Combat Strategy Guide: Positioning

Overview

Tired of swarmers?Can’t hold off large armies?Always missing shots?Keep losing all your equipment?If you answer YES to any of these, this guide is for YOU. Like any strategy game, combat isn’t just about weapons. Your positioning plays a vital role to your success and survival. Let me show you how.

Introduction

Combat strategy is a very large topic. So in this guide, I’ll be talking about only a small portion of it: positioning. Why is positioning important? What are some examples of good positioning? And what are some things to watch out for? Although this isn’t a finished guide, I will continue to update it in the future.

Take note that this doesn’t cover every scenario on how to position yourself. The procedural generation in this game provides too many unique situations to be listed out. Instead, this guide will cover major topics to help you deal with most cases. When you have practiced and developed your skills, you’ll be better prepared to tackle more complicated scenarios by yourself.

This guide assumes you are using ranged weapons. If you are using melee weapons, some parts will be inapplicable to you.

Important: I’m not a great Cogmind player myself, so if you have any feedback, please let me know! Thanks! 🙂

Good Positioning – A Foundation to Good Defensive Play

A basic concept in many strategy games, good positioning makes it harder for your enemies to fight against you. In Cogmind’s case, this means finding a place that minimizes the damage intake, therefore increasing the longevity of your equipment and your core. Remember, your enemy’s greatest strength is its number; don’t let them overwhelm you!

Positioning can help you mitigate damage in two different ways: reducing the number of simultaneous attacks from multiple enemies, and reducing the number of enemies pursuing you. Both are important to your survival, and knowing how to position yourself will help you achieve the first way or the second way, or even both ways.

Positioning can also help you offensively, making the best use of your weapons and allies to kill more effectively.

Much of the strategy depends on terrain features such as walls, doors, and machines. Therefore, it’s important to have map awareness so that you can take advantage of them as soon as you need them. That way, you can save yourself a few more bullets.

Four grunts are surrounding me. Three more are coming. How can positioning help me in this situation?

General Tips for Positioning

These are some general tips that can help you in any part of the game.

Make use of diagonal movement so that you can get from point A to point B more quickly.
Stay close to useful terrain features while traveling. For example, when you see a vertical hallway full of doors on the left-side, try to stay on the left-side wall so that you can take advantage of them as soon as possible.
Watchers call out distress signals only when there’s a nearby enemy. Therefore, when you see them without calling out a distress signal, you’ll know it’s safe around here. Otherwise, you’ll have to prepare yourself.

How Positioning Affects Accuracy

Your Accuracy

The manual[www.gridsagegames.com] lists out all the possible factors that can affect your weapons’ accuracy, including how you position yourself. So if your volleys have been missing a lot, it may have to do with your movement.

Volley modifier: +3%/cell if range < 6
This means the closer you are to your target, the higher your accuracy. A point-blank attack incurs +15% accuracy bonus, while a range of exactly 5 tiles incurs +3% bonus. Thus, positioning yourself to invite robots to draw closer to you will help you hit your target.
+10% if attacker didn’t move for the last 2 actions
This means your accuracy will increase after you stabilize your position without moving. After taking cover and positioning yourself in an optimum place, you’ll receive +10% bonus.
-10% if attacker moved last action (ignored in melee combat)
On the other hand, moving around and shooting is usually not recommended. Otherwise, your accuracy will be severely penalized.

Their Accuracy

Other robots follow the same formula for accuracy. Therefore, moving to take cover can affect the weapon accuracy of your enemies.

Volley modifier: +3%/cell if range < 6
It’s usually better to take cover that is further away from enemies (when all else is equal). That way, it would be harder for them to hit you.
-10% if attacker moved last action (ignored in melee combat)
Another reason to take cover away from enemies is to force them to move in to attack you. If you can move even 1 space away from their firing range, you can severely punish their accuracy rate. However, this is more applicable for robots that have shorter range weapons (like grunts). Those with long-range weapons like swarmers and sentries have lesser impact.
-10%/-5% if target is flying/hovering (and not overweight or in stasis)
Using fast propulsions like hovers has a lot of advantages such as extra evasion chance. Take care not to go overweight!
-1~15% if defender moved last action, where faster = harder to hit
Sometimes you don’t activate all your fast propulsions to conserve energy. Now is the time to activate them all for maximum speed!
-20% for each robot obstructing line of fire
If you are able to go behind green bots while running, you can use them to obstruct enemy’s line of fire. However, be careful with certain bots like engineers that can call for reinforcements when getting hit.

