I'll be filling out this guide as I have time with information to help clarify the systems in this game.

When you start a new game, you will get to choose where your base starts. As you move around the cursor, each area will show up as either red or white. White locations are "easy" to handle terrain; red locations are difficult, and will generally require you to have upgraded and specially fitted out mechs to succeed. When choosing a starting location, there's no difference between choosing a red or white spot, but you will want to choose a location that has access to a lot of white spaces, or you're not going to make it very far.

This is what I've found to be the best starting spot:



This is a red desert tile in Africa. You start pretty close to three cities, and you have fairly easy access to Europe, Africa, and Western Asia.

Getting to Eastern Asia from here looks like it would be easy, but is actually fairly difficult. There's unpassable mountains, and 300 degree terrain that block off most routes to Eastern Asia. You'll have to cross some 161 degree red desert to get to Eastern Asia, and there's a high chance you will get blocked out by enemy bases on these tiles, so you'll need some luck. In practice, you'll probably need to get to Eastern Asia through the Indian Ocean, so prepare accordingly.

Here's one interesting starting spot:


This is a red water tile. Choosing this as a starting location connects North America to Europe with a white trail of tiles, which allows you to access most of the white areas of the map without needing to go through any red tiles. You might still get blocked by an enemy base, but at least you have a chance of making it through with minimal difficulty.

In theory this should be a pretty good starting spot. In practice, I've had really bad luck with this spot, getting wedged in by enemy bases, hard enemy spawns at the start, and enemy bosses chasing me very early.

In general, run the biggest piston with the smallest injector that will meet your energy requirements.

The behavior or Injectors and pistons are not documented at all in the game, as far as I can tell. However, they appear to work as follows:

Higher injector values increase energy output and decrease maximum temperature.

Higher piston values decrease energy output and increase maximum temperature.

Both change the values at an equal inverse to each other, so increasing the value of both the injector and piston by the same amount will result in no change to an ICE. It's only the difference between the two values that matters.

Note, the maximum temperature is the maximum temperature caused by load on the ICE, and has no impact on external temperature resistance.

The general rule with AUX components is to always fill up slots 1-4 with cooling modules, always put a system multiplier in slot 6, and put either a cooling module or a system multiplier in slot 5, depending on what you are optimizing for.

First thing to note is the order of the AUX components matters. The components are loaded in from top to bottom, right to left. When you hover over one of the AUX component slots on the ICE, the top number will show you the order number: 1 through 6.

The second thing to note is that up to 4 numbers that will come up when you hover over a component slot. They appear to be as follows:

• Slot number
  
• System Direction Negative
  
• System Direction Positive
  
• Cooling

System multipliers will have all 4 numbers.

Cooling components will have three numbers, with the middle number being the System Direction, with an implicit negative or positive, depending on the cooling type.

The last thing to know about AUX components is that at the moment there is no benefit to mixing internal and external cooling. You should therefore install only internal or external cooling on an engine.

There are three types of Aux components:

Internal Cooling

Use this when you are using weapons that produce a lot of heat.

-0.04 System Direction
+0.20 Cooling

External Cooling

Use this when you want to increase the environmental heat resistance of your mech.

+0.04 System Direction
+0.20 Cooling

System Multiplier

These multiply the cooling and system totals of the previous component slots. Only use these in slots 5 or 6.

1.5 * System Direction
1.2 * Cooling


Weapon Cooling Optimized



This layout is fully optimized towards weapon cooling. It gives you a max outside temp of 112, which is high enough most environments. With the recent changes to how heat works, this build should be what you typically use for ICE engines.

You can swap slot 5 for another internal cooling component for a minor increase to the overall cooling, but the weapon cooling amount will drop significantly.

Environmental Heat Resistance Optimized



This layout sacrifices a bit of overall cooling, but gives you a max outside temp of 177 on the starting mechs, which lets you access most terrains if necessary. You won't be able to complete a 295 temperature mission with this engine, so don't try.

The major downside to this layout is that your weapons will cause you to overheat repeatedly through the mission. This layout should only be used if you absolutely need to complete a mission in a high heat location with the ICE.

Nuclear reactors seem complex, because there is a lot of components and a lot of numbers for everything, but no in-game documentation at all.

In practice, you can ignore all those numbers. There's only one thing to keep in mind with nuclear reactors: more energy = more heat. Too much heat, and you're going to have problems. You should be fine as long as you limit a reactor's energy output to around 130. Any higher, and you will either have an unstable reactor, or mech overheating problems.

