Mech Engineer combat is often decided before the shooting starts. For example, if facing a boss with starting mechs & starting loadouts, the best micro/command/positioning will not save you.

This guide aims to help players find optimal mech fits and create optimal lances of mechs; the starting 1 chaingun + 1 rocket launcher hybrid mining mechs are pretty awful and players building based on that concept will suffer.

The ideal mech wants to maximize:

1. Damage output
   
2. Survivability
   
3. Environmental Compatibility

Because Mech Engineer isn't a cakewalk, Mechs cannot achieve a full score in all parameters, especially early game, and thus specializations, tradeoffs and careful engineering is required to reach optimal play.

I have assigned all mechs and weapons a subjective ranking scientifically accurate ranking system, based off my personal analysis & opinions verified by indisputable divine revelation, which will be explained in detail in their subsections.

Hat tip to users [Vaughnilla], for advice given on Discord & his detailed reactor guide, and [m.] for his experiments with Accuracy.

SPOILER ALERT

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[Faith for the soul, steel for the body]

The defense submenu is accessed via the button group to the right of your mech's power & weight stats. Almost all of your defenses (and the mech's ammunition balance) are set through this screen.

Melee
Currently only available on the Mining Mech & the Tentacle, this provides a mech the ability to engage opponents in melee using a drill, unless the mech has been stunned (for example, Aries Ramming).

Consumes 6 weight on the Miner and 18 on the Tentacle, the Tentacle version feels stronger (though not enough to compensate for the severe lack of aux/servomotors).

While a 2 damage attack doesn't seem very impressive, the Mining Mech gets to melee 4 times a second before OS upgrades; a solid extra layer of defense against lone Operarius leaking through your ranged weapons, not to mention it allows you to drill through walls, and is -incredibly- powerful against Fragellum attempting to drag you off (cuts off their tentacles)

Gets stronger with Evasion Aux Modules and Fast Melee OS. Equipping a mech with melee causes a tiny sword icon to appear top left of the mech's portrait.

Energy Shield

Drains a flat amount of energy depending on the mech. Additional "unoccupied" energy increases shield size/capacity and regeneration; the energy shield is very weak at minimum power.

Slightly improved by Shield Module auxiliary system, which also gives it AOE damage. Tremendously improved by Energy Shield Power OS.

Only protects vs energy attacks (which come from Colubra, Flos, Fulgur and the Titanus Centipeda) which are fairly avoidable early game.

Late game you require 2+ sets of energy shields in every squad, as every tile spawns energy attackers, and on infested tiles the Colubra gains infinite attack range (but reduced damage).

Passive Armor
Physical plating that is added to or removed via the arrows in the middle of the screen.

In the left window we have a cross section of the armor composite currently equipped to your mech. In this example the configuration is 3130, indicating 1 layer of Type 3 bulk slab + Type 1 bulk slab (occupying 2 layers of volume) + #3 again followed by a #0 strikeface.

In the right window we have a visual of the armor plate that we are planning to add or just added. The top selector changes which armor type and the right selector switches between bulk slabs and strikeplates.

As of build 60 the exact order of your armor matrix doesn't affect protective properties.

Passive armor protects against physical attacks, though some physical attacks (i.e. Sagittarius quills) will damage your armor even if you overmatch their attack. Early game mechs want 6 points of armor to protect against basic Operarius attacks. Late game as much as possible (without compromising the mech's function) is desirable.

Unlike the other defensive options, Passive Armor must be built ahead of time to be equipped to your mechs. Armor can be categotized by protective value, weight, volume utilized, technology required, build time and cost.


Mechs have the space for 4 layers of bulk armor and a strikeface. The strikeface is tremendously weight efficient but you can only have one, and it needs at least 1 layer of bulk armor behind it to function.

Starting armor types consumes two layers and thus becomes useless late game.

Of the bulk armor types, Type 4 armor (thin orange slab) is the most weight-efficient while the Type 5 (thin dark slab) is the most volume-efficient. I would build them about evenly, or perhaps a 2:1 ratio of Type 4 and Type 5 armor.



For the strikeface, Type 2 is the most weight efficient, while Type 3 offers the best protection possible. I'd build them in a similar ratio as with Type 4 & 5 bulk armor, though it has to be considered that the Type 2 strikeface only uses 2 hangar-days while the Type 3 uses 5.

Improved armor tech is relatively early in the tech tree, and there’s no point in producing anything else unless things have gone horribly wrong; you should also wait to fully upgrade District 11 (Lower Level - Eastern Factory of Standard Parts) which increases the number of armor pieces produced from 4 to 20!

Reactive Armor

"Coating" is a simple +/- bar above your main armor configuration. This functions in a way similar to ERA does in real life, and deplete as it protects you from attacks.

While not a big deal early game, late game you want this as close to 100 as possible; CRAM often leaks against "Rocket" equipped enemies, which seem to ignore your passive armor! The last line of defense before taking hull/critical damage.

Self-Destruct
For some inexplicable reason, this option is in the Defense Menu. It arms your mech with a 5000 damage AOE bomb, which will detonate if the pilot is killed/knocked out or the mech dies.

Even more strange is that your default mechs come with this option set to ON. I do not recommend having Self Destruct armed; it often leads to massive blast damage to friendly mechs on the same screen, and sometimes a chain reaction. *Might* be useful if a Giant Boss creature is bearing down on you early game as a desperation move, though even Veteran players who have had the bad luck of being in this situation were not saved by Self Destruct.

C-RAM
The sole option here not found in the defenses submenu, this defensive auxiliary system is essential... late game.

Enemy "Rocket" attacks ignore passive armor and are only stopped by reactive armor and CRAM. They fire at machine-gun like speeds too, making flaws in your defense extremely dangerous.

The ammunition drain is tremendous, thus only mechs with both a good ammunition capacity and short reload time are suitable as hosts.

[The heart of the lance]


Weapons can be customized with 23 points to distribute between 5 stats, and a Modification Slot. The stats that can be directly adjusted are:

Rate of Fire: Self-explanatory.

Weight (Reduction): Self-explanatory.

Accuracy: Weapon base accuracy should be renamed Dispersion. It appears to be measured in degrees from center of barrel; 0 = autohit, 45 acc = 90 degree firing arc. Every point invested in seems to reduce dispersion, though there are rounding increment issues.

Power (Reduction): Rarely used because of the ability to 'undervolt' or blue-line a weapon to recover 2 net energy in exchange for a 2 degree increase in mean reactor temperature.

One level of blue-lining seems to have no negative effects on non-accelerated, non-Energy
weapons. Reducing power to Energy or (some) Accelerator-mod weapons, whether here or via blue-lining directly reduces damage!

Impact: Increases Damage and/or Penetration. Some weapons/mods cannot have penetration or will not gain damage.

By default, only one ammunition type can be reloaded at a time. Thus it is not recommended to use multiple ammo types on a single mech except perhaps the Plate; running dry on multiple ammo types will impose an extended reload cycle. Even with the Simultaneous Reload OS you will suffer from significantly increased peak heat.

Only Kinetic weapons will pass through (and be fired at targets inside of) a Base Worm overshield. Thus standard tile clearing teams should always bring at least 1 mech with primarily kinetic armament to safely hit it from afar; late game attempting to storm the shield, even with flamethrowers and melee-CQB mechs is asking for the RNG gods to punish your hubris.

If the target has armor (almost everything has armor), your weapon needs to overmatch the armor by 1+ points (depending on range) to damage the target. Whether or not it overmatches, a small amount of damage (based on weapontype) is dealt to armor, reducing it’s value against further attack.

Enemies have resistances, blocking up to 75% of the damagetype that is resisted. Check the Bestiary (ingame book) for Resistances. Giant 'Boss' creatures (red or gold swords on the strategic map layer) change their Resistance Type every day.

Environmental effects must be considered; on Volcanic environments it becomes difficult even for quad-heatsinked mechs to run a stack of triple redlined energy weapons. Pretty much everything other than Explosives or Accel/RA Kinetics (with Needle Aux) underperform underwater.

Notes: Following stats are derived of basic model of weapons from the production menu, with no modifications or tuning. For example, the Coilgun with it's Accelerator modification has 45 damage.

Build Time is specifically emphasized outside of costs, because mid-late game it's quite easy to farm resources faster than you can spend them.

Kinetic weapons can penetrate and damage multiple enemies in a line, if they overmatch the armor, but deal almost no damage to armor. This is why Critical modification Chaingun sucks despite it’s immense on-paper DPS.


Energy weapons hit a single target (unless modified with Multishot, or Tesla /w Shard mod) but deal reasonable damage to armor.


Note: For energy weapons, heat generated is one of the most crucial stats, but isn't listed in the build menu. You can read my analysis below, or test configurations yourself.

Explosive weapons have blast size proportional to damage, hitting everything in the blast radius. They damage armor efficiently and absolutely obliterate it with high Armor Penetration.


