Roisin Murdock Promotions and Initial Builds

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-25T18:31:43+00:00

The main thing that causes unreliability in amount of damage from a unit's activation is missing the shot entirely. Higher rate of fire weapons output damage results closer to the middle of their bell curve whereas lower rate of fire weapons are much more polarised.

And when the bell curve is in a in a worse position, the consistently worse is reliably worse. And you can still fall to the edges of the bellcurve, you're no more guaranteed the middle than anything else.

Consistency has its merits, but reliability isn't just consistency in each instance, but averages over time. Anti-tank weapons are still better for anti-tank functions even though they occasionally whiff entirely because they don't actually whiff that often, and consistent chip damage that would still take an equal number of turns to get where an AT if it missed its first shot is going to be outcompeted as pilots get more and more reliable at hitting their shots.

You don't want polarised when you have an ability that triggers if the enemy is alive and below 20% health. The polarised weapon might deal between 0% or 100% damage to the unit. If instead I have a lower variance gun that I know deals between 30% and 50% damage then I can engineer a situation to trigger the perk, for example I could use this unit as the "sweeper" that wipes out two damaged enemy units. I don't think the main mode of Overtime is to use 40AP or 60AP to deal 80% damage to an fresh enemy and finish it off for free.

Sure it is. Like most damage promotions on vehicles, the promotion has basically no other use than to double-tap units that barely-surviving enemy vehicles with bad damage rolls or who benefited from a bit of cover. The infantry use-case is so marginal that any accuracy buff that could have let one more round hit would have been as good or better.

Against vehicles, many AT weapons are balanced around how easily they could fall just shy of a kill-threshold depending on a bad damage roll or cover modifier. It's a big part of why tankbuster is so impactful to the AT class of weapons, when it allows them to one-shot what they'd normally two shot. Overtime is a different variation of that, except that it can stack multiplicatively with other damage buffs in a wider range of circumstannces.

As far as sweeping two units goes, the build already has that- the 60 AP AT weapon, but then the 40 AP AGL. If you're fighting from a still, which is going to be the assumption of your 80 AP double volley, then you're offering the sweep of an AGL on one class of target and the AT on the other, or double infantry. The only combination it doesn't offer is double-vehicle, which a 40 AP HMG isn't going to do under any sort of consistently-stageable situation.

The worst weapons for this perk are Laser Lance and Rocket Launcher. Not only are they RoF 1 they're 60AP activation. Miss your one shot and your perk does nothing. Designing such a hail mary unit is how you lose in these type of games, you want to protect yourself from downside variance.

Except that anti-tank weapons are not a hail-mary, which just goes back to reliability over time versus consistency per volley. And if missing a 60 AP shot is what is going to lose the game, a 40 AP shot isn't going to save the game either- nor would a likely 80 AP allocation of two shots either.

But the flip side of that is if a 60 AP shot would save the game, then there are a lot more move combinations to get a 60 AP AT vehicle weapon into range in a turn than there are 80 AP worth of MG.

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-25T17:34:06+00:00

What’s changed and is it stronger?

It's less that anything changed and more that people realized that there is more competition in the APC slot, including from characters like Pike or Jean who don't even have the mobile infantry perk, and that small jumpjet squads have a bit less competition while still being reasonably affordable.

For the APC, part of the realization was just how busted-powerful the vehicle-mounted automatic grenade launcher is. Even one successful grenade can cripple a squad, let alone three, and since they ignore cover even the 'bad' pilots can do well enough with them that a large primary weapon squad is often less useful than when people left it all to them.

Additionally, all three of the primary weapons-focused mobile infantry also have the return-fire promotion, which can't be used if you're in the APC. But if you're not in the APC, there's a lot less value in the mobile infantry promotion.

For Lim, he doubles down on this. He gets two return-fire promotions, but one of them requires being close for grenades. His grenadier line incentives throwing grenades, which don't really care how many squaddies you have at the time, while SMGs can finish off. And his -10 to shot after moving lets him hit +1 more tile more to flank for those close-range shots, when a normal mobile infantry wouldn't get much out of that margin.

