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Mechabellum is a (mostly) PvP auto-battler tactics game featuring a bunch of robots. it's like a Terran v Terran StarCraft minus all the annoying micro! the rounds are quick! and addictive! i have already lost hours to "just one more match!" syndrome and you can too! how does it play? you choose a starting perk and set of two units from four RNG options. you arrange your robots in formation on the battlefield, press play, and hope you've made better decisions that your opponent as the AI marches them into battle. after winning (or losing) a round, you evaluate what went well (or didn't), choose another perk (you and your opponent get the same set of four options), and decide how to spend your robobucks (on new units, upgrades, and special attacks) so as to best win the next round. you can't rearrange units from previous rounds (with the exception of some perks and upgrades that do let you do move them), so you're mostly stuck with your bad (or good) decisions and must figure out how to compensate for your mistakes or amplify your advantages apart from the basic random start (you and your opponent get a different set of starting options to choose from), everything is even and deterministic. you have perfect information about what units, perks, and upgrades your opponent has chosen outside the pre-round fog of war where you can't see new units and perk choices until the round starts. try and predict how your opponent will try and counter your strategy, place your units in formation, and hope that you've made good choices as your little robot dudes try and annihilate their enemies between rounds you can go into THE META and swap out different unit upgrade options using points you've earned from fighting battles should i buy it? Mechabellum is in early access on Steam, with an early access price of $14.99 that's planned to go free to play after release, in approximately one year. i have no idea how they plan to monetize it after. hopefully it's just cosmetics. there is little or no noticeable early access jank. the fundamental systems are in place, fun, and seem well-balanced. afaict it's basically a complete game and they're just doing balance tuning and bug squashing, while recouping some dev cost from genre enthusiasts. i am not at disappointed with my purchase, with the caveat that it is addictive and eating up too much of my time show me the robot army dudes i can fight with!  Arclight a slow, single-entity anti-chaff metal gear. it shoots a splash damage laser and is your go-to option for dealing with blobs of fangs or crawlers. it cannot target air units by default, but you can reconfigure it to have that capacity, which appears to be a common choice, as it's one of the starter units, and having that upgrade available is an important "oh gently caress i have no anti-air" option  Crawler zerglings. they're small, they're numerous, they're fast, they're cheap, and they're melee-only. a pain in the rear end for any single-entity bot that cannot target multiple units, especially if they rely on ranged advantage  Fang terran marines. a blob of all-purpose light infantry. they may not be fast or particularly strong, but they're cheap, can attack air, and will bog down anything that can't deal with chaff. excellent for screening and tying up enemies while your armor and artillery shoots from behind  Fortress a tank, in the MMO sense. it has a lot of HP, can upgrade to a shield, and can hold its own against most things stupid enough to try and run up to it. it will melt under sustained heavy DPS, but will tie up (and kill) lighter units for quite some time. able to spawn fangs with an upgrade  Hacker turn your enemies against their own! instead of damaging enemies, it shoots a beam of whatever that swaps them to your side. slow as hell and hard to use effectively, but quite effective when used well (i can't actually say when this is. hackers are weird, but opponents have definitely hosed some of my compositions with them)  Marksman it's a sniper. it has long range and slowly fires shots at a single entity. cheap and very effective against single-entity units of all sorts, but very squishy and susceptible to getting swarmed.  Melting Point a giant laser beam. the longer it focuses on a target, the more damage it does. anathema to big tanky bois  Mustang light cav. it's fast and numerous, and it melts air units. the go-to anti-air option and decent against chaff, but squishy. fares poorly against crowd control or tankier units  Overlord Battlecruiser... operational. you can't not hear that starcraft VA when using it, it's impossible. a single-entity giant air unit that slowly shoots salvos of blue blobs. powerful against large and midrange ground units, but weak to other air units and not incredibly effective against ground chaff (it'll win, but it'll take a while). can spawn fangs with an upgrade  Phoenix a two-entity air unit that slowly fires high-damage shots at long range. a relatively cheap and mobile counter to most medium ground units and single entities  Rhino one biggish (but not giant) robot with a buzzsaw on its arms. it's a melee attacker and i can't say much more beyond that. i have never used these outside the summon perk and don't think i've ever seen anyone incorporate them into their regular force, so idk what they're good at  Sledgehammer it's a tank. it's tanky and it hits hard. effective against many medium ground units and ranged chaff but completely incapable of attacking air  Steel Balls BALLS BALLS BALLS BALLS BALLS BALLS OF STEEL. it's a fast four-entity unit that melts lower entity count ground units at close range, but is not great against chaff  Stormcaller rocket artillery. high anti-ground DPS at long range but slow as gently caress and incapable of attacking at close range. these things are incredibly powerful against anything on the ground, but easily flanked (because they're almost always in the rear) and incapable of attacking air units  Vulcan a big boi with two big flamethrower arms. melts chaff and mustangs. useless against anything else.  Wasp the Mustangs of the air (but completely garbage against Mustangs themselves). a quick-ish swarm of air units that can deal with chaff well, costs little and flanks well
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Jun 21, 2023 06:11
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Been looking at this, not sold yet, but are there any videos of gameplay tutorials you'd recommend that details like builds or rounds or game flow?
