Mech Armada Tips for Getting Started

Hello! This guide is just my initial observations after playing the game, just after release. These are things that I’ve found have worked well, and hopefully they will work well for you too.

As stated in the description, the gameplay will likely change in the coming months. I will try to keep this as up to date as possible, and appreciate any input!

Mech Armada has three resources: Energy, Credits and Meta Energy. Energy and Credits are for purchasing mech parts and research, respectively. Meta-Energy allows you to purchase upgrades for your next run. Only Energy and Meta Energy are available for pick-up during battles.

Energy is arguably the most important of the three resources. I generally find it best to prioritize energy ahead of the other two.

• Energy can be collected from points on the map during a battle. You collect three per turn, and also earn a bonus at the end of the battle if you have a mech on the collection point.
• During a battle, it’s important to prioritize gathering as much energy as possible. If you need to prolong a battle to do so, it’s often worth it. There will be a few tips in the mechs section relating to gathering energy.
• It’s generally best to save energy to build new mechs, rather than transforming ones that have damage on them in the early game. Once you have healing items or buffs, it’s generally better to try to keep the mechs you already have.

Credits are used for upgrades and engineering.

• The cost of engineering increases with every item generated. I recommend using this sparingly, roll each torso/transport/weapon once, possibly twice if you need something. You can generally find items as you progress through the game.
• Upgrading is crucial. In particular, torso upgrades are often very useful. You will need to upgrade your weapons in order to keep up damage-wise for late game, but upgrading them too early may be wasteful (since you won’t need the damage)
• Once you’ve gathered enough Meta-Energy, you will be able to select which items to start with on your runs. This is a good idea to do as soon as possible as it cuts down on rolling engineering.

Meta Energy is used for increasing attributes that affect all runs.

• Generally one meta energy will drop per game. It’s generally a good idea to gather this as soon as it is safe to do so, as an enemy moving over it will remove it.
• See the later section for how to spend meta energy. As a rule of thumb, increasing your energy generation and starting energy is a good thing to buff first.

There are three types of battles: Eliminate, Survive, and Boss Fights. We’ll cover some general tips that apply to all battles, and then some more specific tips for each type.

General

• Avoid damage at all costs. Enemies in Mech Armada hit extremely hard, and it is difficult to repair your mechs. There are a number of things you can do to mitigate this (repair gun, the repair-after-battles card, mitigating cost with increased salvage percentage, etc), but the best mitigation is mobility.
• View enemy range by clicking on them. This information is crucial in determining how to position.
• Pay attention to the attack icon on your mechs. When an enemy is going to target them next round, a red icon with the attack type will hover over the mech.
• Make use of undo when moving. If you move and see that you’ve got an attack icon on your mech, consider undoing the move. It’s free, and avoiding unnecessary damage saves you money.

Eliminate
Eliminate is the one you’re most likely to encounter most often. Generally these have the fewest number of enemies.

• These are the easiest of the three game mode. Make use of them to farm energy!
• Kite enemies if you need to to maximize the energy you’re collecting.

Survive
Survive is less favorable to eliminate. You have 5 rounds to survive against the swarm.

• Don’t get greedy during these battles. I often skip energy collection in these altogether, and just focus on not taking too much damage.
• Don’t get in too deep early on. You can hang by the start and let the enemies come to you.

Boss Fights
These differ depending on boss, but not too much.

• Don’t forget the non-boss monsters as you have to eliminate them, too.
• Be sure to bring as much damage as possible. Much like survive, don’t worry as much about resource collection.

In this section, we’ll go over some mech builds that may be useful to you. Be sure to experiment with this, as it is one of the most rewarding part of the game.

Early Game Generalist – 8🔋

• Transport: Mini Tracks, Mini Walker
• Body: Tuple, Dual, or Basic if you haven’t unlocked those.
• Weapon: Double Double x 2

A cheap option that will be a strong staple for the whole run. Will cost around 8 Energy.

The Double Double, at the moment, is the best energy-to-damage weapon in the game. As you upgrade it, it stays very relevant. Packing two of them onto a single mech will provide plenty of reliable power for cheap.

Cheap Mech for Spawning – 2🔋

• Transport: Mini Tracks
• Body: Basic
• Weapon: Machine Gun

I always keep this in my mechs list. It has two main uses: To spawn onto a gathering point to just sit and gather, or to drop in front of a more expensive mech to soak up damage. In an emergency, you can afford to drop this onto a gathering point even if it will die next turn, as it will still generate one energy. I usually like to keep one mech slot open in case I need to drop one of these as a blocker to save a more expensive mech.

