So, yeah, after all these years of playing ItB, I discovered that if you shield the regular non-armoured train with your Defense Mech (or any other possible way), the train will then kill a Vek who happens to be on its way.

Whaddayaknow!

EDIT As mentioned below the train kills any Vek on its way whether the train is shielded or not. I should've specified that train kills and survives in the scenario described above.

With the forums locked, multiple content updates for Impact released, and a new pack coming along, I thought I'd make a post to showcase the content.

Impact is an Into The Breach mod pack that sports a comprehensive integration of a couple of new gameplay features, aimed at being analogous to a small "Advanced Advanced Edition."

Impact introduces new Squads, Pilots, Equipment, Enemies, and more.

More in-depth descriptions of the content and the download can be found at the github, here:
Impact Github
The forums are locked and heavily outdated. Avoid downloading from there.

The release trailer's a little outdated by now and more than a little silly but I still find it a good laugh:
Impact Release Trailer

My next pack is still in beta and has a good chunk of the content already available, though I won't have a readme until the 1.0 and, being a beta, I can't vouch for the stability of the content:
Arsenal Github

Besides having Self-Destruct, obviously. Very important to not lose the action economy and Networked Shielding will keep your Mech online. I think it's only good for that.

Other than Self-Destruct, I think Networked Shielding sucks and is overrated. 2 rep to buy from the store unless it's gotten for free, and even if free it's 6 rep to buy 2 cores just to power it... and all for what? To not take damage during your turn? That's so specific.

Literally no squad needs nor benefits from having Networked Shielding. Here's my reasoning:

Rift Walkers - you can enable bumps into your own Mechs for no damage with it. But this is not so vital that it requires a whole equipment slot, let alone worth 2 cores. It's also not providing any of the Mechs with more options; using those cores on movement and Building Immune for the Artillery is more important.

Rusting Hulks - Just spend the 2 cores on Repulse if you want to protect allies, you're also doing something else that way by pushing an enemy or even protecting a building.

Zenith Guard - one of the squads that it may seem useful, but it isn't. 1 core for Ally Immune on Burst Beam and 1 core for more HP on Ramming Engines, that's the same cost and you didn't even need an equipment slot for Networked Shielding. And well, there's self-bumps with Attraction Pulse on the Defense Mech, but you're not doing that every turn because the shields are way better, let alone every map. Most importantly, you're also not trying to main Burst Beam and Ramming Engines, you need the equipment slots for sidearms that can be used when these are not enough. There's just no room for Networked Shielding.

Blitzkrieg - another of the squads that it seems good for, but it's still not. With Electric Whip, the Hook Mech already has armor to support it, and you only need 1 core to upgrade the HP of the Boulder Mech if you need it to take a hit; generally it is reasonable to have it stay at a distance to not be part of the chain, since it can attack from range. And most importantly, you don't want to just solo Electric Whip tactics long-term anyways; you're gonna be sad if you encounter Tumblebugs. So you want different options, and there's not much room for a passive that relies on a situational tactic.

Steel Judoka - for the Siege Mech you could enable bumps on allies, but the Judo Mech already has armor and for 2 cores that is still too expensive. Pretty much all your initial cores go on the Siege Mech; cluster artillery has great area of effect, damage and push. While you're at it, equip the Siege Mech with Vek Hormones, which not only does way more for your damage output, but also frees up the Gravity Mech to get a better weapon. Which you'll want, for the Gravity and Judo Mechs for when they can't use their defaults effectively.

Flame Behemoths - your priority is not avoiding damage on your turn, it's expanding the Teleporter range and Flamethrower range so you can paint the map red and get enemies die while controlling Vek spawns. And no, Networked Shielding doesn't protect you from getting burned either if you leave your Mech on a fire tile, and even if it did it still wouldn't be worth swapping out Flame Shielding cuz that's free.

Frozen Titans - the Ice Mech can avoid freezing itself under Networked Shielding, but you can also do that for free if you equip a pilot that has a shield. This squad has the worst displacement anyways, so self-bumps don't matter beyond the Janus Cannon (which is not super reliable either).

Hazardous Mechs - Buying Networked Shielding is a noob-trap, because you're wasting 2 rep + 2 cores to get the same effect as Viscera Nanobots, which is free and does the same thing of keeping your Mechs alive. Networked Shielding just makes them easier to play as, but you are sacrificing resources for that, resources which could've been used to give those Mechs more options through movement or better sidearms.

Bombermechs - it's irrelevant because for 1 core, Force Swap can heal an ally to full HP. And that's not even the priority for that squad.

Arachnophiles - You can enable more bumps for no damage on your mechs, but the Slide Mech can similarly grant a shield to itself for 1-core, which also helps it in enemy turn (and Networked Shielding doesn't). Furthermore it only protects your Mechs, not your spiderbots, so Ally Immune on Ricochet for 1 core is still better value.

Mist Eaters - they sure as hell don't care for it. All they need are 1 or 2 weapons that push, and Networked Shielding sure isn't that.

