Guide of the Human Tanks - ALTeR

A guide that should help you beat the whole game.
Contains:

• Guide for New Players
  
• Useful Info for Veterans of the First Game
  
• Details on unlocking every Module/Tank
  
• Tips for difficult missions
  
• Assorted trivia

Guide for New Players

Basics:
The first few missions act as a tutorial for the game. This guide assumes you've played through them.

Tanks act turn-by-turn, but the game is in real time, similar to Final Fantasy. Each individual Tank has a Connection Time before it can be issued a new order, which is determined by its Speed stat. This makes the Speed stat very important. A higher speed Tank can move multiple times before a slow one.

Connection Time is not reduced if you skip moving or firing.

You cannot see most of the map, but you can and should blindly fire into the darkness. Try to make sure your Tank's attacks don't overlap when doing this.

When the game says that "Time has passed", it means an enemy Tank has made a move.

If you have forgotten the location of an enemy Tank and you're sure it hasn't moved, just check the log.

The more Tanks you destroy, the more crates you get. There's also a Wipeout bonus for destroying every Tank. It's not worth reloading if you don't get it, since you can just replay the mission in Free Battle.

Developing Tanks:
You should develop Assault Tanks. This is because they are the fastest tanks, both in Speed and Movement. The 6th to 8th models are 2x2 in size, making them much harder to destroy. Assault Tanks are the best Tanks versus Evasion.

You can also develop Artillery Tanks. Though slower, their great range allows them to stay safely out of danger. Starting from the 4th model, all Artillery Tanks are at least 2x2 in size.
Warning: Artillery Tanks are extremely weak against Evasion, and their attacks can be intercepted. This means they get less useful as the game progresses.

Recon Tanks are useful to reveal the map, but aren't actually necessary if you use Assault Tanks, since Assault Tanks become much faster than Recons. They are especially useful for ensuring you get wipeout bonuses.

Intercept Tanks are useful, but only from the 3rd model onwards. The earlier models are too slow to be of use.

You can safely ignore Shock Tanks and Command Tanks, though you might want to build a second command Tank and use Ruru as a disposable scout.

Modules
Once you've gotten a couple of 2x2 Tanks, you can turn your attention to modules. Size 1 Tanks die too fast to put modules on them. To unlock Shooting Range modules you need to develop and assemble Scouting Range +1. Target Area modules are unlocked by Shooting Range modules.

When you get 200k crates, try to develop and make a Cola. Stacking Colas on a 2x2 Tank will allow it stomp early missions.

Really Sparse Outline to the Campaign
You should have Milk (3rd Assault Tank) by Episode 2 and Leo (4th Artillery Tank) by Episode 3

You can discard your starting modules if you're in need of extra crates

Keep developing Assault Tanks, but you can stop developing Artillery Tanks at Raiden.

Try Free Battle 14 after you finish Episode 6.5, and develop the Roast.

Make sure you have destroyed less than 150 tanks before the Final Episode.
-There are 31 Tanks in the remaining missions before the Final, but obviously you don't have to destroy all of them. The rest of the limit can be used to Farm on Episode 6.5, if you are so inclined.

Try to have Beethoven and a Cola for the Final Episode

Useful Info for People who Played the First Game

Over 75% of the content of this game is in the Great Cavern. These fights are not just random free battles, but also contain a narrative that spans almost 100 missions. The story adds several unique characters and reveals more about the origins of the Human Tanks. If you want to get the full experience of the game, both mission and story-wise, make sure you do the Cavern. Note that Floors are unlocked as you progress through the main campaign, with all Floors after 8 unlocked by finishing the campaign.

There is Only 1 Route in this game. There is a small split in the middle, and 3 different Final Episodes. The different Final Episodes have the same story, but have different difficulty and rewards.

The difficulty of the Final Episode depends on the number of tanks destroyed in the current playthrough. Farming too much might make the final episode very difficult.

Tanks Destroyed:
<150: Weak
150-299: Normal
>299: Strong

You can no longer save mid-mission (Pause).

There is a new type of tank known as the Control tank. Control tanks disable all modules on the opposing side when deployed. While Control tanks can only appear in the last mission of the main campaign, they get more and more frequent in the Great Cavern.

