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

[thesheeep]

What I don't like is that some - thankfully very rare - missions will just cost you almost the entire power grid, without being able to do anything about it. And it can happen at any time, in normal or high threat missions.
As in, there are four enemies, each doing area damage, you can kill two at max and no matter what you do at least 2 buildings (of course, each supplying 2 power) will be done for. If a mission turns out to be one of those, I just cancel the timeline and start again. The chance to get lucky in next missions to recover the grid is just too low to bother.
My two wins so far have only been because none of those missions popped up.

Power grid defense is entirely useless. Even a team fully focusing on it could never get it higher than 50% - and even that only in an extremely lucky run. Would be much better if it was something less RNG based, like a limited number of deployable shields or similar.

 

[Stavrophore]

What I don't like is that some - thankfully very rare - missions will just cost you almost the entire power grid, without being able to do anything about it. And it can happen at any time, in normal or high threat missions.
As in, there are four enemies, each doing area damage, you can kill two at max and no matter what you do at least 2 buildings (of course, each supplying 2 power) will be done for. If a mission turns out to be one of those, I just cancel the timeline and start again. The chance to get lucky in next missions to recover the grid is just too low to bother.
My two wins so far have only been because none of those missions popped up.

Power grid defense is entirely useless. Even a team fully focusing on it could never get it higher than 50% - and even that only in an extremely lucky run. Would be much better if it was something less RNG based, like a limited number of deployable shields or similar.

Well the first turn is quite RNG thats for sure. Sometimes the probe rewards can be very OP -i got the ability that doesn't cost any power, but can move EVERY non anchored object on the map. My god it was godsend in the last mission, where i've been out of luck in the first turn with webbing/aoe enemy attacks. Hinged with ONE power grid through three reinfeld bombs!, but in the end managed to win. Almost all of the map was lava and smoke, made it with the rusting iron squad, quite op. Going to check all squads on normal, and then try the hard difficulty.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Anyone started playing with custom or randomly rolled squads yet?

 

[Arnust]

For all you fans of the Ice squad, the pilot Bethany Jones' (black scientist lady) innate shield bubble completely protects her from the backlash of the Cryo-Launcher. And of course any shields too, it's just that it seems to be really damn neat and makes it about twice as useful and make the "Shoot the cryo cannon four times in a single battle" reallt trivial to get. As it doesn't need any specific direction to fire and be effective she can stay in the back row without the bubble ever getting damaged, and could be used to block that one stray shot in a pinch.

 

[Hellraiser]

Power grid defense is entirely useless. Even a team fully focusing on it could never get it higher than 50% - and even that only in an extremely lucky run. Would be much better if it was something less RNG based, like a limited number of deployable shields or similar.

I agree, the biggest problem I have with it is that it goes against this vision they had of the battles being deterministic. Shields would be better, but so would negating the first X points of grid damage.

 

[Arnust]

I think that maybe the best after the Power Grid cap would be to still keep the diminishing returns but instead of worse % increases, add small portions of extra bars. So another bar would need two whole charges, the next three and the next four, or something like that. That or vastly increasing the amount of Grid Defense you get, I don't know.

 

[thesheeep]

I think that maybe the best after the Power Grid cap would be to still keep the diminishing returns but instead of worse % increases, add small portions of extra bars. So another bar would need two whole charges, the next three and the next four, or something like that. That or vastly increasing the amount of Grid Defense you get, I don't know.

As long as it is something that might or might not help you, entirely RNG based, it will suck.
Especially if everything else you can get (reputation, cores) is worth so much mure (and always needed and always reliable).

 

[Arnust]

For all you fans of the Ice squad, the pilot Bethany Jones' (black scientist lady) innate shield bubble completely protects her from the backlash of the Cryo-Launcher. And of course any shields too, it's just that it seems to be really damn neat and makes it about twice as useful and make the "Shoot the cryo cannon four times in a single battle" reallt trivial to get. As it doesn't need any specific direction to fire and be effective she can stay in the back row without the bubble ever getting damaged, and could be used to block that one stray shot in a pinch.

Do shields survive being frozen multiple times?

Shields are completely impervious to status effects and they won't be applied, unless that same elemental attack does damage (IE the Centipede's acid spit), which then will pop the shield and in the case where the effect affects the tile they're standing on they'll be affected by it next turn. In this instance the self-freeze is harmless.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

fun little game. it could entertain me for a day or two.

 

[Black]

Codex easter egg confirmed.

 

[wyes gull]

This really feels like playing FTL all over again. You playstyle is determined by your choice in mechs (ship) but not overwhelmingly so because of weapon upgrades. The Grid is all to reminiscent of the Hull bar. One bad mission (encounter) can cascade out of control and fuck everything up. Your success later on seems inevitably tied to how well it goes for you in the earlier islands (sectors). The UI is great, even if it doesn't have FTL's' stroke of genius. Most importantly, I would (perhaps too readily) suggest that it strikes as good a balance between your control and the chaos; losing is oft a matter of luck (or lack thereof) but the abundance of ways you can play the system at any given mission (jump) means that there were avenues to explore that could've spelt a different result- and it might be too early to make such a claim but it does seem, just like in FTL, making the most of it gives you close to optimal solutions without them ever being perfect, much like those 95% -to hit shots you miss so fucking often.

Randoms:
- Rusting Hulks are great! Except everything went to hell in the 2nd island
- Hazardous Mechs are terrible! Except I managed to win with them somehow (also, how the fuck are they not called Toxic Avengers?)
- Blitzkrieg didn't last me a mission
- Archimedes' special "move after shooting" ability is phenom when it comes to sitting on molehills
- Kwan's "move through enemies" matched with a high mobility mech is great, too bad he's such a cunt
- If you get a chance to get the hook as a side weapon, DO NOT MISS IT. GRAB THE HOOK

 

[Dickie]

Power grid defense is entirely useless. Even a team fully focusing on it could never get it higher than 50% - and even that only in an extremely lucky run. Would be much better if it was something less RNG based, like a limited number of deployable shields or similar.