Note: Rocket Assist & Acceleration modification actually decreases the accuracy of guided munitions; very apparent at close range. Seems the tracking algorithm has problems adjusting for the increased initial acceleration.

Thermal and Chemical weapons natively penetrate all enemies out to their max range, but are unfortunately quite underpowered in the current patch.

One of the two starting weapons, the Chain Gun is enormously flexible and viable from early game all the way to end game. With a baseline ROF of 600 RPM this weapon is primarily limited by ammunition & reload.

Since the shadownerf, the already ammunition inefficient 20mm gun falls off faster than before. They're still good early game and have great utility.

Configurations:
-General Purpose/DPS, Rocket Assist [Common] “Shredder”

By emphasizing the Impact stat, you can maximize per bullet damage and increase DPS without turning the gun into even more of an ammo hog.

To the side are two variants of the Shredder archetype, improved accuracy & efficiency variant, and low accuracy high dps.

-General Purpose/DPS, Rocket Assist [Rare] “Drill”

Another configuration of the Rocket Assist Minigun, focusing mostly on accuracy, this is very effective in early game map clearing missions to quickly kill an Ovum through piles of Operarius.

Alas, it becomes ineffective very rapidly as soon as they spawn anything with more armor.

-Support/CC, Slow [Uncommon] [Effective Range: ~750] “DMV”

With 6 points in penetration the slowing chaingun will punch through Operarius (and slow them) out to 600 meters.

Then, even if the rounds do not penetrate a more heavily armored opponent behind the Operarius, it will still slow whatever it hits. The DMV configuration is useful even towards endgame.

-Anti-Swarm/DPS, Multishot [Uncommon] [Effective Range: ~750] “Danmaku”

The Multishot mod minigun is very powerful early game for its ability to hose down cones of Operarius. If "I can't even beat the first mission*" is you, try this build.

(You peasant)

Unfortunately the minigun has rather poor armor penetration scaling without Rocket Assist, and thus when facing targets with real armor the Danmaku will perform poorly.

-Support/Debuff, Shard [Rare] [Effective Range: 750]

The lightest way for a pure kinetic build to damage armor at long range. Has great single target DPS as of 1.0.

Its actual effective range is quite bad, and its armor shredding ability isn't as good as explosive or energy weapons... but it's an option.

One of the first weapons you can research, the tank gun has 8x the base damage of the minigun but 1/12th the ROF at a much higher weight… Why is it rated so highly? Of the ammo using weapons, the tank gun is very ammunition efficient and quite flexible too.

Compared to 1.0 explosive weapons, the humble tank gun has fallen behind alot in terms of DPS to weight ratio, though it's utility and ammo efficiency are still excellent.

Configurations:
-General Purpose/DPS, Rocket Assist [Common] “Sniper”

Penetrating basically everything in the game, this is the bread and butter of non-boss lategame kinetic DPS.

Mostly used for hitting Colubra through it's shield or hitting Ovum behind swarms of higher armor opponents.

When used underwater, you should to add 1-2 points to Impact, even with Needle aux

-Anti-Boss/DPS, Shard[Common] [Effective Range: 750] “Warhammer”

1.0 changes to Shard behavior allows the Shard archtype to massively outperform the Critical configuration in terms of single-target damage.

However, cannot pierce rows of enemies and detonates on first contact, so still requires support from other weapons to clear the way.

-Miniboss/DPS, Critical [Uncommon] [Effective Range: 750] “Sledgehammer”

The tremendous damage and line clearing behavior makes the critical tank gun quite effective against low armor opponents that between Operarius and world map bosses.

Beware of Aries.

-Support/CC, Slow [Uncommon] [Effective Range: 750]

Compared to the the slowing minigun which sprays its bullets in a fairly wide arc and cannot penetrate heavy targets (pretty much anything with more armor than Operarius), the slowing tank gun can penetrate pretty much any non-boss opponent and is fairly accurate with a few points invested.

It is not unusual to see a pair of slow mod tank guns stunlock entire clumps of Flos.

Alas, slowing effects seem to have been nerfed recently, many enemy types are now immune or resistant to slow, making this weapon less attractive as an investment, due to it’s high weight and low ROF.

-Support/DPS, Multishot [Rare] “Boomstick”

Statting a few points into accuracy, setting max range to 500 (or less) and using the Multishot mod, a mech can instantly unleash a tight shotcluster of 4x tank gun shells as a safety measure.

Unfortunately, mech pilots occasionally shoot off wildly and the terrible ROF/high weight footprint make this sidearm less appealing.

Heavy and power intensive, the Coilgun rewards it's devotees with unmatched range and penetration, providing safety and consistency in bossfights.

Example Configuration:
-General Purpose/DPS, Acceleration [Uncommon] "Exitus"

Efficiently deletes columns of enemies out to extreme range.

ROF & Damage can be further improved with redlining and Size+

With Size+ and sufficient redlining, non-Acceleration variants can be taken.

The second of the two starting weapons, the rapid rocket launcher stands in stark contrast to the minigun with how much it falls off after early game. The rapid launcher is vastly worse than the minigun at killing lines of Operarius, it's single target ammo efficiency is mediocre, and to top it off the weapon’s base weight is quite hefty. The saving grace is on Day 1 you're given a pile of them for free; you never have to build them.

1.0 changes (doubling explosion weapon damage) have made the rapid rocket launcher much stronger than it was in beta.

Configurations:
-Debuff/DPS, Shard [Uncommon] “Hammerer”

Changes since 1.0 have made this form of rocket launcher very effective at both armor shredding and DPS.

This configuration is quite effective against medium enemy types like the Brucus or Aries, though you may want to add more points to accuracy against small targets, or use a pilot with the accuracy talent.

-Support/DOT, Fire [Rare] “Simmer”

Generally speaking this is something you dump as soon as you can get your hands on the Large Launcher.

Even with maxed Impact the fire zone isn't great, but usually it lasts long enough to kill multiple Operarius.

The inaccuracy and ROF mean you'll be spewing lots of fires all over, which can sometimes be helpful.

Unlocked almost as early as the Tank Gun, the Large Rocket Launcher is one of the most potent weapons in the game, with its only downsides low ROF and tendency to blast oneself.

Configurations:
-DPS/Debuff, Shard [Common] [Min Range: 250] “Demolisher”

L Missile/Shard shreds armor a bit slower than the rapid variant, but the ammunition ratio is vastly, vastly superior.

-DOT/DPS, Fire [Uncommon] [Min Range: 250] “Holocaust”

Underperforms against large groups of basic swarmers, as those the blast doesn’t kill tend to get flung far out of the fire pool, the L Missile/Fire is intended for use against heavier opponents whose armor has been stripped.

Incredibly efficient if when you get line of sight on an Ovum, anything without armor melts as they spawn, and the Ovum itself dies pretty quickly to fire.

Not 100% sure it should be considered an Explosives weapon since it likely does more Energy damage than anything else, but it does use Explosive type ammo. It fires a missile which in turn unleashes small Tesla arcs at enemies near the projectile.

Size+ variant consumes a ludicrous 75 hangar-slot-days...

Example Configuration:
-General Purpose/DPS, Acceleration [Rare] [Min Range: 250]

Considered the ultimate area of effect weapon. Incredible ability to rapidly exterminate Operarius, flatten the entire map and with extended fire destroy basically everything that isn’t a boss, and contributes appreciable anti-armor performance even against a boss.

It's existence decreases the difficulty of assaulting Day 80+ infested tiles from "you wot" to "skilled players can do this ironman". Any lance with these should dump (well, reconfigure) their Critical mod Large Missile Launchers.

While other mods can work, this weapon is orders of magnitude stronger with the Acceleration mod. Main drawbacks - the random location of the Orbital Defense Gun mission to acquire it’s blueprints, and the insane construction time to produce additional copies.

Since 1.0 the BFG (yes that is the name in the files) can equip fire or shard or whatever, they all work very well if you redline enough and/or use Size+

Enormous power draw and high heat generated prevents the player from spamming laser weapons before fusion cores, but even a single laser (high power ICE) is a game changer, and you can support more on fission power.

Configurations:
-Anti-Boss/DPS, Multi [Common] [Effective Range: 450] “Judgement”

HP Laser/Multi has almost twice the DPS of the HP Laser/Critical, while also being considerably more efficient against swarming attacks.

May be *slightly* inferior in effective dps vs small targets (i.e. Aries) at the edge of it's range.

-Anti-Boss/DPS, Acceleration [Uncommon] [Effective Range: 450] “Gram”

At the cost of doubling power draw, the Gram configuration draws twice as much power for a ~30% icrease in DPS. Many mechs take this configuration come Fusion reactors.

-General Purpose/DPS, Fire [Common] [Effective Range: 500] “Incinerator”

A game changing weapon, the fire laser obliterates Operarius so efficiently it almost completely obsoletes the multishot minigun, -and- also efficiently kills heavier enemies via efficient armor shredding.

Maxing impact is more efficient, but pilots fire wildly on occasion and there’s the chance of a complete miss even with the mech oriented correctly, thus higher attack speed for safety.