Doorway Tactic – Benefits & Example

One useful position is at a doorway inside a room, diagonally adjacent to the door. Most robots walk along the hallways where several adjacent rooms are nearby. When you see some bad guys are coming, you can slip into one of those rooms and then wait for them to come by. There are many advantages to using this type of tactic.

It forces your enemies to fight 1-on-1 against you. When a hostile robot walks up to the door, it would stop to fire its weapon. Meanwhile, all its buddies can neither go through the same door nor aim at you, so they are forced to wait outside until you to take out its friend.
It is important to fight diagonally adjacent to the door because if you stand orthogonally, the second robot will be able to attack you.

3-on-1 is a bad idea. I can only attack one grunt at a time. Meanwhile, 3 guys are attacking me all at once.

By positioning myself in this way, these grunts can’t attack in group anymore. It’s 1-on-1 battle now!
It gives you accuracy bonus to hit your target. Your attacks are most accurate when targeting a directly-adjacent robot, making fast-moving bots like swarmers and programmers much easier to hit. Standing for 2 turns straight without moving also gives you accuracy bonus.
It gives you time to swap out your equipment before fighting. If you’ve been equipping a valuable item like a sensor array or a terrain scanner, running into a room early will give you time to swap it out for an armor or a heat sink before the fight begins. If you spot an enemy with high resistance against your weapon type, now is the time to swap it out for something that is stronger against it.
It lessens the chance of hitting green units that would call for reinforcement when attacked, specifically engineers and haulers. This is because fighting enemies face-to-face makes it harder for stray shots to hit them.
It helps you be more ready to face additional squads. In case more enemies are coming, you’ll be able to continue to fight them 1-on-1 instead of being sandwiched by different 2 squads.

Example

At the outset of this guide, we see 4 grunts surrounding me from top to bottom. Additionally, 3 more are coming due to operator’s reinforcement call. If this happens to be your very first battle, would this be a hopeless fight for you?

Not when we execute the doorway tactic!

Notice how much damage I’m taking despite facing 7 grunts in a row, and how quickly I can kill with just basic weapons. I haven’t switched out or even lose any of my part! Had I stood on my ground without moving to the doorway, my equipment would have been gone already.

Clearly, doorway tactic is very strong. Do you think you can handle 10, 15, even 20 grunts? If you have enough spare parts (with a storage unit), you definitely can! Of course, your core would take a lot of hits too, but it goes to show that it’s very possible to keep on fighting all the way to the exit without being stripped down to nothing.

Doorway Tactic – Things to Watch Out For

Fighting near a doorway has a lot of great benefits. If you keep this in mind, your combat run will no doubt improve. However, using this tactic may not always result in 1-on-1 fights. Here are some ways that can happen.

Strong weapons can break wall tiles, especially kinetic and thermal cannons. Using them to fight may not be ideal because they can blow a hole on your wall and expose yourself. More enemies will start creeping in, and you may be left with fighting all of them at the same time. EM weapons, however, cannot punch through walls, but they can have a different side-effect (see below). Kinetic and thermal guns are usually the safer options, but again, if they are strong enough, they can blow a hole as well.
EM weapons can cause chain-reaction explosion, damaging yourself and the surrounding walls. These weapons have a range of spectrum values that determine the chance of causing an explosion when a power source is hit. If you examine an EM weapon, you’ll see that its spectrum can be narrow (50%), intermediate (30%), or wide (10%). Using EM weapons with narrow spectrum have the highest chance of causing explosions which should be avoided if you want to keep your defensive wall. Using EM weapons with wide spectrum are much safer when using this doorway tactic, but chain-reactions can still occur (though much less frequently).
To calculate the chance of causing chain-reaction, take the hit rate % of your target’s power source and then multiply that number by the % value of your EM weapon spectrum. You can view the hit rate % for each part by examining the robot.

For example, attacking a G-47 trooper has a 10% chance to hit its power source. If you use EM Pulse Gun with narrow spectrum (50%), you’ll have 5% chance to cause an explosion per hit! And that’s not all, the chance is further increased if you use multiple EM weapons or if you need multiple volleys to finish off your target. With multiple grunts to kill, the chance of a chain-reaction will more likely to happen eventually.

Probably not a good weapon to use here…
Enemies can enter through hidden doors (also known as emergency doors), with flanking attacks that can cause 2-on-1 battle or worse. There are several ways to reveal this type of door (such as using a structural scanner), but it can still be anticipated without using these methods.
For example, if you have a sensor array, pay attention to your enemy’s movement when inside the room. If you spot an enemy going into an adjacent room instead of through the hallway, there is definitely a hidden door.

