A guide to Mobile Infantry, a perk that enables an entire playstyle focused around swiftly mobilizing infantry through vehicles. Introduction This guide was originally a guide written during the beta test on the MENACE Discord. Mobile Infantry is one of the most playstyle altering perks in the game. It allows the Squad Leader to enter & exit a vehicle - henceforth referred to as the 'battle taxi' or 'taxi' - for the low cost of 5AP. As vehicles are generally less fragile and more mobile than infantry (more on this later), this allows your infantry to use the taxi both for mobility as for armor. At the time of the writing of this guide, infantry inside of a taxi is completely safe until the taxi is completely destroyed. We might be able to snipe pirates out of trucks, but they can't do the same to us. There are exceptions to this. The "Passenger Hit" defect, construct Floater explosions and mines can take out squaddies inside a taxi. That being said, regular gunfire never does! As Mobile Infantry tactics allow you to combine mobility with firepower, there will obviously be a lot of overlap with CQB tactics. I will try not to go into the specifics of CQB, but for more information on this concept you should take a look at the CQB section in the excellent Gate Rippers' War Manual. It's important to note that the Mobile Infantry perk is crucial in order to be as AP efficient as possible. There's nothing stopping you from using a taxi to drop a unit off in an advantageous position, and I highly recommend anyone uses vehicles for this. This guide is specifically about using an infantry unit in conjunction with a vehicle to be more than the sum of their parts. Other Guides To Check Outhttps://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3660218753 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3660188726 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3659937275 What do you need for Mobile Infantry? A taxi. That is to say, a vehicle with a Heavy/Medium flex slot that forgoes a Heavy weapon in order to unlock its transport compartment. You can still use a Medium weapon, such as an Autocannon, however! At the time of writing, the only two vehicle eligible for this are the Light Troop Carrier and the Infantry Fighting Vehicle. The latter is a straight upgrade to the former especially in terms of durability. If supplies allow, I strongly recommend upgrading whenever possible. An infantry SL with MI. There are some edge cases where you can use an SL without this perk, and simply eat the 60AP cost to enter/exit the vehicle, but I don't recommend doing this often. I'll get more into loadouts later, but in order to maximize firepower, this SL should be given 8 squaddies and good guns. Optionally, a recon element. As your taxi is vulnerable to a few specific types of units (namely those that can kill hardware) it's extremely important to know where these units are at all times. While you can drive in blind, I recommend against making this a habit. Ideally this recon element has Vanguard Deployment and tons of Concealment in order to give information as deep and early as possible. Optionally, the AI Logistics OCI. While early in the game you'll only have the vehicles and supply to field a single taxi-MI team, as you progress through operations your supply will eventually let you field more units. AI Logistics reduces the supply your vehicles cost by 15% (at time of writing) and can stack. This is obviously really helpful, and even just a single one can let you field two MI teams or even a supporting combat vehicle. By midgame, it's not impossible to field an almost fully mechanized team with Vanguard scouts, that will let you really accelerate the opfor to death! Why Mobile Infantry? AP efficiency: By using the taxi for movement and the infantry for firepower, you get to cheat the AP system a little bit. Most of your units will have to choose between movement OR actions OR a little bit of both. A taxi-MI team can do both for the same amount of combined AP. Essentially the taxi is gifting its AP to the MI for the purpose of movement. Outside of Pike, no other SLs can gift each other AP with that level of efficiency. Supply usage: While a taxi-MI team costs a chunk of supply up-front, it can shave off a lot of supply costs particularly when it comes to armor. As the MI unit will almost never be exposed, you can afford to keep them in their regular pajamas or load-bearing pajamas for an entire campaign. Speed & Mobility: Even the slowest pilot is still quite fast relative to most infantry squads, especially when they can afford to sink most of their AP into movement. This lets you close in on objectives quicker, get into flanking positions that infantry simply couldn't reach, and draw attention from units that can't meaningfully harm your taxi. It lets you pick your engagements, and alpha strike high-value targets before the enemy has had the activations to get into cover. Suppression (or the lack thereof): Your MI squad simply does not interact with the suppression mechanic until things have gone so FUBAR that being pinned is the last of your concerns. Space: Taxis tend to eat up a ton of the AI's attention, allowing your other squads to move up in relative safety or pick off stragglers that tried to run away. Why not Mobile Infantry? Zone control: By having two units (one of which a supply-hungry vehicle) occupy essentially the same tile, you limit your ability to project firepower over an area. For a similar amount of supply, you could field 2-3 rifle units or even more weapons teams that can threaten a substantially larger area. This is especially important on Stop Migration-type missions where you need to cover as much area with vision and firepower as possible. Static missions: This one should be obvious, any mission type where you have to sit around an objective zone does not really benefit from additional mobility. Vehicles are still extremely worthwhile on those types of mission for raw firepower and I highly recommend bringing at least one mobile SL in order to hunt for indirect fire units (Bug Bombardiers, Mortar teams, etc), but a taxi-MI team can often feel like a waste of