While the high speed laser has nearly equal point-blank DPS for -alot- less power draw, that DPS collapses at even half of the laser's max range.

Quite potent against bosses - the inaccuracy barely matters against targets eating up most of your screen/the map.

Note: Maxing ROF can increase DPS at the cost of thermal management. Since the 1.0 capacitor changes it's much harder to manage heat from multiple energy weapons, but if your only using a handful you can probably spec for ROF & Crit. Hat tip to 'whateverdude'.

Configurations:
-Anti-Boss/DPS, Multi [Uncommon] [Effective Range: 450] "Dervish"

When statting for Impact, the Multi-mod HS Laser is more heat efficient against large targets.

Note: At long range, against medium or small targets the actual DPS of this configuration falls dramatically.

-Anti-Boss/DPS, Critical [Uncommon] [Effective Range: 450] "Staccato"

When statting for ROF, this configuration is the most effective on a per-mount basis, strictly superior to even Accel-mod HSL.

-Support/Debuff, Slow [Uncommon] [Effective Range: 450] “Red Tape”

In many ways inferior to the Slow Chaingun, because it cannot penetrate and thus debuff enemies behind the front line, the Slowing High Speed Laser has the advantage of not needing ammo.

An enormous boon when you consider how many mechs have awful ammo stats (and are thus allergic to Chainguns) in addition to it’s good single target damage/armor shred..

Less efficient than the lasers, the Tesla weapon has its own unique features.

Configurations:
-Anti-Boss/DPS, Acceleration [Uncommon] [Effective Range: 450]

Tesla weapons have perfect accuracy and excellent baseline ROF, further improving maximum DPS.

This weapon configuration generates even more heat per damage ratio, however.

-Support/DPS, Shard [Uncommon] [Effective Range: 750] "Flayer"

While less efficient at deleting floatsam than the Fire laser, the secondary lightning arcs can remove armor fairly efficiently, and at extended range compared to other energy weapons.

Excellent choice for supporting a Kinetic fit.

Note: Weapon claims extreme potential damage with direct hits on the testbench, but once you set the armor to zero a direct hit deals vastly less damage than potential. Shard behavior doesn't actually activate after successfully melting down the target's armor.

Before the flame nerf, the Flamer was a solid C to C+ with it’s ability to burn anything with under 20 armor; a solid lightweight/low power alternative to the 20mm and the Laser; shorter ranged, but continuous fire, able to hit all targets in a line and generating a flame pool at the end. No need to reload (with Custom OS: Gas no Reload). You could get decent range (more than laser!) with Accelerator or Rocket Assist, amazing crowd control with Slow, improved damage with Critical, or crazy CQB ability with Multishot, all in a very low footprint package.

Now fire damage doesn’t work on anything with more than 10 armor.

Configuration:
-Anti-Swarm/Debuff, Slow [Rare] [Effective Range: ~180]

Midgame you could use this as an lightweight emergency CQB side arm for an otherwise pure large launcher missile machine; they tend to have the spare computational capacity to run Gas no Reload; though most missile mechs have the spare power/weight for a Fire Laser instead.

Sidearm for Laser mech isn’t really viable as the heat generated by continuous reloading (Gas no Reload) matches that of a laser. Late game Kinetic mechs really want to take advantage of “Kinetic ROF” custom OS, so they'd rather not have to deal with a crappy flamer sidearm either.

More damage but no flame pool, with a longer construction time; an alternative Flamethrower. Without the flame pool effect the base flamer isn’t very exciting either, even before the flame nerf.

Specifically advertised as an underwater version of the flamethrower, but barely works underwater -range drops from 150 to 50. While it climbs back up to 100 with rocket assist aux that's awful especially midgame, and the Toxin Sprayer comes relatively late in the tech tree.

Configuration:
-General Purpose/DPS, Critical[Rare] [Effective Range: ~150]

I would never build this, but very late game you might acquire a prototype for free from researching it, once your scientists have nothing better to do.

Without the accelerator mod it has less range than the basic Flamethrower or Toxin Sprayer.

Configuration:
-General Purpose/DPS, Acceleration [Rare] [Effective Range: ~250]

When fitted with Acceleration mod, it becomes as powerful as a dozen Flamethrowers, though lacking firepool. The torrent of plasma particles deals tens of thousands of damage to unarmored targets on the testbench! Amazing!

But as soon as you give anything 10 or more armor the damage drops to zero, not to mention that it costs more, takes longer to build, is on the end of a tech tree, takes a very long time to research, draws a tremendous amount of power, short range bracket...

The Plasma Gun is on the verge of being overpowered, but is disappointing for it's drawbacks given it's position on the tech tree and investment required.

[Six hours to chop down a tree / Four hours sharpening the axe]

Stats on table are taken from bare mech chassis on engineering floor & supplemented from files.

More servomotors slots lets you have more carry capacity. Lower chassis weight is good - it means more mass capacity devoted to weapons, systems, armor etc.

Heat resistance and weapon slots determine offensive potential, though low weapon counts can be overcome via Size+ and Additional Power Circuit (fusion reactor Aux) to massively red-line a small number of energy weapons.

Heat Resistance is thus a cap on a mech's DPS potential if using Energy Weapons or adjacent (Coil, Plasma, BFG), modified by Auxiliary slots which can be used for thermal management.

Ammunition Ratio (reload/magazine) are limiters for ammunition-dependent builds.

Water Resistance is mostly useful for underwater mechs, though it does affect how fast stability degrades (before slowdown is inflicted) in swamp terrain. Impact Resistance affects being blown around by storms and chance of being stunned by an Aries Ram.

Since we aren't playing a 4x, and can't overrun a map with 20 cheap spam mechs, low cost is less important than capabilities and potential.

With the 8 mech lance update, having some cheap spam to cover your 99% turboredlinedps wunderwaffe is both reasonable and effective... but the limit is still 8, so don't go crazy.
*Name taken from ingame files.
**Once District 15 - Mech Bay is fully upgraded, the Miner only uses 1 hangar slot.

Coffinmech
+ This hastily converted industrial/mining exoskeleton is shockingly good for starting gear. Six aux & decent heat resistance makes it tremendously flexible well into mid-late game. Melee capability (found on only 2 mechs!) means it not only can dig through walls but also cut tentacles/tongues/etc from Fragellum/Frogs/Bosses, situationally an incredible defensive boon.

- Two weapon slots means it can't fully extract the potential of a fusion reactor even with max redline aux. The mediocre ammo ratio means it's not an efficient CIWS boat, despite having 6 aux.

Plate
+ The second mech you get/the first you research is top at both DPS and tanking.

Early on it's a decent carrier for ammo intensive weapons due to good ammo ratio. Lategame this beast can dump all of a fusion core into three Size+ weapons, and with 6 aux can run them on pretty hot maps.

You can also fit low power draw support weapons & a 702 fusion core to combine great CIWS and great shielding. With it's low self-weight and 6 motor slots it's almost trivial to have all of the above and maxed armor...

- Plate, weak? I guess it's completely unsuitable for water, and uh, doesn't have melee?

Holo
+ The first aquatic specialist, the Holo features great water resistance, six motor slots and good ammo ratio. Suitable for carrying heavy weapons.

- With only two aux you can't really make it a good CIWS boat, and 2 heat resist gives the reactor seizures if you whisper "red line". Inflexible and low potential.

Quadro
+ The sexiest looking mech comes with 8 weapon slots and 4 aux. After T3 motors the player can cram on a stack of max weight tank guns.

- Unfortunately, it's terrible reload and heat resist make it unsuitable for both ammo intensive weapons and energy weapons.

You run out of thermal management before using up a fusion reactor. In terms of DPS potential the Quadro is eclipsed by both the Plate and the Castle while having far less flexibility.

Tentacle
+ Tremendously buffed since the beta, the Tentacle is almost competitive on land.

In most scenarios you'll never use up all the weapon slots but 3-4 miniguns + melee can provide good support to L missile Holos, which can clear most midgame underwater missions.

- Severe Aux/Motor shortage limits it's max potential.

Triangle
+ A well balanced and flexible design, the Triangle feels sorta like a Size+ Coffinmech. With decent ammo ratio, resist profile and 5 aux this mech can do a variety of roles pretty well.

Equip Turbine, Repair Drone and either Needle or Torpedo and you've got yourself a half-decent underwater mech. You can make it a decent CIWS carrier, or load up on heat resist to turbo-redline a stack of weapons. Has great innate armor too.

- Held back by low motor count, much harder to equip a stack of Size+ weapons, no melee.

Castle
+ Tremendously potent tanky DPS machine. Massive heat resistance allows it to pack a tremendous amount of redlined DPS (though less extreme than Plate) it's extra weapon slots can be fitted with lower power supporting weapons.

Has best armor/health & magazine, amazing resist profile, can fight well in all biomes.

- Very expensive, late in tech tree, not a good CIWS platform.

