Missions (Long War)

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Standard Missions

Alien Missions

Alien Abductions

Alien Abductions are generated by landing UFOs - the UFO will disappear and be replaced by an abduction site that you can respond to, even if you don't have that country covered and didn't detect the incoming UFO. Shooting down the UFO before it lands will, naturally, prevent the abduction being generated. Due to the different format, abductions will only affect one country at a time and you no longer have to choose. The reward for abductions is always credits. Skipping or failing an abduction mission will result in increased panic in the affected country and continent.

UFO Crash Site

When a UFO is shot down and not destroyed a UFO Crash Site mission becomes available. Completion of a UFO Crash Site mission rewards the player with the possibility of recovering valuable components from the UFO--- however, a crashed UFO is now even more likely to have destroyed artifacts. In fact, after the first round, you will more often than not hear the UFO's Elerium Generators exploding. Be forewarned some UFOs are crewed by elite crews; these will have a large number of strong aliens defending them. UFO crash sites are determined by a few fators, if a UFO is shot down at a high altitude, the chance for a UFO being destroyed outright is higher. The lower the altitude, the higher the chance of a crash site. In the off chance, that a UFO is shot down from high orbit, there is a higher chance for valuable equipment to be destroyed, when your troops arrive.

UFO Landing Site

Some UFO missions will involve a landing. Whether or not this will be the case can often be determined by looking at the UFO's altitude (low altitude often means it will land). If you allow the UFO to land it will either generate a terror mission, an abduction, or simply a landing site. It may actually be in your interests to let low-flying UFOs land, as (a) it will save your interceptor craft some damage, and (b) it will net you a lot more salvage, including intact computers and generators. On the other hand, the landing UFO might generate an abduction instead, in which case you lose the salvage you'd get from a crash site. Successfully assaulting a landed UFO will also stop the alien mission from being completed. Be warned some UFOs are crewed by elite crews; these will have a large number of strong aliens defending them.

Terror Site

Similar to vanilla terror missions. You are required to eliminate all hostiles and save as many civilians as you can. Long War is very unforgiving of allowing civilians to die, and you will need to save almost all of the civilians to avoid panic rising in that country and continent. Terror missions are generated by UFOs, so you can prevent a terror mission by shooting down the incoming UFO before it can create the terror site. Like vanilla, failing or ignoring a terror mission will cause the targeted country to leave the project immediately.

Council Missions

Council missions have also been modified, mostly to the tune of larger numbers of enemies, both seeded and airdropped. For example, the Site Recon mission has number of free-roaming Chryssalids. Keep an eye on your ammo.

EXALT

Covert Data Recovery

These missions are similar to their vanilla equivalent. You field a full squad and defend an encoder and transmitter. Comm arrays are available for your covert operative to hack.

Covert Extraction

In this mission type you are limited to only 4 soldiers and your covert operative. As such, you want to avoid getting in to a pitched battle with EXALT, and usually your best strategy is to get your covert operative to the arrays, hack them and get out fast.

Exalt Base Assault

This mission is considerably tougher than it is in vanilla. The EXALT base is crawling with randomly generated elite EXALT squads. In addition you may find some elite aliens here as well.

Long War makes a tweak to the hologlobe UI so that if a mission is outstanding, time acceleration will stop when interesting things like a soldier recovering from fatigue happens. This means you may want to avoid the final "discover" step on the EXALT base until you're ready to assault it to avoid this behaviour triggering constantly even though you don't want it.