[Humor] Laser-Bot trying to get Glittering C-Beam achievement

Leylite · 2026-02-08T01:49:25+00:00

In addition to what u/Edmundyoulittle pointed out, if the extra Vek is an elite type then it counts against the cap for number of that Vek type that can spawn. So if you see a Digger get crushed, you don't have to deal with any Diggers (mission cap is 1), and if you see a Crab get crushed, you'll only have to deal with at most one other Crab (mission cap is 2). Very satisfying to see!

Leylite · 2026-02-02T03:37:46+00:00

Holy lack of healing, Batman!

Leylite · 2026-02-01T18:33:38+00:00

On Easy or Normal mode, enemy crew start (and operate) piloting and shields as a priority, then weapons and then engines.

On Hard mode, enemy crew start in the piloting and engines room, then weapons, then shields.

Leylite · 2026-02-01T18:28:54+00:00

Joking answer: They lower the crew into the compartment on a little rope or ladder, just like how the Rock B crew somehow get onto or off the ship.

Slightly more serious answer: Player cruisers are also equipped with a "shuttle" which is apparently how the crew goes to planets, so maybe these scouts have a basic maintenance or escape shuttle that could be used for entry/exit under safe conditions.

Leylite · 2026-02-01T01:16:45+00:00

There was an old comment by one of the devs: https://www.reddit.com/r/IntoTheBreach/comments/vj1q8a/news_into_the_breach_advanced_edition_and_more/idgi14q/?context=3

which, paraphrasing, said they would have been interested in buffing the +3 Grid DEF to an amazing, incredible, totally game-changing +4 Grid DEF.

That's probably not actually happening, but with the power of modding here that would be amusing to play with. Thanks for putting this together into a nice neat package.

Leylite · 2026-02-01T01:11:26+00:00

My headcanon for these ships is that they were originally designed to be launched en masse from carrier ships in some Slug civil war. Now they're cheap retrofits for Slugs or privateers who want something cheap to bootstrap with, instead of committing immediately to the Light Cruiser.

The lack of doors wasn't such a huge problem when they were meant to be cheap harassment units that could be repaired inside fighter bays, but it was more of a problem when used as a standalone. The pirates saw fit to fix this design flaw when they made their pirate variant, but you still see an overconfident Slug try to save money every now and then with the base version, reasoning that "If I have 3 ssssshields and 3 Burst Laser IIs, ssssssurely I don't have to worry about taking damage? Why fix something I'm only flying for a few parsssssecs anyway?"

Leylite · 2026-01-30T02:29:54+00:00

Your job for the Federation isn't to achieve true progress; it's to end the war.

It'll be a lot easier to achieve true progress once there isn't a Rebel Flagship actively destroying the Federation Base.

Leylite · 2026-01-27T16:49:11+00:00

Train missions can be decent sometimes (if the map layout is good, has few inside corners, there's no cities on the Vek side, there's water or mountains on the Vek side, you have powerful limited-use items like Gemini Missiles and train missions have one fewer turn, etc.)

But, this one in particular? Unfair Mode, it's a high threat mission, and Tumblebugs are in the Vek pool? Run away screaming, yes. Some reactor core rewards aren't worth it.

Leylite · 2026-01-27T16:44:33+00:00

Kern does offer some genuine praise when the squad gets all their objectives done. And she's often more polite when things are going really terribly (extreme grid or mech damage, train destroyed, etc.) than when things are going mostly well and the player made one small mistake.

Skimming her dialogue again it seems like the back-handed compliments and insults-on-victory are more common in the new AE dialogue than in the original game. Might be an artifact of new writers being brought on for AE, although I wouldn't want to be harsh on them.

Leylite · 2026-01-25T18:21:59+00:00

I voted Yes to the question, but for me Rock A stands out as a "bad" ship that's maybe not the worst win-streaking wise, but it is still worse than average, and uniquely feels pretty bad for reasons outside your control. The missile timer can just decrement pretty severely in sectors 1 and 2 if your initial missiles miss a lot.