[From humble clay, the goddess breathed life, creating humans - earth's artistry]

Non-Auxiliary components must be built on your production lines (or found/looted), they do not come free with a mech frame.

Cockpits vary by weight, pilot protection and control; currently the Control stat seems to mostly affect reload times, critical for any mech that cares about ammo draw. Safety is the chance a hit will not injure the pilot; not too useful early game as mechs tend to die before the pilot does, but late game Repair Drones can keep mechs fighting though absurd amounts of damage... Until the squishy meatbag inside dies.


It becomes clear that Cabin 2 & 3 (especially Cabin 2) are trash clogging up your inventory; at least Cabin 0 & 1 are very light weight. When compared to Cabin 4 & 5, Cabin 2 is inferior in both Control & Protection -and- weighs more. Cabin 3 offers a very small weight reduction in exchange for a considerable loss in control and safety.



Cabin 4 is generally the most useful cabin, though mechs that don’t care about reload time - i.e. low ROF large missile mech that won't need to reload, a pure laser, or chemical build - prefer Cabin 5. If weight constrained, Cabin 0* & Cabin 1 are also perfectly valid choices for a mech that doesn’t care about ammo reload time.

*No point in building Cabin 0 since you start with a surfeit. Do not build more than 3 of Cabin 1 -at most-.

A mech’s weight capacity is determined by the total carrying power of it’s servomotors, which come in two flavors, combustion and electrical.

ICE motors (unlike in real life) have the advantages of lower self-weight and higher carrying capacity. For the electrical motors, the advantage is the ability to dramatically increase carrying capacity when redlined, allowing the player to trade power for more lift.

However, as Power itself is in highly demand by energy weapons, weapons with Acceleration Mod, not to mention the Shield Generator and a bunch of Custom OS programs, electric motors are suboptimal on most builds.

(Number in parenthesis is stat when triple redlined)

It becomes apparent that there's little incentive to ever touch the first motor type since you're given a full complement at the beginning of the game, and they rapidly become garbage clogging your inventory as each city gives you a stack of crappy motors. I've ended the game with over 50 of them in my inventory.



The Improved ICE is useful early-midgame as they can be produced in tremendous quantity due to low construction time. Unfortunately, the improved electric motor is less useful with it's extended build time and the reduced demand for electric motors anyhow.

The basic electric motor is mildly useful early game because they are often given for free by cities. Early-game mechs don't have energy weapons or OS programs and don't really need energy shields. But mid-late they also become trash as you find yourself either needing energy shields, energy weapons and/or Acceleration modded weapons -or- able to use the Tier 3 electric motor instead.

And obviously, investing into the Tier 3 motors pays off late game, though the extended build time does compete with other important items.

[For wont of a nail/My kingdom for a horse]

Auxiliary Systems (just like Custom OS) can make or break a build. If you've snuck a peek at the Mech section, you'll notice that Mechs with less than 4 Aux slots are rated very poorly.

Ammo Module

Unlocked on Day 1, this module is useful from the beginning of the game to the end, though it becomes less spammed once the player acquires more ammunition efficient weapons and mechs with superior ammo characteristics.

The basic mining mech has a rather horrific ammo ratio of 12/3 with no auxiliary systems or cockpits installed. With the default starting cabin and 6x Ammo Aux installed the reload time drops to 6.6 seconds and magazine grows to 9; meaning the same weapons can fire for thrice as long, then after running dry needs 45% less time to reload!

Battery Module

Unlocked on Day 1, the utility of Batteries drops off rapidly to competing auxiliary systems. Sometimes used with ICE engines to allow a mech to run an extra laser or allow underpowered ICE mechs to run electric motors.

However, with Fission reactors mechs have enough juice to handle 2-3 lasers, and supporting 2 lasers requires Heatsinks and/or Capacitors,; the Battery falls out of use very quickly.

End game heavy overshield defensive builds *also* gain more from the Shield Module.

Evasion Module

The last of the starting auxiliary systems, the Evasion Module is niche but useful to improve the performance of melee mechs alongside Fast Melee OS, especially configurations that don't care about ammo draw.

A common midgame build for the Miner is 1x fire laser, melee, 2x heatsinks and 3-4x evasion aux.

Metal Grid

Why does this even exist? It adds a whopping 1.4 hitpoints to the Starter Mech... Even the mighty Castle would get 2.4 extra health - who in their right minds would waste an aux slot for 2-3 hit points?

I want to blame the sheer power of the Repair Drone in making this worthless, but to be honest it would be very hard to justify even without the existence of the Repair Drone.

Armor Module

Occasionally used early game to bring mechs above a certain armor breakpoint to dramatically improve safety, so as to avoid having to produce armor before having researched good armor types or having repaired the armor factory.

Mid or late game however, it is generally preferred to install a heatsink/capacitor or ammo module instead of armor module. Impact Resist is nice, but more DPS would kill the Aries before it rammed you.

Turbine

Installing one allows the Miner or Triangle to retain decent mobility underwater and mostly allows them to overcome the threat of being dragged off to their doom by errant currents.

This also increases available oxygen, granting more time for a damaged mech to get to someone equipped with a repair drone before the pilot drowns. Installing two is necessary to bring a Quadro up to sufficient water resist, and three for a Plate - not worth it, imho.

Needle Bullets

Even with this Auxiliary System, only Rocket Assist or Accelerator mod Kinetics have decent speed/range/penetration in aquatic maps. Without the Needle aux, Kinetics are very poor (like everyhing non-Explosive) underwater.

Torpedoes

Ironically, Explosive weapons are useful underwater even without Torpedo!

Though the rage gained when 3 large missiles miss in a row against a rapidly closing target just as your Kinetic Mechs all decide to reload at the same time... Can quickly drive you to equip it anyways ;p

Heat Sink

One of the most powerful auxiliary systems in the game, necessary to make internal resistance reactors architecture function at higher temperature.

Capacitor

Capacitor is more weight efficient for an ammunition-independent mech (or supremely ammunition efficient mech) if max mech temp exceeds biome temperature. In other situations the Heatsink is better.

Repair Drone

If I could only have one auxiliary module, it would be the Repair Drone. I've witnessed teams with 3x repair drones survive multiple times their health in damage (over an extended period of time, of course).

While the mechs *are* getting weaker from critical hit debuffs (which can only be repaired back in the walking city), it's an insane amount of combat endurance being added.

You need a *real good reason* to not bring at least 2 mechs with Repair Drone; it's -that- good. Equipping a mech with a repair drone causes a tiny wrench icon to appear top left of it's portrait.

C-RAM

A specialist module, mostly superfluous early game. "Just don't attack tiles with Milis" "Just kill everything and clear the map before you die"

Late game every almost every tile spawns "Rocket" spewing Milis and you have to fight off Giant Bosses which also shoot Rockets. Maxed out Reactive Armor depletes before clearing the mission - time to equip C-RAM.

One C-RAM is often very leaky, two drains ammo incredibly fast. The best CRAM carrier is of course the Plate with it's 6 aux slots and amazing ammunition ratio.

Shield Module

An optimized fusion core (before aux) produces 540 power. 6x ICE engines and energy shield generator consumes 40 power, or 7.4% of your reactor. Your energy shield ratio is ~92.5%.

If you add a Battery Module, your total available power rises to 621, and your standard draw drops to 6.4%, meaning your new energy shield ratio is ~93.5%. :vomit:

If you use an Shield Module instead of battery, your new energy shield ratio is ~97% - more effective than Battery module, passive damage to nearby enemies from energy shield is just a cherry on top.

[All systems nominal]

Reactors generate power necessary for energy shields, energy weapons and energy-adjacent weapons. The reactor is heated by the power they generate, the environment, and weapons fire (energy/thermal) and reloading. If the core temp exceeds limits it will overload, shutdown and reboot, leaving your mech very vulnerable during this process.

The reactor consists of a reactor frame + core components + auxiliary systems; auxiliary systems (like aux on mechs and modifications for weapons) come free with the frame, but the frame and core components need to be found and/or manufactured.

Note: The order of components in the core is irrelevant and does not change power output/heat generation.

In auxiliary circuits the order of resistor elements + multipliers is very important and will change the final cooling/resistance factor. They are numbered for a reason!

The interaction between the reactor's operating temp, max temp, external resistance, and the mech's heat resistance determine the mech's max temp, and at what temp your reactor core will passively stabilize at (before reloading/weapons heat). Reactors will have better thermal margins (leading to increased max mech temperature) if they 'use up' less of their cooling capacity. At higher tiers, generating less power is an alternative to heatsinks for a given environment/weapons heat configuration.

Vaugnilla covered the myriad possible reactor core layouts, so my guide will just focus on practical/optimized builds, and add the most useful auxiliary (usually cooling circuit) architecture.

The ICE reactor appears to be some sort of rotary engine. It's core components are the Piston and Injector, which come in 2 varieties each.

