Advice for the Lightning Squad needed

[Sin]

As the title says, I am a little dumbstruck by this one. The main battle-mec is very strong, but also a bit dangerous to use, a fine line that is fun to play, but while the artillery is usefull as well your 3ed member of the team seems mostly useless unless you find a weapon for him.
I frequently end up in situations where I just can't stop 3 impending attacks on the grid without sacing my support tank, or having it out of position.
I know it's difficult to give general advice for the squads, but I feel like I am missing something.

Any help would be appreciated.

[asdf]

One thing I'll say about Blitzkrieg - I think a lot of people are way too scared of taking mech damage. You can use your own mechs to help the lightning mech hit more targets. When I played Blitzkrieg on hard I had Bethany on the ranged mech (she had +2 mech HP +1 reactor power - I don't know if she was necessarily the best pilot to use, but she was just the one I happened to have carried over when I switched to Blitzkrieg so I ran with it), and the one with the grapple has 1 armor, so both of them could take hits from the lightning pretty easily. It happened surprisingly often that I'd just put my mechs between all the enemies and zap absolutely everything at the same time. You might not want to take mech damage, but it's better to kill more enemies than it is to preserve your health (one time I stood on acid and took a 6 damage zap leaving my mech at 1 HP just to kill an extra enemy).

I only played Blitzkrieg once on hard, but it turned out well enough so I consider it a strong squad: https://imgur.com/a/Kdaow

On the grapple mech you might note that it's actually using a ranged (ie. not brute) weapon - this was just one of the rare cases where based on the weapons I had available I considered it worth spending +1 power to use that weapon - the grapple got removed only at the end of the 4th island because I had power to spare and didn't need a 0 power weapon there anymore.

[Geffalrus]

One thing to note about the Hook Mech is that it is the only "pull weapon" that moves an entity multiple spaces. The Attraction Pulse travels in a similar straight line but only moves the enemy 1 space. Gravity Well travels over obstacles, which is nice, but again, only moves things 1 space.

The Hook Mech grappling hook can travel the length of the map and pull a Vek that entire distance. Sitting a Hook Mech around a single deadly environmental tile can work surprisingly well.

And it can work as an escape mechanism, or as a positioning mechanism for your Lightning Mech. And when you move the Lightning Mech with the Hook, it doesn't count as movement. So Silica's double attack is still possible. Or a full move then attack. There are some interesting possibilities.

[thegrassyknoll]

-The soldier that has " preemptive strike" is strong with the Lightning Unit. Pretty much guarntees you kill the psion first move. Also kills 1-hitpoint enemies and makes the 3-4 hitpoint enemies killable on move 1.

-As stated above, The hook mech is really good on certain maps. Use as a conduit.

-Unfortunately i find blitzkrieg to be one of the most selective mission teams and probably has the most mission weaknesses. If other options are out there, avoid: train mission/defend tanks or robots. Also "blocking vec 3-4 times missions" can be tough as the vec never really spawn next to cities, and you always give yourself damage nearly every map, so taking the extra damage can be too much.

-On the flip side, Blitzkrieg is great at kill x number of enemy missions and pretty good at killing bosses, especially the hated game killer spider boss.

[Terin]

I feel like the pull mech should start off with 4 movement. You need a lot of space to perform a good pull, and an enemy moving over one tile could make the pull mech require a radically different position to do anything in a turn.

[Drain]

Play faster. That's what worked for me.

[Misery]

Okay, so, after some more time, I think I've got these guys figured out. Or at least, what works for my playstyle anyway.

The things I found to be important:

Start out either on an island with lots of low HP enemies, or the Detritus island, where higher-HP things have a decent chance of ending up covered in acid.

Get the lightning mech powered up ASAP. You can bring a pilot with +1 reactor if you want, but it's not *that* necessary (I didnt have one in that mech). Just get a reactor and stick it into the building-chain upgrade ASAP, before you upgrade anything else.

The harpoon mech: It's purpose isnt to pull Vek out of line. It's to yank them into the lightning mech's range, but also to simply sit in a spot where it can act as a conduit for the lightning, letting it chain further. Pretty sure this is why this mech has armor and high starting HP (and you can go for a looong time without needing to upgrade that HP).

The rock mech: As an artillery mech this one is pretty solid to begin with. Most of the artillery weapons in the game are quite good. Aside from being entertaining the rock has many uses, but the main thing this guy is for is to finish off (or shove away) enemies that the lightning bolt didnt finish immediately. Sometimes you can do both at once.

A bit later on, get the lightning attack upgraded to 3 damage when you can. With 3 damage and the building chain, it's possibly the strongest attack I've seen in the game yet. Basically you fire it once and blow up the universe with each shot. The best part is, this guy has the easiest time aiming at things, because with the building chain, you dont even have to aim at the Vek; just hit a building directly with the bolt and it'll blast the Vek anyway. Or even hit the harpoon mech. Also, the rocks thrown by the artillery mech can channel the lightning (unlike mountains, which dont channel anything), but keep in mind that since they only have 1HP they'll be destroyed by this.

As for other stuff, one thing I realized was that this squad is *really* dependant on that lightning attack, to the point where having a second weapon on that mech was completely pointless. Instead, I just stuck a passive effect on him, and that helped a ton throughout the run. All sorts of viable passives to work with this team.

The rock thrower is best helped by getting another artillery type attack, whatever that happens to be. Preferrably something that shoves enemies forward instead of to the side.

And for the harpoon mech, uhhh... well pretty much anything can go for it's second weapon slot. I used Boosters in this run. Gave it the ability to leap all over the place and shove things around at the same time. I could reposition it into a spot for chaining or blocking while at the same time knocking another Vek into a spot that works better for me.

Camilla was the pilot I brought into this one (I put her in the harpoon mech, as the lightning one can often still shock the hell out of the map even when webbed) but there's alot of good options that'll work with these guys.




This squad seems to have a tough time early on, but later in the game most battles were a freaking massacre. Even piles of alphas at once just couldnt deal with it. Since the playstyle is kinda weird though, such as the harpoon mech basically being a pile of HP for you to "spend" to do loads more damage, and the whole chaining thing, it's alot tougher to get a grasp on just how to use these guys. And you have to be really careful with the artillery mech, because it cant handle being hit by that lightning.

I definitely wouldnt call them the best squad, because of that really nasty start that they can have, and the fact that they are super-terrible at certain mission types (trains are the big one, dont do train missions if it's at all possible). But later in the game they just murder entire maps with relative ease.

[glass]

Misery님이 먼저 게시:

O

The harpoon mech: It's purpose isnt to pull Vek out of line. It's to yank them into the lightning mech's range, but also to simply sit in a spot where it can act as a conduit for the lightning, letting it chain further. Pretty sure this is why this mech has armor and high starting HP (and you can go for a looong time without needing to upgrade that HP).

Maybe you had a pilot with +2 hp and didnt realize? It has 3 hp by default like most mechs.

[srsface]

Stick the Rock monster as the pilot in the hook mech. Enjoy your win.

If your hook mech isn't constantly getting zapped by your own lightning blitz mech, you're not using it to it's full potential. Just gotta make sure your don't accidentally blow up your rock tosser mech and it's very easy to just shred everything with them.

One of the only squads in the game that don't fear the spider boss and actively seek out fighting the goop monster too.