Lost more likely to target XCOM? (And how to counter them)

[Zekros]

So I was playing a supply raid mission in one of the city maps with a Lost Sitrep modifier on. Went about the mission normally, until an explosion caused by Advent troops shooting some Lost caused a swarm to appear. The swarm literally spawned on top of the Advent squad ("yay" I thought to myself), yet they suddenly all turned around and ran towards me. There was only like 1 that actually attacked the Advent enemies. It was hard but I managed to get through most of them. But then a few turns later, the Spectre's and Codex's joined in. Jammed my weapons, knocked out my troops, and of course all the Lost from a second swarm decide to attack me again. I had no way of killing them all and the Advent forces just took shot after shot at me because the Lost ignored them almost entirely. It was like the Lost were actively helping the Advent troops, it was ridiculously unfair.

Finally managed to do this mission by retreating way back to my original spawn and taking out any enemies that came into my line of sight. As you can see from the screenshot it was still a rough fight.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1126614704

From what you guys have been saying this doesn't seem as rare as I initially thought. Thankfully a lot of you have already shared some helpful advice to counter the Lost and mitigate some of the stress when dealing with them. If you've experienced a similar scenario yourself, please share your experience and strategy to help out other players!

Cheers

[Hasefrexx]

In my game advent is obsessed with killing the lost. Had a defend the resistance camp, I faced berserk and MEC with base weapons, after killing the resistants, the berserk thought it would be a good idea to kill lost so I slowly shot them down. I "only" lost 1 recruit and another guy (and the mission) out of 6 while I should really have lost all my squad if not for the berserk being absessed about killing lost. Because I play with always activated advent operations and the lost one got activated, it always ends up like that, with advent killing countless of lost swarms while I shoot advent down, it's ridiculous.

Also when you are counciled sneaking to an ADVENT and lost pod, they activate one another (they must see one another), meaning that they start fighting one another even before I'm revealed (otherwise they ignore one another until you activate the pods).

And yes, lost is biased towards XCOM but because of all the above, it is ridiculously easy to abuse. Rangers in the middle of a pod can kill one per shot at 100% accuracy and sharpshooter on high ground can kill all the low health ones (infinite amo) too.

[Zekros]

Originally posted by masterpainter78:

Oh ok,

If the Lost see the Aliens first they go after them.

So the only way to make that happen is to run a stealthed guy over who see's the Advent and the Lost without being revealed.

They then go at it.

Oh that's quite interesting. I heard Reapers and Gunslingers (Sharpshooter) were quite good counters to the Lost but I never thought about that. Do you reckon the battle scanners would work too?

[Zekros]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1126614704
No deaths but everyone got wounded about 6-7 health. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that was hard

[Gamefever]

Originally posted by Zekros:

Originally posted by masterpainter78:

Oh ok,

If the Lost see the Aliens first they go after them.

So the only way to make that happen is to run a stealthed guy over who see's the Advent and the Lost without being revealed.

They then go at it.

Oh that's quite interesting. I heard Reapers and Gunslingers (Sharpshooter) were quite good counters to the Lost but I never thought about that. Do you reckon the battle scanners would work too?

Im not sure but now I want to try it out too.

[Dr. Marker]

In my experience, this has been a pretty prominant issue and has been something that has changed the Lost from what I first thought was a pretty fun enemy type to go up against to a tedious frustration.

I get that they had to amp up the difficulty to compensate for the addition of things like hero units and soldier bonds but as it stands it seems Firaxis have gone the 'Dark Souls 2' route of difficulty management, if you can't think of anything else, just hurl more crap at the player.

If anyone from Firaxis is reading this, I had some very colourful words for you after I completed a mission where my conventional weapon wielding Corprals/Squaddies had to fend off 7 faceless simultainiously.

And the one where they had to do the same for 4 Muton Berserkers.

Both on a timer.

These aren't well thought out encounters, they're meat grinders there to artificially ramp up the difficulty.