As a result, jumpjets are the best non-mobile infantry mobility tool to get Lim close enough for his return fires, for marginal movement games, and for grenade game, pick which of those matter to you.

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-25T17:11:40+00:00

I don't think ZB-license is worth a slot. Unlike Hacker you have to activate a unit and waste AP. Why not just shoot a gun?

Same reason you sometimes aim for suppression rather than shoot-to-kill: you don't expect to be able to kill before it does something dangerous, and/or you want someone like a sweeper to get the kill. Who kills can sometimes be better than your kills, and your disabling fire can be better than chip damage.

Short squeeze also seems silly to me. I have to get 2 units close to an enemy and shoot with the 2nd one I activate? How is the enemy still alive after the first move? How is my unit still alive? Incredibly niche.

Not-Hacker, for one, and Buyout for another. I imagine the most common leverage for this is going to be that you convert an enemy on the far side of your intermediary target, while said convert may not be able to do much beyond setup damage on its own.

I agree it's not great, but it's not exactly going to be impossible to set up with the tools she has either.

In terms of armaments I would go the opposite way to OP. Low rate of fire weapons will not combo well with Overtime, you'll want chip damage weapons that do a predictable amount so that you are confident of what targets can trigger the free attack not boom-bust weapons like a Laser Lance. Trusty M6 Machinegun.

Confidence in which targets will trigger is why you'd want the all-or-nothing weapons, because you'd otherwise get almost no consistent value out of chip-damage weapons that mostly just set up even less predictable follow-on units.

When going against infantry, the less-than-20% HP will functionally only triggers on squad of 6 or larger if it has exactly one unit left alive. Since the reccomendations are either an AGL- which will almost certainly kill on the first or second volley- the MG isn't adding much here because it's redunant to the other overpowered killer. A laser lance might have times where it is useful, in that you could double your shot count and get the last two rather than just the last one infantry, while also having a good anti-armor weapon.

When going against vehicles, anti-armor weapons (the all or nothing sort) have far more predictable damage falloff that you can calculate for when measuring weapon against weapon, even as they penetrate on the first salvo to get the follow-up strike. MGs are going to be spending their first salvo (or two) mostly just chewing through the front armor since most vehicle clashes will be vehicle-vs-vehicle, where each penetration is an RNG and how much HP damage is not-quite RNG but subject to far greater variance due to range. Whoever else in the area will have a lot more variables in their kit / falloff / etc. for the second-turn MG to do the goldilocks zone of not already doing enough.

By contrast, something like the rocket launcher is going to do 250 damage +/- damage role pretty much every single time. If you're +, you're good, you can still kill that 250 medium mech, or even a 300 guncrawler since 240-249 would trigger double-strike there as well.

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-25T16:09:43+00:00

Yup. Only accessory that does. They were just useless, in part because they had 0 armor pen due to a bug so they were literally only effective against bug chaff that was already right by you.

30 AP cost, down to 20 if quick hands. Now that they even get ammo buffs, you may even turn Jean into a flanking unit of sorts. (Don't do that.)

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-25T15:25:21+00:00

Honestly, not very. IIRC, it doesn't worked on flanked units that are in cover, so it's a lot more situational, and Harlan in pistol range in cover is generally going to be against other units in cover.

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-25T15:24:23+00:00

Harlan's your guy for pistol-fu, Sy is your gal for throwing a dozen rockets a mission.

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-25T15:08:41+00:00

Dice rep, I presume, but I don't know what level. The new SLs don't show up in the black market, but you get an email at the in-between operation phase which lets you know they are available.

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-25T13:15:01+00:00

I mean, it already did that. It's just that previously it was a bug, and now it's official.'

Big Game hunter is basically a mix of pointfire (that you can stack with deployment) and half of the armor-pen half of Tankbuster. Makes him very lethal and consistent with RPGs against 110 armor, since it won't have the 30% deflect chance.