Regarding ICE Auxiliary configurations, the 4-2 Resistor-Multiplier architecture (whether external or internal) offers 32% Resistance Factor and 2.15 Cooling; whereas the 3-3 Resistor-Multiplier layout offers 35 Res and 2.04 Cooling. At the ICE level 5% of your cooling is more significant than 3% resistance, and thus more optimal.

38 Power/958 Max Temp Standard ICE Reactor

4-2 Internal Resistance

This is the default ICE Reactor equipped to your starting mechs. It uses a core architecture of a Low Pressure Injector & Low Pressure Piston, with 4 internal resistors + 2 multipliers. This is pretty bad with starting mechs - they don't use heat generating weapons. The standard configuration on Mining Mech overheats on 100c when reloading, even with 6x Ammo Modules.

4-2 External Resistance
Thus, it is advantageous to immediately swap to external resistors. This layout does not overheat at 100 degrees when reloading a single ammo type.

149 is still problematic.

27 Power/1334 Max Temp LP/HT ICE

4-2 External ResistanceLess useful than most veteran players assume. Before Heat Sink, the Starter Mech does not have a biome advantage (still overheats on 149) over the Standard layout. After Heatsink, a 3 Heatsink + 2 Ammo configuration allows a Kinetic or Explosive armed mining mech to avoid reactor shutdown during reload on Volcanic.

The High Temperature ICE reactor is very niche imo.

62 Power/694 Max Temp HP/LT ICE

4-2 Internal Resistance
Once you acquire Heat Sinks the high power version becomes the most useful ICE Reactor on the miner, serving it deep into midgame. Running two heatsinks at 149 degrees, this configuration can reload (1x minigun) twice in a row without overheating, or maintain perfect stability with a high power laser+ high speed laser, and still has enough margin to red-line something.

The Nuclear Reactor seems to be water moderated; the bottom appears to be a transparent liquid that gives off a characteristic blue Cherenkov glow when reactor is turned on. All fission reactors share the same maximum operating temperature of 1800 degrees, unlike with ICE reactors changing stats depending on pressure ratios.

Note: At the fission tier, the 3-3 resistor circuit/multiplier combination is more effective than 4-2 or 2-4 in all metrics.

147 Power

3-3 Internal Resistance
The highest power (stable) fission core layout uses a 2 Control - 3 Fuel - 3 Fast Kernel configuration. It does consumes more heat capacity than a lower-powered design, but generally speaking the number of heat generating weapons you can power with a fission reactor is mostly balanced with it's power output.

Typically completed with 3x Int Resistor + 3x Multiplier to help support 3-4 energy weapons or Kinetic ROF OS.
3-3 External Resistance
However, a low heat build (i.e. L Missiles) could optimally choose to use external resistors instead.

This allows Heat Sinks to be saved, which frees up Auxiliary slots for other systems - such as the Repair Drone.

A toroid/hollow pentagon that softly glows Cherenkov blue when in operation, the Thermonuclear Reactor is generally regarded as the ultimate mech powerplant. However, due to the high base weight it is suboptimal for mechs with very limited Servomotor slots, such as the Tentacle.

Affectionately nicknamed "the Donut" by the community.

420 Power

3-3 External ResistanceWith the Fusion Reactor, it is possible to have a very high thermal margin factor whilst still producing *alot* of power. This magnet configuration of 2 Horizontal + 2 Vertical + 2 Curved is often used with 4x Capacitor auxiliary modules, fully suppress firing heat *and* operates at a high temperature, without the mass penalty of Heat Sinks.

540 Power

3-3 Internal Resistance
With a 3 Horizontal + 2 Vertical + 1 Curved magnet setup, this reactor pumps out an impressive 540 power. Unfortunately, the thermal margins are low enough that most mechs cannot use external resistors without a very low mech temperature - they will need heatsinks to operate in the warmer biomes. Thus many mechs (especially offensively biased designs) cannot support a 4 capacitor array.

Back to the internal resistor.

3-3 External Resistance
On the other hand, the Castle comes with an amazing 35% free heat resistance.

A no-heatsink, external resistor setup on the Castle gets a max mech temp of 233, meaning you can run it with 4 capacitors and permanently sustain energy weapons at 149.

702 Power

Max OverchargerWhen 540 Power is still not enough, the Overcharger awaits.

Has poor cooling, needs multiple Heat Sinks to simply to counteract basic passive heat alone, even on mechs with decent built-in heat resistance.

Additional Circuits
The fusion core has a unique auxiliary: Extra Power Circuits.

May see use on a low temp build for a low weapons count mech. Other players say it was common to redline a Plasma Gun 9 times before the fire damage nerf.

[Immortality Protocol/Extermination Runtime]

The final level of customization, customizing OS and power circuits incorrectly can break a working machine. Doing it properly can make a mech into a map flattening, boss stomping force of nature.

Processor Programs
Though in the same button group as the Defenses and Additional Circuit submenus, the Custom OS Screen is only accessible once Processor Programs has been researched, which is fairly late in the game. Here, you may select programs which change the behavior and sometimes nature of a mech's systems interactions. They add load to a mech's CPU, and you are limited to 100% CPU capacity.

If you need to run more programs, you can Overclock. Overclocking doubles the CPU's power, or halves the relative load of each program. This does come at the cost of doubling systems damage.

OS program numbers are indicated in a bar on this screen, and are also added added to the top left of the mech portrait, in red if overclocked.

For example, a mech with 137 in it's portrait means it's OS has been modified with 1 - Faster Melee Attacks, 3 - Move Speed Power, and 7 - Laser Power, and red meaning it is overclocked. This allows a veteran player to know the mech's purpose at a glance, without dissecting it on the Engineering workbench.

Custom OS Programs can be classified by what they scale off of and their CPU cost, this determines how well Programs synergize with each other and efficient combinations.

The higher the Mech's reactor temperature, the more powerful these programs get, incentivizing you to ride the redline.

0 - Energy Shield Power (56/28)
Tremendously boosts energy shield effectiveness, allowing a late game overshield design to facetank infested Colubra for extended periods.

3 - Move Speed Power (18/9)
I put this on every mech as soon as Processor Programs gets researched. Mechs are agonizingly before this.

5 - Kinetic Rate of Fire (60/30)
Radically changes the nature of Kinetic weapons; this program dramatically improves DPS by increasing ROF proportional to Reactor Temperature.

However, it removes one of the cornerstone benefits of Kinetic weapons - they now generate heat on every shot. Can easily cause a runaway reaction with multiple Chain Guns, watch your mech's heat and click on the chain gun's icon when in danger.

7 - Laser Power (68/34)
Makes Energy weapons hit harder. If a DPS mech is mostly armed with energy weapons there's no reason not to use this. Does -not- improve Tesla arcs emitted by the Particle Emitter.

The more unused power you have in reserve, the greater the performance you will see out of these programs.

2 - Cooling Improvment (38/19)
Note: ONLY INCREASES COOLING WHILE OVERHEATING. Quite useful with Safety Override, but imho Safety Override in and of itself is very dangerous.

4 - Kinetic Reload (32/16)
Improves the reloading speed of kinetic ammo based on available energy. Quite good on most kinetic mechs, as non-Coilgun kinetic weapons have minimal energy draw, especially after blue-lining.

9 - Evasion Improvement (28/14)
Increases evasion based off of spare power. Hard to tell if it's useful - when I'm evading enemy fire, I'm not sure it was this program or if it were just my orders.

These programs either do not scale or do not depend on reactor power/heat.

1 - Fast Melee Attacks (20/10)
Multiplies melee speed by Stability Regeneration bonus, which is mostly increased by the Evasion Module Auxiliary.

6 - Rocket Barrage (64/32)
Hugely increases explosive weapons Rate of Fire, by something like ten-fold according to testing. Explosive reload time is increased by 5 times, however.

Not widely used due to tremendous overkill and high CPU cost, even a Plate specced for ammo/control will be spending -alot- of time reloading. Some ammo efficient mechs may be armed mostly with energy weapons & a single large launcher, use Rocket Barrage and then lean on the energy weapons while the mech reloads.

8 - Gas no Reload (62/31)
Allows a thermal/chemical weapon to continuously fire even while reloading. You still experience reloading heat and Thermal/Chemical weapons are very unfavored in the current state of balance, so not too useful at the moment.

10 - Safety Override (25/12.5)
Mech is guaranteed to be damaged from Overheat, but the mech will still keep functioning even if overheated.

Very dangerous because crits often debuffs the cooling system, making further overheats inevitable, causing more damage to the cooling system until the mech is in a state of constant shutdown-overheat. Potentially very advantageous as cooling efficiency increases with temperature, not to mention that overheat cooling is improved both by a pilot Talent and the Cooling Improvement OS.

11 - Reloading Protocol (18/9)
Allows a mech to simultaneously reload all it's empty ammo magazines at the same time. The reloading heat from all ammo types is added together. While it leaves a much smaller vulnerability period than sequential reloads, this still gives your mech a tremendous heat spike.

Overall I recommend not using multiple ammo types on a single mech, except perhaps the Plate.

