You boys are clueless, totally clueless. Its a cakewalk if you use your BRAIN!! I know that is a foreign idea to a lot of you who just like to go all Leeeeeeeroy on everything.
You boys are clueless, totally clueless. Its a cakewalk if you use your BRAIN!! I know that is a foreign idea to a lot of you who just like to go all Leeeeeeeroy on everything.
It was simply extremely boring. I used dual beam bank, beam array, dual heavy cannons, 2 plasma torps and a turret on my D'deridex and probably died overall like 4 times. Any more waves and would have died from boredom.
I have to agree with many of the comments made here. The mission is lopsided and difficult to complete in a reasonable amount of time. Like most of the peeps that spoke up here, I used the D'deridex though I at least removed the cannons and replaced them with beam weapons because you can't keep the nose pointed at anything that can move well enough to get off more than a couple of shots with the cannon.
I found that killing the smaller ships first and isolating the ships by staying on the outskirts and attacking a single ship and running far enough that they follow you out of range of the others. When fighting the battleship kill the support ships first or you will be fighting for a long time. If they aren't going to make the D'deridex turn better, then it needs a serious weapons upgrade. Just my opinion.
I agree that 3 wave for a total of 9 groups of attackers is to much of the same thing in one sitting.it is quite dull and drawn out.
Either reduce the total number of groups or ships, or add in some mechanic to make it interesting. Make it a time based defence where we have to stop too many ships getting too close.
But I've also got to say, if you're taking a hour to complete a wave, then you probably haven't made the transition from Fed/KDF play style to Romulan. Most of the missions it doesn't matter, but this is one of the few where you really have to play to the strength of the ship.
I agree that 3 wave for a total of 9 groups of attackers is to much of the same thing in one sitting.it is quite dull and drawn out.
Either reduce the total number of groups or ships, or add in some mechanic to make it interesting. Make it a time based defence where we have to stop too many ships getting too close.
But I've also got to say, if you're taking a hour to complete a wave, then you probably haven't made the transition from Fed/KDF play style to Romulan. Most of the missions it doesn't matter, but this is one of the few where you really have to play to the strength of the ship.
^^^ This
I too was so used Fed gameplay and finally figured out to use the battlecloak to my atvantage.
I Skipped the elachi missions until level 40/41 then roped in a fleetmate to help out, we cleared it it out relatively quickly.
But doing it solo is a pain in the neck at best of times, i gave up after 1 and a half hours through sheer boredom. Putting it simpley, the elachi missions would be better at level 40 upwards.
"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush utterly his achievement and remove from all record his every trace of existence. From that defeat no enemy can ever recover. That is the meaning of victory."
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
I did this mission this weekend a couple of times and I like it. It is not short, about 40 minutes was my fastest run, I think. It gets easier on higher levels, but that is the case with all game content, remember Ground Zero?
The good things.
Time, I am playing to kill it. If it was short, I had to replay it and replay it and ... oh wait.
Nice rewards. I am going for a full set of those plasma weapons for my Rom captain. Next, there is plenty of secundary loot, that gives good EC at the vendor, or you end up with a couple of greens or a blue item.
How to.
First. A low level, under developped escort set up (which is always the case at this level) will have it hard. You need survivability, some tankiness, the fight isn't short. You can get such a ship by doing the Temporal Ambassador mission.
Kinetic damage is the answer here. Gravity Well, but also get something that strips shield so those small craft can use their torpedoes. Anything that bypasses shield is great here.
Mine pooping. That is a new tactic of my that I use more and more. I mount a mine launcher in the aft and set it to autofire, so when I am in combat I TRIBBLE mines. I see it as a poor mans console thing. Now there are those ships that jump away from you when you get close. Where do you think they end up? BTW, take a mine launcher with a short cooldown.
To resume. It is not a short mission, but I love it.
I played it in normal difficulty, and didn't take note of how long it took me, but I only died once and I didn't find it so hard with my D'dedirex loaded with looted single plasma beams and plasma torpedos. D'dedirex turns like a trash truck indeed, but other than being repetitive to do the same three times in a row I didn't found it really hard.