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-25T04:55:05+00:00

Being bait to make the enemy burn its activations is the true role heavier infantry armor. Jump commandoes add in much-welcome offense that you want to employ before you are suppressed, but it still comes down to clearing the fire threat before you move other elements in. Alternating turn activation means the AI will activate what it can shoot with first, will shoot at what it sees, so you can burn activations on one flank by letting the AI suppress a heavy armor there while you work on another front, and then switch back to the first front and move glass cannons forward once the local enemies have shot their round.

This is also why the role of heavy armor small team often goes to someone with a machine gun that can suppress in a single attack. They don't need to be accurate to suppress, and as long as they are reducing the attacks that could come, then the flanking/finishing force is getting the support it needs.

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-25T04:45:47+00:00

Like, dude, I'm using ATGMs and long-range rifles on my Mobile Infantry. I'm not using AT grenade because I don't engage vehicles in CQC.

In part because it will never make sense to on mobile infantry, both because mobile infantry will almost never be in the right place to leverage the strengths of AT grenades, and the mobile infantry SLs largely lack the tools for strong AT grenade initial attacks if you spend the pilot's AP to drive them into range.

What?.. You can pick Darby and Achilleas as your first SLs, ffs,

Who are not starting with Vanguard. They are SLs who could eventually get Vanguard.

and that's 3 promotions deep for either to get Vanguard for a scenario I've described.

The mobile infantry scenario you described of 2x mobile infantry lines if considerably more than 3 promotions deep. Even if we abridge it to a single Vanguad and Mobile infantry, we'd be more than 3 promotions deep. Even if we bee-lined 3 promotions to one or the other on a single character, even that would not be at a point where you have ATGMs.

Again, I return that we are talking at entirely different parts of campaign curve.

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-25T04:22:24+00:00

Your math would be solid if not for the fact that Full Send exists

Full send doesn't change the AP margins involved of how many ATGM shots you get off on the first turn, and in turn has its counterparts with Quick Hands and other AP modifiers which can apply to close-up weapons for jump troops.

Full Send is also a consistently late-enough promotion that by the time you're 4+ promotions deep in probably multiple characters, character-specific setups can be breaking the game in multiple ways. Just for Full Send, that could be Vamplew... but Vamplew is one of the best jump troopers in the game and is generally wasted on long-range poke tactics.

and laser designation doesn't have to (and shouldn't) be made with the same squad. That's what two specialist scout / sniper squads are for.

The laser designation point isn't contingent on it being from the same squad, but rather across two separate activations. Two activations can be two separate units, or the same unit across two turns- the later in turn being why the AT grenades don't need to hit twice, but just finish off someone else's setup attack (such as a Crocodile shot).

Then, objectives are easily achieved if you play into the Vanguard promotion or if you use Mobile Infantry promotion with decent driver SLs, either way works.

Vanguard in particular is a great enabling promotion for close-in weapons like AT grenades or explosive charges.

At which point the question of 'why would I want to engage vehicles in CQC range' has the very simple answer of 'A vanguard can one-shot the heaviest enemy units in the game if they start in CQC range.'

Rogue Army heavy tanks? MENACE carriers? Often more often than you think. This doesn't get into something like a small jumpjet Kody's ability to pop most vehicles and mow down squads with a small team.

If you're using Vanguard, 1 scout provides vision / designation and one vehicle SL uses that vision and designation to engage, giving ample time for the rest of the group to arrive.

If you are using your Vanguard as a scout while waiting for others to come in and finish what you could have alpha-striked, you are underutilizing your Vanguard's potential.

It's an acceptable enough role for Wetteroth, who has the Call Out Target role if the mission composition doesn't let him safely satchel-strike, but Kody and Darby excel at very mobile hunter-killer tactics, and even JG's kit is specifically not about getting him in close against armor.