Control Tank Details:
Control Tanks disable non-fixed (blue) modules. Fixed (red) modules are unaffected.
Destroying the control tank does not re-enable your modules.
Even though it says that your modules are destroyed, they are simply disabled. If the unit survives, the modules will still be attached.
Tank insurance modules are also disabled, so be careful. Haste device modules are disabled before they can function. The aluminium foil, golden helmet and pure golden helmet modules do nothing to prevent Control tanks disabling modules.
Control Tanks are available after finishing Floor 5 of the Great Cavern.

The Carry Over Bonus (if you obtained it; see this for details) is a Cat Ears Tank, which has pretty good stats for the start of the game. This unit does not have a Red Muffler and thus will be permanently lost if it dies. No need to panic if you lose it, as a new one can be obtained by beating Great Cavern Floor 24.

Human Tank Database

See this guide for a list of all the Tanks and Modules and their Stats

Hats Or Helmets

Starting from Episode 2, you are allowed to develop and build both Royal and Imperial Tanks.
As the game helpfully advises, it would be unwise to develop both lines of tanks due to lack of funds.
While the differences are mostly aesthetic, there are certain qualitative advantages to picking one side over the other.
Don't worry about losing out. If you are planning to finish the Great Cavern (you should), you will have far more than enough crates to develop everything.

Advanced Models refers to Tanks that get unlocked deeper in the Great Cavern. Basic Models are Tanks that can be developed just by playing the Main Campaign.

Royal Tanks wear Hats, Imperial Tanks wear Helmets

Command: Royal. No difference in Basic models, but Royal has more unique and interesting Advanced tanks

Assault: Depends. Royal's large assault tanks are far superior, but the Line-Mon equivalent costs much more to develop. Also, Imperial tanks are required to develop their Snipers, and Line-Mons are needed for the Haste Module

Artillery: Royal. Roast is a pretty good and affordable tank. Do note that Masamune is an Imperial tank.

Control: Royal. No difference in Basic models, but only Royal has an Advanced Control tank.

Snipers: Imperial. No difference in Basic models, but only Imperial has Advanced Snipers

Recon: Imperial. No Royal equivalent for Koharu.

Shock: No idea. No difference in Basic models. For Advanced models, Royal are more powerful but Imperial are cheaper.

Sword: Imperial. Their Advanced models are better, and you need Sekigahara for Koharu.

Intercept: Imperial. Both Advanced models are the same, but Royal have 2 extra basic models which I feel are unnecessary.

Crate Farming

Farming isn't very efficient in this game, since crate rewards increase dramatically as you get lower in the Great Cavern. One playthrough of the cavern yields nearly 300 million crates.
You should farm only to develop crucial equipment, for example, Control Tanks. Also, due to Control Tanks, it is not very useful to grind for the top end modules, since they can be disabled. Also, don't forget that the Final Episode increases in difficulty if you kill too many Tanks. That being said, here's 3 early game farming floors.

Free Battle 8: Easy to complete with no losses once you have Large Assault Tanks (Melody, Hikari, etc.) Yields about 80k.

No Tougou in the Free Battle version of this map
Can be completed in a single attack from a Roast with a Modem or a Patrasche with a Cola.

Great Cavern Floor 8: Best early farming floor, can be completed in a couple of turns, yielding ~150k crates.


This mission can be completed in less than a minute with a Large Assault Tank and a Sniper (Yashichi, Elizabeth, etc.)
Can be completed in a single attack from a Roast with +4 Range or a Patrasche with +2 Range, +2 Area and a Cola. The Roast is much cheaper to set up.

Great Cavern Floor 21: Next mission that can be completed with 1 click. Yields 921k crates


It requires a Patrasche with Area+2, Range+2 and a Curry/High-Speed Modem.

Roast:
The Roast is the recommended unit of choice for early farming. It is first available after Free Battle 14, which is unlocked by Episode 6. Developing it requires 120k and 2 Raidens, (the 5th unit in the Royal Artillery Line). The total cost for assembling the first Roast is 190k.
The advantage of the Roast is its speed and attack area of 3, which lets it finish early missions in 1 attack. Also, its 3 slots let it use multiple cheap modules instead of having to develop more expensive ones.