Resource Grabber – 5🔋

• Transport: Roller
• Body: Basic
• Weapon: Machine Gun

The Roller is a weird transport. You can’t shoot after you’ve moved, meaning that you’ll need to choose one or the other. The one use I’ve found for it is that it’s _really fast_, while being relatively cheap.

Sniper Turret – 13🔋

• Transport: Turret
• Body: Ranger
• Weapon: Sniper

The turret surprised me. It can move, and quite usefully it will fly over tiles. This mech build will need a couple of upgrades to reach it’s potential, however. Upgrading Ranger will give you a second weapon slot, which will be hugely beneficial. Upgrading turret will increase it’s movement ability. The turret is decent for standing on points, but can be annoying to position if you don’t have it upgraded. I usually do Turret level 3, Ranger level 2 and Sniper level 3.

Damage Turret – 20+🔋

• Transport: Turret
• Body: Maximus
• Weapon: Anything you find that will deal damage. Gatling/Minigun is good, Mini Missiles too.

I use this turret to make use of a weapon that I don’t want to prioritize upgrading, as the Maximus body gives +1 Level. Often I will find myself transforming this mech quite a bit.

In this section, I’ll go over some building tips that I’ve noticed. One general thing I’ve noticed about Mech Armada is that builds I expected to be good weren’t always good, while builds I didn’t expect to be good were.

General

• Mobility is king. Avoiding damage, grabbing objectives, etc is crucial to winning.
• Armor doesn’t seem to be particularly useful at the moment in general. It is very costly, and only subtracts from the total damage taken.

Transport

• Turret as noted in the mech builds section, is surprisingly good. It can move! I find that I actually am using this more than other transports.
• Tracks/Mini Tracks tend to be inexpensive, however they lose a lot of speed when not on a road. Keep this in mind.
• Walkers tend to have lower health than tracks at the same price point, however the ability to walk on rubble will be important for gathering meta-energy. I generally keep one mech on my team with a walker transport of some sort.
• Jets while initially low health, gain massive range when upgraded fully.
• Trike/Buggy higher cost than tracks with similar drawbacks. I haven’t found a niche for these yet and tend to avoid them.

Body

• Basic bodies (Basic, Tuple and Triple) are extremely energy effective. Basic I almost exclusively use for mechs that need to be cheap and expendable. Tuple is a go to, cheapest way to get two weapon slots. Triple is better late game, as you can add unused weapons to the third slot.

• Aura Effects (Booster, Eagle Eye, etc) don’t appear to be very good at the moment. Positioning is very difficult in Mech Armada, and it’s unlikely that you will be giving the buff to more than one mech after the first turn. These also tend to be very costly. One exception is the mechanic, which can pair nicely with a roller for a fast moving healer.
• Most of the specialized bodies don’t seem worth it, cost-wise. A few notable exceptions are listed.
• Missile Head is a triple with a free mini-missile that doesn’t take up a slot.
• Ranger when upgraded, has two weapon slots and buffs range. This is very useful in almost any situation. When fully upgraded, it has three weapon slots.
• Maximus upgrades your weapons for free.

Weapons

• Double Double appears to be the best energy-to-damage in the game.
• Mini Missile is a close second.
• Mine Launcher is surprisingly effective, as it will stop an enemy’s movement if it does half of their health in damage. The enemies are fairly easy to predict in this game, so this is a must-take in most situations.
• Sniper is fantastic damage, and will deal with armor that an unupgraded double-double cannot deal with.
• Gatling Gun/Minigun are expensive, but can be fantastic later on in the game. I prefer the double-double early game, as you generally don’t need the single target damage output that these have until the second map.
• Air Strike doesn’t feel much more effective than the sniper, with the added drawback that you have to wait a turn for it to go off. It can be useful against bosses, however, or on mechs that have the ability to move after shooting.
• Missile Pod (and other proximity based weapons) don’t do it for me. It’s hard to predict when enemies will cluster, and generally if you’re close enough to a cluster of enemies to use this, you are likely in trouble already.
• Missile Pod, while ineffective against small targets, works exceptionally well against bosses (as pointed out by Piggypig in the comments), as it does multiplied damage to larger enemies.
• Cannon (and other debuff weapons) don’t feel worth it. Favor damage output over effects.