Assembly tips needed

[Wintermute]

I've played Celestial Kir'Ko before that, and those guys work rather well as melee-focused race. Light-bringers with all the racial support is simply 10/10 unit, and racial units are pretty powerful too.

Now I'm doing Synthesis Assembly, and the Assembly part just doesn't work for me.

I found absolutely 0 use for scavengers - and comparing them to frenzied is all the more depressing. Snipers are unreliable as always, with AI going out of its way to stagger them, and simply refusing to accept it's blinded and shouldn't have pin-point accuracy. Engeneers don't compete with Synth Links for supporting - not even in the same league. I've just got to wreckers research, but watching them in militia forces so far - I see no point in them either. They are like ravenous, but worse in both kit and modding capacity. Sure, it's nice that they rez, but I'd prefer them not dying to begin with. Which Kir'Ko achieved with flying colors.

Basically, I'm just looking at my production list right now, and asking myself - "why don't I spam the hell out of hackers with few links here and there?" Anybody willing to give me some pointers? Modding? Compositions?

[snuggleform]

equip snipers with total network integration (stagger immune)

scavengers are all right, but they are much better in your hands than auto battle (Ai seems to lose these like crazy)

nothing wrong with reverse engineers; they're about as good as any other race's support/heal unit

with most races I tend to spam secret tech tier 2, then whatever is "better" secret tier 3 or racial tier 3.

in your case yes I do spam hackers because I like the arc shield (25% evasion thing) which is pretty scary with guardian daemon stacked on it

a very viable build is lightning riders with reassembly mod + arc shield + arc splitting mod. As long as you win fights you never lose units permanently due to reassembly mod - highly suggest try it out on just about anything not just lightning riders

[Wintermute]

Guess I should approach Assembly with idea that I SHOULD lose units in battle then, and rely on resurrections to patch it up?

[snuggleform]

I mean, yes, look at the reverse engineer and reassembly mod. You're supposed to lose guys but then they come back. It's a very annoying/effective strategy.

Being able to reconstruct heroes is kind of silly imo.

Oh also make use of linear accelerator tactical op and hero's refill AP skill, they allow for a lot of mobility and melee viability.

again don't thumb your nose at scavengers; their shotgun does 1 point of stagger which makes them usable and if they get into melee range they're fine.

even the assembly hacker has a special resurrect skill, which is part of why it's so good

[snuggleform]

forgot to mention also try disammblers the'yre slow but if yo'ure sort of used to long range good units they're very good

[The Mandarin Skyrush]

the enemies should not be able to stagger your sniper in the first term of combat, unless you have moved your sniper forward too much. when i play Assembly, sniper is the core of my army. i never move them more than 1 tile, because i want to make sure they have overwatch.

my sniper never needed total network integration, because they start with 9 range, and with rail accelerator, they have insane 10 range. my entire army move with the same pace as the snipers, which is 1 tile at a time. unless most of the enemies are already killed in battle, and i feel pretty safe that my sniper won't get killed.

my sniper mods are always explosive bullets, rail accelerator and a 2nd damage mod depends on what stage of the game i am at. in the early to mid game, my set up is explosive bullet, rail accelerator and the daemon shell which gives your 10% increase in accuracy and 10% increase in crit chance.

[snuggleform]

you run into tactical ops that stagger your snipers, so yes there's a reason to use total network integration

[Wintermute]

Originally posted by TheMandarin:

my entire army move with the same pace as the snipers, which is 1 tile at a time.

Yeah, sorry. It would be nice to run tactics that don't kill me with boredom.

Originally posted by wsc150:

forgot to mention also try disammblers the'yre slow but if yo'ure sort of used to long range good units they're very good

Seen them in militia so far. Indeed, pretty cool. But I'm not there yet.

[DrSuperEvil]

Kirko T1 melee lack range other than their grenade attack. Assembly scavengers rely on being able to move most points and then shotgun for a range attack or if under 1 movement point away close in for a melee attack which heals and can melee overwatch. With the life regen upgrade at military tier VII they get the equivalent of the celestian resurrection for victorious combats reducing losses. Their snipers are pretty good if used defensively since with the gun tech tree mods they can get massive range and splash while the T1 synthesis military tech gives accuracy boost mods. Synthesis doctrines under the civilian branch give energy cost reductions and +1 rank on production after the big boost to production and energy income allowing bigger armies. Synthesis has some good heal and stagger chain tactical calldowns while their dooms day gives bonus accuracy.

Overall the default T1 assembly units suck long term like those of the kir'ko meaning you need to upgrade to skirmishers or better.