Nuclear reactors have three types of components: AUX, Kernel, and Safety


AUX

AUX works very similar to ICE AUX, but with some minor differences. At time of writing this, due to the way nuclear reactors work, there's pretty much only one AUX layout that makes sense to use most of the time:

Slots 1-4: Inner cooling
Slots 5-6: System Multiplier

This is because nuclear reactors tend to not have issues with external temperatures if built correctly, and tend to run guns that generate a lot of heat.

Kernel

There's three types of rods in the kernel that control your reactor's energy output.

Slowdown Rods: Flat grey - essentially just take up a slot.
Reaction Rods: Bluish grey - increase your base reaction level.
Reaction Multiplier Rods: Red - multiply your base reaction level.

There's lots of stats for these rods, and no explanation for what the stats mean. Instead of trying to reverse engineer these numbers, it's far easier to just figure out what works with some simple trial and error. You can swap in and out rods to see how it affects your reactor's energy level, until the output energy level is where you want it to be.

Some important notes:

• You always need at least 2 slowdown rods in your reactor. A reactor will never be stable with fewer than 2 slowdown rods.
  
• The order of the rods does not matter.

Safety

This component provides a multiplier on your slowdown. The basic safety gives a 3x multiplier. I'm not sure if there's any other multipliers. There's not much to do here, expect to put in a safety.


For convenience, here's the energy output for each stable combination of rods with the basic 3x safety multiplier. The layout is as follows:

<Slowdown Rods> <Reaction Rods> <Multiplier Rods> | <Energy Output>

2 3 3 | 147
2 4 2 | 144
2 4 2 | 141
2 1 5 | 135
2 0 6 | 123
2 5 1 | 121
2 6 0 | 88

3 2 3 | 77
3 1 4 | 77
3 0 5 | 75
3 3 2 | 74
3 4 1 | 66
3 5 0 | 55

4 0 4 | 56
4 1 3 | 56
4 2 2 | 55
4 3 1 | 52
4 4 0 | 47

5 0 3 | 48
5 1 2 | 47
5 2 1 | 46
5 3 0 | 43

6 0 0 | 40

I generally find a 2 5 1 or 2 0 6 layout to be most effective for nuclear reactors.


With all that in mind, here's a couple example layouts.

2 0 6 Layout



Almost identical to the 2 5 1 layout. This is pretty much the sweet spot for energy output vs heat production. It provides a tremendous amount of energy, but still provides enough cooling to run any mission other than volcano missions. The big drawback to this layout is that it uses a lot of a single type of rod - it's likely that you won't have enough rods to run this layout on all your reactors for quite a while. You mitigate this somewhat by also using the 2 5 1 layout on some of your reactors.

3 3 2 Layout



Almost identical to the 3 2 3 layout. This reactor layout provides a massive amount of cooling. You'll basically never run into heating issues. It's a lot less energy output than a 2 0 6 layout, but 74 energy is still a large amount to work with. This also has the benefit of using a much more even rod distribution, making it easier to spread your rods out across your reactors.

To access the station upgrades, go to the calendar and click the lever in the lower right corner.


Here's what the station upgrade screen looks like

When you click on a station module, a couple of lines will come out of the section.

The orange line signifies the current module, and will point at the detail panel on the right. The orange squares in the detail panel signify the current level of the module.

The blue line points at the parent module for the currently selected module. The blue squares in the detail panel indicate the level of the parent module. A module cannot have a higher level than its parent module, and so the blue squares represent the current maximum level for the selected module. If you want to increase the max level, you will need to upgrade the parent module.

Every module provides some stat bonuses to your station, but there's a few modules that provide additional bonuses that are detailed in their description.


There are modules that provide special bonuses. In general, you should focus on maxing the upgrades on all of these special modules before focusing on upgrades for normal modules.

56 - Upper Factory

This module reduces the time to produce items in the components tab. It is the most important module to upgrade, and should be upgraded to max level before focusing on upgrading anything else. You will probably need to upgrade its parent modules to get it to max level, but it is still worth maxing module 56 and its parents before upgrading anything else.

23 - Waste Recycling Center

Provides a few resources of each type every day. This is a very useful module, since it will provide resources that you are having trouble finding on the map, and will prevent you from getting locked out of running missions due to insufficient ammo. This should have very high priority for upgrades.

62 - Ammunition Factory

Reduces the resource cost of sending mechs into battle. This is very useful, since the cost savings are significant, and it's easy to deplete a single type of resource, locking out you of missions. This should have very high priority for upgrades.

59 - Repair bay

Since the addition of ranged units to many missions types, your mechs are likely to take some damage on a most of your missions, even if you're doing everything right. And occasionally things will go wrong and you'll have a mech take a big chunk of damage that can cost over a 1000 metallite to fix. This module helps cut the costs on the repairs, and will pay for itself very quickly. Should have a have high priority for upgrades.