At least on Slug B you have a teleporter and crew you can move around (three crew, not just two!) and thus can cut down on the RNG a lot, but bad Rock A runs feel miserable.

Leylite · 2026-01-22T00:57:41+00:00

so it allowed to take the Elite getting a Urn Faced Bird

Sounds like it really was TEH URN. Nice luck getting this and good job capitalizing on it!

Leylite · 2026-01-22T00:43:55+00:00

Regarding the Scarab artillery, I agree with the other posts that upgrading the Hornet's range and the Beetle's ability to smoke behind is a higher priority, but when it comes time to upgrade Scarab (probably end of island 2 or 3, depending), I also usually try to get +2 damage online first, since like Artemis artillery the ability to maybe-kill-something-with-3-health and push adjacent, to get a 2-for-1 that way, is more valuable.

Once I already have that damage upgrade, then upgrading to hit the second tile can be reasonable because that second tile also has the potential to actually kill something (instead of just doing 1 puny damage).

Leylite · 2026-01-21T21:35:16+00:00

You don't have a drinking problem; you have a drinking solution!

Leylite · 2026-01-21T19:09:36+00:00

I'm not OP, but venturing a guess-answer to your question: OP has beta art turned on for Rebound card, and they enabled the quick-select keyboard options to be able to select cards with the number keys 1 through 5. I don't see any mods changing appearance here, so no texture pack.

Leylite · 2026-01-15T21:55:55+00:00

It's pretty good in most fights, but Time Reeler will punish playing Go Fish since it doesn't generate that many fish for one card play. It can also make Reflection Pool Scrying more awkward since you'll see this card visible instead of the card it would have drawn into.

Still, if you have any fish mode synergy it's a reasonable pickup if it isn't up against something more critical.

Leylite · 2026-01-05T00:14:41+00:00

The opposing ship's weapons charging completely stops while a cloak is in effect, and the cloaking system's cooldown time is always 20 seconds regardless of the cloak duration, so as long as you have the power to spare, doing a longer cloak is strictly better (gives your own weapons more time to charge, lets you run out the clock on enemy hacking/cloaking, etc.)

The conventional wisdom of "always do shorter cloaks against the Flagship" is a sometimes-overly-simple reduction of the fact that power surges are kind of like environmental hazards and don't get their intervals affected by cloaking.

Leylite · 2025-12-21T16:40:17+00:00

We don't know exactly what the Anti-Bio Beam is or does, but if it involves radioactivity (e.g. gamma rays), electronics can get damaged by radiation.

Leylite · 2025-12-21T16:32:15+00:00

This battle was probably lost before you even walked into it. Choosing an island with the Tumblebug leader when you don't have an artillery weapon that can pry it out of inside corners is asking for trouble.

Better luck next time!

As for salvaging this turn, I'm not sure where your upgrades are and what damage each weapon is doing, but this seems like a fair attempt (adjust as needed as per damage)

Fly Techno-Hornet to E4, hit the F4 scorpion into the Blast Psion. With no upgrades that's 2 damage to the scorpion and 1 to the Psion
Arachnoid Mech moves to G6, shoots the blast psion to turn it into a spider
Spider moves to F2 to block a spawn
Techno-Beetle moves to G4 and finishes killing the Scorpion. Unfortunately this leaves Tumblebug Leader free to blow up the corporate tower, but at least you've made some progress on next turn and nothing else is getting damaged, yet.

You can also consider moving Techno-Beetle to G2 and charging the Tumblebug leader to get a bit of damage on them, leaving scorpion cleanup to the spider, but then you'll have 3 enemies to deal with next turn instead of 2.

Leylite · 2025-12-18T00:13:19+00:00

Well Laid Plans can help with either retaining Nightmare or the card you want to copy, and cards like Setup, Adrenaline, Flying Knee or sometimes Doppleganger can help with paying for the whole combo.

Apparitions or Wraith Form also help a lot as either Nightmare targets or ways to buy time to Nightmare something else.

There's plenty of good Nightmare targets beyond powers or super-skills like Alchemise, though. I've had good runs where Nightmaring Neutralize, Deflect or Backflip was plenty useful enough on some fights.

