Probably everybody here but me already knew this. THERE IS NO TIME LIMIT ON BEACON PLANTING MISSIONS!!!
If you get to the last turn and all of the beacons aren't placed, all that happens is an insignificant 'kill team' appears to annoy for the two turns it takes for them to die, then you have unlimited turns to plant the beacons, regardless of how urgent everybody made it sound that you were going to miss the window for the satellite passing overhead.
I just did a 4 1/2 skull one of these missions on a jungle map I'd never seen before. It didn't accept the placement of Alpha Beacon (I got a mech to stand in the target hex, but didn't realize until that mech got to the evacuation point that the game hadn't given me credit for it). And Charlie Beacon was a complete washout. I should've gotten there from Bravo on turn 10 (the last 'acceptable' turn), but it turned out 'you can't get there from here' without a jumping mech, which I didn't have.
So I aborted to the evac point, expecting it to appear on turn 10 or 11. It didn't. Instead I got notice of the impending arrival of a so-called 'kill team', which was actually a big nothing burger. After disposing of the kill team the evac point still didn't appear, and it told me I still had two beacons to place. Shrugging, I did it, the evac point appeared, and I evaced a turn before a second kill team was scheduled to arrive.
On turn 22.
Had I known I could take my time with these things I would've handled them much differently.
If you get to the last turn and all of the beacons aren't placed, all that happens is an insignificant 'kill team' appears to annoy for the two turns it takes for them to die, then you have unlimited turns to plant the beacons, regardless of how urgent everybody made it sound that you were going to miss the window for the satellite passing overhead.
I just did a 4 1/2 skull one of these missions on a jungle map I'd never seen before. It didn't accept the placement of Alpha Beacon (I got a mech to stand in the target hex, but didn't realize until that mech got to the evacuation point that the game hadn't given me credit for it). And Charlie Beacon was a complete washout. I should've gotten there from Bravo on turn 10 (the last 'acceptable' turn), but it turned out 'you can't get there from here' without a jumping mech, which I didn't have.
So I aborted to the evac point, expecting it to appear on turn 10 or 11. It didn't. Instead I got notice of the impending arrival of a so-called 'kill team', which was actually a big nothing burger. After disposing of the kill team the evac point still didn't appear, and it told me I still had two beacons to place. Shrugging, I did it, the evac point appeared, and I evaced a turn before a second kill team was scheduled to arrive.
On turn 22.
Had I known I could take my time with these things I would've handled them much differently.