4 - Artillery Gun

Upgrading this module provides more artillery shots during a mission.

Artillery can do a lot of damage, and can open up the terrain, but it is pretty inconsistent, and cannot be used at all during underground or water missions.

It is very useful at helping deal with turrets. If a turret is behind some terrain that makes it difficult to attack from outside the turret's range, using artillery can remove the terrain and allow you to safely destroy the turret.

Artillery has limitations, but since it's useful for taking out turrets, it should have medium priority for for a special module.

26 - Western Factory of Standart Parts

This reduces the cost to produce the components item in the components tab. Components aren't very expensive to begin with, but a reduced cost doesn't hurt. Low priority for a special module.

5 - Communication Center

Reduces communication delay, but the effect is relatively minor and has low priority for a special module.

15 - Mech hanger

Normally mechs require 5 hanger bays in the components tab to build. This module purports to reduce the number of hangers required on the components tab to build the first type of mech when fully upgraded. However, I'm not clear on if that just means the starting mech type that you begin the game with, or if it provides benefits to other types of mechs as well. I'll need to experiment to figure this out. Depending on how many mech types this impacts, this could have either high or low priority.

It is important to understand how armor and armor penetration interact when customizing weapons.

If a attack has a *higher* penetration value than a unit's armor, the weapon will ignore the armor and do full damage.

If an attack has an *equal or lower* penetration value compared a unit's armor, the armor will deflect the attack, causing no damage to the unit. This means is the slower the weapon's rate, the more important penetration is.

All attacks, whether they penetrate or not, will damage the target's armor. The amount of armor damage depends on the weapon type. Explosive and Laser weapons are good at destroying armor. Kinetic and Flame weapons are really bad at destroying armor.

If you have weapons with low penetration, you'll want to balance this by putting weapons that do a lot of armor damage onto your mechs to help reduce enemy armor so the lower penetration attacks can also do damage.

Kinetic weapons tend to be the most rounded weapon type. They have decent penetration and damage output, but lack range and don't do much armor damage.

This is one of the two weapons you start with, and the only weapon you can build from the start.

Strengths:

- Lightweight
- High rate of fire
- Low energy usage
- High versatility
- Very good at dealing with the basic enemies

Weaknesses:

- Has issues applying damage
- Low armor penetration
- Deceptively short range - heavily impacted by damage and armor penetration drop off.

This gun is lightweight, uses minimal energy, and has a pretty high base rate of fire. It has issues with accuracy, range, and penetration.

There's really only two attributes to balance: rate of fire, and accuracy. As a result, there are two main customization paths to go down with this weapon: either optimize for raw damage, or optimize for accuracy.

The raw damage route is more flexible in terms of customization options. Your goal should be to optimize for clearing out many enemies at extremely close range, and so accuracy isn't very important. The mod you choose will have a big impact on what the weapon does. Try using different mods and see how it works out for you.

These are the staple mods for this weapon:

Increased Penetration: This weapon mod with let the 20MM chew through the basic enemies that you see in every level very effectively. At the start of the game, each of your mechs should be using this.
Slowing Enemies: Very effective at preventing enemies from closing the gap. It is a hard counter to several enemy types. You'll want this on at least one of your mechs as soon as

Here are some that might be useful situationally:

Shards after hit: Gives you extremely high damage potential and a large AOE, but suffers from extremely low armor penetration, and can be unreliable.
Critical Chance: Gives you extremely high damage potential, but suffers from really low armor penetration.
Fire Component: Fire seems to do a very high amount of damage over time, but it's hard to tell exactly how much it does. The fire effect only activates when the bullet *doesn't* penetrate, so low penetration is a benefit.

Here's an example of a 20MM with a Fire Component mod that I've found works really well:


The accuracy focused route is more limited in terms of customization options - penetration becomes more important, and so you'll want to have at least 5 penetration, with 7 being ideal. This means you're going to have to take the armor penetration mod, which limits your ability to customize this weapon. With a setup like the following, you'll have around 200 DPS, which is pretty low, but has the benefit of being able to apply that damage out to very long ranges, and has the ability to penetrate multiple targets, allowing the weapon to reach up to 600-800 DPS in many situations.



The tank cannon is one of the first weapons you will unlock via research.

Strengths:
- Extremely ammo efficient. Uses almost no ammo.
- High armor penetration.
- Very high damage potential if built correctly.
- Very low energy usage.

