How Pilots Work: Can Someone Break Down the Basics?

[carllyngholm]

Interesting game, and for the most part pretty intuitive to learn. But one area that seems kind of lacking in terms of information is how pilots work in terms of leveling up and how they carry over through the "campaign". So... you can unlock and level up mulitple pilots, but in any given game you can only take one in your 3 man sqaud, or what? And if you lose, you can only carry over one pilot to the next timeline, how does this affect the other pilots? Some clarifcation about how pilot work in general would be greatly apprecitated. Thanks.

[Phoenix7786]

Basically every round the game "rolls" random abilities for the pilots. Every NAMED Pilot (named as in unique name, portrait, and lines) as opposed to the two generic mooks tagging along has one unique trait that is only for them and nobody else. You get exp for--you guessed it--killing Vek. Vek who die indirectly (burning to death, getting killed by another Vek, dying to the environment) split their exp to your entire trio.

You unlock Pilots by getting so-called "perfect runs", where you complete every objective on every level you play for an island. Selecting a Pilot you've never encountered before permanently unlocks them as a selectable starting character for your next run.

The 2nd method is random time capsules that periodically land. They have at least 1 item inside, and sometimes even a Pilot. As above, any Pilot you've never encountered before is permanently unlocked for next runs.

There is technically a 3rd method for three secret Pilots, but we won't get into any spoilers here.

You can choose any 1 named Pilot you've unlocked when you start a game. Alternatively, whether you win or lose, you are allowed to retain any 1 of your surviving Pilots from that final battle, whether it was a win or a crushing defeat. This also includes the random, generic mooks if for some odd reason you wanted one of them and they also happened to be present.

Named Pilots start with his/her/its unique skill with 2 more random ones available when you level them up. Generic pilots have no starting skill, but get access to the same random pool other pilots do for level ups.

There is no limit to the amount of Pilots you can have in reserve, nor any penality for having all 3 of your Pilots as uniques.

If your Pilot gets a level-up skill you don't like, you're stuck with it unfortunately. You can only change this by selecting a new Pilot next time you start a new game, or by choosing the Level 1 version of a named Pilot and hope for better results. If you happen to have a Pilot that got some very nice bonuses for their level-ups and they continue to survive, you are welcome to keep retaining them for as many wins or losses are you prefer.

If a Pilot runs out of hp, they die. They are effectively removed from your game but will still be waiting next campaign in your starting pool. The unit they were piloting is fully repaired next fight with no penalties to its loadout or reactor levels (reactor power is needed to run equipment or boost some aspect of it). However, if you do not have any extra pilots, you're stuck with a generic, skilless pilot called A.I. Contrary to the name, the A.I. unit is still fully under your control.

[Slain087]

As an addendum to the "running out of health", if a Mech is somehow healed out of zero health (like with the health burst weapon or getting it back with the Hazardous Mechs' heal on kill), they'll stay alive. Only if they remain at 0 at the end of battle does a Pilot die.

[Don Kanaille]

And there´s also a passive you can get which prevents all pilots from dieing no matter what.

Also, very good explanation Randy.

[carllyngholm]

Originally posted by Randy:

Basically every round the game "rolls" random abilities for the pilots. Every NAMED Pilot (named as in unique name, portrait, and lines) as opposed to the two generic mooks tagging along has one unique trait that is only for them and nobody else. You get exp for--you guessed it--killing Vek. Vek who die indirectly (burning to death, getting killed by another Vek, dying to the environment) split their exp to your entire trio.

You unlock Pilots by getting so-called "perfect runs", where you complete every objective on every level you play for an island. Selecting a Pilot you've never encountered before permanently unlocks them as a selectable starting character for your next run.

The 2nd method is random time capsules that periodically land. They have at least 1 item inside, and sometimes even a Pilot. As above, any Pilot you've never encountered before is permanently unlocked for next runs.

There is technically a 3rd method for three secret Pilots, but we won't get into any spoilers here.

You can choose any 1 named Pilot you've unlocked when you start a game. Alternatively, whether you win or lose, you are allowed to retain any 1 of your surviving Pilots from that final battle, whether it was a win or a crushing defeat. This also includes the random, generic mooks if for some odd reason you wanted one of them and they also happened to be present.

Named Pilots start with his/her/its unique skill with 2 more random ones available when you level them up. Generic pilots have no starting skill, but get access to the same random pool other pilots do for level ups.

There is no limit to the amount of Pilots you can have in reserve, nor any penality for having all 3 of your Pilots as uniques.