Use feedback pulse and let them hurt themselves - tie it to a doffed atb for a cd reduction (when not using fbp, of course) and whack aux as high as you dare (or heck, pop a battery) then dive in, ignore the small fry, take out the battleships and on the third wave, just do repeated decloak runs on the command ship, using fbp to hopefully take out attackers
..and carry dual eng teams - you will have to hit distribute shields often, but a cycled eng team will mean the Elachis worst attacks are mitigated
This mission sucked. Too many ships per wave, and I was stuck in a D'deridex the whole time. While I'm sure it's a nice ship for cruiser pilots, forcing Romulan players to abruptly abandon their escorts for ten levels and grab a bunch of new boffs makes zero sense. And those support fighters were worse than useless.
I like big, challenging battles, but not when they take over an hour to complete in a ship I don't like or want.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them." -Thomas Marrone
I am in the camp that liked this mission. It was a bit longer than most, around 40 minutes, nothing too horrible. My ship is running generic equipment as well, I do not see the need to spend too much time on a ship I will not be using in a week.
Part of the reason I liked it were the larger waves of ships. It felt closer to a real attack. If you really wanted to take out an area, you wouldn't send your ships 3 a time and give up after a couple of waves. Rather you would through what you hope is an overwhelming force.
This didn't feel like the typical action film fight seen where the group of enemies stand aside and attack the hero one at time, waiting for the first guy to be taken out before attacking.
Granted being a game, you do want to win, it was nice to have to work at it a bit.
Peaceful exploration? I have a heavily armed ship and a phaser with a kill setting, how peaceful is that?
The problem wasnt really the overall difficulty if you have a ship thats setup properly because you have been playing for a couple years and you have hundreds of millions in EC to setup a ship. it is the issue of all the other missions before this one were reasonable in difficulty for NEW players. They gave up a learning curve and went vertical for 10 levels on that mission. Not only did it escalate in difficulty it was repetitive as well. All 3 waves were the exact same thing, not 1 small, 1 medium and last 1 large wich wouldve made the mission tolerable in its difficulty.
Another thing, those of you who have been playing for years, Do not forget that the episodes are training for new players. If normal difficulty is too much for them then it needs to be toned down. You always have the choice to increase the difficulty for yourself and throwing new players at veteran level difficulty is a good way for a company to lose potential customers.
Join Date: Nobody cares.
"I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek:
It took me about an hour or so to fight of the first wave plus I was getting killed of course, and there's a total of 3 waves. I haven't finished the 2nd wave, because it takes about an hour or so. I think they should just have one wave for this mission, because currently its 3 large groups of waves.
You must be really, REALLY bad at this game to take 1 hour to fight the first wave.
The whole line for this strand of the Romulan campaign is long, but it was easy. I have found the portion defending the space station to be fun with my D'Deridex cutting apart the opposition.
You must be really, REALLY bad at this game to take 1 hour to fight the first wave.
The whole line for this strand of the Romulan campaign is long, but it was easy. I have found the portion defending the space station to be fun with my D'Deridex cutting apart the opposition.
I got through all three waves in an hour. The key for me is to use energy siphon or any energy draining Boff skills and the singularity well to wear down shields and defenses, keep your broadside to the escort or the battlecruiser so when he shoots out the cone area of death warning, take the shortest path out using evasive and engine battery before he shoots the cresent torpedo, then battle cloak to recover and close in and fire off your alpha strike. Evasive maneuvers is the lifesaver here, never use it during regular combat and only to dodge the alpha strike.
This was really annoying. It took me almost 2 1/2 hours to slog through this mission. I was screaming at the computer by the 2 wave on the final map. It was not fun.
It did, however, perfectly illustrate how the D warbird moves like a bloated cow. I had to use evasive maneuvers just to get off a few front-loaded torpedoes.
It was a slog fest. Please fix.
So far, this was the worst mission of the Romulan faction. 1 wave would have seemed OK. 3 was overkill.
Let me start with this: I came to STO because of the Romulans.
I am stating this to say I have started to play last week with STO, with zero knowledge how STO, as an MMO, works.
I completed the mission 2 days ago and since then my feelings have changed tremendously.
