Best and worst new squads?

[SquareDildo]

What are your first impressions? I've tried three so far.

Arachnophiles seem midrange. The artillery is great if it works, bad if you can't hit properly. Moderately difficult to play, but manageable. Ricochet Rocket does a lot of heavy lifting. My favorite upgrades are +1 damage for the artillery and Shield Self for the Slide mech. I got Ally Immune for the ricochet rocket but ended up not benefiting from it. The best shots are those where you hit two enemies anyway so damage is better, and if you use a spider as a proxy it was probably not going to do anything useful anyway.

Bombermechs have some very fun toys, but seem hard to play. The Pierce mech gives me Zenith Guard flashbacks, but it's not as bad. It's more flexible, pushes, and can still hit like a truck at a distance. Bomb Dispenser is challenging to use with the extra bomb and the upgrade is very expensive. Force Exchange is super powerful, but bombs deal low damage and even destroy civilian buildings. They're more useful for spawn blocking and as an exchange target. Also unlike most artillery mechs, the dispenser can't deal with targets over water (unless you can exchange it with a scorpion). I had the most trouble with Bombermechs and it was the first time in a long while that I was unable to do a perfect island (and even lost a pilot!).

Mist Eaters are the easiest out of those I've tried so far. Similar to Rusting Hulks, but feel better and easier to use. Being able to consume dust instead of damage over time is a good tradeoff versus Rusting Hulks. It's simple to just enter a cloud when you need to shoot something, you get healing, and mosquitos are countered hard. The artillery is good out of the box and deals high damage. 2 out of 3 mechs are flying!

[x_equals_speed]

Best new squad is custom squad of three control mechs.

Just gave it a whirl and it was loads of fun and happily won unfair on its first attempt.

Well "happily" in that I lost two mechs and the bomb in a single turn on the final mission because I forgot a frozen psion still got to do psion damage, but they still won.

[Robo]

Arachnophiles - oh god.

Bad, weak, unfun - not sure what the thought behind these was, but they are just bad.
Like BAD.
No damage (well, just BAD damage), no control (well, just BAD control) - clunky mechanics.
I am trying to survive through these just to make the achievements but damn, I dont have fun.

Edit: finally made them work - but I was superlucky on items - got pull tank, push tank and the item which makes Veks get +1 damage from bumps and block. So yeah - not about the squad but items :)

[SquareDildo]

Cataclysm is OP. All 3 mechs deal damage and push or flip. Great base stats: 4 health 4 move on prime, 3 health 4 move flying science mech. Only triptych is mediocre in stats. But all the mechs get good cheap 1 core upgrades, including Buildings Immune on Triptych.

[jtrayax]

Also tryptich can terget and move away objects in point-blank, which is uncommon for artillery mech.

[Jevmen]

Mist eaters is the most busted squad so far
Heat sinkers feels like the weakest one

[Delta]

Bombermechs I liked because you could so easily block spawns with the double bomb upgrade. Armour-piercing shot is a fun gimmick too and their third unit is useful.

Arachnophiles seem mixed to me. Their spider-mechs don't seem to do much on their own and require quite a bit of setup for limited payoff (though thankfully their ricochet and artillery mechs both get decent damage with upgrades).

Mist Eaters seem very powerful due to easily blocking multiple attacks per turn with four-tile smoke as well as their fighter and artillery delivering decent damage, and the ability to control enemies is fantastic as well.

[Nibbla]

Bombermech together with Silica (double attack) is op ^^

[Filthy Goon]

am i the only one that loves arachnophiles? maybe its because i got kai in the arachnid mech who easily became the best when combined with the acidic arachnid bots i was killing everything with ease and sometimes ended maps with lots of bots still going, slide mech with henry made for great set ups with kai and becomes nearly invincible with the shield upgrade, ricochet felt weird with how much positioning matters on both sides for it to work and honestly just used it to move stuff or serve as a distraction, seems like pilots make or break this squad?