Weaknesses:
- Not a very versatile weapon. It's basically just pure damage.
- Useless against anything it cant penetrate.
- Effectively does no armor damage.
- Low rate of fire. Not nearly as effective at dealing with the basic enemies as the 20MM.
- Deceptively short range - heavily impacted by damage and armor penetration drop off.

I find this weapon works best when you focus on raw damage. Builds for this weapon should focus on maximizing its damage, while keeping the armor penetration high enough. While this weapon isn't great at dealing with the basic enemy swarms, the increased raw damage should help a lot with taking out special enemy types with lots of health.

I find the critical chance mod paired with maxed out damage/penetration works best with this weapon. This set up should output several times the damage a 20MM does.

Accuracy improvements don't really help this weapon. The cannon is so heavily affected by armor penetration drop off, its default accuracy is fine for hitting things in its effective range.

Explosive weapons generally have long range and focus on destroying armor. They tend to have have low damage output compared to other weapon types.


This is the second weapon type you start with, but you'll need to unlock some research before you can build more.

Strengths:

- High armor penetration and armor damage
- Very long range
- Low energy usage

Weaknesses:

- Low damage
- Very heavy
- Not very versatile
- Has difficulty hitting targets at short range
- Depletes ammo very quickly
- Causes a lot of heat build up in mechs due to reloading.

Since this weapon's biggest benefit is its good armor penetration and armor damage, weapon mods that reduce armor penetration don't work well with this weapon.

This means you're best off running the missile system with either the increased penetration mod, or no mod at all. The increased penetration mod results in a big increase in armor penetration and damage, but causes the missile launcher ammo to cost twice as much, and negatively impacts the accuracy.

Because the missile system is so heavy, you'll need to put most your customization points into reducing its weight until you unlock stronger motors. Once you have stronger motors, you can move all the customization points to rate of fire and accuracy.

Here's an example of a early game missile system:


And an example of a missile system once you have stronger motors:

Energy weapons focus on raw damage output above everything else. They rely on other weapons to remove armor and deal with the basic enemy swarms.


This can be researched fairly early, and a large stash of them can be found at one of the objectives on the map.

Strengths:

- Extremely high damage potential
- High armor damage potential
- No ammo usage
- Good build versatility
- Lightweight

Weaknesses:

- Extremely high energy usage
- Most weapon mods don't do anything
- Generates a lot of heat
- No armor penetration at all
- Sharp weapon range cutoff
- Very bad against the basic enemy swarm

The fast laser cannon has a tremendous damage potential, but require effort to make work.

Energy weapons scale with their energy usage - the higher their energy usage, the faster they will fire, and the more damage they will do per hit. For this reason, energy weapons are only useful once you unlock nuclear reactors, and they should be configured to use as much energy as you can.

The second thing to deal with is their lack of any armor penetration. You will need to completely remove the armor from a unit before you can do any damage with a laser. Lasers do pretty good armor damage, but you'll want to pair them with explosive weapons to remove armor as fast as possible.

Lastly, lasers are really bad at dealing with the basic enemy swarms, so you'll want to have some other way to deal with the basic swarms.

This section is less important now that there is a bestiary in the game. I'll try to keep it updated with tips for dealing with the different enemy types.

Operarius

The basic enemy type, you'll find thousands of them in every mission. They're very easy to kill, and mostly just act as a check to make sure you have a high rate of fire. If your mechs have a high enough rate of fire, these shouldn't cause you any problems. If you're having trouble with spiderlings, reconfigure your weapons to increase their rate of fire.

Armor: 3
Health: 12
Damage: 5
Resistance: Laser

Aries

When these enemies see one of your mechs, they will charge up for a couple of seconds and then rush at one of your mechs at a very high speed to cause a large amount of damage.

These are one of the most difficult enemy types to deal with.

Rams used to be heavily affected by the slow mod, but their rush is now immune to slow. This means they're extremely difficult to stop before they charge into your mechs - you need to have very high damage output to kill them before they reach you. You should avoid missions with Rams until you can fit your mechs with very high damage output.

Armor: 12
Health: 800
Damage: 13
Resistance: Kinetic

Fragellum

These enemies don't really do much damage, but have an extremely dangerous special ability.

They will get to within a medium range of your mechs and then latch onto on of your mechs and pull them away. This will disable your mech, and will allow the regular spiderlings to attack it. Regular spiderlings will do a massive amount of damage to a disabled mech very quickly, making this ability extremely dangerous.

The best way to deal with this enemy is to only move when the enemy spawn rate is low. Find a place with long sight lines to wait in when enemy spawn rate increases. With long sight lines, you can take out the lasso enemies before they get into range to use their ability on your mechs.