Another way to anticipate the flank is by paying attention to the visual ping effect on the map. If you hear a hidden door opening sound with a sudden blue-color mark in a distance, you are about to be flanked.

Depending on the situation, you can choose to stay where you are, go to that hidden doorway, or even go outside to another room to fight.
Volatile machines may be present in the room. Despite being at point-blank range, enemies can still miss their shots. A single stray bullet may be enough to blow up a nearby machine, heavily damaging you and the surrounding walls, and putting an end to your defensive tactic. The result can be catastrophic.
Enemies may already be inside the room such as sentry, operator, or even a squad of patrollers. There are multiple ways to see them such as using a sensor array. If not, the problem may escalate depending on the situation.
If it’s a lone sentry, it shouldn’t be much of a problem, provided you can take it down quickly.

If it’s an operator, try to destroy the nearby terminal immediately before it can call for reinforcements (using a launcher or a cannon). It is not recommended to aim at the operator due to its high speed and dodge rate. If you can’t shut it down quickly enough, get rid of the nearby enemies as soon as possible before retreating to another area. Hopefully the reinforcements are still far away.

If it’s a group of patrollers, the situation may start to become more complicated. You can try to finish off the patrollers first while standing near the doorway, or you can move out of the room to fight at another location. Either way, it won’t be an easy fight.
Hunters and Behemoths can shoot through walls. These guys are not bothered by any obstacle and will shoot you down using their penetrating weapons or wall-crushing cannons. When facing them, you should get out of your hiding place and attack, or you can run away from them (usually from Behemoths).
Nearby garrisons can summon endless streams of reinforcements. You can tell if you see a log message saying that a robot has called for garrison support. If that’s the case, you’ll be under constant attack by those reinforcements, and the only way to break that cycle is to shut down that Garrison fast, or get out of that area.

This is the one place I should NOT be in…
Carriers can bring in nasty surprises, especially the one that carries the assault squad and has perfect tracking of you. Do not let it come close to you. Otherwise, it will release its squad and will immediately surround you. Instead, let it detect you first in a distance. If you don’t think you can finish it in one volley, don’t bother attacking; just wait a bit in the hallway so that it can release its payload away from you. Depending on what kind of payload, it may be easier to fight in the hallway than in a room. Some enemies to watch out for are hunters, brawlers, protectors, and saboteurs.

Narrow Corridor Tactic

Another good place to fight is at a narrow corridor of only 1 tile wide spacing. However, this type of defensive play can be a little tricky to use. It works best if you’re already positioned at the opposite end from your enemies, or if both of you are already at the same corridor. That way, your damage intake will be minimized from the very start. Take note that corridors can come in different lengths, with longer ones are generally more useful than the shorter ones.

Benefits and Drawbacks

Compared to doorways, tight corridors aren’t very common to find. However, taking advantage of these features can offer a lot of benefits. At the same time, you should be aware of some of their drawbacks.

Squad-on-1 battle can become 1-on-1 fight in a similar manner as the doorway tactic. With only 1 tile width to go through, bots can only line up to engage you one at a time. However, unlike the doorway tactic, you are always opened to attack from the other side, so it is possible for robots to suddenly flank you.
Although it’s usually disadvantageous to be exposed to flanks, it can also be advantageous, namely, giving you time to avoid fighting all the enemies. The opportunity will present itself by paying attention to your enemies’ movement. When you are facing off against one robot within the line of sight of all the other robots, those friends won’t be able to attack you unless they go all around the walls to the flanking position. (Robots are programmed to target you via shortest available path)

Depending on how long it takes to get there, you may be able to finish off the first enemy before running away, saving yourself from fighting all the other squad members. The time it takes to reach you depends on the map layout (including the length of the corridor) and their propulsion type. If they take too long, these running robots will lose track of you and will stop pursuing you even in the middle of their route.

These 4 grunts are trying to kill me, but since only 1 grunt can engage me at a time, all its other friends will have to find another way to get to me…

The closest way possible is through a long journey around the corridor…

By the time I killed the 2nd grunt, the remaining survivors are too far away to catch up. I saw an opportunity to escape to the other side, saving myself from having to fight them.
Busy green bots can block attacks for you. Serfs, engineers, haulers, and recyclers can be found traveling through the corridor, making it difficult for robots to have clear aim at you. Even hunters will stop shooting if there’s even a single neutral bot in the way! Although you may not be able to fight back either, you can use this opportunity to manage your equipment, reposition yourself, or even run away before they can catch up to you.
On the other hand, some bots like engineers may call for reinforcements during the fight. This can happen when you overkilled an enemy and the remaining shots hit those behind. At this time, it may be a good idea to quickly finish off the enemies or leave the scene immediately.

