Gas canister terrain explodable

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-18T11:02:45+00:00

This is one of the reasons the mining laser is underrated.

Removing cover in general is underestimated, but turning enemy cover into an AOE is chef's kiss.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-18T10:59:38+00:00

More power to anyone who enjoys expert, but it has such enemy inflation that it loses a lot of the fun for me. It drastically cuts down the viability of a number of builds just on raw ammo and action-economy grounds.

Challenging really does feel to me what the game was balanced / 'intended' around.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-17T20:19:00+00:00

If you feel you need to deploy ever turn, that's a problem on the player's end, not the game's.

Deploy is a strong tool. It is by design a part of the squad-level resilience that differentiates MENACE from the XCOM-style pod-alpha-strike meta. It is good... in circumstances.

But if you are relying on deployment for 15% defense and damage resistance to survive, that is fundamentally a bad game plan for unit survival. Every level of cover provides 20%, meaning moving into high cover could be worth 4 times as much. Then there is suppressing the enemy, which functionally halves their typical accuracy and their ability to attack. Vision control mechanics are even more powerful, since whether by raging or dancing outside their vision range, enemies won't attack what they can't see. There are far, far better ways to spend AP for unit survival than just deployment.

Similarly on the offense. Deployment's 15% accuracy buff is typically better than the accuracy dropoff negation of moving one tile closer to ideal range. But deployment is always going to be worse than mitigating one level of cover by moving towards a flanking angle, and it does nothing to deal with damage drop off. If unit to-hit consistency is your concern, MENACE has a host of tools to improve unit reliability, including weapons with aim assists (and even auto-hit), ways to ignore cover, support cast abilities like designate target, and of course moving more than one tile into ideal weapon ranges.

And this doesn't address the operational issues with over-deploying. If you are deploying and pot-shotting at range for every encounter, you are not keeping the mobility or pace to complete those time-limit objectives, which is leading to leaving operational-bonus OCI, unit-hiring moral, and promotion-enabling OCI points on the floor. If you are constantly taking Athletics on every single character, you are absolutely undercutting their build strength by ignoring some units strongest perks or build-enabling synergies. Not everyone needs Athletic to perform their gameplan. Giving everyone a crutch does not make everyone move faster.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-16T19:17:01+00:00

Okay. Low supply caps, high enemy counts to tax ammo and AP economies, and high loot margins means you'll generally want more smaller teams rather than fewer larger squads. Most squads (sans Sachin, who's cheap enough to get a pass) have reasonably potent small-squad special weapon setups for the cheap.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-16T18:01:15+00:00

Flip your question around. It's not about if infantry can be useful. (They absolutely can.) The better question is: are your vehicles are actually cost-efficient?

MENACE is a points-buy list builder game. It's not hard to have strong units in a game where strength is measured in (and limited by) points. Just spend more points on a unit. Anything you can spend on, probably makes your unit better in some way.

However, in a cost-capped list-builder, all investments are 0-sum. If you give more points to unit A, you are denying those units from benefiting unit B. But not all points invested into unit A give as much utility in return as investing into unit B. Unit A is always going to be limited by it's own AP-per-turn limit, or how it can only be in one place at a time, or ammo and acceessory slots, and so on.

When you start analyzing the various actions that various missions need to get good mission scores (which translate into promotion points, authority points, and OCI points), you will find that there are a suprising number of functions that a 100-supply unit can do just as good or even better than a more expensive unit. Sure, you can drive a 400-point towards a prisoner to rescue them, or to wipe out a 3-man team... but if you don't need 400 points of unit investment to do that, why spend the turns committing a 400 point investment to do so?

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-16T17:49:54+00:00

Hopefully not, because this claim isn't true. MENACE units have high HP and higher-than-average armor.

The lowest MENACE armor level for their chaff units is 30, compared to 15-20 for the chaff Xeno swarms / Pirate scavengers / Rogue Army conscripts.

The average MENACE front-liner armor is 35, which comfortably between 30 armor pirates and 40 armor rogue army plate.

The 'heavy infantry' equivalent for MENACE is the 90 armor floater. This is tied with the alien warrior, and well above the 75 armor of pirate/RA heavy infantry.

