just bum rushing my position and even dropping RIGHT ON TOP of my squad, and even if im one shotting all these units i still get overwhelmed rather easily. They're firing rockets, they can sustain quite a bit of damage, and after a couple of turns theres some 20 of them on the map, what the actual fudge.

After having my 6 man completely outnumbered and slaughtered and deleting the game, i since been reading on it and learned that assaults played aggressively seem to be a good way to approach it, but its all just looking like a tremendous unbalanced hassle. It would be like the game sending 20 mutons at me in my 3rd abduction mission.

Anyone care to share how they go about these missions?

[characters]

Which map? I always handle my first EXALT mission without lasers. You already have squad size 2 expansion and fail? I cant see the situation.

[Androgynous]

which mission type is it and what difficulty are you on.

if it's the one where you need to defend an area for 3 turns just get mimetic skin and anyone but an assault with close combat specialist so they can never capture the point and then you just pick them off 1 by 1 with squad sight sniper(s)

the AI is kind of dumb and tends to prioritise standing on the point rather than shooting your guys so you can let them clump up and get huge value from explosvie weapons.

also hacking the comm relays forces the enemy to reload their weapons. heavies can still use rocket launchers though, so don't clump up.

if it's the other mission type where your operative has to hack 2 of those relays, there's no time limit so just don't rush through the mission.

if you have 6 soldiers, 2 being heavies, 1 assault and 1 support, what were the other 2? squad sight sniper is by far the most important soldier in your squad, so 1 of them had better be that.

[Delta 1038]

The non-spoilerific EXALT missions come in two flavours:

- Covert Data Recovery (King of the Hill)
- Covert Extraction (Sort of capture the flag)

EXALT tactics relies pretty heavily on outnumbering and then rushing you so either kill them quickly to stop them from snowballing or dig in where you can properly brace yourself as they smash their faces against you.

Also EXALT missions have this quirk with the Comm Relays (The yellow radar thingies) where if you hack them, EXALT operatives can't fire their weapons; they have to waste a turn to reload.

[Simple Man]

The mission was data recovery, the king of the hill type, difficulty is (was, game was deleted since) classic ironman. My full squad was 2 heavies, 1 assault, 1 support, 2 sniper. The map was police station, where, as normal, ya deploy behind that first police car. 4 of my team went to the door on the right, where the device (encoder?) was.

I expected a difficult fight, i didn't expect a fight of 6 vs 20, and 20 that could tank damage, fire rockets, etc. Both snipers died from a rocket that hit them, exploded a car, which hit them again with its explosion, didn't even give me a turn to move them = 2 units insta dead. And now you could say "you should have just taken down their heavy to prevent him from shooting the rockets". Well the turn before 3 of them had dropped like 2 tiles from the snipers (because there clearly werent enough EXALT on the map yet, they dropped in some more), so i was already trying to deal with that, when theres still rockets being fired at me on top of it.

Granted, i was unprepared for the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ these missions are and didn't optimize conditions (best squad, best positioning, best exploitation of AI/LOS, hacking at the appropriate, best possible times, etc) but these misions seem pretty awful, terrible. I'll have another go at it, try to adapt, but that was a pretty rude awakening. Like i said, this would be like doing your second or third abduction against 20 mutons (most those guys had 9 and 10 HP, and will do more damage than mutons), makes little sense, the scaling is completely off.

[characters]

Ah, the police station. That's easy, unless you move to the difficult situation.
That map is one of my favorite.
Moving to encoder to protect it is baaaad choice, you may have watched Youtube walkthrough that protect the encoder in this map, that is not good example unless you like harsh.
Moving to transmitter to protect it is smooth, dude. I'll tell you one tips that you burn up the ban's engine (not all doors) at first just before/after dashing to the transmitter.
More than half of Exalt heavies could be eliminated by squadsight sniper and overwatch just after they move back from encoder to transmitter, because they have to move long way so that they dont have time to fire rockets.
In this map, every kind of soldier can contribute to the battle. Support's overwatch is the most efficacious, Heavy's roket can smash enemy pods, SS Sniper is too busy to reload, and Assault, he doesn't have to run a R&G risk here but just sit in the back in the ban with CCS and C&P.

[R543]

Oh hey remember me?
I sure do remember my first exalt mission, was the car shop one and the one with the encoder(just a general word I found those encoder missions to be way more of a rush(some only having 2 turns until they're hacked) than the Data Extraction(those are way less rushed and more fun imo).

In my first missions I didn't even have lasers for the most part, only got enough money for a laser pistol for my convert operative gunslinger, because of that I couldn't instakill exalt soldiers, needing around 5 hits for each.

Generally I recommend the following(I'm still kinda new so there's probably better strategies out there):

Get some of your best men on those missions, Rookies aren't that recommended.
Use Explosives, if you see a way to kill two exalt members with one rocket or grenade then do it
Triggering a lot of Exalt groups is normal, not something that happpens because of bad play, the way they are placed often leaves you with almost no choice.
Exalt Heavies use Rockets if Soldiers are put in groups or near explosive objects such as Cars(I think a lower number of soldiers is required if they are behind a card, painfully had to see that two of my soldiers got shot by an exalt rocket that blew up the car, luckily I had saves)
Overwatch is your friend, after you trigger some of the Exalt groups new ones will spawn, having overwatch means you can already weaken them or even kill some off.

I think the game doesn't explain it until later but the Covert Operative can hack those orange signal stations, delaying Exalt(not sure what it does, apparently it stops some from firing?)

