Terror Mission

Large numbers of aliens have landed in a major city! The population panics! There are special large "Terror Units" we haven't seen before!

Funnily enough, these seem to be more of a trap for your squad than a political move by the aliens... Oh well, into the breach once more...

Briefing

Mission will be successful when all enemy units have been eliminated or neutralised. You must attempt to save the lives of any civilians in the area by neutralising the alien menace.

Alien Deployment

Rank	Beg./Exp.	Vet./Gen.	Super.
Soldiers	4-5	5-6	6-7
Navigators	1	1	2
Medics	1-2	1-2	1-2
Engineers	1	1	2
Leaders	1	1	1
Commanders	0	0	0
Terrorists	2-6	4-8	6-10
Totals	10-16	13-19	18-24

Civilian Deployment

The number of civilians spawning during a Terror Mission is between 0-16. Generally, expect between 8 and 16 civilians to still be alive when you arrive. However, if the aliens have wiped them all out, they'll still happily combat your squad.

Tips & Tricks

• The Terror UFO isn't anywhere to be found during a terror mission.
• Urban Terrain (city/suburb).
• In a terror site - worry about your soldiers first. Civilians later. Very important. This is a game, so you can choose to be a bit heartless. (It's called collateral damage)
• The gas pumps are explosive!
• All buildings in the cityscape are very weak. Light gunfire can destroy fences and walls.
• To save a few more civilians than usual, try limiting HE rounds.
• TIME is NOT on your side. If you want a half-decent score, expand quickly and secure. The quicker you kill aliens or get them to panic, the more civilians you'll save overall.
• The aliens will have grenades and heavy plasma, but they never bring blaster bombs along on terror missions. I suppose they don't want to end it that quickly.
• Bring lots of heavy rockets and high-explosive. First people off the transport should create a "free fire" zone around the craft with them. You aren't penalized for property damage, so level the place.
• You can get a rough idea for how many civilians are left by gauging the length of the alien turn (civilians move after aliens). You can also count the number of civilian screams you hear during alien turns -- each scream is a death. To get a sure-fire count of total civilians, you can save your game, abort the mission, check the debriefing tally of killed civilians, and then reload. (Some players may view this as cheating.)

UFOs with Terror Missions

The city-raiding terror mission mentioned above occurs only when a Terror Ship is sent on an Alien Terror mission and lands on a city.

But before this happens the aliens will send a Small/Medium/Large Scout which will show on a Hyper-wave Decoder as on a Terror Mission. The ship will land randomly, in some non-urban area, and behave much like you would expect to see on a an Alien Research or Alien Abduction mission. Unlike a city raid, these scout terror missions will not include Terror Units.

If this scout is shot down by X-COM craft and/or assaulted on the ground, chances are that the following Terror Ship will not be able to target any city when it arrives at its target region. It will then wander around for some hours on the area before finally departing back to its hidden base. To know if a Terror Ship will attack a city, watch for its flight pattern: if it immediately heads towards a city after arriving at a region, then it will perform a Terror Mission.

While the city-raiding missions cannot be ignored because of the drop in X-Com's funding and esteem that it would cause, they can be largely avoided by shooting down the scouts. Another alternative, perhaps more risky, is to try to shoot the Terror Ship before it lands. However, both might risk some sort of Alien Retaliation.

See Also

• Terror Units
  
• Alien Terror
  
• Urban Terrain