Developer Blog: Things You Should Know

Hi everyone! We hope you’re having a blast out there in Gears Tactics. We’re back with another Dev Blog to cover some of the things you should know to be armed for battle out there in Tactics!

Gears Tactics is a story-driven game, which means that certain Hero Characters are essential to the narrative at the heart of our campaign. In any mission of any kind, any present Heroes must survive the fight. If they die at any point, it’s game over.

For those of you diving into Insane, there’s no Down state in the game – so if any Hero takes critical damage, it’s time for a checkpoint reload.

Ironman is also available in Gears Tactics, which puts your game into a No Fail state. Fail once and your game save is deleted and you’re back to the start of the game – nothing about your prior save is retained.

For those of you brave enough to take on Ironman mode, bear in mind that a Hero dying at any point counts as a Fail Condition. This is tough as nails stuff. And if you are on Insane, that also means any Hero taking full damage is an instant Fail Condition too. Insane Ironman is not messing around.

Movement is critical in Gears Tactics, and one way to micromanage your movement to perfection is through Waypoints.

By holding CTRL as you click, you can set waypoints to fine tune your movement from A to B. Waypoints are highly effective for skirting an enemy’s opportunity of attack radius or overwatch area while spending the minimum amount of range possible to get to your destination.

Additionally, you can eek out your potential movement range by using cover. Cover sliding allows you to get just a little more movement range out of your soldier, provided you can hit some cover at the end of your action movement range. This can be a critical skill to learn in certain situations (we’re looking at you Nemacysts!) to get that edge on your opponents.

Executions are vital in managing the onslaught of enemies in Gears Tactics by providing your squad extra actions, but just as important as executing enemies is WHEN you execute your enemies.

Enemies who are down will eventually bleed out if not revived, but you can factor them into your unfolding strategy with a little recon. Toggle Tac-Com on with [R] and mouse over a downed enemy to see how many turns until they bleed out. If they have, say, two turns remaining, that extra action may be more impactful next turn than your current one. Avoid execution tunnel vision and pick those moments wisely!

We’ve all been there. Half our units are pinned by Snipers or under the watchful gaze of Overwatch. You pull out your Snub and, low and behold, you still have 6 turns left on that Disabling Shot. Head. Desk. Thankfully, there’s plenty more ways to interrupt enemies if you know the right tricks.

Firstly, Frag Grenades or any sort of explosion will always interrupt enemies. Planting grenades can also help you do this to advancing enemies, leaving them exposed out in the open. For those of you on the harder difficulties, this will prove to be invaluable.

Secondly, weapons with the Disrupt ability – or Snipers with the Longshot knock down ability – will interrupt enemies with ANY hit. As above, this is also great for Overwatching and buying some valuable breathing room.

And as a final backup option – other than killing them obviously – landing a huge amount of damage in one hit will also sometimes interrupt enemies. Fingers crossed if this is your only option left.

Speaking of interruptions, if you know the right tricks, you can also knock enemies back into E-Holes for an instant kill. And it never (EVER) gets old!

Well, that’s if you let them come out of the E-Hole at all. There’s a few tricks on how to do that, but we’ll leave that for you to discover.

Hands up if you’ve ever died to a Grenadier. Yeah, us too. A lot.

Grenadiers have a fairly limited range of movement before they take any damage. Once they take damage, Grenadiers enter the Berserk state, amping up their damage by 50% and (most importantly) upping their movement range by 50%.

Grenadiers are always lethal but they are arguably at their most dangerous when emerging from E-Holes. If you send a Grenadier into Berserk state as they emerge, they can cover a shocking amount of distance and do some serious damage before it’s even your turn again.

The golden rule for Grenadiers is only damage them when you know you can kill them (or have a really good shot at killing them). When it comes to E-Holes, this means you sometimes need to avoid the instinct to have your units Overwatch the turn they emerge, as it can actually make them more deadly before you’ve even had a chance to react.

Don’t forget, once Grenadiers enter Berserk, they lose their opportunity of attack at close range. Even the smallest bit of damage will knock them into this state (Snubs work great for this), allowing you to rush in with Bayonets or Chainsaws to finish the job in one easy action.

Finally, if you are having any issues with the game and need support, please head to support.gearstactics.com for official technical help.

We’re also keeping you up to date right here in the Steam community as best we can on any developments, troubleshooting steps or updates in the works. By being a member of the Gears Tactics Community Hub, you are already on the right track.

Thank you all for an amazing launch week. We’re still blown away by the brilliant reviews, our Mostly Positive reception on User Reviews and so many of your comments over the past few days. We hope you have a blast out there this weekend, and we’ll be back with more updates soon.

Until then,

TC.