The [REDACTED] introduction mission feedback.

I'm slowly running my first campaign on expert ironman and recently got to [REDACTED] faction introduction mission and started their operation immediately after.

How the introduction mission built the wrong expectations and made me prepare incorrectly.

The only enemies you (or at least I) encounter are the drones and soldiers with average armor that can be stripped and huge HP pools that you have to get through. There is huge swath of enemies slowly moving towards you and chipping at your morale. One could say basically zombies. Luckily you have the 4 round limit and evacuation.

My initial thoughts: some armor to be stripped and after that huge HP pools that you have to get through while being ammo efficient. Add the that some crowd control because of their specific surpression mechanic that I haven't fully figured out yet on the introduction operation.

Now the first operation. Around 1500 supplies so I understand we are at the point where higher tier units from other factions appear consistently, maybe not in large numbers yet.

What I meet is high number of very high armor no hp pool suicide bombs, their terminator like vehicle with higher armor values than medium vehicles of other factions, everything with quite decent detection range. Mostly enemies that have to be taken out by anti vehicle weaponry. My main anti tank squad gets wiped out in a single turn (honest mistake), my 120mm mortar that I put in exactly against hordes of infantry and auto cannon on other squad can't deal with the armor and I have to rescue the SL and abandon.

I avoided most posts about [REDACTED] on the sub to not spoil myself, but I've seen some complaints about their design. As I haven't played enough against them I have not yet formed opinion about the faction as a whole.

My problem is with the introduction mission. It's stated the the enemies you are fighting there are some kind of early designs of [REDACTED] so one could expect more formidable enemy units in the future. But my very first mission against them after that required the exact opposite weaponry and tactics to what I would assume after the introduction.

Should the introduction mission prepare you for everything the faction can throw at you? No, but playing on Ironman it made me do the literal opposite of what I should have done.

In conclusion if the [REDACTED] faction stays the same their introduction operation should either consist of at least 2 missions, you should fight different types of enemies during the mission or their other units should be implemented more gradually during following operations.