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Jun 23, 2023 13:44
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Been playing the hell out of this with some friends from time to time. No idea how higher end games go but I'm at about 4500 CP now and I feel like I've got a good handle on things. It's kind of crazy how initially it seems like there are so many different units and you'd get tripped up trying to remember how to use them all but it took me no time at all to recognize every unit's base strength and weaknesses. And then as you play you learn little tricks on what you can do with them. Like for instance the Sledgehammer tanks should be put in a line formation against swarms of small units so that they "ripple fire" their cannons as things get in range, as opposed to all likely targeting the same unit and overkilling it but wasting the reload time on potentially hitting more targets. Or upgrading the rhino with the self destruct upgrade and then using the mobile beacon to have it run directly at the enemy tower so long as he gets close enough his death with take it out instantly.
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Jun 23, 2023 13:58
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I'm not too hopeful on the games survival. So far you have matchmaking problems, and meta problems. Right now its tough not finding people who have spent 10 hours in the game, and the current meta (Super Teched Balls) is a bit hard to counter and obtuse. DropTheAnvil fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Jun 27, 2023 |
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Jun 27, 2023 05:50
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Steel balls are weak vs. swarming units, so they're pretty easy to tie up with some fangs or crawlers. Tanks and Balls can get really out of hand once they start stacking experience, so it's important to not let them get away with early tower kills. They're also weak in general to air units, Phoenixes with some swarming ground based backup will make short work of them.
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Jun 27, 2023 18:45
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This game is seriously fun and addictive, it needs some more attention. It feels really good to turn a game around with just the right unit placement. Lately I have been loving steel balls with mech division to counter all the marksman spam I have been seeing. Although I got countered hard by hackers one time I tried this. What’s everyone’s favourite starting specialist? I used to go Marksman specialist every time I could but lately I am favouring heavy armour.
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Jun 30, 2023 15:32
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DropTheAnvil posted:I'm not too hopeful on the games survival. it's maybe gotten worse, but IDK, i started a bit later than most (~2 weeks after the apparent big influencer marketing push or whatever got a lot of people streaming it) and have consistently faced near peer combat power opponents, which is a rough proxy for time played. the latest update also tweaks the MMR system and makes it visible. small queue depths will occasionally place me against a new player, but i think one of the strengths of the game is that losses tend to be informative, with enough room to try counters before you're dead. even if they don't turn the tide, you can see if trying something new does at least do better than the previous comp. that and short matches make me not mind getting whacked much balance-wise there doesn't seem to be a clear unit meta--everything can be countered, it's just not necessarily easy to figure out how, and there's a bit of a runaway effect where not countering something early enough lets your opponent compound an advantage through upgrades and tech. my last loss against someone way more experienced ended with them saying "you did figure out the right counter, just about 2 rounds late  "in other news ROCKET PUNCH ed: Blisster posted:What’s everyone’s favourite starting specialist? I used to go Marksman specialist every time I could but lately I am favouring heavy armour. i love elite specialist because you start at a disadvantage in force size but can really snowball if your early choices are effective and don't get hard countered quick. i need to make use of the mini "buy level 2 units this round" perk more often with other specialists Qtotonibudinibudet fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Jun 30, 2023 |
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Jun 30, 2023 17:50
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I've found the arc/phonix/crawler starting combo pretty strong so far.
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Jul 2, 2023 07:37
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The counter to the popular Steel Balls + Mustangs combo (BallStank) is getting quick vulcan with scorching flames and having it sit behind your own crawlers/balls/tanks, with some marksmen/phoenix support behind to help soften the balls. With the damage tech, levels and damage items vulcans can roast balls surprisingly quickly, clean up crawlers and mustangs don't stand a chance. It takes a couple rounds to afford the vulcan but you can slow them down while placing your supporting units before you drop it and start the reversal. It won't save you if you wait to long and let your opponent get huge balls, but that's kinda true of every strategy & counter. If you're having trouble with high tech balls in general EMP is also great, balls are much less threatening if you tase them. Balls.
