Evacuation Zone locations, broken?

[Ceris]

I was hoping to just send to the dev support team but I guess this is the most paradox will allow? The scripts for escort missions have two events which greatly derail the playing experience.

Most importantly is that once a missions goal is completed the evacuation zone will often appear directly behind (relative to the primary goal) a set of opponents. The stated intention is that a player could choose to forgo the scrap/bonus associated with finishing off a set of enemies to instead travel to the EZ, however my most recent mission had enemies spawning in the EZ as soon as the primary objectives were complete. This has happened nearly every escort mission, and most assassination or retrieval missions.

Second, is that enemy reinforcements spawn when the escort vehicles reach their destination. This tends to play out in one of two ways. The enemies spawn nearby and kill allied vehicles before the player has the opportunity to act, or too far away to make any attempts on the allied vehicles which them despawn immediately. It also means I'm protecting the allies from nothing for the entire journey. All of these are terrible game design.

Shouldn't the EZ for players and allies be the same or nearby? It's quite jarring that my dropship decides not to land on the cleared safe landing pad that I'm occupying, instead coming down on the other side of the map surrounded by hostiles. Immersion broken.

Please consider adjusting the reinforcement times and EZ locations next patch so I can finish a career and move on to flashpoints without ragequitting. Also, more in game detail on what withdraw provides. From what I can tell good faith is binary so I would get equal reward for doing just a little or the whole mission. Thank you for supporting the game so far, I was really pleased to get career mode and balance updates.

 

[bobucles]

I usually find the evac zone is almost always directly behind enemy spawn points. There isn't much point in trying to do a safe evac because you'll get shot up for a couple turns on the way.

 

[Kiousu]

Here's an idea: make evac zones placable by the player

 

[Aradiel]

The problem with player choice is that everyone will simply choose to evac from their current position, although since we can simply withdraw at any time, maybe that's fine?

Some evac zones, especially in assassination missions, are well placed and easy to get to. Others are only easily accessible if you know the map, and know where both the reinforcements and evac zone will spawn, so you can attack from near the evac zone, and can get back to it before reinforcements can intervene.

Of course other evac zones, as mentioned, are on the other side of reinforcements, making them useless.

I think the main problem, and the most easily fixed is that surely we should know ahead of time where the evac zone is. Many times it's not even on flat ground. In other cases, where it is on the other side of reinforcements, then it should be repositioned.

 

[JibSail]

Giving the player a choice doesn't seem too bad. Just have them choose between 2, or three options.

Its a great opportunity to add some tactical complexity to the evac mechanic.

 

[Venomhide]

Agreed. Oftentimes the escort missions are empty space; we clear the pick-up zone of hostiles, then we escort them through a path with no enemies, and the moment one of the convoy reach the evac location they spawn. Sometimes, yes, they spawn too close and are too fast and destroy a vehicle without us being able to stop it, but at that point all we are are point defense systems, not escorts.

The enemies should spawn when we're at the halfway point, IMO.