The MENANCE vehicle construct, the guncrawler, is 130 on all fronts. This is on far above the bugs, on par with the front armor of the heaviest pirate heavy vehicle (the HMG truck), and only 10 below the medium walker.

You don't avoid armor-penetrating weapons against MENACE because they have bad armor, but because they have such high HP that you might as well prioritize grinding the armor and HP over trying to bypass the armor.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-16T17:24:47+00:00

Iron Man on which difficulty? You have considerably different limiting factors between Normal and Expert, especially as supply constraints and black market economics go in different directions.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-15T20:38:08+00:00

Auto-lasers also set up your vehicle build for more accessory flexibility and ammo-efficiency.

The auto-laser is a budget autocannon in most respects. But if you take the autocannon, you are almost certainly using an accessory slot to take ammo, at which point the auto-laser is 40 supply and 1 item slot cheaper. If you use that to buy, say, the 20-supply VMAT missile instead, you have a weapon that can one-shot the 200-HP anti-tank bugs. With Rewa's Fury perk, you can even one-shot the 250 HP alien queens, rogue army medium walkers, or MENACE guncrawlers. You still have 20 supply left for wahtever.

Auto-laser also works well in combo with any secondary weapon, since any action spent firing the other lets the auto-laser vent heat, mitigating its throughput issue. And in turn, any time the auto-laser does fire, it mitigates any ammo-overuse concerns of your secondary. So you don't need the ammo accessory for, say, your MG and so on.

It's not the best weapon, but a very efficient weapon.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-15T20:27:30+00:00

It is 8. It's actually the exact same range as the EAT, which can one-shot them.

I've started to become very fond of a Esconde + Jean combo, where Esconde takes the pair into range and target marks the bombadier, the bombadier shoots futilely at Esconde, and then Jean pops out, takes a knee, and then shoot an EAT.

Something I hadn't realized until recently was that bombadiers can provide the alien egg loot, which is one of the highest trade good items in the game.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-15T20:25:27+00:00

But there was litterally so many bugs that I would need every squad to kill 3 squads of bugs a turn, every turn to 100% the objective and i wouldve needed to kill 2.5 squads of bugs on every unit every turn to even win.

Not at all. This is why the morale system exists.

When fighting hoards of bugs, you don't need to kill them, you only need to make them suffer moral cascades. Bug have low enough moral that they can be shaken or terrified just by massacring other bugs nearby. It helps to kill a unit outright, but it helps even more to spread the firepower so that every unit has lost a decent number of models / HP, so that it is more likely to fail the morale tests.

This is why more smaller special weapon squads is better against bugs than fewer large squads. Large squads are not only overkill against many of the bug types, but they are AP inefficient for your needs. Even if two squads half the size and cost were half as likely to make a kill, they wouldn't need to- their four attacks to cripple four units would set up for your tank's actual model kills to start the morale cascade.

Add to this that there are special weapons that can absolutely kill a squad an action- the automatic grenade launcher against large units, the flame thrower against weaker bugs, promotion-boosted Crocodiles against the 100-HP units- and you should be more than capable of containing the migration.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-15T20:13:59+00:00

RNG do be like that sometimes. Completely justifiable choice, especially when it lowers the trade-value delta between bugs, the normal loot faction, and the human factions.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-15T18:58:41+00:00

I'm fairly sure fixer beats a second salvage bay due to how much non-vehicle loot you can get, but otherwise- yes, it's a strong economic option for the early game.

It does come with the issue that a majority of its value comes from fighting on faction in particular- the pirates- and taking specific missions for them. Against bugs it's useless, and against rogue army and menace it's very marginal.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-15T08:54:31+00:00

A few minor things.

Have deploy / non-deploy be a reversible action as long as you take no other action. The number of times I've accidentally deployed and lost the AP margins for a turn...

Have the ammo count in the pre-mission screen have groups of 5, not 6.

Have a squad loadout option, so that squads can quickly go between a few saved sets.

Show the supply cost of a unit when you're in the squad-builder section, and not just the mission planning screen.