I haven't played the game, but I was checking out some videos and saw that one of the random upgrades your pilots can get on level up is +3 Grid Defense. How did the devs consider this anything close to +1 Move or +1 Mech Reactor?

 

[wyes gull]

I haven't played the game, but I was checking out some videos and saw that one of the random upgrades your pilots can get on level up is +3 Grid Defense. How did the devs consider this anything close to +1 Move or +1 Mech Reactor?

Think of Grid Defense as Engine upgrades in FTL- people often chose to get Shields first because they'd rather have something that "just werks" rather than a better chance at shit not happening. The problem in both games is that -you are- going to get overwhelmed- ie, you're going to shot at by more projectiles than however many shields you have/you're going to have your buildings attacked by more Veks than you can kill/push/counter and when you do, the Engine/Grid Defense is what's going to save you.

I would still rather have Grid Power (how many times you can lose buildings before Game Over) and Grid Defense (the chance a building that's hit doesn't take damage) be 2 separate stats tho. As it is, the the chance of you not getting damaged is tied to how much damage you can take. To bring back the FTL comparison it's as if you had to fix your Hull to 100% before you could upgrade your Engines.

 

[Zarniwoop]

It's like Syndicate, Battle Chess and The Terminator had one of those freaky 3 parent babies.

With cocaine added.

Glorious

 

[thesheeep]

Any pilots with powered abilities that don't have bonus reactor are kinda meh too.

Well, so far I only found one, but that one was incredible.
Two actions per turn if not moving. So I put him into artillery and gave him the "summon tank" ability, too.
First turn, (usually) attack and summon and afterwards sometimes being able to attack twice.
Pretty awesome.

 

[Arnust]

The thing with FTL dodge is that it's directly related to the ability to escape, can get you up to 80-100% with Cloaking and you should have like an extra 10% from the Pilot that you need to station there anyway. A 5 to 20% dodge chance is something you really want to get out of your face as reasonably fast possible because of the different projectile types.

Maybe a more forgiving version of the Grid damage would have its setback like this: Damaged buildings who rolled Resist will STILL be damaged, but don't take Grid damage. This means that you could compensate with that with one of the above systems like the diminishing extra health points.

Being more realistic, I think it'd ensue of a bit more thorough of a rework, if any, because it could just mean chopping it outright.

On the Robot pilots, the ones who only need one reactor are the more reliable. Gana's "deploy anywhere with 1 damage in all directions" is fantastic for mosy of your Prime mechs and if not just for having a bit of an edge on the first turn's RNG, and Prosper's "grant flying", aside of looking goofy as hell, is objectively better than Kwan's ability (flying already grants moving through enemies so why bother) and has some more utility and survivability.

 

[Pequod]

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.

 

[---]

Henry is pretty damn useful too: moving through enemies for 0 reactors, lol. I'm using only him, until I find a better pilot.

 

[Pequod]

sser said ITB is easier than FTL. I disagreed. Then agreed that on Normal, maybe. Now, 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...

In ITB you can lose your grid on Normal mid-island because energy in missions is so rare.

 

[wyes gull]

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.

Meant GUI.

 

[Arnust]

In ITB you can lose your grid on Normal mid-island because energy in missions is so rare.

That's why you should mainly aim for Reputation and maybe even try to do the "Perfect" island score, and only do energy missions if they're in the way or you're in a tight spot. You can get a big refill by pretty cheap, and depending on your loadout and state of the run you can probably spare the Reactors.

 

[Silva]

Anyone know if additional content is being planned? I could see a couple more islands, a new optional final mission (underwater?) and a bunch new mech squads giving it more longevity. Maybe even some new game modes.

 

[---]

I think - and I hope - that they'll support it heavily, just like they did with Faster Than Light.
Also don't forget the modders.

I'm enjoying it so far, even though I still didn't beat it (well, I didn't try neither). I'm spending some time grinding and unlocking new mechs/pilots, I'll play the final mission when I'll be bored.
I confirm that the Steel Judoka team is fucking awesome. Surely my favourite, along with the one specialized in smoke. I can't see the appeal of the "popular" ice party, though: the double cannon may be useful, but in a team in which the only mech which can pushes enemies is the cannon itself... well, it's pretty crap, since few times the kaijus will be perfectly aligned. Still, it could work in a customized team, probably.

 

[wyes gull]

And then there's 6 enemies at once and they all decide to attack structures.

Spoiler

Oh, fuck off.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Yeah, it’s got a good hook. I’ve only played two hours but I can’t figure out what the heck Chris Avellone was helping them with. It’s pretty light on words and narrative.

As much as I like these developers, it’s hard to escape the feeling that they hired the human stretch goal as a kind of endorsement deal to appeal to story/ /dialogue/character lovers who otherwise might not be attracted to this kind of game.

honestly it seems like for about 20 years chris avellone spends months and months writing about 6 sentences, then moving on and doing it again. Great gig if you can get it I guess. I have no idea why people still expect anything else from him.

Honestly I feel like something is wrong with him-- not trying to be a dick, but he either is depressed, out of ideas, burn out, or some sort of addict...or maybe a combination? I don't wish ill for the guy, I just don't think he really even tries anymore and seems like maybe he does not want to..

Anyway, I completely ignore whenever he is hyped to be on a game and expect that in the end I would not be able to tell if he worked on the game or not.