Tight corridor also makes it harder for you to travel through, so escaping may be difficult without flying, kicking, or crushing.
Penetrating weapons become extra effective. It’s generally rare to see robots to line up in a row, but using this tactic can provide this golden opportunity. Penetration can now be used at full potential!
Small wall-breaks do not diminish your defense. Cannons and chain-reaction explosions can ruin your doorway tactic, but not as much for narrow corridor tactic. Unless the corridor is really short or has lost too many wall tiles, your enemies can still find it difficult to gang up on you. Beware of the swarming engineers though.

Corner Tactic

Corner tactic makes use of wall terrain corners to block attacks as you position yourself. This is usually done by pulling back around the corner after being spotted. Compared to other types of defensive tactic, the benefit of fighting at the corner is much more temporary when facing a squad of multiple robots. This is because they can simply go around the corner too. As a result, corner tactic should be done when no better option is available. However, if only a few is present (such as a lone sentry), this type of defense becomes more viable.

When pulling back around the corner, you gain a short timeframe to prepare yourself before your enemy arrives. During this time, you can swap out your equipment for a more battle-ready loadout. At the same time, waiting at the same space without moving helps you gain accuracy bonus for your volleys.

How far away from the corner you want to position yourself can range from “very close” to “pretty far away”. Waiting at a close range helps you to gain additional accuracy as your enemy closes in. On the other hand, waiting further away from the corner can help you deal with melee attackers more easily and can help you use launchers more safely.

When to Perform Defensive Tactic?

Although it can be easy to understand how to execute these defensive tactics, the hardest part is knowing when to execute. The correct answer can be blurry. Here are some factors to consider:

How fast can you eliminate your enemies?

Suppose you have 2 guns against a group of 4 swarmers in front of you at a range of 10 tiles. The nearest door is behind you, 5 tiles away. Should you move to use the doorway tactic?

Here’s my answer: I would think it’s a good idea to move there. The reasoning is that your accuracy is too low to kill a single swarmer in a volley, so you can guess that it would take a lot of turns to destroy them. Meanwhile, these swarmers have decent accuracy against you. Therefore, running into a nearby room will let you take less damage in the long run, and will help you kill them more easily.

On the other hand, if you have a rocket launcher in your inventory, you can easily swap out one of your weapons for it. Most likely, a single rocket or two will take out the whole pack. Because you can eliminate them so quickly, doing this way will probably be more beneficial compared to running to the doorway.
If you’re at a Factory floor or above, is it worth the time to move to a chokepoint? How dangerous is the programmer squad?
Starting in Factory, the central A.I. will start dispatching programmers at you. Therefore, time starts to become another resource you must take into consideration. Here’s an example.

Suppose you’re on an early Factory level. A group of 3 grunts have detected your presence at 10 tiles away in front of you. The nearest door is behind you, 5 tiles away. Should you move to execute the doorway tactic?

Here’s what I think: It can go both ways. If you choose to perform the doorway tactic, it would take many turns for the grunts to reach you, time that would count down the programmer ticking clock. Considering that it takes 120 time units for grunts to move a single space, they would have to take a total of 18 turns to get to the doorway (which is 15 tiles away from those grunts). On the other hand, fighting on the spot would alleviate yourself from wasting time, but that would expose you to more damage from your enemies.

At the same time, it could also be a good choice to run to the doorway. An early Factory level doesn’t dispatch a lot of programmers, so they’re not that dangerous yet. Therefore, it’s also not a bad idea to fight them at a slightly more frequent rate. (However, killing more enemies will raise your alert level, topic that won’t be discussed in this guide.)
Are you desperate to salvage from enemies?

Suppose you’re down to only 3 damaged weapons. You have little to no backup for them. You’re facing a group of 3 grunts 10 tiles away in front of you. The door is 5 tiles behind you. Should you move there?

Here are the 2 key advantages for performing defensive tactics in this case: you would take less damage so your weapons will break less quickly, and the salvage left behind (propulsions, weapons, etc.) would be closer to you. Less damage to your weapons means better chance to win the fight. Also, recyclers will be less likely to pick up everything on the floor because you are much more ready to grab them as soon as possible. Even if you lose all your weapons in the middle of the fight, the grunts you killed will probably leave behind guns adjacent to you as opposed to 10 tiles away from you. Having quicker access to these weapons can help you make a comeback. Additionally, if you destroy the grunts afar, moving toward to that location may attract even more attention there.