These are its full stats:

Name	Range	Area	Scout Range	Scout Area	Sight	Move	Speed	Slots	Cost	Dev Cost	Size
Roast	8	3	2	1	1	1	3	3	30k	120k + 2 Raidens	2x2

How to Unlock Everything

As per the first game, basic tanks and modules are unlocked for development by building the previous model.
This list is for all the other tanks that are only available as mission rewards. If it is underlined, that means a single model of the tank is received. If not, it means the tank can now be developed. There's also some notes on some unlocked tanks that I feel are significant.
Massive Victory requires a 50% or higher advantage on the enemy.

Main Campaign
Episode 2: Able to build Imperial tanks. See above for advice on which to develop
Episode 4: Intercept Tanks (Ice, Natsumero), Winning leads to Episode 6 Super Sendai, Losing leads to Mt. Akane
Either Episode 6: Samurai/Knight Tanks (Milua, Sekigahara)
Episode 6 Super Sendai: Unlocks Free battle 14.
Free battle 14 Yakiniku Battle: Chateau, Karubi, Roast, Yuuke, Briand

Note: See Crate Farming section for thoughts on the Roast.

Episode 6.5: Snipers (Elizabeth, Yashichi)
Any Final Episode: Ruru gets powered up to Ruru II, Unlocks Free Battle 15
Final Episode (Weak, Normal): Rara
Final Episode (Strong): 1st Time: Elle, 2nd Time: Peko-Peko

Finishing the Campaign for the first time also unlocks Sound Mode and Movie Mode, which lets you listen to every track and watch the opening and ending movies.

Free Battle 15: Free Battle 16
Free Battle 16 Daihon'ei Corps Visit: Masamune, Koharu, Miou(Speed Victory), Heshiko(Massive Victory), Free battle 17

Note: Koharu is the best Recon tank in the game. Her fixed module, God Eyes, reveals the map until her next turn. She is really expensive though, costing 500k, 5 Kuros(150k) and 3 Sekigaharas(60k) to develop, and another 500k to build, for a total of 1,210,000 crates.

Free battle 17 Daihon'ei's Revenge: Miou II(Speed Victory), Heshiko II(Massive Victory)

Great Caverns
Floor 5: Control tanks (Canaria, Komugi)

Note: Control tanks are well worth the crates to get, and almost a necessity for later floors. Make them a priority.

Floor 8: Haste Device
Floor 10: Yukishiro
Floor 15: Yuunagi
Floor 24: Cat Ears Tank (Same as carry-over bonus)
Floor 35: 1st time: Pokari, Fighting Tanks, Little Ghost (You only receive her after getting 2222 total kills. You don't have to reach 2222 by this floor) 2nd and later times: Grape
Floor 40: Free Battle 60
Free Battle 60 Grand Cross: Thigh Highs, Roronon, Rin, Mera-Mera, Puni-Puni, Ruby, Yukimin, Parfait, Free Battle 61
Free battle 61 Daihon'ei Experiment: Mikazuki, Rindou, Nyamu, Kaguya

Note: Parfait and Kaguya are intercept tanks with haste built in, so artillery will no longer be a threat. Mikazuki and Thigh Highs are Command tanks with built-in evasion and Speed 5.

Floor 54: Faltz. You can later develop Faltz on Floor 73
Floor 59: Pure Gold Helmet (module)
Floor 60: Pokari gets powered up, Advanced Fighting Tanks (Thiessen, Ludwig).

Note: Ludwigs will eventually replace Line-Mons/Chappys as your front line. They move 1 less space but are hasted and have perfect accuracy. They're also much more expensive, but crates won't be a problem.

Floor 67: Mr. Cat
Floor 68: Juumonji
Floor 70: Saphir, Midnight, Misora, Ichinotani, Free Battle 82

Note: Misora is the best Sniper in the game, with an area of 2.

Free Battle 82 True Grand Cross: Saintpaulia
Floor 73: Fuse module, which allows development of Mirage
Floor 92: 1st time: Cat Badge(module), 2nd time: Cat Ears(Module) 3rd time: Cat Ears Tank II.
Floor 96: Nail Clippers (module)
Floor 97: Ruru gets powered-up
Floor 99: Orange (module)

Very Important and Major Hint: Make sure you save a separate file before clearing floor 100, as there is a way to irrevocably fail
If you are unsure as to how to continue, well, winning isn't everything.

Floor 100: Free battle 114, Megumin (see this guide)
Free battle 114 Colosseum: Free battle 115
Free battle 115 Colosseum: Shiragiku, Tsurugi, Miou III, Koharu II, Masamune II, Rara II, Touka

Note: Touka makes beating many missions trivial.