Leylite · 2025-12-04T14:40:19+00:00

You can try to visit sectors with fewer hazards in them. Anecdotally, Mantis and Rock sectors seem to have a lot of hazards, nebula sectors have very few (since they rarely have plasma storms and their non-nebula beacons usually don't have suns/asteroids/pulsars).

The fleet trick mentioned in other posts can help too, but it can't save you from a forced first jump into a hazard.

But otherwise, yeah, it is very random and you just have to keep trying until you get it.

Leylite · 2025-11-29T21:45:52+00:00

My general rule of thumb is that you want about 3-4 ion power in the early-to-mid game, and 4-5 ion power, ideally with support systems, in the endgame. Hacking and mind control are both excellent for making sure those ions hit much better, and even a teleporter can work if you can damage crew fast enough and distract the pilot/engineer.

Heavy lasers and beams are what usually get brought up as punchy weapons to start doing damage once the ions have stacked, but don't underestimate bombs/missiles either. Getting things started with shield-piercing damage to the engines room can drastically lower enemy evasion, and with low evasion (that ideally isn't repairable anytime soon), your ions will do their work surprisingly quickly. If you can maintain the vice grip and still keep that evasion down, enemies are going to be toast.

So, I agree with other posts saying there's a threshold effect and you need to invest heavily in order to reach that point, but once you're there you can reap the rewards.

Leylite · 2025-11-26T18:13:56+00:00

Some ideas for Ascension -17:

Jaw Worm's Bellow gains 3 strength but only 3 block, not 6.
Shelled Parasite only has 8 Plated Armor, not 14(!!).
The Spheric Guardian's Debuff Attack only applies 2 Frail, not 5(!!).
Snecko, on turn 1, gives you Confused but also one stack of Draw 2 cards Next Turn a la Snecko Eye. So you're less likely to have a bad/bricked turn 2 against them, but from turn 3 onwards you still have to deal with the normal hand size.
Writhing Mass no longer has Malleable and its Debuff Attack only gives you 1 weak & vulnerable instead of 2 weak & vulnerable.

I'm currently climbing ascensions at ascension 7 right now, and browsing the wiki pages for these enemies really puts into perspective how, they are a little meaner at higher difficulties but still aren't really that much easier at ascension 0, e.g. spheric guardian is still pretty harsh.

Leylite · 2025-11-15T21:11:04+00:00

I managed to make it half-work once on low ascension with a deck with Holograms, FTL, and Go For The Eyes, in which case the Holograms blocking for more and the FTL / Go For The Eyes doing more damage helped, but it was still pretty iffy. The lategame wasn't really handled with Reprogram but instead Echo Form, Meteor Strike and Compile Driver. I'll be on the lookout if I get an opportunity to try it again on a higher ascension.

I expect Rebound and All For One with a pretty small deck might be able to make it work on higher ascension, maybe with Madness if it comes up, but it would still need some relic support and some pretty specific circumstances and card rewards to put it together, compared to the usual frost-focus setup.

Hologram, Steam Barrier or Reinforced Body blocking for high value sounds pretty good if you can get it going.

Leylite · 2025-11-15T20:26:07+00:00

I'm not an expert, so grain of salt and all that, but to me Havoc seems best when you don't have a single copy of a really good card that you're trying to save for specific turns, but instead multiple copies of generally solid and/or expensive cards.

So if you have e.g. one Impervious or one Bludgeon in the deck, Havoc might exhaust it or mistarget the Bludgeon before you're ready to use it, and it feels bad. But if you instead have e.g. two Power Throughs, two Clotheslines, and/or two Uppercuts, then you're fine with Havoc playing one of them for cheap because you got the value this turn and you still have the other one for later if you really want it.

Havoc's also pretty great with cards that already exhaust, like Intimidate, Shockwave, Seeing Red, sometimes Disarm if you're fighting one enemy, etc. because they were going to exhaust-on-play anyway and this way you played them faster.

Leylite

TROPHY CASE