Positioning with Allies – Intro & General Tips

Allies are useful in many different ways, whether you have a few of them to help bring down those Behemoths, or a lot of them to take out an entire army on their own. Meanwhile, they can draw a lot of attentions away from you, keeping those bad guys from pointing their weapons at your precious items and core. Some allies don’t provide any firepower at all but instead provide utility-based supports such as scouting map areas or enhancing your hacking power.

Despite their many advantages, allies are very temporary. Not only are their cores weaker than yours, they are also not capable of restoring their core integrity when reaching new floors, and they cannot attach new items or replace their damaged parts. They can also be easily destroyed in many different ways, making it difficult to keep them alive in the long run.

However, it is possible to increase their longevity through use of good positioning. Good positioning can keep them alive a little longer which can be thought of as extending your attack buff, or having an extra shield, or increasing the duration of their utility. Good positioning can also make your army attack formation stronger, taking down enemies more quickly and efficiently. In fact, positioning them is the only control you have over your army. How effective your army performs depends on the way you manage it.

Positioning your allies can be fiddly at times depending on their number. This is especially true if you want to give specific orders to certain robots. Complex coordination requires higher number of keystrokes and mouse clicks which can slow down the gameplay. However, if doing so would produce a large benefit, it may be worth it.

Allies can be obtained in many different ways, but for combat Cogmind, they are commonly found in cave areas. These areas are also ideal to make heavy use of positioning due to the lack of time pressure from programmer squads. Thus, you’ll have more freedom to position yourself and your allies to any place you want.

General Tips with Allies

Position them before the fight starts
During combat, allies will start ignoring your command and will start going by their own instinct. And if an enemy starts to run away, they will even try to chase it down. This can be especially annoying when non-combative evasive robots like watchers are around, potentially separating your force away from you before getting ambushed. Even your non-combative robots will start to behave on their own when being targeted by enemies. This makes it impossible to micromanage your units during battle, so if your allies see an enemy, it’s usually too late to position them now.
Use Open Space
It’s bad enough for your enemies to face you within a narrow corridor. This is because they can’t fire off shots simultaneously. Instead they have to line up one-by-one to fight against you. For a similar reason, it is bad for your allies to fight at a chokepoint too. Instead, you should use wide, open space. Try to avoid going through narrow chokepoints unless you know there aren’t many enemies nearby or if your army size is small. That way, everyone can join in the fight at the same time.
Move Out of Your Allies’ Line of Fire
Your allies can miss their target too. As a result, these stray shots can land on you if you’re in-between them and their target. Keeping a distance away from your allies’ line of fire should make it harder to (accidentally) backstab you. At tight spaces, it may be better to stay away from the fight in order to avoid constant stray shots.
Spread Out Your Friends
The best battle formation maximizes your allies’ offensive and defensive potential. This can be achieved by spreading out your allies. Doing so will help minimize the chance of accidentally backstabbing each other. It also helps to minimize the chance of getting hit by enemy’s missed shots, and as well as lessening the impact of explosive weapons.
Scout Your Surroundings
Knowing what lies ahead can help you determine whether to charge forward, take a detour, or stay back. Although you should always pay attention to your surroundings, certain threats are especially dangerous to your allies such as explosive traps and machines as well as programmers. Scouting can be done using sensor array or visual processor. You can also use fast propulsion to go ahead of allies to scout for potential problems. If there is any anti-ally threat, you can personally remove them first before your allies can come in. If other types of enemies are nearby, you can retreat back to your allies.

Hunters and explosive machines are dangerous pair. If the hunters’ penetrating shots touch even one of those machines, it could explode and damage my army significantly. Their weapons could also hit multiple bots at the same time.

Knowing this in advance, I attempt to deal with the hunters on my own. I could easily fight both of them by myself, resulting in a small loss for me, but a potentially big save for my allies.
Know When to Run
Having a lot of robots can be a lot of fun, but they can cause so much attention that the alert level can start piling up. As a result, the central A.I. may start pouring out reinforcements after reinforcements in order to overwhelm you. It may start to feel impossible to save everyone. So when you see your allies are starting to crumble, take your leave early. Better to save your valuable parts and core than to keep fighting and then lose them. Do not feel too attached to your buddies.