After my first try (yes, I have warped out without completing the mission, cause I had enough) my reaction was: this is brutal, way out of line compared to all what I had to do so far.
My equipment must be outdated... I must be doing something terrible wrong.
And being a true Romulan survivor:
- I did some foundry mission,
- played the market,
- looked for various daily missions (Sector Borg, Mining)
- Started to give attention how my ship is equipped,
- what weapons do I use and what differentiate a plasma beam from a disruptor cannon apart from the angle.
- what bridge officer actions are available to me.
- I started to read STO wiki to learn more about how to play a Tactical Romulan.
- What are my ship energy level modifying stuff I gathered only so far.
- Why is my D'D's inertia so low, what options do I have?
- How can I use my battle cloak?
- Planned how I can avoid the massive cone-banana-alpha damage and how to use the lowered forward shield to apply my damage.
During my second try
Quick alpha damage -> singularity defense -> cloak again.
Dodged cone attack with Evasion and increased engine power.
Used my weapon systems' hull DOT damage feature and ejected warp plasma in front of the dreadnaughts.
Massed damage bonus to increase my alpha
Played it like (I think) I have to in case facing superior number of enemies with different technology.
During my first try I died like 10+ times before I said: nope, this is not okay.
During my second try I died 3 times... due to my not so well designed reinforcement.
Two things I would change:
(i) Give a WARNING: Be prepared! This is not the usual Fire-All-Weapons mission you got used to so far.
(ii) Redesign support npcs Have them fly small, fast ships focusing on Elachi support.
and if your enemy can respawn... have our support respawn too.
Tow days ago I would have said: Nerf Elachi. This mission was designed absolutely wrong.
Today I say this is bloody spot on and I enjoy STO more!
Overall, I came out stronger and ready for new challenges!
(And I bought the Starter Pack)
I was on board with this whole "nerf devil's choice" thing back before they updated it. The mission is completely do-able now since they fixed the ally AI.
If you ca't beat it now... then idk watch a youtube tutorial or something....
EDIT: Just realized this is a different mission all together from Devil's choice. Sorry about that (I haven't had my coffee this morning yet) Still I beat this mission no problem. GL to ya'll that can't >.<
God this mission is so incredibly BORING. I have spent the last 2 hours on one mission. Not because I keep dying but because they've fit like 4 missions into one and stretched it out. I've played games that sucked, but I've never played one that made me wish there was an "unconditional surrender" feature... I honestly would take 10 hours of Tal Shiar interrogation than finish this mission. Nice job devs... I'm guessing this mission is the result of a Hot Pocket and Red Bull famine.
Agreed. This mission is incredibly tedious. The first parts are ok, but the last mission is so boring that it's more fun to watch the paint dry on my ships.
It does not exactly help that the so called "help" is shuttles/fighters. They get destroyed very fast, leaving the player as good as alone.
The Elachi is an annoying enemy in space, with the crescent attack and those bloody sub-space jumps. That they can launch support ships does not make it any easier.
And the fact that they can spam VM is just compunding the problem.
There is no doubt as some said earlier that this mission needs a complete overhaul.
It's one of the most boring missions in the LoR experience imho, and the story in this mission is not exactly stellar either...
So, to sum up: boring, tedious, not much story, Elachi are interesting, but very annoying to fight due to their abilities, particularly sub-space jump and the constant spamming of VM.
Boring...Tedious...the ever present feeling that my Romulan superiority complex was diminishing with minute that passed.
I would have to agree on all points mentioned, I get through half the first wave to see the wave counter still at 0/3 and realise this is going to be a long haul. I return to my ready room stick on a film and let the crew do the work (kinda).
The ability to jump behind me fine...I'll save my tac powers for after...Oh your sending boarding partys on regular basis and shutting down my systems...guess I'll have to keep hold of my tac abilities a little longer...and after the long wait finally I let rip tractor beam that TRIBBLE cannons firing...and APO...YOU SON OF A B*****. There are a few more abilities I didn't mention cause quite frankly I didn't even know what they were.
This was more like fighting a PvP match against players +10 levels without the increment than a PvE mission suitable to the level.
