Turn-Based Tactics Into the Breach: Advanced Edition - mech tactics game from FTL devs with Chris Avellone writing

[sser]

Yup. Though I found the fire guys to be extremely good at simply outright exterminating the bugs just as well as shoving them around.

How so? I find fire squad to be the most unwieldy considering its all damage over time. They get two forward-pushes and the single-target teleporter.

Because they have some of the best CC combinations available layered with perpetual first initiative damage:

Utility mech can swap places which can have a nominal exchange of up to SIX squares of movement AND displace the enemy to where you want AND put you where you want. Disgustingly powerful.

Their Prime Mech does damage and he pushes and he sets locations on fire.

Then their basic Long-Range mech does what most do, which is push enemies around perpendicularly with the additive effect of setting the ground on fire. He's one of the mechs that you can put on top of a burrow and firebomb another burrow. This is only bested by the rockthrower from Blitz who can stand on a burrow and simultaneously bury another burrow with his rock.

And then there's setting everything on fire. Vek don't extinguish themselves & Fire damage sequences first, meaning if a Vek is 1hp and on fire you can stop giving a shit about them. Setting everything on fire quickly adds up: all those little notches of damage, all those times where a Vek has 1hp and you can't find a way to stop them, all of that is instantly solved. Once the Vek is on fire, they have a few turns of life left at best. This let's you rearrange your focus onto future threats. If you have a good opening turn, you can quickly clear the board and take it easy. This is how I steamrolled a Normal run with the fire team. This is also the run where I accidentally ended a turn on the last map but it didn't even matter.

 

[toro]

Spent 20 hours with this game.

I finished first 2 islands with perfect score and then for some retard motive I decided to try the 3rd island instead of the final island. Lost everything.

 

[Black]

The UI is great, even if it doesn't have FTL's' stroke of genius.

By God.
Twitching on the space bar to time cloack is a stroke of genius.
Fucking constantly shuffling energy bars around is a stroke of genius!
Holy hell, the micro with boarding!
F T L - a literal stroke with fatal brain hemorrhaging.

Proving that everything would be better turn-based.

 

[Urthor]

Hard difficulty is actually just irritating. It goes from there's a perfect solution if only you squint your eyes long enough to okay wow there's no way out of this without losing grid power, just frustrating to have to finish to get the achievment tbh.

 

[sser]

That's why I didn't like their way of doing difficulty - I thought the better implementation would be to strip away precisely what makes things easy: time. Introduce a turn timer and things get a little dicier. If you have all the time in the world, you seriously just need to be patient and the game pretty much solves itself. Not good design, IMO, though apparently good enough to get a bunch of people fucking shit up anyway which speaks volumes about the average gamer's patience I guess.

 

[Black]

Alpha ITB version

 

[Arnust]

For anyone who got it on Steam, now you didn't do the objectively worst call (like me):

Utility mech can swap places which can have a nominal exchange of up to SIX squares of movement AND displace the enemy to where you want AND put you where you want. Disgustingly powerful.

Their Prime Mech does damage and he pushes and he sets locations on fire.

The Prime Mech's Flamethrower also can freely be selected on which tile the actual "punch" effect takes place among all the ones you have range in once it's upgraded (because there's >1 tiles to choose from) which can be really damn useful and do shit like going through buildings, if I don't remember wrong. The Swap mech can also be very favoured by one of the "Extra move after action" pilots to get yourself out of the way of danger, even if it's the human pilot which just gives you one tile of movement.

 

[sser]

Mobility in general is good to have on all the mechs. I usually shoot for mobility and a +HP. One of the more powerful items is one that gives everyone move if they start next to each other, and IMO the best pilot (so far anyway) is the lady who ignores Smoke and Vek grabs.

 

[Arnust]

She sounds even more useful for when people start figuring out Vek attack pattern and priorities, to start baiting enemies intentionally. Sounds whack coupled with Rusting Hulks, too.

 

[Silva]

Was almost giving up on the Rusting Hulks when I found out the +1 range for the Aircraft missile and... well, it changed everything.

I love the fact you must find each team's specific tactics (which usually only works with certain upgrades unlocked) and then that initial "what's the fuss about it?" becomes "WOOOOOW this team rocks!".

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

I just lost 3 islands clearing run because I didn't pay attention to a conveyor belt.
Suffered 4 grid damage in one turn. At least I opened the 4th island, one pilot and Blitzkrieg team.

I wonder if there are some team combinations on which game is impossible to play through on normal.
Considering going in with 3 shield bubble throwers of Zenith team.

edit.
Strange; game's saving system glitched and I could have continued my old save that I mentioned above about from situation after 3rd island. My unlocks that I purchased after that run remained.

 

[Hellraiser]

I finally managed to get to island 4. Also managed to complete it and try the final island for the second time, but I got raped by the Vek nuking the grid on phase 2.