Exalt forces move relatively fast to the Encoder, so it's best to arrive there in two turns(don't rush it too much through) it's more or less about keeping a soldier in the Encoder zone in cover(so those timers won't even go down). Not sure how it is in other difficulties, but in normal they would only go for the encoder that's more away from spawn and completely ignore the other.

Will write more tomorrow when I have time.

[Simple Man]

Hello yes, its mister 750ti.

I have fixed EXALT missions altogether. I didnt stop playing them, but i disabled ironman from my game, i already have the achievement anyway, and now if EXALT decides to pull these absurd plays, i'll just save scum and beat them the second time.

I can play scumy too :P

[BOWSER]

I'm doing my first EXALT encounter at the moment. My first attempt taught me to spread out because they have rocket launchers.

My second attempt was more successful. I was able to reach the extraction point with the operative, but something odd happened to the rest of my team. I wanted to end the map because most of my group was damaged, so I make it to the extraction point with my Heavy and choose to end the map.

The result screen said 5 members on my team died and only one survived. My entire team was alive and shooting EXALTs until the very end, so I don't understand how 5 of them died without my knowledge.

I'll just have to see what surprises await my third attempt.

[Androgynous]

Because if you extract with one person in the extraction zone, it only extracts that one person. You get a warning message if you try to do that.

[Reoden]

Even if you only have ballistic weapons, EXALT shouldn't be too tough unless you're playing on higher difficulty and/or Long War. Bring a couple shotguns along and hit the communcations relays to force them all to reload (does not stop their Opperatives from reloading or Heavies from rocketing you, take those guys out asap).

[Simple Man]

Originally posted by Reoden:

Even if you only have ballistic weapons, EXALT shouldn't be too tough unless you're playing on higher difficulty and/or Long War. Bring a couple shotguns along and hit the communcations relays to force them all to reload (does not stop their Opperatives from reloading or Heavies from rocketing you, take those guys out asap).

It was classic difficulty, ironman, so not like i could just reload afterwards. What felt like a million units just swept my 6 elites.

So now i play without ironman, the whole EXALT things strikes me as very low creativity type thing, kind of like when AAA games put those trillion HP bosses infront of you, they're not hard, just alot of HP. Same here, EXALT isn't any harder than the aliens, theres just 4 or 5 times more of them than you.

[characters]

Originally posted by kodiak.pw:

Hello yes, its mister 750ti.

I have fixed EXALT missions altogether. I didnt stop playing them, but i disabled ironman from my game, i already have the achievement anyway, and now if EXALT decides to pull these absurd plays, i'll just save scum and beat them the second time.

I can play scumy too :P

The enjoyable part of EXALT things is having solutions you handle to sweep them in different ways from the usual. Meld is placed in a randam location, while Encoder/Transmitter isn't. You do save-scum and find best walkthrough for each map then It'll be fun.

[BOWSER]

Originally posted by Androgynous:

Because if you extract with one person in the extraction zone, it only extracts that one person. You get a warning message if you try to do that.

I see. I completed the mission on my third attempt and was able to extract all members with 3 (plus the operative) standing in the extraction zone.

[Chapter Eleven]

Have your agent use those EXALT Communications Array and the exalt's wont attack for one turn.

[Matomatic]

I've never found Exalt a serious threat on the battlefield they can spam the field (but I've never seen as much as 20 in my 5 playthroughs), but the *******s caused South Africa to leave through their propoganda on my impossble ironman game. I don't see how they are that difficult, just clear the two groups.(with help from explosive abuse to clear holes in walls to flank or remove cover then squad sight/ run and gun rapid fire the scrubs) Then overwatch your soldier's so at least 2 soldiers have a shot on every position of the map on the encoder/transmitter map, with your agent in place to hack an exalt relay as a 'last resort' if more than one of them are left standing with shots on non-full covered/MEC soldiers.
On the other game mode just focus on overwatch at the terminal you hack or if you STAND NEXT TO IT WITHOUT HACKING IT- that trigger reinforcements as well. after you've hacked both and moved the covert operative more reinforcements will be appear near the extraction point so, otherwatch near there or have soldiers in postion to flank the postion they appear in.
Your covert operative should have chitilin or nano-vest to increase surviablilty, IF THE COVERT OPERATIVE DIES YOU FAIL THE MISSION, if you have another slot from that foundry upgrade have a ghost grenade if you can afford it, or a flashbang/alien grenade.
Non-squad sight essential Snipers then Supports then Rookies should be used for the covert operatives.
Snipers because of GUNSLINGER, low profile, scanner etc.
Supports because of smoke grenade (dense smoke) and deep pockets (smoke saves lives not as much as ghost grenade though)
Don't use assaults, they're too valuable even with the base shotgun.
You should scan for $50 each month as it makes a profit of $50, and stops their pesky events. Don't hold huge cash reserves (you can lose half of it) and be weary of losing multiple countries on 3/4 fear to their magical propoganda.
Exalt is a great source of experience because of their soldier spam, remember to take lower ranked troops on missions to fill your ranks, if you're really low on resources or behind on weapon research they will give you laser weapons too, otherwise sell them on the grey market.
NO WEAPON FRAGMENTS even though there are alien grenades from elites. Thus tasering with Dr. Vahlen's 0.1V device is almost pointless and spamming explosives has no drawback.
Don't cluster more than one soldier together behind a car or gas pump EVER on these missions, because they'll take 12 damage from 1 rocket which can wipe your squad early on. I've experienced similar from my own stupidity, getting General Van Doorm killed by moving him next to a burning car without noticing it was burning. -lol.
GL Commander