Alien Terror (EU2012)

• Mission Objectives
  • Approach civilians to enable evacutions
  • Minimize civilian casualties
  • Neutralize all hostile targets
• Alien Terror Attacks, or Terror missions, have made a return from the original game. In this missions, the civilians will be spread randomly throughout the map. As you approach them nearby aliens will engage both you and the civilians. Each civilian lost counts against your final score. To rescue a civilian all you need to do is get close to them. Necessary proximity is indicated by a circle around each civilian.
• Although there is no timer or countdown on this type of mission, you need to be very quick without being reckless. Too slow and you lose civilians which can then be turned into zombies by a Chryssalid and then eventually hatch into a new Chryssalid. Too reckless and you'll lose your troops to the overwhelming forces in these fights.
• Civilians still alive when all aliens are dead are automatically counted as rescued; they do not all have to personally rescued, although that makes them immune to further attack.
• All civilians count as dead if you lose or abort the mission, even ones that you've rescued.
• Explicitly rescuing civilians is not really necessary. Once you've extended your front line ahead of them you've essentially made them safe from the aliens anyway. Civilians the aliens can't reach are just as safe as civilians who are rescued. If anything, keeping civilians around is good, since a dead civilian hurts your cause less than a dead or wounded soldier. Whenever a civilian gets shot, think to yourself "better him than me".
• Unlike original XCOM, there is no additional penalty for X-COM killing a civilian if such an unfortunate event does happen (with explosives, primarily). Remember, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few! ;)
• Any civilian count at 14 or above is considered "Excellent", so there's some room for error, depending where the civilians spawn.
• Doing well can drop a country's panic level by as much as 3, and subtract 1 or 2 Panic points from the other nations on that continent.
• Aliens almost always take priority to shoot civillians over your troopers, and never miss killing them. In fact, they will often skip on a close-range flanking shot on a soldier, and shoot a civillian halfway down the street instead.
  • If you're hurting on the panic levels, you might find it a worthwhile risk to move out of cover, just to get a clear/flanking shot, if it means getting 3 "Excellent" ratings.
  • The two exceptions to this priority rule are the high-HP Sectopods and Berserkers: they will always ignore civillians to get at your troops. This forces you to concentrate your fire on them while their squadmates pick off civvies at will.