Mission failed: Objective complete, did not ""neutralize all hostiles"

[ninjajump]

This seems unfair. I completed the objective. By completing it I alerted another pod and summoned reinforcements.

I was playing on iron man commander. I wasn't going to stick around to fight six more enemies than I had to and frankly it feels unrealistic to risk soldiers lives just to get some more kills with no real purpose.

[Sunwave]

You can evac after doing the objective and you will actually succeed the guerilla operation. You will counter the dark event.
But you will not get any loot, or supplies/intel/staff as a reward. So it's not that bad. I agree that it's kinda stupid, but hey, at least getting the objective still counts anyway, even if it says "failed".

[why are we here? just to suffer?]

I know...

[Empiro]

For Guerrilla Ops, I believe that you still prevent the event from taking place.

However, the objective includes defeating all hostiles, so technically, you did fail. If you want the mission rewards and loot, you need to kill everything.

[was_fired]

Except in this case the risk is realistic. You need to remove all enemy forces from the ground if you're going to send in people to gather bodies, supplies and large chunks of alien metals. As pointed out before if you evaced you would still have stopped the dark event (your timed objective) and gotten the associated benefits.

[delmoroth]

I am ok with no loot, it is the irrationally depressed looking soldiers that bothered me as well as your supplies contact crying about it. "SO commander, you halted the enemy in its tracks, killed a ton of its soldiers, and got out without any losses. We are very disappointed. Next time, irrationally sacrifice your soldiers for glory, after all, that is what good leaders do. Dismissed."

I am gonna track that guy down and take him out. Next time he can go fight.

[Lantantan]

I think it's a great mechanic, offering us a meaningful choice! The game is asking us to risk our wounded soldiers to double our money. I loved those moments where my greed tempted me to take supid risks, and my beloved soldiers paid the ultimate price.

[The Dess 2023 GOTY Edition]

I had a similar situation. 6 man sqd, 3 KIA, 2 wounded, but I eliminated 2 crews and got the timed mission objectives. But I knew I could not defeat the rest of the crews with an underpowered squad, so I bailed. Yet the game says I failed. GG XCOM, would suicide squad again!

[Mook]

You did the objective, you didn't finish the mission. Half mission complete means you failed the mission. You should only solid snake it if you are on like L/I and are in some major jams

[ninjajump]

I guess my real problem with this is two fold. first, It's not so much the lack of rewards as it is the disapointed look on my soldiers' faces and the big "FAILED"

No... My mission was an unmitigated success. The fact that we didn't get to loot the bodies just means that I felt keeping my soldiers alive was more important.

Second, the internal logic of the game is inconsistant. often times in missions I'll kill all the original pods but scramble to the exit before the reinforcements have a chance to kill me. That's still considered a success even though I left the reinforcements. What's the difference between reinforcements and the original pods? why can I leave one and not the other?

[d_valroth]

Yeah, the game is inconsistant about that. There are only a few missions that should actually require killing all enemies, and the Spokesman seems to almost randomly decide whether you are the greatest commander ever, or a sad disappointment. Sometimes he changes his mind in a matter of days. His reactions seem to be based on where Firaxis thinks you should be at a given point in the game, and not on the actual strategic situation. One month the only thing the aliens achived was a single box of Avatar progress and he was upset. Like really dude?

Basically, if the Evac Volume is predeployed, then your objective is to leave the map, possibly after picking up an item of value. If it is not, then you are expected to fight to the death regardless of how pointless that is. Perhaps this is meant to prevent players from failing to collect critical loot to advance the game, but I think it could have been handled better by one of the talking heads at base mentioning afterwards how important it is to take and hold some ground so the salvage teams can get in. I think part of the problem is that early on the game was more hit and run, equipment OSP, but they dialed it back close to the first game for some reason. (Based on teasers and dev comments from last year, notably soldiers no longer have a loot inventory as seen in old footage.)