It seems like if I lose the power grid even once, I have to restart the game from the beginning...is that right? And there are a lot of missions where the power grid has only 1 health and its impossible to save it in certain situations... Sorry, just a total noob's rant
Posted Sep 9, 2019, 9:32 AM UTC
Experienced players reach 90+% winrates regularly on hard mode, you are just inexperienced.
A good way to not let frustration get to your head is to understand that 95% of "unsolvable" situations are self created, you may just not know how much impact you had in creating your current state.
Half your mechs webbed up? Did you check web vek ranges before placing your mechs? Did you carefully place your mechs so that veks can't jump into unsolvable positions like between your pusher and a building?
More attacking veks than mechs? did you block spawns efficiently? Did you buy the best weapons?
There are often multiple ways of solving any given turn, but only one those ways put you in the best position for the next turn. New players tend to solve the first one but ignore the second.
The best way forward is to consider every decision made carefully, you have all the time in the world to check where each spawned vek can attack, choose island based on veks vs your tools or buy stuff between Islands. If something happens you didn't consider, then you know better next time.
Use "rubber duck decoding" explain your moves to an inanimate object or pretend you are streaming to noobs or playing with your little brother. If you can justify your decisions to your "rubber duck" then you will have put more thought into it than most players.
You'll get there, may RNGesus be with you!
Use "rubber duck decoding" explain your moves to an inanimate object or pretend you are streaming to noobs or playing with your little brother. If you can justify your decisions to your "rubber duck" then you will have put more thought into it than most players.
That's awesome advice. And hilarious in its wording.
A lot of programmers use this too!
It's also frequently used in the rubber duck industry
This is very insightful. Thank you for this.
Another small tidbit; it is favorable to have your non- artillery mechs in the center if they can be. It provides you with flexibility to what the Vek throw at you.
It is not a hard and fast rule that I play by, as you need to adapt, or sometimes there's water/mountains/whatever in the middle squares that prevent you from being effective.
Yes the rationale here is you can get full NSEW coverage in the middle but if against an edge your mech may be ineffectual as its weapon would push a Vek into a building for example
rubber duck decoding
This is a thing? I do this in so much of my life it's nice to see I'm not just crazy.
It's called rubber duck debugging by programmers, and it's not only used, it's very effective.
What difficulty are you playin on? It's perfectly valid to play on easy mode at first!
Yes! Its great to play on easy mode to learn the moves, the weapons, what power ups are good, and have fun doing it. Once get a couple wins under your belt, move up before you start developing bad habits.
You're not expected to win EVERY time just by game's design, although, as I noticed, game tends to avoid presenting guaranteed grid damage situations. But it mostly takes practice to see opportunities.
game tends to avoid presenting guaranteed grid damage situations
It's just RNG, but the devs configured it so greatly you rarely see the "not my fault" moments. They do happen sometimes, but too rare have an impact on your run (unless you go for no-grid lost).
Just remember that mech health gets replenished and grid health doesn’t. Once I got to the point of using mechs to protect grid I made much more progress.
At one point something clicked and i realized i could sheild half the stuff with my own mechs and now I almost never get out of a battle damageless, even when I definitely could have
It seems like if I lose the power grid even once, I have to restart the game from the beginning...is that right?
Yes. Definitely.
And there are a lot of missions where the power grid has only 1 health and its impossible to save it in certain situations.
Grid power is carried over from mission to mission.
Each mission starts with whatever you finished the last mission with.
You start the run with about 8 or whatever and it goes up and down throughout the entire game. If it hits 0 you lose :)
Until you get better at the game, choose maps with easy bonus objectives. Stay away from the train and try to stick to the "protect the building" objectives. Some bonus objectives refill your power grid and sometimes if you're maxxed out on power grid, you can sacrifice a little grid if you know that the bonus objective is a sure thing and you'll just refill it afterward. (when you're better you might be going for perfect, but as a newbie you an afford to lose a little grid once in a while)
Also, Into the Breach requires a different approach than most turn-based games. Once that clicks you might find it a little easier. Stay proactive against the vek's numbers, be smart about blocking vek (bear in mind that it only postpones their coming by one turn), be willing to take a few hits by your mechs, and position manipulation is everything.
