Jetpacking space pirates taught me a painful lesson in punishing strategy game Menace

There’s an accidental element of roleplaying to the Early Access launch of Menace, the latest turn-based tactics game from Battle Brothers developers Overhype Studios. Like the newly-minted commander of the TCRN Impetus, thrust into leadership after a warp travel accident left everyone on the bridge of the colonial navy ship violently decompressed, I too have very little idea what I’m doing.

While Menace’s tutorial walks you through the basics of directing soldiers on the battlefield, there’s currently little guidance to the finer details of this strategy game. I’m not going to let that get in the way, however. After all, I’m here to serve as a protecting force in the Wayback system, delivering justice to enemies of the state across its planets.

Take the pirates causing problems on the planet Backbone. Overhype call it a series of procedurally generated missions, I call it on-the-job training. Commence Operation The Pirates Of Menzance.

The first mission in my counterinsurgency operation is securing a foothold on the forest planet of Backbone. After touching down, my objective is simple: I’m to sweep the area, wiping out at least 70% of the pirates’ forces. Though, if I really want to impress the colonists that called me – and earn a tidy bonus to boot – I should also recover the cargo seized by the pirates and eliminate the elite boarding party unit behind this mischief. There are even more bonuses if I complete the mission quickly, so I’m going to try a little shock and awe. After all, I’m a commander in the Terran Congressional Republic Navy. This amateur outfit won’t stand in my way.

I encounter my first learning moment when I try to send all four of my squads down to the battlefield. When you start your campaign in Menace you are told to pick four squad leaders. What I didn’t realise is that not all squad leaders are created equal: some command infantry, others pilot vehicles. By chance, I had picked two of each, which is a problem when you only own one armoured personnel carrier. Sorry Lance Corporal Renu Rewa, you will be sitting this mission out back in the bunks on the TCRN Impetus.

Still, two full squads of marines and one heavily-armed APC should be more than enough firepower to take on these presumably sea shanty-singing, grog-swilling space pirates.

My troops touchdown on an old airstrip in the centre of the map. Penned in by a chainlink fence, the concrete is empty except for a few old shipping containers that provide a smattering of cover. The supplies I need to recapture are off up a hill to the north and the boarding party squad is to the south. There is bonus experience up for grabs if I can complete the mission in ten rounds, so I split up my forces, sending squad leader Charles Lim (accompanied by Gerry Boganwright) in the APC north, and recon leader Jane Darby south.

My thinking is that Lim and Boganwright can race to grab the resources, drop them off at the landing strip, and travel south to catch up with Darby if she needs any help with the boarding party.

In Menace, you spend a unit’s action points on both movement and attacks, so covering ground can leave your troops unable to fire back if they run into trouble. I learn this after marching Lim as far north as I can on his turn, barely reaching the outskirts of a thick copse of trees. I then send Gerry in his APC a touch further north and, in the process, uncover a squad of pirates hidden from view on the high ground. It turns out these are less swashbuckling ne’er-do-wells than assult-rifle toting killers. The bastards open up on Lim, who isn’t as well-protected by the shrubbery as I expected. Lim’s squad duck for cover, becoming suppressed immediately.

Menace’s suppression system means when it’s Lim’s next turn, his squad have 30 fewer action points, their fire is significantly less accurate, and they have to put up with me shouting for them to get their yellow bellies out of the mud and do some fighting. Unfortunately for Lim, before it gets to his next turn, another pirate squad to the east of the copse starts firing on his position, pushing him from suppressed to pinned.

Perhaps Darby will have more luck to the south.

Darby is at least in cover when the pirates start firing at her. She and her squaddies are stood in the shadow of a rusting cargo container when a gaggle of pirates emerge from the woods. With the benefit of cover, their bullets barely make an impression on Darby’s suppression meter. Which means when she fires, she does so without penalty. Much as the copse had provided no cover to Lim, the spruces do nothing to stop Darby’s bullets. The first salvo kills half the pirate squad, leaving the survivors suppressed. The second burst finishes them off.

After seeing Lim jumped by a second group of pirates, I tell Darby to use her last 20 AP to kneel down and see if anyone else is drawn to the noise.

Back to the north, Lim’s pinned squad lie on the mossy forest floor as the pirates fire potshots at them. There’s a real heft to the weapons in Menace, so even with the distance of the commander’s view, the thwack of bullets into the ground near Lim’s troops induces a flinch. I’m not sure whether the sporadic shots enemy units fire between their turns can harm your units or they’re just an effect to keep the battlefield looking active while you decide where to move your troops, but either way it’s an effective way to ratchet up the tension.

When suppressed as completely as Lim is, your squads don’t have the option to fire back, they can only skip their turn or crawl two spaces. I use this meagre effort to push Lim’s squad around the edge of the forest and break line of sight on the second group of pirates that has him flanked. The move actually puts him closer to the first ambushers, but also closer to Gerry. And, more importantly, closer to Gerry’s machine gun.