But I did it, was it worth it not really. Would I have finished the mission if I wasn't so eager to level and jump into my DD probably not. Will I ever do it again...NO F Way.
Cryptic > Change it to 1 wave or nerf the abilitie CDs.
After my first attempt on Wednesday night I would've agreed this was too difficult & boring. Eventually, after struggling for an hour, I exited half way through. I was annoyed by the lack of mobility of the D'deridex (being used to escorts).
Second time, after a look at some of the suggestions on this thread, with a bit more time to devote to the mission & with a bit of a plan, I managed to get through the three waves in around an hour and a half (on and off) with no respawns. I gained a new-found respect for the D'deridex (one tough ship) & for the game. This mission made me think about how I play the game & improved me as a player.
Okay...I'm done defending the Romulan missions, even though they were freaking doable on Tribble with a D'Deridex and mostly White/Common gear, instead of giving hints and tips and showing my Tribble build and so on...I'm just going to say this...
If you are having problems with the Romulan missions, re-evaluate your gear and your ships BOff powers.
The constant nerfing of easy content into even easier content is not needed...at all...
Oh, just an FYI, when LoR went live? My Romulan was flying C-Store ships with fully kitted out crafted gear...Oh it was so ludicrously easy.
Played these last night myself. IT was challenging but didn't quite have the nerve wracking experiences mentioned here. I had heard that they'd powered down one of the Rommie story missions - was this it?
Played these last night myself. IT was challenging but didn't quite have the nerve wracking experiences mentioned here. I had heard that they'd powered down one of the Rommie story missions - was this it?
Yup. I haven't replayed it yet, but I think they reduced the enemy counts, not sure exactly.
So if the mission is hard.... L2P. I beat the old REALLY hard version solo on Tribble in a D'Deridex equipped with TRIBBLE gear.
I like this mission, all you need to do is draw one ship at a time out away from the area they hang out in. Blow it up and draw out another, if you happen to draw out to many ships then cloak and get away and try to draw one out or maybe two if you think you can handle that....
It really is very easy if you employ some strategy other then going into the thick of things thinking you can take on the whole wave yourself.
One at a time and learn to use your cloak to your advantage.:cool:
Played these last night myself. IT was challenging but didn't quite have the nerve wracking experiences mentioned here. I had heard that they'd powered down one of the Rommie story missions - was this it?
Devil's Choice got toned down.
Last Stand ... is just boring. I don't believe it got toned down. It may be slightly overtuned, but not massively so. It's just a dull encounter set. First Mission, 3 groups, 2nd mission 3 waves of 1 group, 3rd mission 3 waves of 3 groups. Just not all that interesting to deal with.
Comments
You boys are clueless, totally clueless. Its a cakewalk if you use your BRAIN!! I know that is a foreign idea to a lot of you who just like to go all Leeeeeeeroy on everything.
0/10 on your trolling attempt.
Please grow up a bit and try again.
I found that killing the smaller ships first and isolating the ships by staying on the outskirts and attacking a single ship and running far enough that they follow you out of range of the others. When fighting the battleship kill the support ships first or you will be fighting for a long time. If they aren't going to make the D'deridex turn better, then it needs a serious weapons upgrade. Just my opinion.
Why don't you go get a life fattie.
Either reduce the total number of groups or ships, or add in some mechanic to make it interesting. Make it a time based defence where we have to stop too many ships getting too close.
But I've also got to say, if you're taking a hour to complete a wave, then you probably haven't made the transition from Fed/KDF play style to Romulan. Most of the missions it doesn't matter, but this is one of the few where you really have to play to the strength of the ship.
^^^ This
I too was so used Fed gameplay and finally figured out to use the battlecloak to my atvantage.
But doing it solo is a pain in the neck at best of times, i gave up after 1 and a half hours through sheer boredom. Putting it simpley, the elachi missions would be better at level 40 upwards.
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
The good things.
Time, I am playing to kill it. If it was short, I had to replay it and replay it and ... oh wait.
Nice rewards. I am going for a full set of those plasma weapons for my Rom captain. Next, there is plenty of secundary loot, that gives good EC at the vendor, or you end up with a couple of greens or a blue item.
How to.