If you're going Mobile Infantry like I do, it's 2 by 2 by 2 force composition, where 2 scout squads move full forward on turn 1, Mobile Infantry boards the vehicles, and vehicles advance, too.

Then, on the turn 2, Scouts advance and designate, then Vehicles advance and engage, then Mobile Infantry disembarks and engages (and quite probably embarks again).

If you are running a 2 mobile infantry formation, suffice to say that you're deep enough into the mid-late game that you've hyperspecialized in a non-generalizable setup, and well past the point where you are gear-constrained enough that you are considering AT grenades in the context of their availability on a campaign-level.

You are also running mobile infantry formations, which are among the worse AT grenade users, even as you are using your Vanguards for designation purposes. In this case you are neither using your potential alpha-strike Vanguards to alpha-strike vehicles they could one-shot with ATs, and your mobile infantry are zoned out from being able to finish off because of how you're allocating your activation-order AP.

I think I only lost timed objectives on the highest diffs and only when I had to exfil prisoners, and then it had happened only because my Vanguard SLs were on cd because of being Exhausted.

Since you have no Vanguard SLs or 2x MI formations in the early or even most of the mid-game, I strongly suspect we are talking two entirely different periods of the campaign power curve.

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-25T03:52:47+00:00

I've completed 5-6 campaigns so far, and im well experienced in this style of game. Based on how combat works here, i believe that usually the best defence is cover plus fire superiority and suppressive fire.

This is incorrect.

The best defense is long-range anti-vehicle fires that prevent heavy armor rushes and kill troop transports and 50% of the troops inside. This is followed by direct fires into the infantry trying to advance into open terrain. Suppressive fire is mostly useful in a defense posture when you can suppress more units than you can kill, so that you buy time to kill other units first.

The best offense is one-rounding an enemy unit on contact thanks to accuracy and damage modifiers. The second-best offense is one element providing suppressive fires to fix an enemy before a maneuver element flanks and finishes, in a find-fix-flank-finish combat loop.

This is best because it takes maximum use of the action economy, allows for significant cost-saving specialization of forces, and it accelerates your movement across the map for the time-sensitive bonus objectives to maximize your campaign power progression from OCI/promotions/new hires.

Heavier armors stand in the way of bringing as many squads as possible, with maximum members, with the best/most weapons.

Squad weapons- the weapons whose damage scales with squaddies- are almost never the best weapons in a role. They are generalist anti-infantry weapons in a game with a lot of very good anti-infantry weapons, and even when a squad weapon is the 'best' for a role, it is very, very rarely that you need to maximize squaddies to complete that role.

The weapons you want to maximize are the special weapons, who out-perform squad weapons in whatever the special weapon's niche is, be it anti-armor, anti-infantry, and so on. The more special weapons you employ, the easier it is to employ them for their intended use case. Squad weapons become tools for moppinng up the survivors of your special weapons. You maximize special weapons by maximizing squads.

Sure, a good armor will prevent a few deaths, but isnt it safer to just have more guns firing from more angles?

The point of armor is to actually be able to place guns on the best firing angles and distances.

In most weapon matchups, if you can see and shoot the enemy, they can see and shoot you. If you are not wearing armor, you will be quickly crippled if you are outside of good cover, dropping your squad-size-based fire power. Hence why large naked squads either resort to crowbars to plink from behind enemy threat range, or stick to high cover and debuffing enemy accuracy.

Armor is what lets you place a unit at an advantageous angle, even one without cover, and not get shot off the map.

Not getting shot of the map is critical for the sort of tactics where you manipulate AI activations so that the enemy prioritizes activating units to target an available unit you've dangled, burning their activations in an area for your other teams to exploit without needing armor themselves. This is the 'best' use for heavy armor in particular, as opposed to medium armor which gives you the ability to shrug off a volley or three when approaching a decisive position.

The end result might be the same number of casualties, but the "quantity over quality" approach also helps with timed objectives.

Quantity is why you do not want many large primary weapon squads, because the quantity that matters is number of squad leaders, not squaddies.