[letir]

1. Mist Eaters - most powerful squad and easy to use. 4-tile smoke and ability to command Vek around is OP as hell. Brute is far less complicated than Jet Mech. Don't even need special pilots to avoid their own smoke. Also fire, because why not? The only downside is limited ability to move Vek around, Henry or Kazaak is good starting pilots.

2. Cataclysm - solid pick. Have decent damage on everything, pushing and confusion.
Ranged shoot point-blank. Brute just yeeting enemies away, pretty unique manipulation action. With chasms they dominate ground-based enemies.

3. Bombermechs - powerful, but complicated. Most techincal squad ever, they rely on Science and Ranged working together to make miracles happens. Brute packing good punch, but sophisticated in use. Archimedes is good for them, faciliate even more teleportation shenanigans.

4. Heat Sinkers - meh. Brute and Ranged are good with some upgrades, but Prime is extremly awkward and lack any decisive strength. They supposed to be damage-oriented fire suqad, but their damage is (both starting, potential upgraded and boosted) is weak. Squad passive is hard to use reliably.

5. Arachnophiles - rock bottom. Brute is okay with some brain play, and there is plenty of simpler weapons for straightforward situations. Science is a bit funky and REALLY lack flying, but work fine as far as movement goes. Ranged is supposed to be key feature, but it falls flat with pathetic damage and zero utility. You need to help him secure kill, but squad lack powerful and reliable damage options. Even then, spiders have slow movement speed, no damage upgrades for late game, and blast/fire psions counter them hard. There is a lot of artillery weapons with better utility, damage and scaling.

[SquareDildo]

In defense of Arachnophiles, they laugh at blobbers, plasmodia, even spiders if you don't position them wrong. You can destroy their 'summon' and still do damage/pushing in the same turn. There's no harder counter to Blobber than the spider mech!

I figured out Heat Sinkers. They're about area weapons (and they get commonly get +2 damage per boost because they have mass weapons). Prime affects 6 squares at the start. Initially, they set up 2 squares of fire, but with upgrades they can ignite 9 per turn. Flame Behemoths can only ignite 5.

[Jevmen]

Played arachnophiles with Kai and this mech truly feels like it should have 2 damage by default, creating spiders feels much more reliable

[Nogan]

Hard to gauge the new squads because the game is significantly more difficult. For example, I've been struggling with the Heat Sinkers because I'll run into a turn where the game spawns two Tumblebugs by a cluster of cities and I just auto lose. Or maybe I get a start with two choke points and can't make any ingress on the first turn and immediately lose. Similarly, a lot of the problems I'm seeing people having here stem from not having a diverse enough set of tools to handle the change in the hp curve and damage output. I don't think that's on the squads, I think it's on the balance shift.

[Alpro]

Heat Sinkers are pathetic, they lack damage, control, health, mobility and cheap upgrades. First island is hell and the rest of the game hates you so much for playing them. I finally got a 2i unfair win, after 789678654 attempts, but i had to sacrifice a skilled invulnerable Kai on last turn...

[SquareDildo]

Originally posted by Alpro:

Heat Sinkers are pathetic, they lack damage, control, health, mobility and cheap upgrades. First island is hell and the rest of the game hates you so much for playing them. I finally got a 2i unfair win, after 789678654 attempts, but i had to sacrifice a skilled invulnerable Kai on last turn...

This is my first run on Unfair:
https://i.postimg.cc/DnxYBK71/Screenshot-from-2022-08-07-19-15-37.png

[Jevmen]

Originally posted by Alpro:

Heat Sinkers are pathetic, they lack damage, control, health, mobility and cheap upgrades. First island is hell and the rest of the game hates you so much for playing them. I finally got a 2i unfair win, after 789678654 attempts, but i had to sacrifice a skilled invulnerable Kai on last turn...

heat sinkers are good but have the weakest start out of any squad BY FAR, you need to spend some reactors until you stop being so so so RNG dependent, i legit had to restart 4 runs because i get unavoidable damage turn 1 in each mission, i reccomend using Kai on the multi shot mech and go to an island with 2HP enemies so you can actually pass the early game, once you get more range in the prime and science and push for the brute is easily one of the strongest squads