12 - Reloading Restriction (10/5)
Very CPU-light program, prevents any reloads from starting whilst core temperature is over 85%. Good if you didn't anticipate your ammo-efficient hybrid part laser mech running out of ammo and don't want to shutdown.

But sometimes it can be desirable to shutdown, reboot the reactor and reload while rebooting.

Unlike with Defense and Custom OS in the same button group, Power Circuits does not bring up a separate screen. Instead, details on energy utilization and additional power lines (if any) are revealed. This menu also reveals cooling, heating, etc. By toggling the switch under your reactor you can add/remove extra power lines to a component.

A single blue power line to non-energy/energy-adjacent (EM Coilgun, EM Plasma, Particle Emitter) weapon reduces your energy consumption by 5, but powergrid capacity by 3, netting you 2 "free" power back. Doing it to energy weapons causes their damage to decrease!

Each redline increases power draw by 5, but increases powergrid capacity by 3, for a net power cost of 2.

-Redlines to ICE motors only increases lift by 1 and is considered useless after very early-game. Electric motors show far better energy/lift ratios, see the Servomotor table.

-Redlining energy/adjacent weapons increases damage but also weapons heat, based on type and mod.

Adding any power line reduces maximum mech temperature by ~2* for each line!

This is why the Extra Power Circuit fusion core auxiliary is difficult to use well.

*Note: sometimes rounding errors.

[the victorious general calculates before the battle is fought]

Upon starting a game and completing the introductory City Defense mission, you will see a bunch of icons on your strategic map.

Of particular interest are four colored pings on your map; Green, Gold, Teal & Pink. When within strike range, you will know them by their beautiful, unique pre-mission art. They denote a side quest with different win condition and advanced loot.

Reactor Production Complex (Pink)

A normal Colubra clearing mission, except the terrain (large installation) is rather difficult for early game mechs.

Rewards:
Bait/Beacon Construction Technology
~8x Fission Reactors
>10 Control Rods
>10 Safety Chips

Somewhat less immediately useful than the Bunker mission rewards, due to the fact early game starting mechs using basic ICE servomotor struggle with every point of weight & fission reactors are chonkier. Additionally, the demand for power is fairly low pre-energy weapons.

However, the prize becomes quite potent during mid game. A tremendous amount of build time is saved as you never have to build a fission reactor frame, control rod or safety chip again. Now it only takes 6 hangar-days to put a new fission reactor into operation (3x grey fuel rods + 3x red fast reaction rods).

Bunker (Green)
Map is dominated by large bunker structure in center of map, which has friendly MG turrets on it. Ovum will spawn attackers constantly, consider clearing these before capturing the bunker. Once your mechs touch the bunker the residents will depart into trucks and follow your mech. Go to the evac zone to complete the misison.

Rewards:
Size+ Weapon Construction Technology
~4x Chain Guns, Rapid Rocket Launchers, Tank Guns
~4-5x High Power Lasers, High Speed Lasers

Arguably the best early-game lootbox, the Bunker Misison is fairly easy and can also grant a struggling player a massive power spike with laser armaments. Make sure you beeline Heat Sinks ASAP if you see this ping anywhere near your start location.

Orbital Defense Turret (Golden)

Similar to the Bunker mission, this map features a large turret in the middle surrounded by a set of earthworks/walls. Considerably harder than the Bunker, though, as it has a armadillo mini-boss whom jumps around the map, unfurls itself to shoot lots of bullets at you, and occasionally attempts to entangle a mech with it's tongue.

Recommend pausing just as it unfurls and dropping artillery on it. Activating the orbital defense turret in the center (and keeping it alive) significantly reduces the difficulty.

Rewards:
Particle Emitter Launcher Blueprints
2x Particle Emitter Launcher
2x Fission Reactor
> 20x Control Rod
> 10x Safety Chips

This mission rewards you with the most powerful anti-mob weapon in the game. I've already ranted about how amazing it is earlier in this guide.

Satellite Crash Site (Teal)
Spiral labyrinth that is somewhat less of a CQB hazard than the Reactor Factory site - but makes up for it with an annoying frog miniboss, even more threatening than the armadillo in the Orbital Defense mission. Once you kill the frog, use explosives/drill or artillery to open a shortcut through the labyrinth.

Rewards:
~1x Fusion Reactor
~1x Fission Reactor
~9x High Power Lasers
~1x Cabin 3

Whilst this mission also grants a considerable amount of lore, the loot it grants is less exciting. Fusion Reactor is a bit inapplicable early game (due to high weight) and less of a power swing than acquiring Particle Emitter Launchers late game. Still useful, of course, given the fusion reactor frame consumes 30 Hangar-Days to build.

Other than movement, the game has two strategy layer systems, the Bait/Beacon and the Atomic Missile. On the Strategy layer, after the player presses end turn, the turn order is City Movement - > Boss Movement -> Nuke Lands (if nuke was targeted this turn)

Nukes

Nukes are unlocked via research. Unlocking nukes gives you a small amount of warheads and 2 missiles immediately.

Atomic missiles require two parts to fire, two warheads are produced every week from your city's main reactor, and the missile, which requires 2 Days x 5 Hangar Slots (and a large chunk of resources) to build.

The fastest launch pace possible is 1 nuclear missile per turn. The turn order means you must lead a boss (or savescum) to connect on them.

Bait

Beacons attracts bosses within 5 tiles of it once triggered. They can only be activated via delay mechanism on the strategic map layer and require a Bait unit to be produced beforehand, which requires 3 days x 1 Hangar Slot.

Thankfully it is significantly cheaper than the nuclear missile.

As mentioned before, they are unlocked via the Reactor Production Complex Mission (Pink Ping)

Decision-making tips

While the ingame-guide has plenty of details (and you should read it) we'll give a examples of decision making concerns.

-On start, consider restarting if either a gold or red sword icon are within 4 squares of your current position.

-Early game, you can clear basic (Operarius-only) tiles with 3 units if you use an optimized build (see Mech section). This means you can clear 2 tiles a day with your starting 6 miners, which is ideal for accelerated resource gathering and farming EXP for as many pilots as possible.

-Before you end the day, sort all your pilots by Vitality/Stress Resistance. Put your 2 most injured/stressed out pilots into the Hospital.

Next, sort by Combat Skill/Reaction. Put the worst performer in Training.

-Early game, consider moving closer to deposits of resources you are lacking (see Resource Mode on strategic map)

-Your city cannot walk over mountains. Make sure your planned trajectory has a valid path.
Funnily enough, your city can walk in deep Ocean (???) and Volcanic terrain...

-Labyrinths require nukes to clear; either travelling through the maze and then defeating a boss in side to plant the bomb or by firing a nuclear missile at it.

-Titanus Araneus (Red Sword) will aggressively spread infested tiles. Consider nuking it as early as possible. Avoid early game.

-Titanus Centipeda is far more passive, unless it sees an Araneus or your city nearby. It is very tough to beat without optimized endgame mechs. Nukes do not work on Titanus Centipeda (Gold Sword) bosses! Avoid until endgame.

[best laid plans, of mice and men / oft go awry]

If the City damage reaches 100%, you will lose the game.

Initially your city is in a state of severe disrepair and will continue to take damage as key metrics (humans available/not wounded, energy supply, food/goods supply, life support) cause inefficiencies.

To mitigate this (and avoid losing), you need to repair city districts.

By farming twice a day from the start, resources should not be your main bottlenecks. Instead, I find upgrading/repairing districts to be constrained early by lack of City Components and the limit of 1 upgrade per day late game. City Components themselves are bottlenecked by production line. Upgrades can be stockpiled up to 5, but are lost over that.

You can't increase the daily upgrade limit (in current version). Since the daily upgrade limit is our hard bottleneck we want to avoid as much wastage as possible by maximizing production.

To do this we want to focus on repairing District 56 (Upper Factory). Spend your initial upgrade points on repairing it. Then, put as many City Components into the build order as you can afford (reserving some resources for deploying mechs, of course).

Soon you will run into a limit where a district can no longer receive upgrades until the linked (blue line) supporting district is upgraded. In this case, D56 is dependent on D36, Lower Residential Zone. The Lower Residential Zone itself in is dependent on District 25, Water Supply System.

Which in turn is dependent on D03 City Disk, which depdends on D02 & D01 Leg Connections. Including the supporting stack, fully repairing D56 should take about 7 days, depending on RNG factors.

Next, I find it best to rush District 15, Mech Hangar. By doing so it allows us to deploy each mech twice a day, meaning with the starting 6 mining mechs you can deploy a full strength lance of 4 mechs 3 times a day, or short squads of 3 mechs 4 times a day, tremendously improving EXP and resource gain. Since we have already fully repaired D03 City Disk to fix the Upper Factory, this should finish very quickly.

Afterwards I favor maxing out D16 Academic Corpus, putting a point into the Main Reactor (to improve efficiency and slow down city degradation), D11 Eastern Factory (Armor), D05 Communications center, D04 Artillery, then whatever district improves my current lowest stat the most.

