Combat Overview

Gratuitous Tank Battles General
1

Could someone please give me an overview of how the combat should work, or a link to one. I don’t really feel I know what mechs should be used for, what tanks are best at, what infantry should be used for, what weapons work against what, (aside from obvious stuff like machine guns).

2

I can tell you what I’ve deduced thus far:

  • Tanks can’t use shields, so they hold up best against Ballistic weapons. They also tend to be a little better against most missiles since Armor modules get more Hit Points than Shield modules (The missiles I’ve seen are roughly equal against armor and shields).

  • Since only Mechs can use shields, they hold up best against Energy weapons. You can also make Heavy Mechs with both armor and shields, which can work well when up against a mixture of Ballistic and Energy weapon fire, but obviously the shield won’t last as long. Mech hulls are much lighter than Tank hulls, thus Mechs are always faster than a Tank when using the same configuration.

  • Light Mechs are the fastest units in the game (A Medium with an Engine Management II augmentation might be faster, but I don’t have it yet) so you want to preserve that speed. Don’t try to make much of a fighting Light Mech, because it’ll slow down to Medium Mech speeds, and Medium Mechs have access to superior weapons and an augment slot. This might change with the next version since the hull costs will become a factor. Despite speeds of 9+, they still won’t survive much, so they’re only useful right at the beginning and sometimes at the very end. Unfortunately, they’re not worth many VP either, so the few that get through don’t count for much. Theses probably need some balancing in order to really be useful, like maybe being harder to hit than other hull types or something. If they were cheaper you could spam them, but they’re not cheap atm.

  • You don’t start with a HMG turret (You start with an LMG turret). I suggest making one.

  • Multiply the cost of your Infantry designs in the Unit Designer x 20 to get the cost in battle (There are 20 soldiers in a squad). I think this means you can also multiply their Armor x 20, but I’m not certain if they get hit individually or not. Mostly I only find infantry useful in trenches so far, but I don’t have the Ambulance yet. Laser Rifles are a must-have and I unlocked Assault Rifles in my 2nd win. If you’re attacking and you ever have a situation where the enemy has no flamethrowers or machine guns, that’s the time to send infantry, but I find that the enemy can build a counter too quickly for them to stand a chance. One infantry squad in a trench is so-so, but if you have multiple infantry squads adjacent to one another, they can bring a lot of firepower to bear. In multi-square trenches, I like to use Ballistic infantry in the first square of the trench the enemy comes to (to take down shields), and then have a squad of Laser Infantry. If possible, position turrets so that the enemy gets hit by both the trenches and the turrets simultaneously.

  • I haven’t been able to figure out if the Heavy Beam Laser or the Pulse Laser has higher DPS. Taking reloading frequency into account, I think the Heavy Beam should have higher overall DPS, but I seem to see more things die to the Pulse Lasers. This may be due to Pulse Lasers having higher DPS between reloads (it would be nice if I knew how many time units equaled 1 second). At the moment the Light Beam seems rather pointless.