First. A low level, under developped escort set up (which is always the case at this level) will have it hard. You need survivability, some tankiness, the fight isn't short. You can get such a ship by doing the Temporal Ambassador mission.
Kinetic damage is the answer here. Gravity Well, but also get something that strips shield so those small craft can use their torpedoes. Anything that bypasses shield is great here.
Mine pooping. That is a new tactic of my that I use more and more. I mount a mine launcher in the aft and set it to autofire, so when I am in combat I TRIBBLE mines. I see it as a poor mans console thing. Now there are those ships that jump away from you when you get close. Where do you think they end up? BTW, take a mine launcher with a short cooldown.
To resume. It is not a short mission, but I love it.
Use feedback pulse and let them hurt themselves - tie it to a doffed atb for a cd reduction (when not using fbp, of course) and whack aux as high as you dare (or heck, pop a battery) then dive in, ignore the small fry, take out the battleships and on the third wave, just do repeated decloak runs on the command ship, using fbp to hopefully take out attackers
..and carry dual eng teams - you will have to hit distribute shields often, but a cycled eng team will mean the Elachis worst attacks are mitigated
Also for the DD..aux2damp helps a lot.
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
I like big, challenging battles, but not when they take over an hour to complete in a ship I don't like or want.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
Part of the reason I liked it were the larger waves of ships. It felt closer to a real attack. If you really wanted to take out an area, you wouldn't send your ships 3 a time and give up after a couple of waves. Rather you would through what you hope is an overwhelming force.
This didn't feel like the typical action film fight seen where the group of enemies stand aside and attack the hero one at time, waiting for the first guy to be taken out before attacking.
Granted being a game, you do want to win, it was nice to have to work at it a bit.
Peaceful exploration? I have a heavily armed ship and a phaser with a kill setting, how peaceful is that?
Another thing, those of you who have been playing for years, Do not forget that the episodes are training for new players. If normal difficulty is too much for them then it needs to be toned down. You always have the choice to increase the difficulty for yourself and throwing new players at veteran level difficulty is a good way for a company to lose potential customers.
"I'm drunk, whats your excuse for being an idiot?" - Unknown drunk man. :eek:
You must be really, REALLY bad at this game to take 1 hour to fight the first wave.
The whole line for this strand of the Romulan campaign is long, but it was easy. I have found the portion defending the space station to be fun with my D'Deridex cutting apart the opposition.
I got through all three waves in an hour. The key for me is to use energy siphon or any energy draining Boff skills and the singularity well to wear down shields and defenses, keep your broadside to the escort or the battlecruiser so when he shoots out the cone area of death warning, take the shortest path out using evasive and engine battery before he shoots the cresent torpedo, then battle cloak to recover and close in and fire off your alpha strike. Evasive maneuvers is the lifesaver here, never use it during regular combat and only to dodge the alpha strike.
It did, however, perfectly illustrate how the D warbird moves like a bloated cow. I had to use evasive maneuvers just to get off a few front-loaded torpedoes.
It was a slog fest. Please fix.
So far, this was the worst mission of the Romulan faction. 1 wave would have seemed OK. 3 was overkill.
Very boring
I am stating this to say I have started to play last week with STO, with zero knowledge how STO, as an MMO, works.
I completed the mission 2 days ago and since then my feelings have changed tremendously.
After my first try (yes, I have warped out without completing the mission, cause I had enough) my reaction was: this is brutal, way out of line compared to all what I had to do so far.
My equipment must be outdated... I must be doing something terrible wrong.
And being a true Romulan survivor:
- I did some foundry mission,
- played the market,
- looked for various daily missions (Sector Borg, Mining)
- Started to give attention how my ship is equipped,
- what weapons do I use and what differentiate a plasma beam from a disruptor cannon apart from the angle.
- what bridge officer actions are available to me.
- I started to read STO wiki to learn more about how to play a Tactical Romulan.
- What are my ship energy level modifying stuff I gathered only so far.
- Why is my D'D's inertia so low, what options do I have?
- How can I use my battle cloak?
- Planned how I can avoid the massive cone-banana-alpha damage and how to use the lowered forward shield to apply my damage.
During my second try
Quick alpha damage -> singularity defense -> cloak again.