If you keep your snipers separated the use of a tactical to stun a single unit is a waste of tactical points. Also they still have their blinding shot left which can stall for a turn or two.

Their electrocutioner is inferior to the syndicate indentured range wise but can still make use of the chain lightning and stun mods from the arc tree and it has overwatch. Assemblers rely on making cannon fodder spawns as decoys while healing/reviving allies and removing corpses to revive from enemies (amazon and xenoplague). Wreckers rely on stagger impacts and acting as shields for units behind them while their odd choice of regen mod exclusions makes them limited in utility. The disassembler is is like a promethian artillery in that it makes dot hazzard fields while their ultimate unit can ignore cover or go into a heavy melee swarm mode.

[Wintermute]

I wouldn't call what scavengers have a "ranged" attack. Frenzied strip armor with theirs, and AOE makes it harder to botch. Scavengers... miss. A lot.

Electrocutioners aren't bad per se. But hackers are simply better. So i left them out of my complaints.

Coming to think of it, a lot of my Assembly troubles come from a fact that I'm in early conflict with Dvars. God Assembly sucks against Dvars. Hard.

[Ichthyic]

concussion ammo on those shotguns the scavs have is actually pretty effective.

for some reason, it seems to trigger more often than on a sniper rifle even. I think the shotties have some kind of "double hit" projectile?

[Ichthyic]

if you are playing the campaign missions, primarily use scavs with your xeno assembly hero. they will recover more health by killing things at short range.

otherwise, use the double hero setup. you will have 3 heroes. use your commander as one and the promethean as the other in a stack. you can use them to leap frog each other into great attack spots using their unique ap refresh ability. plus you also have the tactical spell to give them full ap again as well.

1. you weaken enemies with snipers.
2. you use your commander to move forward, and kill something.
3. use your other hero to move forward and attack.
4. use your refreshed ap (you picked martial, right?) on your commander to reset full ap on your other hero.
5. either attack again with the other hero, or move forward into cover and use their ability to refresh your commander's ap.
6. attack again.
7. use your tactical spell to refresh either of the two heroes.
8 attack again.

works even better if you have the ap refresh mod on kill from kirko on your regular hero, or even the vanguard one.

2 heroes, 2 lighting riders, 2 snipers.

you can handle anything with that once they level up and you have good mods.

make sure you enable the research scavenger doctrine ASAP, so you can fast track the better mods.

[Ichthyic]

...and if you're using synthesis, you can use reaver/daemon shenanigans to get two MORE attacks each for each of your heroes. replace one sniper and one lightning rider with a reaver and that synthesis droid thing that refreshes cooldowns.

if your heroes get some decent weapons, and they probably will, they become basically your entire army.

[Ichthyic]

..and one last note (again if this is campaign).

while it might look like the easiest path to take on the second map is war, the other option is not as hard as it might look at first sight...

[Blastom]

I've found Assembly early is army meh as well, mainly due to lack of a solid T1 unit and solid damage dealers. It's highly relies on staggering or other measurement to limit enemy actions and win in prelong fights.
While Kir'ko and Amazon can boost to air damage with scouts, the Assembly one has only 6 damage.

The scavengers have trouble to deal with stagger resistance and themselves are highly vulnerable to staggering. Unlike the true range shooters, they have trouble to focus done the enemies one by one and have no ability to break covers - well all early Assembly units cannot do this efficiently. They have to prelong the battle with controls.
The sniper is not reliable due to the accuracy issue, no one can break covers for them to get clear shots. And they're pretty expensive to raise.
The engineers are pretty good support units, but support only. They're slow for melee and didn't do much more than scavengers in damage dealing. They can remove attritions during winning battles with free meatshields and resurrection, but cannot win the battle.

The elecutioners are simply too expensive. They're pretty good to me, but stagger resistance will remove their long range bombardment and leave them only 11 damage shooters. Using them as damage dealers will easily crumble the economy.

Generally, if the opponents have no heavy long range fire, heavy air units, staggering and stagger resistance, the Assembly early army does everything perfectly, but if any of the condition is met, Assembly will have trouble to deal with them in early game.

After transferring into middle/late game, every race/tech combination can work perfectly. Nothing to discuss there. The main problem to me, is turn 1 to turn 30.

Imho, Dvar and Syndicate work best in early games. They can easily make more stacks than heroes in early game and farm very efficiently. The other races, saving for Kir'ko as I haven't tried it, have trouble on economy or production speed to do the same.

[WarriorOne1]

Check out here..i ask too for tips with assembly.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/718850/discussions/0/1636418037471180892/