Blitzkrieg is rather good, I had max electro whip+the toss arm on the prime, the grapple bot had also maxed out smoke bombs (that shit is OP), the rock throwing bot didn't get anything nice, so it had a passive that grants any psion aura benefits also to your mechs and maxed out rocks.

Using rocks and your own mechs as conduits for the electrical murderwave is very fun. Plus the advantage of the electro-whip is it allows you to deal with vek even if their numbers snowball out of control and it actually becomes easier to do damage, as you have more nodes through which the murderwave travels and there are far more positions from which you can make an attack (so obstacles matter less). You just need to get the chain through building upgrade.

One of the more powerful items is one that gives everyone move if they start next to each other, and IMO the best pilot (so far anyway) is the lady who ignores Smoke and Vek grabs.

I have to agree, I also like the guy that can orbital drop anywhere during deployment but being immune to vek grabs is ridiculously good and after playing with both the lady wins. Vek grabs are by far the most disruptive thing Vek can do.

 

[Arnust]

If you think the smoke bomb is OP, imagine it coupled with the Rusting Hulks haha

Seen this on the Steam forum. Holy...

 

[Zarniwoop]

Spent 20 hours with this game.

I finished first 2 islands with perfect score and then for some retard motive I decided to try the 3rd island instead of the final island. Lost everything.

Did the same thing. Had perfect health left, and 21% defense.

Thought you could click on an island to see before committing to it, but NOPE. I was in. Got zergrushed about 2 maps in, managed to keep 1 pilot but lost the rest along with all mech upgrades of course.

On the plus side, the Blitzkrieg squad I unlocked, KICKS ASS. Zappity zap zap.

 

[Silva]

I feel the game minimum lenght (2 islands + final) is not enough to see the game "crap" (items, pilots, etc), thus incentivizing the player to only buy power cores+energy and ignoring new gear/pilots expermentation. I wish they revise this somehow in the future.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

I feel the game minimum lenght (2 islands + final) is not enough to see the game "crap" (items, pilots, etc), thus incentivizing the player to only buy power cores+energy and ignoring new gear/pilots expermentation. I wish they revise this somehow in the future.

Isn't the point of option for early end fight to make player agonize about their load out for it?

 

[Arnust]

The way to clear acid tiles seems to be to repair your mech over them.

 

[baud]

I feel the game minimum lenght (2 islands + final) is not enough to see the game "crap" (items, pilots, etc), thus incentivizing the player to only buy power cores+energy and ignoring new gear/pilots expermentation. I wish they revise this somehow in the future.

Isn't the point of option for early end fight to make player agonize about their load out for it?

I've just finished after two island (for the first time). You don't have a lot of choices in loadout after just two island and it's more useful I think to just go power cores+energy, since you will make you mechs stronger, but won't change the way you play.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

I've fired up FTL right now and ran through a Normal campaign with the first ship (which might be the best...shields, burst laser, rockets...) and I disagree again. Its borderline impossible to lose such a vanilla run.
Up shields to 2. Park ship against an enemy with a single laser and drone or meteorite field. Get coffee. Come back to 2 gold stars crew in Shields, Piloting, Engines and Evasion already up to 30%.
You have to really suck to get that ship destroyed before you find Cloak at which point you get 2 untouched attacks to bring down enemy guns and/or shields or evasion. Top it of with mindcontrol/hacking...

Second variant of the first ship is even easier for playtrough. You only need one pip weapon upgrade + plus 2 shot/energy normal weapon combined with necessary shield + engine and preferably stealth upgrades to beat final boss.

There are still some ship variants on which success is eluding me. Zoltan C and Mantis C for example.
Do you have any fool proof strategies for those?

Spoiler

I think that with Subset Games games different starting ships/mechs are best thought of as difficulty modifiers.

 

[toro]

I finally finished the game on Normal. The run was almost perfect but I only did two islands because 3 times is was raped on the 3rd island and although my squad was almost perfect I did not want to risk another wipe.

Spoiler

My characters after the first 2 islands:

End fight screenshots:

Spoiler

 

[Arnust]

I think you forgot to put a spoiler tag for the first row of pic, lad. GG, anyway.

 

[toro]

The way to clear acid tiles seems to be to repair your mech over them.

Fire is extinguished if you heal over a tile on fire.

 

[Stavrophore]

If you think the smoke bomb is OP, imagine it coupled with the Rusting Hulks haha

Seen this on the Steam forum. Holy...

Problem is -getting this weapon is random, either from pods or from the "shop", since none of the mechs have this as default weapon.

 

[Zarniwoop]

Inb4 they remove it because of assfaggots complaining it's "OP". This is not World of Warcrap god dammit.

 

[Black]

This lil fag here is probably one of the strongest mechs in the game. The stuff you can do with teleporting enemies from 4 tiles away is insane. Just upgrade his teleport and move and you're set.
And it's the Science class, which gets many cool gadgets.