The optimal research order differs greatly depending on your situation.

Example 1: Bunker Rush
Great news! After clearing the starting mission, you discover that the Bunker (green ping) is 8 tiles distant, or 6 days (strike range of 2) and the route is all land.

Time to min-max hard and rush Heat Sinks. To do this you need:

1. [Reinforced Frame], 2 Days, 100 Scientists
   
2. [Layered Armor], 2 Days, 25 Scientists
   
3. [Heat Drain], 2 Days, 50 Scientists

Since we start with 160 scientists, some 60 excess researchers will be twiddling their thumbs on Day 0-1, but on Day 2 you will have a surplus of 135 scientists. You should pursue [First Generation ICE]; which should leave you a surplus of 55 scientists. Going after [Mech Chassis - Plate] will only leave you with 35, meaning Heat Sinks will be delayed since these research take longer than 2 days for Layered Armor to complete.



And now you have Heat Sinks available just as you do the Bunker mission. Heat Sinks + laser weapons + fission reactor (& improved ICE) gives an *immense* power spike this early.

Example 2: Emergency Aquanaut
Let's say you start on the edge of a nice scenic route, covering as much land as possible with minimum revisit/overlap. But to your dismay, during the next few days you see a Red Sword lay a trail of infested tiles switching directions blocking your path, while a Gold Sword meanders on your alternative land route.

Rather than try to thread the needle, you need to go the other way - into the ocean. Rush Turbines & Needle Aux to turn your starting mechs into ad-hoc submarines.

(May be better simply restarting if you didn't go Heat Sinks before, lol)

Example 3: Giant Problems
Suppose it is relatively early, and you were threading a mountain pass.

Your scientists finished Tank Guns, First Generation Engines, Reinforced Frame, Rocket Launchers.

They are about to start [Mech Chassis - Plate] when you get bad news - your tile clearing team discovered the path in front of you is blocked by a mountain range (since you didn't cheese and memorize/screenshot the terrain).

It gets worse.

The Titanus Aranea changed direction and is now chasing your city. You move away from it just as fast as it can approach. The planetary superstorm storm will pass by you in 2 weeks.

You don't think you can grow your starting squad - ICE and all - to beat it in time. Instead, you rush Lasers -> Nukes which will take exactly 13 days.

With a bit of luck you will survive.

[Know thy enemy, know thyself]

WIP


-In the pre-mission planning screen, ensure you place the squad member with command skills in Slot #1 - they don't work otherwise. This slot even comes with a golden rim and crown to make it obvious who should be here.

Also consider changing the target priorities, for example having some long range DPS focus against Ovum is often a good call and shorten mission time.

Another example is if you don't have a good CRAM setup and can deal well with spam Operarius, it may be beneficial to set your long range fire support mechs to focus on Milis before they chew through your reactive armor.

-If you don't have enough DPS to charge directly into the ovum you can make edge-hugging circular movements. Hugging the map border ensures you don't get surrounded in all directions, and naturally causes the majority of enemies to clump up chasing you. This massively improves your effective AOE/piercing DPS against them, and also lets you destroy Ovum near the edge.

Then, as the number of enemies die down, tighten the circles.

Enemy resistance causes them to take 75% less damage from the given damage type. Try to avoid butting heads into hard counters.

Having more range than the enemy greatly improves safety, which is why despite the tremendous DPS of energy weapons they shouldn't be used alone, at least late game.


Operarius

The basic swarmer with average movement and melee attack. If you can't deal with these you can't deal with anything else in the game, hence they form the floor of enemy threat levels.

Aries
Quite discombobulating when you first meet them, high armor and kinetic resist makes early game kinetic attacks against Aries near-futile. Small cross section increases chance of missing, but once hit by explosives/energy they melt quick.

Fragellum

Capable of grasping mechs and dragging them into the swarm, the threat of Fragellum scale with the alien horde. Recommend bringing at least 1 melee mech to act as pointman/bait to saw off tentacles and having at least 1 DPS prioritize Fragellum.

Ovum
The main source of common xenoforms, the number of Ovum present on a map tile is displayed in the bottom left corner as "Nests".

Killing them quickly will reduce the time to clear a map. Since they have zero armor, fire type damage is tremendously effective against them.

Brucus

Your primary source of resources, the Brucus has the ability to move through walls like your mechs through normal terrain. When damaged, they drop 2 turrets* & retreat so it's recommended to kill them quickly.

Two bursts of artillery usually suffice.

*Xeno Turret
Quite tough early game, these turrets are also fairly small in cross section and thus explosives often miss.

Fulgur
High health and powerful, short range energy attack. The Fulgur is quite annoying, but due to it's low spawn limit and weak armor is a relatively manageable threat... midgame.

Avoid early. That is, if you can. Superstorm cells will spawn them in large numbers.

Gammarius

Large tanky crab, their high spawn limit and reasonable damage resistances make them able to 'protect' clumps of enemies behind them as they advance.

Proper usage of target prioritization and good movement pattern neutralizes this threat.

Sagittarius
Long ranged attacker who chunks through Amor, ignores Coating/Shields and CRAM. Only real solution is to kill them first, which requires powerful, well tuned weapons.

Avoid early.

Flos

Short ranged crab, with energy wave attack that overloads your mech's reactors. Short range and average movement means its not too hard to kill it first. If you absolutely cannot kite them strong energy shields can work.

Avoid weak energy shields - they are actually counterproductive.

Milis
Long ranged small rocket spewer which ignore armor and need Active Armor (Coating) or CRAM to stop. Though not as dangerous individually as a Sagittarius, they have a spawn limit of 5 and will overwhelm 1-2 CRAM if you let them build up.

Caecilia

Tough, fast flying snake that spews energy bolts at you; a tiny and vastly less threatening version of the Titanus Centipeda.

Shooting off segments other than it's head detaches those sections; far less effective than simply going for the head. Avoid early.

Colubra
Baseworm on all non-Boss/Labyrinth/Special Objective maps. Kill it to clear the tile.

The Colubra fires a short range but tremendously powerful energy beam which is stopped (temporarily) by energy shields - will burn through all but the most powerful shield configurations quickly. On infested tiles they gain infinite range but fire a much weaker, slow projectile.

Has a 1000 HP, 2 Armor bubble shield over it which is immune to non-kinetic weapons. Must destroy the shield before non-kinetics can go through.

Early game it is entirely plausible to storm the shield with CQB weapons. Late game the sheer number of Ovum spawning enemies behind the shield make trying to assault it even with Plasmaguns foolish - there's a real risk you'll get stunlocked by the horde of enemies just as you try to cross the shield.

Maps have different effects which result in different optimal fits and ways to approach them, which can be further complicated by map modifiers.

-30 - Taiga
By far the least hostile environment, snowlands significantly improve cooling and don't have any built-in hazards.

There have been some changes since beta. Taiga maps now come with slowing mud zones, rendering them a navigational hazard..

Additionally, they have more trees than before, weakening fields of fire and occaisionally presenting a hazard for Large Missiles.








0 - Cave

Cave maps are cramped, typically with many sharp bends, making them very CQB heavy.

Combined with enemy Operarius occasionally popping out of walls, and the lack of artillery support, caves are fairly difficult to attack.

17- Underwater Biomes
Aquatic terrain reduces your mech speed by 65% and makes otherwise minor damage fatal if not repaired.

They massively penalizes non-kinetic, non-explosive damage, sucks up aux slots even for those weapons, and has currents (watch for moving clumps of bubbles!) which shove around most mechs.

Initially, Artillery support is unavailable, but can be remediated with the Depth Charge tech.

It is advised to avoid all but the easiest Aquatic maps until you have Repair Drone.




9 - Mountain

Mountainous maps typically come with large blocks of blocking terrain and large open spaces between them, granting generous fields of fire for long range weapons, as long as the player moves correctly.

29 - City
Though they come with comfortable heat level, most cities have dense block layouts that result in a CQB maze.

The capturable machine gun turrets are too weak to compensate, whilst also endangering nearby mechs - the turrets have self-destruct enabled!

Recommend explosives/artillery to cut a path through the terrain, reducing CQB risk.

Quite important early game; Cities provide you with piles of T1 motors, scientists, engineers, ICE reactors, and occasionally T2 motors.





32 - Plains

This biome is very forgiving. The open terrain permits excellent firing lines.

53 - Swamp
Unless the player turbogreeded early game with HP ICE/Internal Resist pre-heatsinks, Swamp temperature is still enjoyable.

However, the enormous amounts of slick/wet floor and large amounts of blocking terrain the map is both a navigation (unless using aquatic mechs) and CQB hazard.

Though the blocking terrain tends to be widely spammed, it's usually much 'thinner' than on mountain tiles, thus making surgical cuts with artillery is often quite practical.





107 - Wasteland

With some reconfiguration, your starting mechs & starting tech can operate at 107 degrees without guaranteed shutdown, making this biome a natural early-game cutoff.