That's the lot. Except Heshiko III, who is only available through an exploit

Note: You can receive multiple Cat Ear Tank, Faltzs, Mr Cats and Fuse Modules. To do so, you have to play the mission again in the Great Cavern, not Free Battle. This requires you to move back up the Cavern and play from the nearest checkpoint down to that Floor. Don't worry about your progress; just hit Bottom and you'll be taken back down to your lowest floor.

Tips for Difficult Missions

Final Episode (Strong): If you're having trouble with this, you've probably farmed too much on your first playthrough. Farm a bit more and get Chappys/Linemons. A Control tank also helps.

The forces arrayed against you

How to deal with Cats: As in the previous game, Shock Tanks and Line-mon spam work well against Cats. The newly introduced Fighting Tanks and Snipers are very effective against them. Sometimes it's better to let them make the first moves, to get them into range for your counterattack.

After Floor 13, Enemies will commonly have modules from this point, including evasion and haste. Deploy a Control Tank to make your life much easier.

After Floor 51, Artillery Tanks become almost useless, because of evasion and hasted intercept tanks.

Floor 59: Don't deploy a Control tank
Floor 64: Don't deploy a Control tank

Floor 74 and onwards:
Many enemies have evasion, perfect accuracy and high speed or haste devices. These are all built in, so Control tanks don't help. Ludwigs and Thiessens should form your front line, with Mr Cat, Line-Mons and Misoras as back up. Don't get too upset over your losses, since each mission gives you millions of crates.

Floor 88: Only the 3 top most Toukas can be destroyed.

Two possible enemy setups

You'll probably need to reload a couple of times for your Cat to hit the Toukas, but these forces are sufficient.

Floor 92: Deploy Ludwigs on X7,11,13 / Y14 and Pokari on X9/Y14. Bring along a Koharu and 2 Snipers as well.
Wait for the first 2 enemy attacks. If the second attack hits your tanks, reload. If not, move your fighting tanks directly forward to Y9, 8, 9 and 10 respectively.
You'll find that the 3 large cats have positioned themselves next to each other, such that the attacks of your fighting tanks will kill all 3 Cat Alternatives, a Mr. Cat, and a Cat Ears.
This leaves only 2 Mr. Cats and 3 Cat Ears.

Ideal Cat positioning after the first 2 Cat moves

Floor 99: This fight is very difficult without the 01 units unlocked by the final Free Battle. I recommend skipping it the first time through. If not -
The boss can only be damaged if you are Cornered. Her first move is always to go straight down and attack the middle, and then attack nearby.

Her first attack is always in the middle, the second attack could be to either side

Put some expendable units in those locations to get yourself down to cornered in the first 2 shots, and kill her and the goggled one with fighting tanks. You should be able to win from here, though with heavy losses.

Floor 100b: The boss can only be damaged if you are not Cornered. Take out the more dangerous supporting tanks, and try not to clump your units together.

Floor 100 interlude: Lose.

Trivia of the Human Tanks

Names of the Human Tanks:

Kisaragi just means February.

Whip of love is a japanese euphemism for harsh discipline.

Elle's Japanese name is pronounced Eh-Leh, like "Ele"ctricity. Elle's so much better.

The special tanks that appear on yakiniku maps: Roast (Rosu), Karubi, Chateau, Briand, Misuji, Ichibo, Sirloin, Kainomi, and Hiuchi are all japanese cuts of beef. Yukke is a dish that consists of raw beef.

Detritus's Japanese name is 雅落多 (garakuta), a play on 瓦落多 (junk, trash) with the first character replaced with the homophone 雅 (elegance, grace). Detritus works pretty well as a translation.

Royal Shock Tanks are Japanese sound effects. Here's what they represent (roughly)

• pikopiko: ping (electronic sounds)
  
• patapata: flapping (If you watch hetalia you should know this)
  
• tokotoko: footsteps
  
• sakusaku: crunch or sizzle
  
• furifuri: trembling
  
• hirahira: frilliness
  
• pikapika: brightness (Also how Pikachu says goodbye, which is fitting)
  
