It is definitely much more complex than either FM1 Remake or FM3, no question. Until you get a solid grasp on the combat system it will be very difficult to deal with certain missions. I strongly recommend doing the tutorials at least until you thoroughly understand how AP works.

Early on it's quite hard to kill anything because you don't have enough skills to get chains reliably, but manage your XP correctly and you can get excellent low-level skills to chain with quite quickly. Long type pilots especially need to spend a few levels in Fight or Short to get Critical which is an essential skill for everyone.

Ammo management also becomes important as the game progresses because it takes many more shots to kill enemies and you want to limit the number of item backpacks for reloads so you can bring more firepower using power backpacks. Because of this you want your pilot skills to do maximum damage per ammo used, so skills like Critical and Lucky are much more useful than multi-attack or hit% skills that only give you a normal damage extra attack.

Honor skills can be useful but unless you're specifically trying to surrender an enemy they're not needed and not worth micromanaging honor points by saving kills for specific pilots. Just get Ash his 140 honor and don't worry about managing the rest.

Overall just try to surround your enemies so they can't act, don't let your units get surrounded and skill chain to kill enemies quickly and efficiently.

It seems like alot are being denied. Like there is a serious lack of aim/snipe skill. Every fight I need to damage every part before the enemy wanzer dies. Can't just aim for the arm.

The long range missile weapons don't seem to shoot unless your wanzer is already in position and don't move. On top of this the ammo running out of basic weapons like shotguns, bazookas. Why did they make things so overly challenging.

Machine guns are your best bet for a consistently good weapon. It can hit air units and does good damage with high accuracy. Shotguns are not great in this game, and Rifles are only good if you can reliably hit body/weapon arm shots (or for Ash's special skill late in the game). Flamers are good with Speed since they have such high damage per shot but tend to suffer from accuracy problems.

I recommend always giving your Long pilots at least a machine gun for a backup weapon as all the Long weapons just don't do enough damage to reliably kill anything most of the time. There are aim skills later in the experience trees but by the time you get them you should be doing enough damage with Critical and Lucky to destroy most enemies in a turn or two making the aim skills fairly useless by that point.

Once you get strong enough to farm the top-end weapons in the Colosseum the game becomes much easier (until the very end missions), but even with store-bought weapons it's completely doable though it will definitely be a bit more challenging. Just keep your parts and computers upgraded and try to have good mobility on all your units to help surround enemies and keep your units safe.

Getting up close feels like suicide in this game. You are trading damage with the enemy wanzers. And with 1 item in your backpack and no reload truck, no coliseum xp grind available, I don't see how you can come out on top of these close encounter trades without lots of in-battle repairs.

My usual strategy in other FM games is load up on everything long range. Bazookas that can travel 2-3 squares, while the enemy can only counter 1 square. Or have very long range missiles and keep reloading. By the time I get close to the enemy they are already weak. These long range strategy seems to not work.

Yes, unfortunately long range weapons in this game are quite weak. All you can really hope for with them is to weaken a body/weapon arm so that your close range attack will destroy it with no chance for counterattack. Cannons can be ok (especially with Speed since they do a decent amount of damage per shot) but you will still need to do a lot of close range fighting.

Make sure EVERYONE has a shield, and a second one on the other shoulder if weight allows. 100% damage mitigation is a life saver if it triggers. Until you get enough damage output to reliably skill chain enemy units down in 1-2 attacks you really have to spread the damage around and may have to sacrifice a unit or two for more difficult missions.

You can always get the free high-end wanzers from the network at any time if you need a boost to your units (Schakal B/Iyana) which will make the game much easier, but some people consider it cheating to get them earlier than you are supposed to through the hints you get in-game...that's just a personal choice. If you aren't having fun I suggest picking them up to progress and enjoy the game even if you just use them as bait to tank damage.

Originally posted by popsicle:

Getting up close feels like suicide in this game. You are trading damage with the enemy wanzers. And with 1 item in your backpack and no reload truck, no coliseum xp grind available, I don't see how you can come out on top of these close encounter trades without lots of in-battle repairs.

My usual strategy in other FM games is load up on everything long range. Bazookas that can travel 2-3 squares, while the enemy can only counter 1 square. Or have very long range missiles and keep reloading. By the time I get close to the enemy they are already weak. These long range strategy seems to not work.

Lack of Ammo is an illusion. If you give every single wanzer two short weapons, it is extremely unlikely to run out of ammo. The ammo is limited but wanzers are also very fragile. It is better to completely focus on filling all/most the backpack slots with Restore items. That means you can have your wanzers healing each other as they take damage.

Give everyone dual machine guns, ignore the rest of the mechanics. Install only skills that are beneficial to machine guns. Homogenize all characters.
That's how I've beat it on the first run.
It is what it is, it's counter intuitive, but it works.
On NG+ you can let characters learn their specialties, if you feel like it.

Originally posted by popsicle:

Getting up close feels like suicide in this game. You are trading damage with the enemy wanzers. And with 1 item in your backpack and no reload truck, no coliseum xp grind available, I don't see how you can come out on top of these close encounter trades without lots of in-battle repairs.

My usual strategy in other FM games is load up on everything long range. Bazookas that can travel 2-3 squares, while the enemy can only counter 1 square. Or have very long range missiles and keep reloading. By the time I get close to the enemy they are already weak. These long range strategy seems to not work.

Try to stay in a line when advancing to minimize the chance of one person getting ganged up by multiple wanzers.
And yea stock up healing and restore items. Ammo is only really relevant for long ranges. Have melee fighters do the clean up job so you don't waste ammo on an enemy with 1 body hp.
Long range is still useful but in a different way. Attack with missiles and rockets won't get countered but still deplete enemy AP, so you can do that and then attack close range so the enemy can't counter. Really useful when fighting big dudes with big weapons.

Originally posted by Latency:

You can always get the free high-end wanzers from the network at any time if you need a boost to your units (Schakal B/Iyana) which will make the game much easier, but some people consider it cheating to get them earlier than you are supposed to through the hints you get in-game...that's just a personal choice. If you aren't having fun I suggest picking them up to progress and enjoy the game even if you just use them as bait to tank damage.

This strategy is brillant!! Having the Iyana I was able to use it as a decoy to draw all the toughest enemy units.

Not you. Shields are unreliable (they don't reliably activate like in FM1), LRMs have low damage and ammo and use too much AP, early backpacks have ONE slot, Wanzers have arms made of wet cardboard.

I have used every hero to their respective specialty (long, short, melee) and, on normal difficulty, the only bump on the road thus far was mission 10. The game is difficult but not unfairly so.

With that Iyana I was able to split the parts up for different team members. This helped me progress alot.