Wasteland maps can come with tornadoes and fire vortex. Tornadoes can be redirected with large explosions, so do consider using a burst of Artillery to redirect one about to hit your mechs.

149 - Desert
The Desert biome not only features fire vortexes and tornadoes, they also have chronic winds pushing low impact resistance mechs to the right side of the map. Load up on impact resistance & stability regeneration if you can afford to.

Unlike with Wasteland, starter mechs with ICE reactors cannot stabilize on this biome.

Avoid early or bring pilots with Overheat Recovery.








281 - Volcanic

This hellscape is widely considered the harshest environment in Mech Engineers.

Volcanic tiles feature constant showers of pyroclastic fallout, thermal hotspots that erupt if damaged by explosive weapons, and of course high background heat.

The tax on thermal capacity makes it almost completely impossible to clear early game, and drastically limits late game DPS.

Tiles can receive multiple modifiers, for example a Superstorm Infested Tile can coexist with a Labyrinth Entrance or Red/Gold Sword.

Infested Tiles
All biomes can receive the infested modifier, which significantly improves the armor of xenoforms, changes the Colubra to fire long range (but weaker) projectiles instead, and worst of all makes hull breaches an infection threat to your pilots.

Of special note is increased background heat on certain tiles - Taiga/Cave/Aquatic/City/Wasteland - which are raised to 30/77/89/167, further punishing low heat-resistance mechs like the Quadro & Holo.

Recommend avoiding early game.

Superstorm Tiles
Upon game start, you may notice a massive vertical column of these icons on the global map. All biomes can receive the Superstorm modifier. Like Desert, tiles afflicted by the Superstorm have powerful winds buffeting your mechs, which makes using low impact resistance mechs annoying and dangerous.

Unlike the Desert, Superstorm tiles constantly spawn Fulgur and have a much higher spawn limit.

Labyrinth Entrance
Surface does not have a Colubra, but an entrance to the base in it's place. Must explore and fight through the Labyrinth and defeat the Titanus Monstrum to plant a nuke and clear the Labyrinth.

Recommended to avoid without midgame fits, at minimum.

Pre-railgun (or at least massed tank guns) it may still be advisable to avoid Nests as much as possible. Though the resource reward is impressive damage taken can only be repaired post-mission, threatening the completion of the Monstrum boss fight.

Mobile World Map Boss
Titanus Aranea and Centipeda are represented by red and gold sword icons respectively. When encountering them, the map is a mostly flat arena with some trees, which is mostly to your benefit.

Though some cover could be useful against the Aranea's rocket attacks, fighting Centipeda on the surface is less stressful than underground.

Kill the boss to clear it.

[Audentes Fortuna Iuvat]

WIP

In the introduction we discussed the difficulty of packing Offense, Defense, Utility etc into one mech. However, you have four mechs. Empirically I've found the following composition very optimal for on-land boss fights (and overkill standard tile clearing):

1x Support/Off DPS
2x DPS
1x Tank

---

"But wait, NAOP-sama" one might say, "how to get enemies to attack your tank and not the DPS/support?" This is where pilot talents come in.

Pilots gain a talent point every 3 levels, for a maximum of 3 Talents (earned at level 9). Basic Talents function no matter who is in the Squad Commander slot.

Evasion
Adds 15% Evasion.

Feels as if pilots with Evasion take less damage. May be a placebo effect.

Accuracy
Increases Accuracy by 30%. Gives 1% Critical Chance.

Given how the HS Laser falls off from having superior DPS at point blank to less DPS at 450m than the HP Laser due to accuracy problems, this is mandatory for most DPS mechs.

Repair
Can repair allied mechs if equipped with a Repair Drone auxiliary.

Very powerful; a squad with 2+ repair drones can survive multiple times the damage a squad without repair drones could.

Overheat Recovery
Speeds up recovery from Overheating by 150%. Overheat does no damage.

There are two schools of thought on Kiber's Discord; those who think that [Overheat Recovery] is the best thing since sliced bread, and those who find this skill useless because they engineer their mechs to not overheat on the target biome.

Pilot Rescue
Rescuing a mech from a mission also rescues the pilot.

I've actually had this talent fail to rescue the pilot for me, though I think he died first and then the mech shut down, rather than the other way around. Late game that situation is quite common due to the power of the repair drone.

Taunt
Every 3 seconds, 15% chance to Taunt all enemies. Taunt lasts 3 seconds.

Doesn't guarantee the defense mech will be the target, but over the course of a long battle, a significantly increased amount of damage should have been aimed at the tank; meaning less towards other mechs.

DPS mechs won't be able to full glass cannon, but they can use lighter, more efficient armor, be less concerned about rockets, and spend more mass/energy/slots etc on offensive duties.

---

Leadership Talents only work on a pilot in Slot 1 (in pre-mission planning menu). They affect the entire squad.

Leadership: Movement
Increases the movement speed of the squad by 15%.

Mandatory. Early game mechs are agonizingly slow even with this skill in effect.

Leadership: Reload
Increases the reloading speed of the squad by 25%

Almost mandatory. Reduces both vulnerability window and reloading heat via faster reloads.

Leadership: Repair
Increases drone repair speed of the squad by 50%

The weakest of the Leadership skills. Doesn't do anything about critical damage, and base repair drone skill is already very strong vs hull damage.

According to the in-game manual, high relationship score between squad member being issued an order and the squad leader reduces delay. I personally haven't noticed a significant improvement even at 1000 relationship, but it can't hurt, right?

WIPWIPWIP

Early game, the mining mech all you've got. It's mostly constrained by it's awful ammo ratio (and the fact all the starting weapons use ammo). While late game it's constrained by it's low servomotor count and weapons slots, the fact it has melee and pretty reasonable stats helps.

Would be one of the best mechs in the game if we were playing a 4x, but alas.

Day 0 Builds
Our initial misison opponents are all Operarius. 12 damage is a nice number, as it 1-shots a swarmer.

Step 1
First, we reconfigure the basic 38 Power/958 Temp ICE by dumping the internal resistor and switching to external resistors, like so:

This should bring us to 100 degree biomes without overheating during a reload.

Step 2
We configure our chainguns according to the Shredder archetype, like this.

NOTE: If you're having severe difficulty passing the first mission (how?) you may choose to fit a chain gun or two according to the Danmaku configuration instead of this build.

Step 3
Next, we ensure all 6 aux slots are filled with ammo modules.

Go to the defense menu, disable the self-destruct, add a type 0 slab and a type 0 strikeface... oh dear, we're overweight.

We could remove the melee drill... but it's only 1 weight excess. Instead we blue-line the weapon and redline one of the basic ICE motors.

Step 4 Basic Miner, Kinetic
Perfect. Send it to the hangar, stick a pilot in the mech.

"NewAge-sama I have a big stack of rapid rocket-"
"No."
"I'm running low on miniguns-"
"Lies."
*puppy eyes*
"Fine."

Step 2A
Set your rocket launcher like so. The fire damage is pretty brutal to anything with weak armor, and explosive damage ensures their armor decreases.

The Miner will be 4 units overweight following the same steps as earlier. Instead, turn off your energy shield and red-line all your basic ICEs.

Your mech should look like this:
Step 4A, Basic Miner, Explosive

On start immediately retarget the pilot of this onto a Brucus (resource-turret worm). It should die very quickly to the flame rockets, and if it spawned relatively close to your position you can grab the resources without being overwhelmed.

Warning: explosive ammo seems to generate more heat somehow, despite the "Heat from Reload" stat being identical. This build will suffer reactor shutdown at 100 degrees, whilst reloading, unlike the kinetic variant of the Starting Mech. You may wish to instead build around the 27 Power/1334 Temp Reactor instead, of which you can assemble one of immediately at game start.


Mid

Late?

Early Aquatic DPS


Early builds

Mid Support/DPS

Late Support DPS

Late Pure DPS

Late Pure Tank


Early Quadro

Mid DPS (Kinetic Star)

Late DPS (Energy/Missile)

Late DPS (Energy/Kinetic)

Early DPS

Mid Aquatic

Late Support/DPS

Mid-Late Aquatic

wryyyy

Late DPS

Q: "Can I circle around the world map?"
A: Yes. Moving right on column 33 will have you appear on column 0, and vice versa.

Q: "What are the map numbers?"
A: Akin to minesweeper, the numbers on the map indicate 'How many Labyrinths are within the surrounding cells'.

1. Add in Titanus Monstrum. Fight it again as it got nerfed since beta.

2. Update Aux for 1.0. That is, if Kiber doesn't make more changes...

3. Fix pilot/lance composition.

4. Squeeze in bossfights somewhere.

5. Flesh out strategic missions.

6. Somehow cram in images into Biomes/Enemies/Tactics.

I'm already out of character count in this section, and I don't want to make even more sections - the index is already longer than the page on my screen!

7. Update Thermal/Chemical for 1.0. Low priority since they're still mediocre after 1.0 buffs.

I think that's it? If there's anything else this guide needs before finalization, let me know in the comments.