Dodged cone attack with Evasion and increased engine power.
Used my weapon systems' hull DOT damage feature and ejected warp plasma in front of the dreadnaughts.
Massed damage bonus to increase my alpha
Played it like (I think) I have to in case facing superior number of enemies with different technology.
During my first try I died like 10+ times before I said: nope, this is not okay.
During my second try I died 3 times... due to my not so well designed reinforcement.
Two things I would change:
(i) Give a WARNING: Be prepared! This is not the usual Fire-All-Weapons mission you got used to so far.
(ii) Redesign support npcs Have them fly small, fast ships focusing on Elachi support.
and if your enemy can respawn... have our support respawn too.
Tow days ago I would have said: Nerf Elachi. This mission was designed absolutely wrong.
Today I say this is bloody spot on and I enjoy STO more!
Overall, I came out stronger and ready for new challenges!
(And I bought the Starter Pack)
If you ca't beat it now... then idk watch a youtube tutorial or something....
EDIT: Just realized this is a different mission all together from Devil's choice. Sorry about that
My Foundry Missions:
The Wave Empire Series: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=279751
Agreed. This mission is incredibly tedious. The first parts are ok, but the last mission is so boring that it's more fun to watch the paint dry on my ships.
It does not exactly help that the so called "help" is shuttles/fighters. They get destroyed very fast, leaving the player as good as alone.
The Elachi is an annoying enemy in space, with the crescent attack and those bloody sub-space jumps. That they can launch support ships does not make it any easier.
And the fact that they can spam VM is just compunding the problem.
There is no doubt as some said earlier that this mission needs a complete overhaul.
It's one of the most boring missions in the LoR experience imho, and the story in this mission is not exactly stellar either...
So, to sum up: boring, tedious, not much story, Elachi are interesting, but very annoying to fight due to their abilities, particularly sub-space jump and the constant spamming of VM.
Boring...Tedious...the ever present feeling that my Romulan superiority complex was diminishing with minute that passed.
I would have to agree on all points mentioned, I get through half the first wave to see the wave counter still at 0/3 and realise this is going to be a long haul. I return to my ready room stick on a film and let the crew do the work (kinda).
The ability to jump behind me fine...I'll save my tac powers for after...Oh your sending boarding partys on regular basis and shutting down my systems...guess I'll have to keep hold of my tac abilities a little longer...and after the long wait finally I let rip tractor beam that TRIBBLE cannons firing...and APO...YOU SON OF A B*****. There are a few more abilities I didn't mention cause quite frankly I didn't even know what they were.
This was more like fighting a PvP match against players +10 levels without the increment than a PvE mission suitable to the level.
But I did it, was it worth it not really. Would I have finished the mission if I wasn't so eager to level and jump into my DD probably not. Will I ever do it again...NO F Way.
Cryptic > Change it to 1 wave or nerf the abilitie CDs.
Second time, after a look at some of the suggestions on this thread, with a bit more time to devote to the mission & with a bit of a plan, I managed to get through the three waves in around an hour and a half (on and off) with no respawns. I gained a new-found respect for the D'deridex (one tough ship) & for the game. This mission made me think about how I play the game & improved me as a player.
Loving the Romulan gameplay!
If you are having problems with the Romulan missions, re-evaluate your gear and your ships BOff powers.
The constant nerfing of easy content into even easier content is not needed...at all...
Oh, just an FYI, when LoR went live? My Romulan was flying C-Store ships with fully kitted out crafted gear...Oh it was so ludicrously easy.
So if the mission is hard.... L2P. I beat the old REALLY hard version solo on Tribble in a D'Deridex equipped with TRIBBLE gear.
My character Tsin'xing
It really is very easy if you employ some strategy other then going into the thick of things thinking you can take on the whole wave yourself.
One at a time and learn to use your cloak to your advantage.:cool:
Devil's Choice got toned down.
Last Stand ... is just boring. I don't believe it got toned down. It may be slightly overtuned, but not massively so. It's just a dull encounter set. First Mission, 3 groups, 2nd mission 3 waves of 1 group, 3rd mission 3 waves of 3 groups. Just not all that interesting to deal with.