[Zekros]

Damn that sounds pretty rough.

This is the first time a Sitrep has completely changed the mission for me, although I can agree with what you're saying. I like the idea of the Lost and they're fun to fight as the only enemy in a mission (or when accompanied by small Advent squads during ambush escape missions) but they become very tedious when you're busy dealing with larger threats or objectives.

I'm praying that I never encounter a Lost swarm whilst fighting an alien ruler. I shudder just thinking about it.

[Incunabulum]

Originally posted by Sphinx:

70% xcom / 30% advent

I do think it would make more sense if it was proximity based instead.

Do advent even target lost at all?

I've seen them target Lost but only when the Lost are right next to them. Otherwise they ignore them and shoot at me.

[Jackal]

The lost are really easy to deal with, when I had to rescue an escort and a vip from resistance, I stood on the roof of the building having 1 soldier blocking the way up on each side and just wiping them all until it was closer... I think on that mission i killed more than 200+... only reason I ended it was cause all the corpses were already lagging. Also if you are lucky enough to get Between the Eyes order early, always bring a sharpshooter, unlimited ammo 1 shot everything

[Rathalos]

I had something interessting happen that migth add to this.

I was scouting with my shadowed reaper while my already revealed team was on the other site of a building with no direkt line of sight throught it.
Then on the aliens turn an advent patrol wandered in my reapers sight and triggered a group of lost and where themselves triggered by the lost.
And then despite their animations during the little cutscene even showing then turning their attention against each other the lost did their initial sprint towarts my out of sight group and the advent got into cover in a a way that protected them from my group.
And obviously they didnt figth each other.

So the lost and the alien can only trigger each other when they are inside the view of a shadowed or consealed soldier but if there is a revealed soldier somethere on the map it becomes the focus of the lost and alien alike.

[Player]

Yeah I think you have to activate then with a concealed unit or they won't fight each other on their own

[Zekros]

Wow so even when they shouldn't be able to know your position they still knew where you were?
That does sound quite similar to what happened to me, apart from I wasn't concealed, just positioned far away. The Lost seem to make a mad dash for XCOM despite there being other enemies around them that were much closer/triggered them in the first place.

I'm starting to wonder if they were intended to do this or not. Maybe too many clashing game mechanics is resulting in something that goes against what you'd expect? Idk

[Sawrit]

I was in a mission where i happened to be concealed, there was a large amount of Lost fighting ADVENT soldiers and i noticed something interesting, there were 5 losts surrounding a group of 3 ADVENT soldiers, when the lost attacked, only one swiped at the Stun Lancer, while in retaliation only the Lancer struck back, while his pals just stood there and didnt do anything, at least i got to witness 8 Losts gangbanging a snek to death, that was funny, didnt make much sense why she kept binding the lost zombie instead of shooting at it.

[The Hat]

This will fix it.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1123260291

[MeleeIs300Bucks]

I'd suggest taking lures on any Lost mission. They have two charges per mission per item. I faced a really tough lost mission because I absolutely had to stop that dark event, it's one of those that the other options are bad but this one would just be straight up terrible kinda thing.

Anyway I had to rescue the VIP and didn't have concealment apart from the reaper, the map sucked ass for stealth so no matter what I did I was triggering 3 advent pods. I decided to launch 2 lures at the advent positions, the lost that spawned completely ignored me even if I was close to them and went for the advent that hit been hit by the lure. I used the other lure charges to keep an advent pod pinned down for 3 turns while I dealt with the remainder, then being able to turn and finish the last pod and the lost off.

I think without the lures my risk of casuality would be very high but the lost took the brunt of the fight for me.

[Valec]

Originally posted by masterpainter78:

If the Lost see the Aliens first they go after them.

It was at this point where I realized not only do you not know what you're talking about, you didn't bother reading the thread, either, and decided to ♥♥♥♥ on people who want mods to adjust things in a direction you don't like.