The bullet-spitting turret fitted to the side of the APC is meant to be a suppression weapon. Its lead has terrible armour penetration, its accuracy drops off drastically over distance, and, yet, no one seems to have told Gerry that. True, the turret does suppress the pirates hunkered down on the hilltop. It also kills every last one of them.

The path to the crates of resources on the hill is clear. That is, until a rocket comes out of the treeline and straight into Gerry’s flank.

I have potentially underestimated the threat posed by these pirates.

I was right to hold Darby in position. More pirates rush through the trees, passing their comrades’ bodies without a glance. Her first shots shred their courage, her second send them fleeing back into the treeline. If I want to wipe out the pirates to complete the mission, I need to give chase. I try to move Darby but forget that she is ‘deployed’ and I have to use the last of her action points to stand up. I sympathise. It takes a lot of action points for me to stand up these days, too.

On her next turn, I move Darby into the woods, trailing the fleeing pirates. When I moved my squads earlier in the mission, I sent them to the full extent of their range and didn’t leave any AP to deal with the threats when they discovered them. Wise to that lesson, I send Darby half her potential move distance. The pirate squad is in sight. I tell her to kneel again and… ah fucksticks, kneeling left her with too little AP to fire.

The pirates run on and I end Darby’s turn by telling her troops to stand up again. I can almost hear the protesting knees through the screen.

Back to the north, Gerry doesn’t seem to be too harmed by the rocket attack. I order him to fire back, putting two bursts of machine rounds into the forest. Now that his squad have composed themselves, I send Lim north to grab the crates.

Over the next two turns, Darby mops up the fleeing pirates and doubles back to advance on the pirate boarding party. I stick her on the other side of a cluster of trees from the enemy, telling her to wait out of sight until she has support. Lim and Gerry move across the top of the map, preparing to race south and flank the pirates after Darby’s engaged. On the way, however, more pirates appear, engaging the pair in a firefight.

While the pirate boarding party is marked as a special threat, so far I’ve made short work of enemies kept at a distance. Rather than wait for Gerry and Lim, I move Darby out of hiding and try to get a bead on the pirates.

When the fog of war clears, Darby sees the boarding party. Clearly the ships they’ve been looting were stocked with protein shakes because these boys are twice the size of the other pirates I’ve faced. Darby only has enough AP for one round of fire and the bullets ping harmlessly off their body armour. I think I’m going to need Gerry and his machine gun.

Except, on Gerry’s next turn, when I give the fire order to dispatch the squads delaying him and Lim, I find the gun’s empty. Apparently muggins here forgot to pack additional ammo. (In defense of muggins, I didn’t know at the time that you need an accessory to increase your units’ ammo capacity.) So long as Darby can keep her distance she should be fine.

Just to check if the first shots were a mistake, I tell Darby to fire off two more bursts. The second and third salvos all ping uselessly off the chonk pirates’ armour. On their turn, the bastards fire up a set of jump packs and land right beside Darby. So much for keeping her distance.

I try to end the fight to the north as quickly as I can. Lim fires on the remaining pirates, but he only manages to suppress them. Even unarmed, having an APC in the mix can’t hurt, I tell myself, ordering Gerry south to Darby’s side. Before he can reach her, the pirates take their turn. With two bursts from their assault rifles, they cut Darby’s squad to shreds. All of her squaddies are killed and she is left bleeding out.

While I am well beyond completing the mission in ten turns, or even twelve, leaving both those bonus objectives in the dust, I now have four turns to get someone to Darby to rescue her. If I fail, I’ll be down one of my only squad leaders who can bring infantry into battle. Without her, it will be Lim and Gerry taking on the next two missions of the operation on their own, while Lance Corporal Renu Rewa twiddles her thumbs back on the ship.

On Lim’s turn he dispatches the last of the pirates to the north and begins moving south on foot. Gerry, meanwhile, arrives on the scene with an empty gun. Not sure if pirates can finish off downed targets, I drive him between them and Darby, using the APC as a wall.

Which is when I learn vehicles have a special move.

If turns out, if you plant a vehicle next to an enemy unit, you can run them down if you have enough AP. (If I had read James’s preview before playing I would have known this but, well, I am once again proven a fool.) On Gerry’s next turn I watch with vengeful satisfaction as the APC runs over the muscly boarding party. Somehow they aren’t all splattered by the 20 tonnes of metal going over their heads. Happily, Gerry has enough AP to reverse back over the survivors.

Lim reaches Darby before she dies of her wounds and technically the mission is a success. Though the extra experience I earn from killing the pirate boarding party is cancelled out by losing the bonus I would have gotten for getting through the mission with all my squads and vehicles. Still, can you put a price on these life lessons?

My mistakes do have consequences. As well as becoming injured for the next two missions, reducing her AP and accuracy, Darby becomes hesitant for the next five. The debuff increases the cost of moving, so she will be even slower on the battlefield.

With one mission down and two to go, I might need to start playing a little smarter if my squads are to survive, let alone succeed in Operation The Pirates Of Menzance.