Mini guide to Heat Sinkers

[SquareDildo]

It's "mini" because I don't list all the possible builds, not because I know how to be terse.

I think Heat Sinkers is a weak squad, but it's not as hopeless as some say. They're particularly weak on the first island, but get much better with upgrades. Still, I feel like you have more limited options for growth than others. I used the squad to complete the game 3 times on Hard, and my Unfair run is started with a perfect island.

---- Interesting pilots ----

Harold - extra push move for no core cost. If you put him in Quickfire, all your mechs can push when needed. There's another pilot that can push.
Camila Vera - Dispersal needs to be close to things but can't deal with webbers. Camila fixes that.
Henry Kwan, Prospero - you actually have lots of movement points, but short-ranged weapons and no flying. What if you could go through enemies?
Lily Reed - makes positioning a lot easier, unless you get body blocked...
Chen Rong, Archimedes, Bethany Jones - Quickfire can go for most daring shots without getting return fire. Bethany's shield also helps to survive a web.
Kai Miller - she's interesting, because she's NOT good in this squad. She's redundant! The same probably goes for Morgan LeJeune.*

---- Easy islands ----

Pinnacle Island is good because there are lots of fragile robots, and buildings to break out of ice. There are forests to burn. Ice ground tiles melt instantly when treated with fire.
If you have to freeze and protect the robots, remember you can clear fire by eating it. This saved my butt one day. Alpha scorpion was attacking a frozen bot on the last turn. I was able to push my Quickfire with Napalm, bumping and killing spider egg. Quickfire walked away, but because it ate the fire, Dispersal was able to push a frozen robot away to where the Quickfire was.
Also remember Napalm can push a mine robot onto a mine. A freezing mine will extinguish fire.

Detritus - look at all the acid! This is also the island where Quickfire can kill 2 alpha burrowers with a single attack.

Islands with Blobber, Plasmodia, or, if you're careful, Spider. Spider Leader is okay, but Blobber Leader and Plasmodia Leader make spawns with 2 HP.

---- Upgrade advice ----

1st core - put this into +1 range on the Napalm Mech, or Push on the Quickfire if you don't mind extra complications. I prefer the extra range.
2nd, 3rd, 4th core - get "add fire" for the Dispersal Mech.
Try to find some area damage weapons, especially if they can fit on Any Mech.

That's it. It should be much easier now.

---- Mech evaluation ----

Dispersal Mech is the most awkward Prime in the game. Prime mechs are almost universally high damage, but short range. This deals low damage, and pushes things you're not firing at. You can't even win a fight with a webber stronger than basic Leaper! Think what you're going to do about webs. I think this mech needs the most care with positioning. Its attack affects 6 squares. Remember that you can shoot for shorter than the max range!
Dispersal Mech is happy if it can push a target and hopefully deal a little damage or spread fire at the same time.

Quickfire Mech is fast, flexible and long-ranged, but your only mech that can't push things out of the box. Combined with low damage to individual targets, this means it often can't deal with a threat on its own, unless we're talking about boosted Quickfire and a weak vek. You can change that by getting Add Push, but this is a tradeoff. Suddenly you have to skip some targets because you'd damage buildings, and if your rockets make dust clouds they push targets away from them! I'm happy paying for upgrades, not so much for tradeoffs. Make a good push, and hit two good targets - these are often in conflict with each other.. But to tell the truth, extra push adds bumping damage and environmental kills.
This mech is also vulnerable to webbers.
Quickfire Mech is happy to prey on the weak and destroy secondary objectives.

Napalm Mech is your simplest, most reliable mech by a long shot. It just walks up to something and pushes it away. Oops, that was unfortunate because it's one of your two short-ranged mechs. Oddly enough, it's your most city-friendly mech because fire deals no damage to buildings (it does damage allied units, including some surprises like the Terraformer). In fact, it deals no damage at all if something can't burn, so occasionally you can grant one of your other mechs extra movement by pushing it. The downside is that it eats fire squares, but gets no damage benefit at all! You can fix that by moving the passive and getting an extra weapon. Science weapons almost never do damage, but a handful of Any Mech weapons do damage... especially Missile Barrage!
Remember you can re-allocate cores. Your get a cheap +1 range upgrade and +2 range for 2 cores. If you give it a second core, it's still good because you take it out of the +1 and put both into +2.
Napalm Mech is happy when it can push an enemy away from objective, hopefully adding a lot of fire. It's especially happy if it can ignite a square where one of your other mechs starts or stops.

---- High level analysis ----

It feels like your mechs are slow, because two of them are short ranged and quickfire can't shoot through obstacles. This is why fixing range is important, plus more range is more fire. Technically, they're a fast, fragile squad. Dispersal is 3 HP 3 move, but everything else is 2 HP and 4 move. All mechs walk :-(.

So, are they glass cannons? No!! Somehow, they deal low damage. Even boosted with fire, they're nothing special. What are they good at? Area weapons and area denial. Prime affects 6 squares by default, other mechs 2 squares each. Boost mechanic deals +1 damage per target you're attacking, so it benefits area weapons. Flaming Behemoths initially set 2 squares of fire and scale up to 5. Heat Sinkers also start with 2, but scale up to 9. Area denial is serious, because vek won't enter burning squares unless they're already on fire themselves. And two of your mechs can be adding a lot of fire as a side effect to pushing things.

This is my tactic with these mechs: push things away while blocking the map with fire and dealing minor damage.** Dispersal Mech has the strange benefit of pushing stuff without burning them. This means the enemy you pushed will still be afraid to enter burning squares. Later turns of any battle have lots of blocked squares, and when enemies go for the unblocked you blast them with boosted mechs.

Positioning: even if you're immune to webs (Camila Vera), your prime is easily body blocked. Put Dispersal and Napalm where they're likely to still push things away from objectives even if they can't move. This works especially well with Spider enemy - Napalm in a back row can kill the egg while still setting the street on fire, and that will come in handy later.
I play Quickfire without push, so positioning is not super important, just don't get blocked or webbed.

I give low priority to range upgrade on Dispersal, because you're often unable to use it anyway without damaging stuff. Adding fire and movement is more important.

* The whole reason Boost mechanic exist is to make sure some damage benefits don't stack. Movement benefits are now fairly common: Skilled, Opener, Finisher, +1 Mech Move, +1 Mech Reactor, Adrenaline, and of course the pilots. But if you want to increase damage without adding cores, you only have Boost.

** I refrain from calling it Damage over Time, because it makes people think about fire, acid, psionic storm and in the context of this game, electrified smoke clouds. Heat Sinkers don't deal that much damage with fire, and they even clear some fire. Fire is more useful to make areas vek-proof. I prefer to call it attrition.

Oops, I initially had an error here. "Add fire" on Dispersal Mech costs 3 cores, not 2. For that price you can get +2 damage on Refractor Laser :-/.

[Nogan]

Biggest tip I've personally learned is to avoid islands with Tumblebugs until you get a more consistent means of dealing with them. I've had bad spawns immediately end runs.