If you are in a tight area with a high spawn rate and lassos present, you are probably going to lose your mechs.

Armor: 6
Health: 700
Damage: 13
Resistance: Thermal

Ovum

These are enemy spawners you will find in pretty much every level. It's best to deal with them from a distance, so you don't get overwhelmed by the enemies they spawn. Be aware that they can soak up a lot of damage.

Armor: 0
Health: 3000
Damage: 0
Resistance: Energy

Brucus

Every level will have worms that can burrow through walls. They don't have any direct attacks, but when provoked, they will drop turrets that are a huge pain to deal with. Killing them causes them to drop a lot of resources, so it is almost always worth hunting them down.

They have some armor and extremely large health pools. Be aware that it can take a while to kill them early game.

Armor: 4
Health: 1400
Damage: 0
Resistance: Kinetic

Caecilia

Long, Shoots Bullets.

Armor: 9
Health: 950
Damage: 0.5
Resistance: Missiles

Big Bullet Shooter

Armor: 14
Health: 1450
Damage: 10
Resistance: Missiles

Flos

This is the only non-turret enemy that energy shields affect. This enemy launches energy projectiles at your mechs. An active energy shield will completely block their attack. However, their attacks will put a lot of strain on your energy shields, and if they deplete your shields, they will cause a lot of damage very quickly.

The way energy shields work is a bit unclear, but it seems they tap into the unused energy output on your mech. The more unused energy, the stronger your energy shields will be. Since ICEs don't have very high energy output, these enemies are best avoided until you get nuclear reactors.

With strong energy shields, these enemies are one of the easiest enemy types to deal with.

Armor: 14
Health: 2700
Damage: 24
Resistance: Laser

Gammarus

Don't let their size and large health pool scare you. These guys are actually one of the easiest special enemies to deal with. They are heavily impacted by the slow mod. If you use the slow weapon mod, you should be able to easily keep out of their range until you finish them off.

Armor: 14
Health: 3700
Damage: 34
Resistance: Fire


Colubra

The objective for most levels will be to kill a boss worm. They frequently come with a shield that seems to negate artillery, and greatly reduces any incoming damage. You will do a lot more damage by having your mechs step into the shield. Doing enough damage to the boss will cause the shield to drop.

The boss worm rotates in a circle. If a mech ends up in front of it - it will latch on to the mech, restricting its movement and continuously damaging it. Stay behind it to avoid its attack. Slow weapons will cause it to stop rotating, making it much easier to stay behind it.

Armor:4
Health: 5000
Damage: 8
Resistance: Kinetic

Turrets are present in every mission, regardless of the listed enemy types for the mission. You can't tell what type of turrets are going to be in a mission, but in general, you'll only see bullet turrets for the first dozen or so missions, and then see the other turret types start to show up in later missions.

You can't tell your mechs to prioritize targeting either bullet or energy turrets at the moment, since they're not selectable in the enemy types.

The best way in general to deal with turrets is to sit just outside their range, and try to pick them off. You can use the middle mouse button to order your mechs to target where your mouse cursor is.

Bullet Turrets

Bullet turrets have a large attack range, and do a lot of damage. If you have a mech sitting in range of a bullet turret, it will take a lot of damage very quickly. Your starting mechs can be killed in just 2-3 seconds of being in range of a bullet turret.

The best way to deal with them is to snipe at them from outside their range. You can target them by clicking on them with your middle mouse button, but it can still take a while to snipe them down.

If there's a turret behind a wall that you're having trouble hitting from outside its range, use artillery to clear the wall so you can take it out safely from outside its range. If you can't use artillery, you'll need to wait until the enemy spawn rate lowers to its minimum, then rush the turret with your mechs to take it out as fast as you can to minimize damage to your mechs.

It's not clear what the stats are for this turret, since they're not shown in-game.

Armor: ?
Health: ?
Damage: ?
Resistance: ?

Missile Turrets

Moderately difficult to deal with, but not too bad. You can select them as an enemy type to prioritize, and you can counter their rockets with active armor. As long as you have some reactive armor, and you don't let them take too many shots at you, you shouldn't have too much trouble with them.

Armor: 10
Health: 550
Damage: 7
Resistance: Missiles

Energy Turrets

This seems to be the easiest turret type to deal with. Energy Shields seem to completely shut down their attacks. I'm not sure if there's a way for them to bypass your energy shields - I haven't seen it happen yet. You only need a single energy shield on your mechs, as long as all your mechs are in the radius of the energy shield.

It's not clear what the stats are for this turret, since they're not shown in-game.

Armor: ?
Health: ?
Damage: ?
Resistance: ?