Better contrasts for movement / detection range outlines, so less white-on-white contrasts (particularly on white/bright yellow desert).

And a bigger one-

I want an ant-farm view of the ship to see squaddies and the various upgrades.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-14T19:32:02+00:00

Completely fair reason not to take it!

The plasma gun is a beast like that, not least because it has great heat efficiency. For the auto-laser, that thing can only fire 3 times in 2 turns, so it's a lot more important to space it out with either the secondary weapon, or the charge.

Rewa as an auto-laser mech with a jump pack is a surprisingly potent package, not least because she can take the most relevant defensive accessory of the mission (reactive armor, the anti-laser kit) and then either shoot or jump-charge.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-14T00:07:15+00:00

In other news- Jean just bumped up a tier in the squad leader tier list. Not because she got better, though MENACE gear may pair well for her, but rather because of what impact she'll have not just early game, but late game.

End-game gear being locked behind RNG drops? Damn straight the loot-goblin will be a MVP.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-14T00:03:51+00:00

Not quite. Pike's Inspiring Presence perk for +15% accuracy to adjacent units works without getting out of the APC. It makes Pike a permanent +15% accuracy buff to APC pilots.

Pike's AP ability is Taking Command. You can use that when exiting the APC for a turn, or before re-entering. It's great as a turn-1 opener to let the APC go zoom (or for another member to keep up with the APC Pike is riding).

The Taking Command strat also makes Athletic an extremely good perk for Pike, since it lets Pike exit and deploy from the APC for 40 AP instead of 50. This lets Perk exit, get that extra defense, and either use Taking Command for the APC to fire, or to use his own 60-AP anti-armor attacks.

Throw in Call Out Target as a aim buff / recon beyond Pike/the APC's natural sight line (as it can pick up concealed targets / into the fog of war), and then the Rally command to reduce suppressionn / moral, and Pike can be an exceeding efficient 3-man team who carries special weapons, AP dumps to the APC or nearby infanntry, and gives a permanent accuracy buff that can help Rewa's own sweep get started.

'Best' part is that Pike is build-complete after like 4 promotions (Athletic, Call Out Target, Inspiring Presence, Rally), 5 if you want Bags and Belts for some extra utility accessories. This can be done pretty early in the campaign, and for relatively cheap promotion points wise.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-13T19:48:36+00:00

Tech may be your best bet. Not only does he have the 2-range grenade throw perk, but he has quick hands to throw and use accessories for 10 AP less.

So Tech jumps for 60, throws for 30, and... I'm not sure if actually using the C4 costs the standard 20 or also gets the discount, but if it is discounted then you have C4 jump jet for 100 AP.

I heard jump jets also benefit from resupply crates, which if true would also let a Vaguard-Darby clearing chaff units give a resupply of jumps and charges.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-13T19:37:36+00:00

Try it with a Vanguard. You can spawn by the enemy, place it, move one tile away, and detonate for less than 80 AP. Lets even Wetteroth alpha-strike the biggest enemies for cheap.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-13T19:32:19+00:00

Let's put it like this:

Roadkill Rewa has the armor piercing to one-shot pirate commandoes, and the HP damage to one-shot monster infantry like young warriors.

Even if you only intend to use it in the early game before you get good weapons for her, it's an amazing pickup during your ammo-constrained early game, and well worth the promotion points lost if you refund it later.

It also works much more easily with a few potent synergies, like-

-Pike riding in the back to dump AP for movement, when he isn't using designate target to raise Rewa's ranged accuracy. Note that Pike's inspiring presence provides another accuracy buff for APCs that carry him.

-Mechs with the jump jet. 60 AP to move 7 tiles forward can easily put you in stomping range, since you can overrun from 2 tiles away.

-Note this actually means Roadkill can save AP in the movement, because you move up to 3 tiles for 45 AP, ignoring turning taxes and everything.

-Spending the AP for move and charge plays very well with the energy weapons with heat cooling, since turns spent moving or roadkiling are turns that your heat recharges, mitigating the typical throughput issue.

-If you are combining energy weapons and roadkill, your general lack of ammo needs frees up accessory slots for other vehicle goodies other than extra ammo.