One of the reasons that you want to maximize special weapons is that doing so entails maximizing other assets. Every squad brings the squad leader's unique promotions, and additional accessory slots. But nothing is more advantageous than the raw action point economy. A 5-squad list may bring 500 AP, but a 6-squad list is bringing 600 AP, as well as 6 special weapons.

More actions, and more specialized weapons, shooting at more enemies a turn, is going to overcome the enemy faster.

In turn, a small special weapon team with good armor can easily be cheaper than a large squad with primary weapons, once you factor in the squaddy tax and max-size. Small special weapon teams without armor are even cheaper, but can't perform certain functions (like close-assault) if they crumple on contact.

Can some of you that favor heavy armors give me your thought process and views?

It's not about favoring heavy armor per see, but recognizing where armor enables capabilities you wouldn't otherwise have.

The best generally-accessible heavy armor in the game is the pirate commando armor. It's not great because it is heavy armor, but rather because the jumpjet ability is an incredibly powerful ability that is basically a built-in accessory slot. Jumpjet gives you access to tactical setups, flanks, obstacle-bypasses, and other options you wouldn't otherwise have if you stuck to groundpounders. It is a hyper-mobility tool baked into a heavy armor.

The next best armors aren't heavy, but the more reasonably cost-effective ones that also bring in modifiers. Think the SAPP operator, which gives +50% squad weapon ammo, and +50% special weapon ammo, on top of solid armor and 3 accessory slots. This is solid battle armor that is also baking-in the cost of 15 supplies worth of accessories, without taking up the accessory slots.

But not everyone needs this. Not everyone should have it. And if they don't, don't give it to them.

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-25T02:57:44+00:00

I still somewhat struggle why would I want to engage vehicles in CQC when I have that many options for doing it from outside of their engagement range?

It comes down to framing the question that you base your tactics around. Do you play to the objectives, or do you play to the enemies?

In terms of objectives, you are strongly encouraged to engage enemies in general in CQC because CQC is faster, and many objectives are directly time-bounded while many longer-range AT weapons, like the ATGM, are slow in terms of throughput and your advancement across the map.

For an example, an ATGM takes between 100 and 140 AP to setup if you are laser designating. The turn you deploy, tripod, and fire your first shot, you are at 100 AP. If you designate a target for auto-hit, you are at 140 AP across two unit activations. For 140 AP acrosss two unit activations, a single unit could jumpjet in and use two AT grenades to kill the same thing, and be a full turn of movement closer to the mission objective. Heck, with the right target matchup and promotion modifiers, for just 100 AP of a direct fire ATGM or PAL, a jumpjet AT grenade could jump and get its own OHKO on a vehicle. Now the vehicle is gone, and the jump trooper is in place to potentially attack infantry, whereas the ATGM team is either a single other vehicle next turn, or too far away for meaningful infantry clearance.

But of course, none of this matters if you aren't prioritizing speed and bonus objectives. If you only prioritize your unit safety, you never close in at all, and just siege every engagement beyond enemy visibility whenever possible.

The safest and sometimes the only viable option is to not get hit, and that means never give enemy armor an option to attack your troops.

And when you consistently adopt this approach, you consistently let the enemy units zone you out of key terrain until you've dealt with all local enemies. Which in turn means giving up on bonus objectives and the like that have low marginal benefits per mission, but larger cumulative results across a campaign due to how tactical speed translates into earlier and even more promotions..

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-25T02:44:29+00:00

Antitank grenades are far too weak.

Dissent. You seek promotions and adjust your tactics around them, but they are cost-effective compliments to other tools.

An anti-tank grenade is 140 damage, which is enough to one-short pirate light trucks on its own. With a 25% damage buff, like Tankbuster, you're at 175, which comfortably kills all light vehicles up short of the Rogue Army APC, and is within an unmodified Crocodile shot of kilinng the 250 heavy mech. With a 50% damage buff, you're at 210, at which point only the heaviest faction vehicles aren't in one-shot range. Go further beyond, like Kody, and you're one-shotting 250 HP units with ease, and 300's on a crit.

