Hostage rescue missions

[Aquohn]

Is it just me, or has the stealth change made these missions basically impossible? I mean I always come away from them feeling really guilty about the number of innocent people I got killed. The problem is, there's always a clump of guards hanging around each pod. The former modus operandi was to use cover to sneak up to them, then activate stealth and tear them to pieces. But now, unless you have a weapon that can kill them all in one shot without hurting the cryopod (and they're often arranged so that this feat is impossible), hitting one will alert all of them, and those left over will almost certainly obliterate the defenseless cryopod in a turn or two.

Right now, the only solutions I can think of are:

1) Reduce the number of guards at each cryopod, perhaps to only 1-3, but make the level much bigger and fill the corridors and intermediate areas with bots. Also maybe have a small, well-defined radius (which the player is told about) for which the priority targeting is applicable.

2) Remove the priority targeting, but always seed GaffeBots/BlunderBots. Alternatively, select only one type of bot in the level to have priority targeting.

3) If all else fails, restore the old stealth mechanics for cryopod missions.

Lorewise justifications for 2) and 3) might be a tad iffy, though.

Comments? Suggestions?

[Misery]

Aye, stopping them from blowing those up is usually futile.  It's worse on the higher difficulties, where even comparatively weak foes like ammobots can wreck them in a single hit.  Particularly if Leaderbots are around.

[Histidine]

Could just make the pods out of really strong glass (i.e. buff their HP).

[Misery]

Depending on the difficulty it'd have to be a really extreme buff.

On Expert even 20,000 HP would melt fast with their focused attacks.

[Winge]

I think I've only played one hostage rescue mission since the stealth change.  By choice, mind you--the fact is that as soon as bots are alerted, they will make a beeline for the nearest pod, even if the player is closer.  If I am out of range when I first alert the enemy bots, there is literally nothing I can do to stop them from blowing up one, or usually more, pods.

I think I would rather do a blockade or pointless salvage mission than a hostage rescue mission on higher difficulties.

[keith.lamothe]

FWIW cryopods are now immune to aoe-splash, so you can use your room-clearing weapons with impunity (just don't aim directly at the cryopod; I really shouldn't have to be that specific... but I never know).

Whether that's enough, I don't really know.

[keith.lamothe]

One other related change for 0.937:

* Changed the bot logic for "if I can shoot a cryopod or chase a player, have a 10% chance of always shooting the cryopod and a 90% chance of picking evenly between shooting the cryopod and chasing the player" to "if I can shoot a cryopod or chase a player, have a 10% chance of shooting the cryopod and a 90% chance of chasing the player.

That should help, I think, in terms of whistle, etc.

[keith.lamothe]

And something else related:

* Fixed a bug in recent versions where enemy bots could shoot cryopods while either or both had never been seen before.  Now only bots that have been seen can attack cryopods, and only cryopods that have been seen can be attacked.
** Note: sensor vision still counts as "seen", and this includes Tuck's pre-scouting of each mission.  Tuck just has different experiences in hostage missions, with the advantage of knowing where the pods are and the disadvantage of having less leeway in alerting any bots near the pods.

I just did a day-1 hostage mission on Hard and FWIW it felt pretty right to me.  I had to be careful in how I progressed (wasn't playing Tuck, so I didn't know where the hotspots would be) but between my siege's rocket launcher, my assault's grenade launcher, and the bots not really focus-firing the cryopods (they did fire on it occasionally, and if you're far enough from them they'd just go after the pods, so you still have to be careful) I don't think I lost a single pod.

Of course, that's just day-1, and that's only on Hard, so day-20 Expert hostage missions may still be excruciating, but I think there's progress