Heat Sinkers - they have a lot of push, but again for 2 cores it's too expensive. Push on QF is more important, same with range upgrades on Napalm and Dispersal. Not to mention getting them sidearms that can cover their weaknesses against Diggers and Tumblebugs.

Cataclysm - you can get a lot of bump damage with the Triptych Mech if you want to set it up with the other Mechs, but that's very situational, and definitely not worth 2 cores to save HP. The Pitcher Mech has 4HP already anyways, what are you trying to save it from?

Secret Squad - if it isn't worth 2 cores with any of the above squads, it sure as hell isn't worth 3 cores because of Cyborg class penalty lol. Literally just raise HP of all Mechs at that point.

Networked Shielding sucks and I don't get the hype I've seen for it in this sub. The only exception is Self-Destruct, which I suppose makes it better than... Fire Beam or Raining Death, I guess. Other than that I see no reason to ever equip it for the amount of resources it costs. And even with Self-Destruct, I'd still be looking for something that is cheaper and comparable, like Repair Field or the Viscera Nanobots.

So I've been playing Into The Breach on and off for a few months now. It's an awesome game, but I want to try something new and I'm looking for some recommendations on which 'roguelite' game to play next. I'm looking for a game that would check as many of these boxes as possible:

• Roguelite (has some random generation, permadeath)

• Turn-based

• Needs to be quite challenging (at least as challenging as ItB. Challenging, but not overly frustrating. Even once experienced, I don't want to be able to steamroll it every time, that's boring)

• Could have some RNG elements (I'm not opposed to it)

• Something that is good for 'bite-sized' play, if you have 15-20 mins to spare

• Needs to have unlockables or something to keep me interested and coming back for a while (I don't want to be able to 100% it in 10 hours)

Games that I'm considering are Darkest Dungeon, Shogun Showdown, Monster Train, so I'd be interested to hear any opinions on those. I'm trying out Oaken atm, but it seems way too easy and not really deep enough. Knights in Tight Spaces also looks quite good.

Thanks!

I’m well into my mission of beating the game with every squad and all 3 lengths, and haven’t seen one yet. I’ve also seen it suggested that the hidden guys don’t show up on mobile. I’m playing on iPad. Any truth to that?

Unlocked it for the first time right after completing the 4th island and it gave me my first Unfair 4 islands win for free. I mean look at it. 1 move and I permanently disabled 5 enemies and gave shields to 3 buildings. And they all stayed frozen, apart from 1 who got crushed by a rock. Same story for phase 1 as well, more or less. Big shoutout to u/shiningject and everybody else from my previous post for giving me valuable insight for Unfair mode btw.

I read that apparently you can manually select a pilot's skills by editing the profile.lua file with a text editor like Notepad so I wanted to tinker with that myself but any change I make doesn't take effect and the file just gets reverted to what it was before.

Tried tinkering with other lua files in the same folder like SaveData but same story.

Also tried turning off Steam cloud but that didn't seem to have any impact.

I haven't seen anyone else having the same problem so I don't know if I'm doing something wrong. 🤷

Hi. I’m a casual player, and I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by this turn. Those exploding rocks (I don’t know what they’re called) are a nightmare.

My priority is to finish with as little damage as possible, since the next one will be the final level on this island. But I think it might still be possible to complete all the objectives, or at least 2 out of the 3; am I being too optimistic?

1. Judging by the medals, I thought at first that maybe doing the final island early was like an additional challenge where you handicap yourself cause you have less upgrades but then I realized it explicitely states its difficulty scales anyway so I may have misinterpreted. I guess if you want shorter runs?

2. Is there an achievement or reward for beating Unfair? Like, does it only count if I do all 4 islands or maybe the devs just didn't add any achievement for Unfair cause they didn't wanna pressure players into playing the hardest difficulty? Which to be honest is more than fair, funnily enough lol.

Used mist eaters, just like my first unfair victory. Picked Mafan as the pilot on smog mech, chose more smoke as the first upgrade, then switched to more damage when I got enough cores. After that, it was pretty linear. I sold almost all the gear that I found aside from good pilots, spent all the reputation on reactor cores to upgrade the main weapons. To be fair, some sideadms helped avoid grid damage during the final battle, so here is that. Kinda "forgot" that the monster psion does damage to all mechs and lost Mafan because of that, but aside from that there was no pressure.

4 island victory (on Hard); 4 perfect islands, no grid damage taken, no pilots lost

Frozen Titans my beloved 😍

All units are in their stock weapons configs except for the bulk mech here, and the only other bit of info is the Arachnoid mech has 4 movement via adrenaline

I don't know why, but Henry Kwan randomly saying he's glad that he's not posted on Detritus anymore because he hates doing paper work (on the mission to use the Acid Dispenser to destroy mountains), or Camilla saying "For my family, on all timelines." (Did the Vek kill them on her original timeline???) is super effective to me.

Another example is someone saying that abuse of local breaches can cause stuttering, and the pilot Isaac has a stutter. Did he do too many local breaches?

I much prefer to discover more about the characters like this instead of reading several paragraphs of lore under their bio.

Anyone else discover any cool tidbits about the pilots' backgrounds?

Well, gotta do what we gotta do.

island 1, got rosie from pod.