Positioning with Allies – Uncontrollable Allies

It is important to remember that how you position your allies depends on how much control you have over them. There are 3 different categories for them: uncontrollable allies, servants, and drones. Let’s take a look at the first one.

Uncontrollable allies will follow you around wherever you go, but they do not obey your orders. Thus, the main disadvantage is that it’s impossible to control their positioning. They will move around wherever they please around your general location, leading to an undesirable position. This can be dangerous because their bad positioning may hurt your, themselves, or each other during firefights.

Although you can’t control your allies’ positioning, you can control your own. By using the general tips outlined above (such as using open space and scouting), you can still find much use from your not-so-obedient fellows. Many powerful allies are uncontrollable so it can worth the effort to preserve them.

Uncontrollable Allies that Do Not Follow You

You will find some friendly robots in certain branches like cave areas that are willing to fight for you but remain stationary in one place. They do not take orders to follow you. Because you can’t bring them with you on your journey, they provide no long-term benefits for you to keep them alive. Therefore, the best use of them is to let them take as many hits as possible. It’s usually not necessary to assist them in fighting to avoid taking unnecessary damage. The exception would be when there are too many enemies blocking your path. In that case, you should assist your allies so that they wouldn’t be overwhelmed as they tank damage for you. To reduce the chance of being targeted, position yourself far away from enemies and use long-range weapons to attack (such as kinetic weapons).

Luring Tactic

Because these allies are stationary, they are only helpful if enemies are around their area. One way to make use of them is to lure enemies into their position by attacking once and then fleeing to your allies’ general area. Doing so can allow your friendly bots to assist you in fighting them even when those enemies are a distance away. This is most useful in certain areas that have stationary enemies.

Before starting, you should consider the distance between your target and your stationary allies. If they are too far apart, enemies may lose their tracking of you before they can be successfully lured. You should also consider the type of enemies that are present in that area. If there are robots that are faster than you (such as swarmers), you might be better off fighting them head-on.

To start, you will need a long-range weapon. Many kinetic weapons have attack range even greater than your vision range. After that, you can position yourself right at the edge of your attack range from your target. It might be at a place outside your vision range, so you would need to remember which space is occupied by the enemy robot. Penetrating weapon and guided weapon can offer even greater flexibility, allowing you to hide behind walls and other obstacles.

After you get off your first shot, if it hits your enemy, you will see it trying to chase you down. It might also bring its friends along. If you see them, begin fleeing to your allies’ position. They will take care of it.

Positioning with Allies – Servants

Servants are defined by their obedience. They will obey your commands while you assign them orders within your field of vision. Symbolized by their cyan-color for loyalty, servants will answer many of your calls including “Stay”, “Go To”, and “Follow”. By taking advantage of these features, you’ll have a lot of flexibility for positioning them.

It is worth noting that you’ll lose track of your servants if you don’t order them to follow you. As a result, they will continue to stand still in their position until death. So always try to keep your eyes out for them.

“Stay”

At first, “Stay” seems like a weak, passive order, but it can be quite useful. By forcing your robots to remain in place, it offers a few advantages.

They will gain extra accuracy to ambush enemies coming into their firing range. This won’t work if they see the approaching enemies outside of their firing range which would cause your allies to move in before attacking. So therefore, this tactic works best when using at a chokepoint. Once an unsuspecting enemy turns around the corner or enters the door, the accuracy boost would ensure swift, clean death before it has a chance to react.
They will keep themselves clear of sight from dangerous threats. Traps, programmers, and demolishers are some of the most dangerous threats to your allies. Keeping your friends away from these things will preserve their lives. By commanding them to stay at a safe location, you can take care of the threats without losing your entire army.

“Go To”

This orders your people to move to a certain square, assuming they haven’t seen an enemy along the way. After reaching to this square, they will then stay in that place. At times, ordering multiple robots to go to a specific square may cause a few of them to wander around. Nevertheless, “Go To” is useful in a number of ways:

They can be positioned to avoid combat.
Dangerous anti-ally robots can be avoided if you order your allies to fall back as soon as possible. This can be possible only if you have detected their presence before your allies do.

Non-combative allies such as operators will turn on their panic mode when under fire, so positioning them at a safe place will keep them under control.
They can be positioned to set-up a formation before fighting.
As outlined under “General Tips with Allies”, spreading out your army is one way to make them more effective. You can also rearrange your melee attackers to be in front of your ranged attackers to close the distance more quickly. Non-combative allies should be positioned behind everyone else.