If your Pilot gets a level-up skill you don't like, you're stuck with it unfortunately. You can only change this by selecting a new Pilot next time you start a new game, or by choosing the Level 1 version of a named Pilot and hope for better results. If you happen to have a Pilot that got some very nice bonuses for their level-ups and they continue to survive, you are welcome to keep retaining them for as many wins or losses are you prefer.

If a Pilot runs out of hp, they die. They are effectively removed from your game but will still be waiting next campaign in your starting pool. The unit they were piloting is fully repaired next fight with no penalties to its loadout or reactor levels (reactor power is needed to run equipment or boost some aspect of it). However, if you do not have any extra pilots, you're stuck with a generic, skilless pilot called A.I. Contrary to the name, the A.I. unit is still fully under your control.

Wow... that was a pretty comprehensive explanation. Not sure I FULLY understand all the particulars yet, but that was certainly a good jumping off point. Thanks, man...

[Don Kanaille]

Regarding pilot skills - aside from the unique pilot abilities, there are four possible skills (that I know of) they can get per level up, and a pilot can level up two times at best. These abilities are

+ HP
+ Move
+ 1 Reactor Core
+ 3 Grid Defense

Most players, including me, see the +3 Grid Defense as pretty useless - it increases the chance of your buildings resisting a hit by 3%, which means it gives you one aditional resist in about 33 building hits... yeah. I try to replace Grid Defense pilots whenever feasible (so whenever I dont specifically need their other abilities).

I find the other three to be roughly equal in terms of benefits. Reactor Core is the most flexible one, as it you can not only power your Mech´s movement and HP upgrades, but also any other ability you may need. The downside is that, in a very long run, you may eventually get more cores than slots to spend, so you might be stuck buying less useful upgrades for your rep like grid defense. In general I´d say reactor core is good for a shorter run as it allows to get crucial abilities earlier, as HP and Move are a bit more useful in the longer runs where you might get saturated with cores. But the differene is pretty slim.

[Drain]

Grid defense is always a bad pilot skill because you only get half its value vs the others. Every stat is fixed, except defense, which has 2 values. Before 25%, it's 2 per star. After 25, it's 1 per star. The pilot bonus however gives the half rate, not the full rate. Other stats never diminish in value. A reactor core never goes up in price nor declines in benefit. There's no such thing as too much HP or move, either. So when you get defense, you have half of a skill box wasted. If you have 2 defense skills, it's basically a whole skill box wasted, or 2.5 boxes wasted, with 3 of them.

[John]

Another way of looking at the grid defence is that if it's on 20%, 23% means that 1 in 4.35 shots miss instead of 1 in 5. Over 20 hits that's nearly an extra grid bar. (OK, it really needs 22 shots to save 5, but it's close)

It's not the best skill but it's hardly useless, especially in a pilot with a special ability.

[Don Kanaille]

"Over 20 hits that's nearly an extra grid bar."

In what kind of run do you take 20 grid damage to begin with? Not to forget that you may not even have the upgrade for the first few battles if your pilot has to gain a level first.

Yes, the skill is not useless, but it is way worse than the alternatives. Added move, HP or core lets you manage your mechs better, and if you can use one of those upgrades to prevent a grid hit even once, it already had a better payout than 3% grid defense. Plus it doesnt come down to random chance.

[John]

Also reactor core +1 adds an 11th slot to your mech, so it doesn't affect how many cores you can buy.

That probably makes it the best one, unless you really want +2 movement. (+1 ability and +1 in the mech slot) and +4 HP. I never really need the health that much.

[Torus]

The probability math on grid defense is trickier, and the end results work out more in your favor.
The chance of it not stopping anything in X number of hits is (100 - %chance to work) ^ X.

So, at base level of 15, the odds of it failing to stop 1 in 5 hits = 44.36%, failing to stop 1 in 10 hits = 19.69%.
With 1 +3 grid def, that gets to 37.07%, 13.74% respectively.

So it's better than "you only get 3% less grid damage".

Problem is, the probabilities still don't really get to the point where it'd be a safe gamble.
If you take more than 5 grid hits before going into the final battle, you're probably already having a hard time. (Reason why I'm not factoring in the final mission, is because there you can safely sacrifice all but the last point, so you can and will plan to take grid damage.)
And for the grid def to be somewhat reliably useful, you'll want around 80% chance of success over that series, or 20% chance at failure to stop anything. You don't get to that point unless you get up to 27%-28% grid defense, and don't start taking damage until you get that high.

Basically that means you'd need to roll +3 def on all pilots *and* get at least 4 grid repair points (2 to fill the bar, the others for 2x 2% overcharge) before a building gets hit.