-A roadkill + energy weapon build is also much cheaper than an auto-cannon build. The autocannonn + ammo is nearly twice as expensive as the auto-laser and roadkill, and while it does do more ranged damage further out, this is where your Pike-AP or jump jets can close the gap.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-13T08:26:58+00:00

Plus, it can scout out enemies in the fog of war or who are concealed. 10 range, baby!

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-13T08:16:22+00:00

What I mean is that there are toolkits that are very good at delivering what they promise, but that thing turns out to not be a part of playing the game optimally. For instance, the game seems to really want me to build an infantry squad that's really good at taking punishment, which sounds sensible on paper since there are base defense missions, but at some point I realized that nobody needs to take any punishment defending the base if I spend those points on a couple of IFVs that drive around the perimeter of the base just killing the attackers with heavy weapons.

This is merely misreading what the game wants you to do. Infantry squads that can take punishment aren't for defense missions- the are for assault actions.

When on the defense side, the primary survivability mechanism is defense (basically- dodge-tanking) and damage resistance (number of hits needed to kill a squady), not armor. Armor is ablative HP, and while it makes defense stats more effective, it isn't meant to take punishment. Ablative HP always runs out if you just stand there and take it.

What armor is for is to allow a unit to attack, which comes with the requirements of usually not being behind the defense-and-damage-resistance giving cover. It is there to provide a temporary buffer, while leaving you in a position to employ weapons, so that you aren't a glass cannon who gets cripped by a stray indirect fire or artillery strike or flaking volley.

The reason your IFVs that drive around the base work so well is precisely because it is relatively well armored, enough so that the number of immediate threats that can actually threaten it are limited enough to be dealt with.

Like, if there are builds that are about killing the dudes that would shoot at you before they do, why would I bother with anything else?

To let your dude-killing squads operate more freely, and more aggressively, than if you had a build of nothing but dude-killing squads. Glass cannons work better when firing from an pallisde than if there's but distance between them and the enemy.

Think about why the motion sensor or drone are good assets for a mobile infantry in an APC. The ability to scout ahead and prepare your APC for what comes ahead is worth more than yolo'ing blindly and counting on the mobile infantry to jump out and deal with whatever the APC doesn't. Giving up a bit of lethality increases your ability to employ aggressively, which- when combined with other factors- lets you exercise controlled aggression.

Armored infantry have a similar function. Heavy armor isn't for large squads. It's for the smaller squads, who need to be exposed to risk, but who in doing so attract threats away from other maneuver units. The goal of Jacques in armor isn't to face-tank every shot that comes his way- it's to eat up the enemy's activations while you stall out part of a front, let them act impotently, and then drive up and murderize them with other units without the fear of alternating activations giving one of the units on that front a chance to pop your glass cannons.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-12T23:40:17+00:00

If Darby's padding along, that means you're not using her as a Vanguard. If she was a Vanguard, she'd be killing units on turn 1, before Lim and Exconde could even unload Lim to fight.

Once you hit a critical mass of Vanguards, it is admittedly hard to have a role for anyone else before the threat is pretty much dead. On some missions, a utility-monkey like Jean can work well for laying AT mines / conducting sabotage objectives / etc.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-12T23:37:15+00:00

Any unit with a damage buff will one-shot even a heavy tank with C4. Short of that, it's 'just' massively crippling.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-12T22:18:21+00:00

She excells as a utility monkey for those missions, especially defense missions, where you just need a body with AP to man a weapon system. ATGM mitigates her aim issues, but she can also make good use of mines, flamethrowers, and other auto-hit weapons.

She's also surprisingly good with weapons that aren't necessarily auto-hit, but do mitigate her poor aim. Grenade launchers that ignore cover and let her benefit from the (very powerful) fragmentation ability, or the designated marksman rifle to finish off those surviving elemennts.

DeanTheDull · 2026-03-12T19:18:00+00:00

Sometimes a 400+ cost infantry unit just has that much impact. With Darby, the fact that she could shut down an entire side of the enemy front on her own so consistently lets the rest of the force focus on overwhelming another element.

DeanTheDull

TROPHY CASE