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Jul 4, 2023 04:53
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This game is good as hell, it scratches a perfect tactical itch for me. I've never? had a match that I felt was totally unwinnable, though I've absolutely been completely outplayed. If you want to watch someone with good strategy tips, try Beaglerush. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INyZvZMphZA E: here's some more vids for the first page. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a8G-SviYqI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGFMgV3t_oU NmareBfly fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Jul 4, 2023 |
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Jul 4, 2023 05:55
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Dota broadcaster and fellow goon Pyrion Flax and Tom from the Yogscast. Good taste.
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Jul 4, 2023 08:15
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Steel Balls are also good hacking targets since the other steel balls have to reset their damage dealing to slowly spin around and target their former ally. Hackers almost have to be kept at level to be effective, but they are very good, especially if you've got one in a position that's awkward for the enemy to do much about it and keep levelling it up. Hacked enemies count as your unit and will lower the enemy's points too. Rhinos are very high damage dealers and can take a few hits. They're very good against ... pretty much everything on the ground except hackers at range. Even fortresses don't last long against them. Its very easy to build them in a way that makes them extremely difficult to stop. Photon coating, armour, and repair-on-hit are very helpful for extending the rhino's life, and sometimes making it just impossible to kill with remaining units. Mobile beacon is also very useful when used with rhinos, since they will mostly ignore everything and rush the target. Having a rhino charge past everything, run under a shield and take out one of the buildings can be very helpful if the enemy has left an opening.
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Jul 5, 2023 02:29
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Picked this up and already lost 10 hours to it. Really scratches a similar itch to Frozen Synapse but ultimately feels better because I can click less buttons and don't need to fiddle with unit movement. Its so funny how often you run into people trying to do rhino cheese strats and how easily you can shut those down.
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Jul 27, 2023 02:56
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Pointing out new patch notes as an excuse to bump because I'm still playing this nearly every day and having a blast. quote:Content Update I like that 2v2 is getting some attention, I've had a great time with me and friendos doing dumb stuff. It still does feel a bit like it was shoehorned in but I'm curious to try the compact map things. None of us are good enough to really consider what the diagonal opponent is doing and it's almost impossible to predict how the end fights will go when you have like 1 unit of fangs dragassing across two maps to pew a single stormcaller or whatever but it can lead to some funny results. Day9 is also still playing this a lot, if your measure of a game's success is how much steamer attention it gets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKrkIkSbu4M
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Jul 27, 2023 17:50
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Played a game where I managed to get hackers to work. Was playing a game trying to figure out how to get a win on elite specialist and i just could not keep pace with my opponent for most of the game and their steel ball production and was down to like 140 hp. But two funky hacker placements later and I managed to collapse both of their flanks and while I still lost in the transition to giants (which the hackers were no use since they went overlords) it still felt satisfying to finally place some hackers that weren't be wasted on chaff.
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Jul 28, 2023 00:24
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Hackers can be very strong, and can make for some huge swings if you nab a couple giants. Best time to use them IMO is if there's something shoved right up front like a vulcan or a rhino (especially if they didn't pack the photon coating for the rhino.) They go extra well with balls or melty points because of the constant damage those put out. Also any attack up items are great on hackers, they just get hack speed increased. The anti missile towers are a huge stormcaller nerf to the point that I don't know if starting with storms is ever a good idea now?
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Jul 28, 2023 03:14
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NmareBfly posted:Hackers can be very strong, and can make for some huge swings if you nab a couple giants. Best time to use them IMO is if there's something shoved right up front like a vulcan or a rhino (especially if they didn't pack the photon coating for the rhino.) They go extra well with balls or melty points because of the constant damage those put out. Also any attack up items are great on hackers, they just get hack speed increased. at least for now half the time people don't remember they exist! this also works in the opposite direction where people will continue to mass storms despite your putting them down
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Jul 28, 2023 04:20
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I think intercepts are fine where they are at. maybe a little bit less radius to them but they cost 100 to place down, can be destroyed, and storm callers can still overwhelm them if you want.
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Jul 28, 2023 07:17
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I have been trying out the “box” strategy that I saw in a tournament beaglerush was casting a while back. Basically you put all of your forces right up front and one one side, then aggressively flank on the same side, trapping your opponent in an L shape. I have had mixed success but you can really roll over people doing this. Balls and Crawls work best as your starter of course, and speed specialist is really helpful. Usually you can overwhelm one side enough that your other tower only needs a single crawler unit and arclight to delay a bit. Last game I did this the opponent got really salty and said there was no counter to my comp. but they built hackers against my crawler swarm so I am gonna say I am not unbeatable yet.