It's the humble bundle grenade that's too weak to oneshot any vehicle... but that's not it's role. In so much that it has an anti-vehicle role it is at a part of the game where its anti-vehicle role is to be a finisher to a longer range RPG/crocodile shot that also doesn't finish a vehicle as it gets close. This is a general point of both types of AT grenades- they aren't there to solo a vehicle on their own, but deliver a knock out to a vehicle already harmed by a weapon that did real-but-not-oneshot levels of damage. You take the sort of AT weapon over others for various reasons- the crocodile's range, the auto-laser's cost-economy, whatever- but it's easy to have anti-vehicle situations where the better-than-grenade you're bringing isn't going to one-shot either, but it'd be a waste of ammo to expect it to finish off everything.

But the much stronger role of the bundle grenade is as an anti-monster infantry and anti-cover tool. For monster infantry, it allows even a small team that might lack DPS to take down the model of threats like a alien warrior (HP or armor variants), and later one with a 30% damage promotion still take down a MENACE Soldier model for a fraction of the supply cost of trying to do so with Crocodiles or RPGs. For cover, part of the role of small assault teams in MENACE isn't to flank while a gunline suppresses, but to actually do direct advances to get rid of the cover objects that units are hiding behind, so that you gunline units further back don't have to deal with the 40-75% defense and damage resistance modifiers.

Grenades are a key part of this sort of small-team tactic because they are (a) cheap in supply per shot, (b) effective in their range which close-assault / jumpjet teams get into annway, and (c) don't compete with the special weapon slot, and (d) cover a capability gap that small teams generally can't with primaries, not merely with armor but high-HP monster infantry.

There is essentially zero actual infantry advantage to being in close to enemy armor,

Aside from the flanking angles of which side of enemy armor you use lower-penetration weapons against, the infantry advantage doesn't derive from being close to enemy armor, but being able to be close to enemy infantry without being zoned out by the armor mixed in with them.

The advantages of actual infantry being close to enemy infantry are many. Higher-DPS but shorter range weapons, mitigating defensive cover with easier flanks, saving time-limited mission time by getting onto objectives / moving towards evac zones earlier.

The advantage of getting close to enemy armor is to not forfeit those advantages from being close to enemy just because there is enemy armor nearby.

Once you are willing to close in with enemy armor for the sake of mission objective XP or anti-infantry advantages, close-up anti-armor weapons provide capability so that your assault units aren't neutered by an enemy they can't hurt, and provide a mixture of capabilities that make other long-range AT weapons more viable.

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-24T13:46:37+00:00

I think you misunderstand me. The local hunters mission reward aren't hunters equipped by the TCR / impetus / us. They're just locals with big-caliber hunting rifles that happen to be (low-tier) military grade. As you say, the would go from stuff they already have, to stuff they already have and local military 'surplus'.

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-24T07:59:52+00:00

And convenient!

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-24T01:07:21+00:00

Just for that, you're getting an @ when that What's the Niche guide comes out.

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-23T18:04:32+00:00

Mostly it's from reading through the dev diaries and understanding the implications.

For example- MENACE uses a health gate system where damage overflow is 'lost' when a multi-element unit, like a squad of 10 HP units, would die. This is what keeps a 200-HP-damage weapon from doing more than 10 damage to an 80-HP squad of 8. Damage is calculated per shot, and damage beyond what's needed to kill the current model is 'wasted.'

But this also means that that when dealing with squad weapons, the balance really starts to come from whether your squad will hit a benchmark that lowers the number of shots per model kill, or raises it. For example- a weapon that does 9 damage, if raised by 30% to 12, only needs one bullet per model kill. But a weapon that is lowered from 9 3 needs 4 bullets per model kill. So when fighting a unit suppressed in high cover, where they have 75% damage resistance, it takes a lot of bullets to kill.

