This is something that's been an issue since XCOM 2 initially released, but playing the game again with War of the Chosen has reminded me of the problem.

While every mission type has the potential to be difficult, none of them have the same scaling and randomness problems of "Protect the Device". In the early game, it's typically not an issue since most enemies only do 4-5 damage at most, giving you at least 8-10 turns to secure success. However, the HP of the device doesn't scale, so you're looking at potentially as few as 3-4 turns once you start running into enemies that can do 10+ damage in a single hit. Worse yet, there are a few late game enemies that can just stomp directly on top of the objective and destroy it in a single turn.

I wish these missions had been rebalanced with War of the Chosen, but instead, it looks like you have to continue to avoid them at all costs in mid/late game unless there's a dark event that you'd really like to counter or a reward that you desperately need.

What do you folks think? Any other mission types (or sitreps) that you particularly try to avoid?

I was hoping this mission would have been adjusted for WOTC, but I just ran into it last night. Berserker pod spawned right on top of the objective, which was on the other side of the map, and started shooting it on turn one. Oh and to make matters worse, this was a Lost mission as well.

I didn't have problems with that mission type myself. Even 2-3 turn is enough to get my squad in range and start shooting the offending enemies at which point they focus on the squad. At one point I had triple pods on it with mechs, archons, mutons and a gatekeeper among other assorted rabble (and the lost sitrep) sitting right on top of it, but at that point I was just able to bring in overwhelming firepower and didn't hesitate to even use grenades on the device itself as it was still a net positive in terms of clearing out the area.

Is there something that can kill it in one turn? Couse that seems unintended and a bad oversight.

Generally the Lost sitreps were the most tiring to me because it limited your use of explosives and also the with flamethrower guys having a chance to explode, or Sectopods exploding at some point you could end up covered in Lost. Lost specific mission by themselves aren't that bad. But I let a dark event go through when there were Lost swarms on every mission for a month and that doesn't not go well together with certain objectives.

The other notable tough time I had was when the doom clock was on the edge and I had to assault a facility with the most powerful Ruler on it, the Berserker with tier 2 gear still, ouch.

I think all but one of my protect the device missions had most of the enemies all spawned in the device room. I can't tell if it's a bug or another of XCOM 2's awful design decisions to make it seem tense or something. Eventually I had soldiers that could move across half the map per turn and one-shot most aliens, so they weren't a problem by then, but I skipped all of those missions up to that point.

Last night, I failed two of these missions back-to-back.

On the first one, I discovered that it's unfortunately not always the case the enemies will actually all focus on your squad after you've entered their range. I did exactly what you suggest here, and I rushed forward to try to aggro all of the enemies. However, in spite of all of the groups of enemies being activated and primarily focused on me, at least one was still taking a shot at the objective on every turn. Most surprisingly, even The Warlock took a shot at it.

On the second one, there was an andromedon standing directly beside the objective doing 10+ damage every turn. I managed to reach the objective and activate all of the enemies before the device was destroyed, but then on the next turn the andromedon walked directly through the device instantly destroying it.

I somehow got out of both encounters without any deaths, which is a miracle when you're dashing into multiple enemy groups on commander difficulty, but I'm still kinda pissed about how that all went down.

@chaser324: Damn that sounds like something that really shouldn't be allowed to happen, where terrain destroying enemies can just destroy it by walking through or next to it.

I had something similar. I had probably 6-7 tough aliens attacking the objective. I sprinted over there as fast as I could with the Lost in tow, my strat was to try and use an Ultrasonic Lureon the pods attacking the device to try to get the Lost and aliens to fight one another. It didn't work, I just couldn't get close enough in time for the Lure to work properly.

I forgot all about this, sad it was never fixed.