APEX Mission.

[Novatech]

I like most of this game but I can't get over how much I hate the end of this stupid mission.

Really guys? Three terminals? It's not even fun it's just frusterating, dude spam with tazers and super tanky drones that run past your whole team to kill the main terminal?

it's not like you gave me the option to bring my WHOLE TEAM...wtf?

And the turret guns are garbage half of the time they won't even shoot. *sigh*

FFS there's more of these drug addicts than there were npcs in the whole building, theres one elevator that I fixed myself HBS, so explain to me how the 5 man 3 drone kill teams are coming from two seperate sides of the map.

[steelcoresoviet]

There are stairwells, and neighboring basements, it's just that the Hubolists control them.

Anyway, it's not like the whole congregation was awake before... unlike during the attack.

Originally posted by Novatech:

super tanky drones that run past your whole team

You should probably stop them from doing that.

[Brewskin]

I just crushed this mission on my latest run, after having troubles with it on earlier ones. My main was a rifle/decker, and the party was Blitz, Eiger and Diets. Before jacking in with Blitz, I positioned my main in the bottom right corner of the West room, and Diets and Eiger in the bottom left of the East room. Once they were in place, Blitz jacked in via the western terminal. From there, he and Apex methodically cleared each area, healing as required, and activating the node and Western turrett on their way around. With 2 Blaster progs, and only moving them into a new area at the same time,with full AP, they made short work of any IC. Focused on Parsons when he popped up, and activated the Eastern turrett a turn before the junkies and drones attacked it. From there it was activate the 2nd node and jack out to help the gang. Few turns and a lotta dead junkies and blowed up drones later, game over. Main Terminal took some damage, maybe 25%, but my party went almost untouched.

[Ichthyic]

summons work great here. there's a free one you can grab in the west room IIRC, but you can certainly have dietrich bring a few in his pack. air elementals and earth elementals are good. air elementals cannot be stunned by the tasers. run them to the crates with cover near an entrance, and have them do their stuff. if you lose control, usually not a big deal since you moved them away from the party.

give dietrich the lighting barrier spell and use it on the entryways into the room he's in. that doesn't do much to the drones, but it sure as hell slows down the cultists.

[Sinocelt]

The drones have to take a circuitous path, so you can use barriers twice on them at the very least. Something weird, though, is that they're able to go around barriers set in the doorframes opening on the room with the main computer.

[Novatech]

OK i'll try running it with summons and barrier spell and see if I can grind it out.

[Ichthyic]

yeah, since you can only activate one set anyway, might as well plan for just one room to have them.

I found them overall pretty useless. summons were far more effective.

[Novatech]

Originally posted by SpenReyn:

And what did you mean by not being able to have your whole team? 4 including yourself is all you get. My secret for this one is open as few doors as possible, buff during the rounds no one is in range, and use your overwatch a lot. Barrier spells can bottleneck the bad guys for AOE attacks (spells, grenades, shotguns) I don't bother with the turrents much, if my chars a decker I'll activate one set then leave it. I usually have Eiger and Dietre together, and either Blitz or Glory with me. The summon point in the left/upper side is good, a nice wind spirit but Dietre has a hard time controlling it. His earth and fire fetishes work better for him.

Eiger,Glory,Deitrich,Blitz, - But you forgot the Dog, I forget his name but he is also a character.

[Ichthyic]

Dante. pretty much on a par with glory, though I give glory the edge because of the variety of attacks in melee, and the ability to use ranged weapons (Dante's cooldowns are a bit excessive for my tastes, especially given how late in the game you aquire him as a teammate).

[Simpson3k]

Hm i actually had it very easy even with apex working against me, i simply opened all the doors and snipered the spawns right at entering the area through the open door cases. Keep in mind, if you keep the doors closed, the mobs move through them but they stay closed..so you better open them yourself before you enter the center room and start to interact with apex in the first place.

Hm well the 6 ammo grenade launcher from the blitz char quest was a big help there :)

[m3z4n1n3]

My char is decker/rigger... another easy way to deal with APEX, on the first wave killed everyone except the drone, I use my drone class A to hit and disarm the drone, and basically i just skip turn till the purge reach 100% voila less pain and very quick :)

[frdnwsm]

There are a number of strategies. I have done it 5 times now on hard. The cultist's main strength is numbers and tasers; their weakness is poor armor and low health.Their drones have a lot of HP but are big fat targets, almost inpossible to miss. I usually have success with the following tactics. (Note: It is very helpful to have chosen sniper double tap skill for Eiger rather than auto reload. Also, I do hope you picked wired reflexes for her.)

1) Buy Dietrich some different spells, especially lightning barrier. He can leave that ley line spell at home. Give him an armor spell and he can buff up the entire team before the fight gets well underway. The cultists have no mages to strip your armor, and armor spell lasts for the duration of one combat ... which in this case is the entire scenario. With all the crew having armors of 9-10, enemy shots bounce a lot.
2) Team him and Eiger up in the left hand room. He keeps her buffed with haste/aim, and tosses lightning barriers at the doors.
3) Eiger can stay dwn south and snipe cultists at long range as they move in, taking out the taser wielders first.
4) I like to open all doors so she has a clear field of fire.
5) Blitz stays home. I don't need to side with APEX, so no need for a decker.
6) Glory and myself cover the other room. I buy Glory the Vindicator and give her two containers of jazz. Her aim with the Vindicator isn't great, but it's useful against the drones which are 4x the size of a human target. She has the stats to use the Vindicator, which gives her a hard hitting ranged weapon to add to her her razor claws. Jazz + adrenaline gives her 5 AP, letting her get off 2 shots per turn with the Vindicator, as well as having 1 AP left over to change position. I carry some jazz also, to pump her up as the fight goes into the late phase and bunches of drones try to take out the terminal.
7) Dietrich and myself duck into the south rooms early in the fight and start the countdown ASAP. When the purge is complete, pull the switch on APEX and wave bye bye.

[Zadok]

I think it is fun. If you really want a simple game and do not fancy finding the solution yourself...

Just kill most of the first wave, Taser (or Pummel Strike) the heck out of that Drone without ever killing it and you'll never meet a 2nd wave.

[frdnwsm]

Zadok is talking about taking advantage of the fact that a new wave of attackers doesn't seem to spawn until the prior wave is totally killed off.

I personally consider that a programming bug, and won't use it.

[Zadok]

Originally posted by frdnwsm:

I personally consider that a programming bug, and won't use it.

Suit yourself. I'd say it is the game's mechanic and by no means the worst one. If you understand how it works you can beat it - that's good. Had they wanted to prevent that they could have done it differently. Since it is a race against time the game designer must have known this to be the correct solution the moment he decided on this mechanic. It is not some random "they can't hit you in the corner" nonsense but revolves around the most defining mechanic of that fight. To not think that through would be very inapt game design. It works as intended, whether or not the player is supposed to find out about it. Then again I certainly don't mean to fault setting your own challenges. Challenges make single player games fun imo. You could say that's why I considered the tip a spoiler: earning it by finding it out is the initial challenge and being told gets rid of the challenge.

[frdnwsm]

I reported it as a bug. I cannot for the life of me imagine that the Dev team actually intended this as the solution to the tactical situation. Especially since the scenario is actually fairly easy once you develop the appropriate strategy.