While traveling from room to room, I saw a lone sentry hiding at the bottom-left corner. It hadn’t seen me yet.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, I immediately position my grunts to the top-right corner via the “go to” command.

My great army has a clear line-of-fire against that sentry, putting a quick end to that enemy. As a result, I suffered minimal loss. Had I charge my grunts toward it directly, their composition wouldn’t allow them to fire their weapons simultaneously. Plus, being too close to the sentry could result in a lot of accidental backstabbing. However, I did make one mistake here: one of my grunts’ line of fire is too close to my position. A slight miss could’ve damaged me which is easily avoidable. Can you see it?

Although the sentry died, its friend was able to come in for reinforcement, entering via the front door. Fortunately, we’re at a good position. Can you see why?

After the fight, I looted the area and was about to leave, but guess what I’m missing here? That’s right, my grunts are still in their “stay” command! It’s easy to forget the fact that the “go to” command will result into “stay”, not “follow”. Make sure you don’t leave them behind!

Positioning with Allies – Drones

Of all the different types of allies, none are comparable to the drones. These tiny bots are supreme in their utility, possessing the ability to share vision with you, “explore” and “return”, and can even repair itself when returning to their bay. As a result, they are excellent for map exploration, a common use for most players. However, they also offer the highest level of control for positioning, giving you many tactical advantages when used well. How so?

Drones can be remotely operated.
This is a very powerful ability. Not only is it impossible to lose sight of them when out of range, they can also be given orders at any place, any time. Essentially, they are giving you extra pairs of eyes for you to see, enabling you to see several different areas of the same map at the same time.
“Return” forces drones to run toward you under any circumstance.
For other allies, they become essentially uncontrollable when hostile robots are nearby, acting instinctively on their own by engaging the enemies or by running around like maniacs. But drones are different. By giving them a “return” command, they will immediately rush toward you regardless of their circumstances, even while under fire. If you’re carrying a drone bay, they will hop right into it. If no drone bay is equipped, they will stick to you closely like glue.
Drones returned to their bay will lose all their enemies’ tracking.
When an enemy squad catches sight of you, they’ll continue to pursue you with their tracking ability even when you’re out of their sight range. It can be especially difficult to shake them off when robots such as hunters and sentries are chasing after you. However, if they’re chasing after your drone instead, they will immediately lose track of it after it returns to its drone bay, stopping them in the middle of their path. The only exception would be sentries since they will continue to travel to the last known location of the drone (the place where it returned to its drone bay). After that, they will return to their posts.

Having a strong control over your drones can help them serve a variety of roles. For example:

Drones are excellent for scouting without the need to put yourself in danger or out of position. Armed with visual processing units, they can see most robots before they can see your drones! And once enemies are detected, you can take preemptive measure to position yourself or take a detour. And if your drones are caught under fire, simply return them back into your drone bay, and they will stop their chase. With their fast speed and tiny size, drones can dodge most attacks and will likely survive for a long time.
Drones are also great as watchmen, giving you extra eyes for any dangerous robots traveling nearby. This allows you to go about your activity at one area without worrying about any outside forces. For example, you can infiltrate a room without the surprise of incoming patrollers, or loot without worrying about the incoming ARC unit. This is best done if you can position your drones to watch over all chokepoints around your area, so that no enemy can sneak in without entering your view (although hidden doors can cause a potential problem).

Thanks to my drones, anyone coming after me won’t be able to do so without my attention.
Drones can lure enemies toward your position. Usually, the defender has more advantage over the attacker (see “How Positioning Affects Accuracy” topic). So if you can use your drone to lure enemies toward your position instead of attacking them head-on, you’ll reap the benefit of extra accuracy bonus. Simply send out your bot to attract attention, and then order it to return. But don’t let it go back into your drone bay in order to retain their tracking until they start coming into your firing range. Sentries, however, will still march toward your position, so it’s ok to do so. The only disadvantage to using this method is that drones can be destroyed during the process.
Drones can be used as distractors to draw enemies away from their positions. By using the “return” command and then reordering them to “go to” another spot (when outside of enemy’s view), your drones can then relocate even a squad of robots toward that area. Using this method allows you to get through a certain place undetected. Finally, after you have finished pulling, return your drone to your drone bay to stop their tracking.

Taking Advantage of Engineers for Positioning

Engineers are both cool and painful. They’re cool because they’re the only ones that can create walls and doors. And they’re painful because they tend to dispatch reinforcements when being attacked while under construction. As a result, despite being neutral bots, engineers can be dangerous to be around since it’s easy for stray shots to accidentally hit them.