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Jul 28, 2023 11:58
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I've been trying to play with Wasps a bit more as I found a strategy that paid off nicely over a couple of games. If I get the starting specialist who gives you an extra 50 resources a round, I check my enemies starting comp for any anti-air units like Fangs etc. If I see a good composition, I unlock Wasps for 50 and get one unit. With a bit of luck, this should give me the first round as who techs anti-air in the first round (a sentry missile can hose this idea tho). I win the first round, and use that extra 50 to unlock the Engine Upgrade and reposition them to a flank in the second round. I tend to not over commit to the air with this strategy unless they are going heavy for Storm Callers and such, but another unit of Wasps is handy. The flank usually pays off for another easy win, and I tend to move the Wasps to the opposite flank for turn 3 or I send them to the very rear if the opponent has hard-countered them to just be some extra DPS. This little strategy has done well lately. Enemies suddenly building two units of air-upgraded Centaurs on the extreme flanks that I vacated, leaving them mostly useless for rounds at a time. If it starts to work, I can upgrade the Wasps and work towards BOATS. If not, I'm not out too many credits and my opponents have tended to spend more to counter the one or two units of Wasps. It a fun opening. What is everyone's go-to upgrades for their units? I tend to find the Range Upgrade on most units to be extremely handy. The only trap I've run into with upgrades are the "Shared Health" upgrades on Steel Balls and Tanks since a single beam unit will burn up the entire squad. Crazy Ferret fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Jul 28, 2023 |
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Jul 28, 2023 15:55
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Crazy Ferret posted:Waspy stuffff This is awesome I would be so upset
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Jul 28, 2023 17:04
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I think shared health on steel balls works pretty well actually, especially if you are running it with life steal. Its just something you don't grab right away because its better once they got a few levels. Sledges I do armor with instead though.
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Jul 28, 2023 19:25
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beating someone in the weekend tournament and then clicking their linked twitch account to reveal that they have two cotton wads in stuck into their nostrils
Snooze Cruise fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Jul 30, 2023 |
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Jul 30, 2023 02:52
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Snooze Cruise posted:I think shared health on steel balls works pretty well actually, especially if you are running it with life steal. Its just something you don't grab right away because its better once they got a few levels. Sledges I do armor with instead though. it feels very situational depending on what you're facing like, you _really_ don't want it if you're facing melting points
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Jul 30, 2023 06:32
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arc lights are the y wings of this game. scrappy workman unit that isn't as flashy as their close relatives but has my heart <3
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Jul 31, 2023 05:51
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I hate the new missile interceptor turrets and they didn't get nerfed at all in the latest patch. Stormcallers are a massive liability now because in any protracted match someone can slap down several interceptors across the field in one round to negate them for basically the entire fight. If they don't die (and they probably won't because they just negated all of your stormcallers) then they stick around for the next round, providing extra value and letting them stack even more interceptors if they need to. As a result things that storms would normally deal with are running rampant. Big shocker they're nerfing fangs & mustangs because they've been overperforming lately. The mustang intercept tech is fine (a little undertuned honestly) because mustangs cost 200 credits and a unit deployment, if they're intercepting they're not shooting, and if some of the squad dies they get worse at intercepting. Turrets don't have to care about any of that so they're far more oppressive to storms. That's my dumb rant about missiles after tanking mmr.
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Aug 9, 2023 19:52
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stormcallers still work well with far back formations. CIWS can't help much if they have to walk way into your side of the field
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Aug 12, 2023 19:37
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Qtotonibudinibudet posted:stormcallers still work well with far back formations. CIWS can't help much if they have to walk way into your side of the field Idk though, it can be pretty funny to frontline them if an opponent is back and watch their tower fall within a few seconds of a round. Then if you can win the chaff war you can sink their economy.
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Aug 12, 2023 20:21
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War Factory is out. Its really really big. It can build phoenixs, so the regen+shield strat can get even sillier lol.
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Sep 3, 2023 00:09
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Game has finally added its credit store and it has a system you level up the store the more you buy items from it which passively generates more credits... What the lol.
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Sep 27, 2023 18:33
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Having a lot of fun with this game after seeing this thread. I've not played an autobattler before, and what I find I particularly like about Mechabellum is that even when you lose it just doesn't feel that bad? You know that there is mostly a choice you could have made to turn things around, so losing is just a prompt for introspection rather than rage inducing. You occasionally get shut out which is a bit depressing, but it's very rare. It would be neat if they could include some internal stat tracking, it seems like a game that's ripe for it. What's your winrate with each starting specialist, each starting unit type, against each starting unit type, etc. I feel that I lose to a stormcaller opening more often than any other, I just seem to struggle to solve the stormcaller problem, but I don't know how much of that is perception, or whether I really do lose against it all the time.