The game is hard, but wasn't as hard as I expected it to be (at least on normal). I don't think it's because I'm very good at it, but maybe some of the strategies just clicked for me a little sooner.
yes
It's a hard game so dont be put off by dying, failure is to teach you, start on easy mode, look at some guides and tips and have fun experimenting, just try wacky shit and see what works and learn along the way
Well there's a good way of preventing losses, try maxing out grid defense. I know it sounds like a meme, but trust me, I had a run where I maxed out grid def. Literally had the pylons tank 3 attacks in a row at the Volcano.
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I play on easy and it's enough challenge for me. It took me a few playthroughs to reorient my priorities to preserve grid health. Sometimes you'll get yourself into a bind and it's better to sacrifice someone vs losing grid health, or choosing to re-up your grid health in-between instead of weapon upgrades.
It didn't click for me until 5-10 quick game overs.
Always let your mechs take damage if it means defending the grid. Grid power carries over between missions and even islands. If you can, also do missions that give you grid power even if it's at max, it'll increase the chance of a building resisting a hit
The game is a bit "snowbally". If you have a stong start to the mission then the rest will go smoothly. But if you fall behind and let the board get overrun with vek then it can be hard to come back.
At the combat tactics level, one thing that helps a lot is having a good initial placement of your mechs, so your first turn starts on the right foot. For example try to bait ranged enemies to attack you instead of a building, because ranged attacks are easily sidestepable.
There are also choices you can make in the strategy layer that can help. The bonus for a perfect island is very big, so sometimes it is better to pick an easier mission than to gamble on a harder one. Think about your squad's strenghs and weaknesses. For example, if you are playing the blitskrieg squad then avoid the protection missions, because the bouncing lightning can get them by accident.
Also remember that you can visit islands in any order. Try to start in one with a favourable matchup. Look at the enemies, specially the psion. (Green and red are usually easier than purple and orange)
Hi, here's a couple of "advanced" tips
- Blocking spawns is very useful but do it at the right moments. An enemy blocked at turn 1 will still want to spawn at turn 2, possibly making that turn overwhelming.
- Try to keep the number of enemies at around 3 so that you have a mech for each. So block spawns when there are too many, and let some spawn when there's 1 or 2 (so that you kill them and get XP). It's often more valuable to finish up an enemy that has 1hp remaining, than to do 4 damage on another that will still be alive next turn.
- Use the veks to your advantage. Make them hit each other and block their own shots. Make them block their spawn tiles.
- Water and pits are the best. Try to set veks up to push them in for instant kills.
- Keep your mechs' weapons balanced. Try to have a use for each of them. Replace weapons when they suck.
- Carefully choose your upgrades. Move is very valuable. Upgrade mechs that have 3 move ASAP.
- Prioritize upgrading damage on one mech than having all 3 do a little bit more. It's more useful to have one mech that does big damage to kill, while others just push with little damage.
- Teleporter and Wind Torrent are instant buy if you're having difficulty.
- Pick missions that fit your squad. If you don't do much damage, don't pick "Kill 7" objectives. If you don't have much tools to push or disable, don't pick "Volatile vek" objectives, etc.
- Weapons that move more than one vek are important. That's why artillery mechs are super useful.
- Positioning in battle is important. Try keep your mechs more in the center of the map, and spread so that you can reach all tiles. Stand in chokepoints so that land-veks have to stay on the other side. Stand one tile away of water/pit tiles so that you can push veks in if they come in between.
- Bumps are super valuable. Maximize them as much as possible. Two veks bumping each other is 2 free damage. Put your own mechs in the way to do additional bumps. Remember your mech HP is just a resource.
- If you can't reach a vek, use your own attacks on yourself to push you there.
Grid Health carries over between missions. Try to save as much of it as you can.
An important corollary to this is you should let your mechs get hit to prevent taking grid damage, because your mechs regain health between missions, while the grid doesn't. Try not to get your pilots killed of course, but they can take a few hits.
This