But is engineer all that bad? Is there a way to take advantage of its awesome ability? Recall what engineers can do for the complex. They are always on a lookout for any damaged walls and doors. And if there is any, the nearest ones will automatically go up to it (even when outside of their FOV) and attempt to repair it as soon as possible. If there’s any robot occupying the working space, the engineers will wait patiently for it to move away. Afterward, the repairmen crew will start doing their building project.

So how can engineers benefit you? In certain situations, sealing off walls is a powerful ability that can be tipped in your favor. With some map knowledge, it can provide an amazing escape route from all sorts of angry bots by taking advantage of their inability to attack you behind walls. The exceptions would be hunters and behemoths since they will still try to attack you anyway. But when facing other types of robots, several tactics can be used to your advantage. For example:

The Fleeing Tactic

Suppose you are in a room where a group of unstoppable force is charging right toward you from the outside hallway. An engineer is nearby, and the adjacent room is only separated from you by a 1-tile thick wall. However, the entry door to that area is far away from you, requiring a huge roundabout trip that isn’t worth doing. So what should you do?

Well, you can try to fight back, or you can try taking advantage of the engineer! To do that, stand close to the wall and blow a hole with your weapon. Of course, you’ll want to make sure it’s strong enough to punch through that tile. After that, the nearest engineer will try to repair it as soon as it can, but if you stand close enough, you’ll be able to get there on time. Generally, if you’re standing adjacent to the target wall, you’ll want the hole to be at least 4 spaces away from that builder so that it can’t catch up to it before you do. Now run to the other room before all those enemies start flooding in! When done properly, the engineer will seal up the hole, preventing anyone from making use of this shortcut, leaving you in a safe location for you to escape. Of course, since these robots can’t blow up walls like you do, they will instead try to chase you down through a long roundabout path. However, if they’re too far to reach you, they will eventually give up and stop chasing.

The best case scenario involves 1-tile thick wall, but that won’t always be the case. At times, you may discover that the wall is several tiles thick, perhaps 3 or more tiles. If that happens, that would mean you’ll have to tunnel through at least 2 tiles deep before slipping in and allowing the engineer to close up the wall. After that, you’ll have to spend several more turns to tunnel to the other room.

Of course, tunneling through earth tiles can be very dangerous since it involves taking risk of possible cave-ins. Chances are, your equipment will be damaged or even wrecked by the end of the day. If your build consists mostly of low-integrity items such as processors, expect massive item destruction and system corruption. Always weigh in the possibility of a cave-in or two when considering this tactic, and see if the resulting damage will be less than that from fighting the approaching army. Also consider how long you’ll be digging since longer travel time would mean more possible cave-in events. To alleviate the impact, you can swap out low-integrity items for higher ones, or put on Force Field or Shield Generator for massive damage reduction.

The most fatal thing to occur is if all your wall-breaking weapons are destroyed in the process. If that happens, you will not be able to break free from that enclosed space, meaning you’ll have to restart the whole game. It doesn’t matter how cool your items are, or how much core integrity you have. If you cannot break free in any way, it is essentially game over for you. So therefore, the most important tip to keep in mind is that your wall-breaking weapon MUST survive. Keep it safe whenever possible! For example, if you’re carrying storage units with high integrity, make sure to keep at least 1 wall-breaking weapon in your bag.

The Hiding Tactic

Perhaps a more comical and cheesier way to stop those enemies is needed at times. Suppose you’re being chased by an unstoppable force again, and you’re stuck at a hallway leading to a dead-end. Although there’s an engineer nearby, there’s no available room around you. So in this case, you’re at an awful position where you can’t escape to any place. So then, what should you do now?

Well, you can try to fight back against all odds, or you can try a stealthier approach: hiding behind closed walls. By hiding, you’re making it impossible for certain enemies to attack you. To start, position yourself against a wall and then blow up at least 2 tiles in a row to create a small socket within the inner earth. But because engineers will attempt to repair the wall quickly, it is recommended to target a tile at least 5 spaces away from the nearest engineer, if using 2 weapons. That way, the builder won’t be able to catch up to it on time. Afterward, move into the inner earth socket before allowing the engineer to seal it off for you. While sealed, press and hold the wait button to wait out the attack before reopening the wall. Hopefully, your enemies have already left.

Of course, using this type of approach is risky since you can encounter cave-ins within that confined space. See the above subtopic “The Fleeing Tactic” for more information on how to prepare for it.

Cogmind Guide