How to Set Back the Timer
There are special missions which delete ALL progress of a faction if you do them. So you CAN set back the timer substantially. And reverse plenty things.
Especially later with more agents as you uncover more special missions that allow you to do these special “timer setback” missions.
Also going on a mission and defeeting one of the scion bosses does ADDITIONALLY set back the timer substantially.
There are ways to set back the progress of the factions a plenty.
Also:
- You can go on explorer difficulty and have a lower timer setting in addition.
- For those scoffing about explorer difficulty:
- The enemies have a little bit less health but the mass of enemies is still something after the early game.
- Also it is a good way to cut your teeth.
But Again:
- Even on mid you have plenty options to set back the timer.
- And the deathclock has several stages.
- Each having a “longer” time for the factions to tick their next stage.
- So having a faction on stage 1 is no game ending thing.
The timer is an integral part of the game, but it would’ve been better if they allowed you to take on more difficult missions to set the timer back more that way you could take a big risk for a larger reward. Currently the gameplay is pretty much just take the missions that give the largest relative threat (timer) decrease since the missions rewards are random and you’ll overall end up with more stuff (aka stronger agents) by just doing more missions and the way to do more missions is to just keep reducing threat (timer) increases as much as possible.
The timer is okay more or less. But it punishes you for doing any plot missions or recruitments. Going for a new character means you are allowing all threats advance. Same for plot missions. In XCOM advancing plot was setting the timer back. You were rewarded for it. And here you just juggling threats till you find a less punishing time to go for the plot. And I assume I’ll end up with 5 initial characters out of 10 in the game beacuse I’m not wasting time.
Then plot missions have optional preparation missions to reduce difficulty. But doing them is punishing x3, since those are not setting factions back as well