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Sep 28, 2023 00:54
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Yeah, in the vast majority of games, you know there is a way out of the hole you or your enemy has dug for you, and its findable. It doesn't feel unfair. I like the game. Will need to play this again soon.
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Oct 23, 2023 02:46
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Having a great time with this game, just had a very close match against a very angry child who insisted I was "spamming units" and "playing unfairly" because I used missile launchers against their bunched up pack of tanks and snipers. The only reason it was close was because I kept dedicating resources to countering tricks that never came. They really just threw down as many tanks and snipers as could fit under shields in their center field and fully upgraded them while I built sentry missiles and AA units on the sides, and eventually that was enough to overwhelm my mixed comp. At least until I finally stopped messing around and built some flankers to hit the generators. Strategy talk, I'm having trouble fighting Overlords late game. Mustangs with AA don't deal any damage if they take the recovery upgrade while my big lasers, snipers, and phoenixes never seem to target the bastards when they get the wasp production upgrade. My efforts to clear out the chaff that protects them never seem to outpace the rate my opponent can reach a critical mass of overlords and wasps. How do you all handle that?
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Oct 24, 2023 01:38
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snipers with emp emp upgrades are the answer to a lot of things
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Oct 24, 2023 02:02
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Snooze Cruise posted:snipers with emp I keep EMP on my bar for basically every unit and I've never regretted it
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Oct 24, 2023 03:32
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sirtommygunn posted:Strategy talk, I'm having trouble fighting Overlords late game. Mustangs with AA don't deal any damage if they take the recovery upgrade while my big lasers, snipers, and phoenixes never seem to target the bastards when they get the wasp production upgrade. My efforts to clear out the chaff that protects them never seem to outpace the rate my opponent can reach a critical mass of overlords and wasps. How do you all handle that? When people go Overlords at the right time it can be hard to counter. I've lost games I was well ahead in because I failed to counter someone going hard on overlords, and I've won a bunch of games by going with armour-plated Overlords into a mustang-heavy lineup. The most consistent way to do it is with Melting Points in my view, and just have invested properly in chaff clear to go along with it. Marksmen or Phoenix with EMP is also good. You definitely need to have at least one source of single-target EMP and one source of AoE EMP in your unit pool; at the moment I'm running it on Stormies, Phoenixes and Sledges. Arclights specced for AA are even better than mustangs at clearing wasps if they are distracting your melting points that way. I think probably one of my major impediments to climbing further in MMR is there are just a few strategies that I enjoy too much, so I try to make them work when I shouldn't. Carry arclight is just so lovely to watch when you can pull it off.
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Oct 25, 2023 01:59
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My initial impression of the Wraith is that its not very good right now. I'm guessing its meant to counter steel ball, rhino, or sledgehammer builds but as a single body short range air unit its difficult to keep it protected from a small counter investment in marksmen or phoenixes. I've only seen them in 5 matches so far but in every match where 1 player used them and the other didn't, the other player won. Obviously not a good enough sample size to say anything, and people are definitely forcing them out because they want to play with the new toy. Still, it's just a matter of tuning the numbers and the community learning how to use them properly. I'm sure they'll prove to be a good addition to the roster in time. sirtommygunn fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Nov 3, 2023 |
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Nov 3, 2023 19:10
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I dunno the Wraiths seem good to me. They feel similar to the Hackers though in that they are a bit more awkward to figure out how to position compared to like everything else in the game. They have some nifty techs tho. Also they just look cool. Flying lil shotguns. Snooze Cruise fucked around with this message at 04:33 on Nov 11, 2023 |
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Nov 11, 2023 04:30
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Keep running into people using wraiths instead of overlords for that particular type of rush strat. I guess it is probably cheaper to put out, and even like get a level 2, and has the same healing tech, so makes sense! Still pretty much the same response you want to do against overlords, though they do hold up better against wasps. Stormcallers feel like they need to be tune down a bit again. I think the response to them is a bit overblown but I am pretty much always picking them up so it makes them feel a bit stale right now.
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Nov 17, 2023 14:32
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After more games the Wraith turned out better than I thought in that post, but the buff in the patch certainly helped. It's pretty good at this point and I like it as an answer for most tier 2 units.
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Nov 17, 2023 14:45
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