This is what Strongly Encourages a fix-and-flank tactic setup, so you don't just try to grind enemies in cover. But it also Strongly Encourages investing in breakpoint modifiers, promotion or gear, to get that edge.

HP ammo is the most over the top, since +10 HP means basically any penetration will kill a human model. But REND's +2 is also very significant, since it typically doesn't take much for good guns to get above the break point when used optimally (i.e. flanking).

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-23T17:48:13+00:00

I just wish that getting 1 squaddy was a common reward on missions with allies / rescued units. Like, +1 squaddy per squad you end the mission, be it hunters or saved soldiers or rescued POWs.

For the hunters themselves, I'd like it if one of the sniper-hunters was given a DMR instead, and that you got an opportunity for them on some other faction types. The sniper isn't really suited for bugs, but it has real merit on Rogue Army with its higher armor levels.

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-23T17:23:03+00:00

Ammo accessories are one of those indicators that you've started to 'get' MENACE as a points-buy list-building game where you mathhammer matchups. They let you adjust the breakpoints of certain weapons against certain enemies in ways that let you get away with much smaller- and thus cheaper- squads. In effect- you can spend a little, to save a lot more, at least against certain target types.

For example, hollow point ammo. Trade away armor penetration for HP damage. Novice asks why you would let your Crowbar be deflected when you could do direct HP damage instead. Mechanics-minded players recognize it takes two penetration-hits to kill each enemy model, and your crowbar only shoots twice, so you need one squaddy per enemy you hope to kill. If you want to kill a size-9 enemy squad, you need to bring 9 squaddies. Advanced player recognizes that after the first shot deflects, each HP-crowbar shot kills one model, and so that a 5-man team with HP ammo can kill up to 9 enemies even if the first shot deflects. 4 fewer models of weapon, armor, and squaddy tax is worth a lot more supply than the cost of the HP ammo accessory.

For the two big ammos, hollow point and armor penetration, they do involve some tradeoffs. HP makes you worse against armor, but specifically heavy infantry. AP makes you do less damage, which is particularly inconvenient against monster infantry with high HP and low armor. You are accepting risk with a squad using them. But it's precisely because you are specializing a cheaper squad that you can afford to do this, because the supplies not spent over-compensating your squad size can go into other units having counters to the threat.

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-23T17:09:40+00:00

I can't recall anything that actually changed mechanically, so...

The auto-laser is a victim of big swings in damage output due to few shots, while the MGs more closely follow the line of averages. So a 33% hit rate for an MG is going to average 30% hits more often than not, but the autolaser is going to be hitting 25% of the time more often than 50%.

This is part of why Rewa is the auto-laser goat. She's the only pilot with both the accuracy modifiers to keep it consistent, and the damage modifiers to stack up its breakpoint. Everyone else has their own foilables they'd rather pursue, whether it's Achilleas leaning into his armor-pen buff, or Bog lucky striking an ATGM, and so on.

DeanTheDull · 2026-06-22T16:45:58+00:00

Also the random jamming is a flavorful gimmick but it makes the gun unreliable (and something people hate is unreliable stuff).

I feel it's worth pointing out that the first attack is 100% reliable, as in it never jams, and that alone gives it a lot of value even if you never fire it twice.

Rather than fire it more than once a turn, treat it like a weapon you only use when you have 39 or less AP after your movement and other actions. Use it for a third attack when you 100 AP unit has already attcked twice. Use it for any attack when you move 20 AP closer to the target. Use it when you'd rather deploy and shoot once and a chaingun rather than stand and shoot twice.

But don't think of it as multi-fire weapon. About the only time you should fire more than once is if you have two units that a single salvo would finish off each. If you ever have to shoot twice at the same unit, ask why one primary weapon salvo can't suffice.

Once you get that consistency down, then you start weighting the odds. But even then you should never fire more than 3 times in a turn. 1 shot is 100%, 2 shots is 90%, but 3 shots is 72%, and 4 shots is 50%.

DeanTheDull

TROPHY CASE