• pitapita: stopping
  
• pekopeko: hunger
  
• meramera: crackling
  
• rorirori: fear or worry
  
• punipuni: squishy

Also:
Royal Command Tanks are types and brands of footwear and pants, except for Saintpaulia, which is a flower
Royal Assault Tanks are names of dogs, mostly from shows and movies.
Royal Artillery and Recon Tanks seem to be named after their equipment. Tsundere is of course named for the general attitude of the Recon Tanks.
Royal Intercept Tanks are desserts.
Royal Knight Tanks are named after metals and minerals. Milua is the short japanese name for aluminium backwards.
Imperial Assault Tanks are train models. Line-Mon is short for Linear Motor, which is a Maglev.
Imperial Artillery Tanks are mostly flowers.
Imperial Snipers are assassins. Tougou is the main character of Golgo 13, the oldest manga that's still ongoing.
Imperial Shock Tanks are Japanese dog names.
Imperial Samurai Tanks are historical Japanese battlefields
Imperial Recons are Japanese cat names.
Control Tanks are shades of red-brown.
Fighting tanks are health drinks.
Seiran, Gekkou and Faltz (Pfalz) are WW2 planes

You might wonder why the last Fighting tank is called Ludwig. I was hoping it was some terrible pun on Beathoven, but it turns out that it's the Japanese name of Volvic mineral water.
I find it amusing that there's a Ludwig tank and a Beethoven tank, but neither refer to the composer.

Heshiko is a salted preserved fish dish. Her model number He-04, probably derives from her name, since shi can also mean 4.

Sound of the Human Tanks:

There are 94 tracks in the sound mode and only 91 in the OST.
The 3 missing songs are Instinct Army [Legacy M Loop], Instinct Army [Legacy M Loop] VN and pureness off vocal.
LaLaLa (and thus LaLaLaLa)'s lyrics are in Spanish:
A tu lado, me siento mejor
Nunca te vayas de aqui, mi amor
(Lyrics found on http://fruitbatfactory.bandcamp.com/track/lalala)

Song requests:
I'd really like it if fruitbatfactory would release the lyrics to the soundtrack
When is UltraTuMAN(Track128) played? I can't recall hearing it in either game.

Thanks

焼肉万歳[yakiniku-banzai.com] (Yakiniku Oh! Yeah!) for making the series
Fruitbat Factory[fruitbatfactory.com] for bringing it over
Japanese fans for making the japanese wiki[wikiwiki.jp]
People on the discussion board for suggestions, correction and criticism
This person (who frequently changes names, and I'm not sure how to credit them) for proving many things possible

[Tree, Bearer of Dry Wit and Puns]

This guide definitely deserves an award.

[Makem]

Anyone have any ideas on how to get speed victory on Free Battle 16 and 17?

[Juff]

@Ludrik: You can look at "Kills" in the Battle Records portion of the intermission menu. As long as that is under 150, you're fine.

[Ludrik]

Is there an ingame counter to track the number of tanks I've destroyed? Or should I keep record of tanks I destroy elsewhere to not go over 150 limit?

[Juff]

@Eater of Pi: Are you talking about the 3rd mission? Try developing Milk, the 3rd Royal Assault Tank. Since they have a target area of 2, you only need 4 shots to kill the train, not 10.
If you're short on crates, don't forget that you can replay missions as free battles to get more crates.
When you're just starting out, you should focus on developing assault tanks. also, do make sure your battle speed is not set at max, since that greatly benefits the AI.

[Eater of Pi]

And I can't even get past the first train...

I did it in the last game....

[Akai Katyusha]

Noble and Magic are. I can't confirm marble. I don't exactly shop for legwear when I visit the place.

[Juff]

I know the wiki has a list of meanings for tanks, but I didn't want to add anything I couldn't confirm. Didn't realise mizuki and chateau were brands. Are marble, noble and magic also brand names? BTW the spats in question aren't the footwear, but the sports tights.

[Akai Katyusha]

More Randomness: The Imperial Command Tanks besides Sauntpaulia seem to be things that are legwear/footwear or brands of them. Leggings and Thighhighs should be obvious. Spats are a kind of accessory that go with footwear (you know the funny things sailors wear as part of their parade outfit? Those things). Mizuki and Chatteau are brands of legwear available in Japan.

Oh, and Daihon'ei (大本営) was the name for the Imperial Japanese General Headquarters (the combined HQ of the Army/Navy at a political level) during their Imperial (Middle Meiji, to early Showa) phase. It pretty much means "Great (as in big) HQ" in older, less common today terms.

[Juff]

Thanks, good catch.