supply on these missions. Death spirals: Let me be blunt, while your taxi offers a ton of safety to your MI, when things go bad they go really bad. Vehicles are very tough, until suddenly they're not. Rockets, AT grenades, Anti-material rifles, ATGM teams, there's a lot the AI has at their disposal to destroy your taxi. Even if one of these things doesn't one-shot your taxi, a wrong defect (engines especially) can lead to a death spiral. Once your taxi blows up, your squishy MI will be left in the open, with nothing but a smoking wreckage to protect them (which doesn't even benefit from the MI perk's increase in cover!). A single mistake can lead to the deaths of two SLs and an expensive vehicle. Iron Man safety: Most of the time when a death spiral happens you can simply reload and play things smarter, but on Iron Man that's obviously not an option. That isn't to say you can't use MI on Iron Man, just that it's recommended to overinvest in defensive options, recon, and to play things a little slower. Loadouts & Gameplan The gameplan is really quite simple: Drive your taxi up to a good position, use up your remaining AP (if any), end turn. At any later point (often the next activation) pop your MI out of the trunk, use all but 5AP to do whatever you want (usually shooting at things), then pop back into the taxi. In a pinch, you can leave the MI just outside the vehicle as the perk upgrades cover from vehicles, but I'd recommend only doing this when absolutely necessary. The most important thing to keep in mind is that some unit types becomes top priority to disable/kill. Anything with rockets (Pirate Scavengers, Heavy RA Infantry, Construct Soldiers), Autocannon/ATGM teams and most hardware. As such, it's highly recommended to give your MI unit something to deal with hardware, because your taxi often can't. Be especially careful about being marked. If you can't flush out any ATGM units, just retreat. It's not worth the risk. Typically your infantry will spend their AP on firing a rifle twice, but you have options. It's often worthwhile bringing an Infantry Special that can deal with hardware as your taxi often can't. RPGs are a stand-out because they allow you to fire them without deploying. For anything that needs to be deployed, I recommend taking up the Athletics perk for AP efficiency. For example, if your MI has 80AP after enter/exit costs are factored in, you could deploy, fire a 60AP special (such as the MAAL or the Minigun strafing attack), undeploy and enter the taxi. With 90AP, you can do something similar with a 40AP special, firing it twice. I don't have any specific recommendation for gun types. SMGs and Shotguns can be devastating if your taxi can afford to drive close (and often it can), but you can just as well use Crowbars or KPACs to deal with things at a reasonable distance. I recommend experimenting, see what fits you and the specific SL. As for armor: Once you have some spare supply I highly recommend Load-bearing Rigs to give your MI 3 accessory slots to work with. Accessories offer a ton of utility, as well as AT options. Special ammo, smoke grenades for emergencies, AT grenades/Disposable AT Launchers to deal with hardware, Smart-links, or even ammo bags. When it comes to the taxi, I recommend prioritizing safety in the form of Advanced Sensors, Smoke Launchers, or Exploding Reactive Armor. The VMAT can come in extremely clutch as well. The taxi's weapon slots are largely open to personal preferences and supply needs. While your taxi won't spend nearly as many turns firing its weapons as a regular pilot, the right weapon can still be effective. Just remembering your taxi's job isn't to kill things the same way a combat vehicle might, its weapons serve purely to support the gameplan. So consider picking something that patches up a weakness (such as an ATGM or Autocannon to deal with hardware, or a Grenade Launcher to suppress infantry). The Infantry At time of writing, there are three SLs with the Mobile Infantry perk: Carda, Lim and The Yaz. I'll try not to get too much into the weeds about their characteristics, there will be dedicated SL guides for that, but I still want to give an overview of their various strengths as well as give some perk recommendations. Lim stands out an incredible SL for any kind of assault or CQB gameplay, and he's no different as an MI. Amusingly Run & Gun actually triggers from exiting a vehicle, though I don't think this hits any meaningful AP breakpoint. Berserk allows him to shoot a third time if either one of his shots kills something (and with his taxi giving him a flanking shot, this will be often). Grenadier allows him to use AT grenades very effectively. Blaze of Glory, Counterstrike, Zig-zag, Return of Serve and Stubborn are sadly wasted picks on a dedicated MI Lim. Yaz is basically Lim but more aggressive. He has Berserk as well, and Close & Personal makes him a good candidate to be teamed up with the fastest taxi you have. Finisher is an interesting perk. It's a lot of damage, but sadly none of the good taxi pilots have Disruptive Fire to enable the perk. Tankbuster lets him deal with threatening hardware that much more effectively. Carda is kind of a weird pick for one simple reason: She starts with only 85 AP. This means that she cannot enter and exit and shoot twice. She has to either commit to a single shot, or stagger entering/exiting the vehicle over different turns. This makes her very awkward to use initially. Thankfully her god-like Growth Rate means she'll only need 10 or so missions to build up her Agility and hit the 90 AP power spike. Using her as an MI is also a good way to train Agility and Weapon Skill (as she'll often be firing at least once). Furthermore, she has the fantastic Share The Load perk, which lets her leverage her squaddie count as extra special ammo (10 RPG shots or 6 MAAL shots!) as well as Tankbuster. Team Spirit functions just as well when Carda is inside the taxi, and is a fantastic teamwide buff. While she'll never have the same raw offensive potential as Lim or Yaz, she has unrivaled utility and flexibility. The Pilots Exconde stands out as the premier, best in class taxi pilot by a mile for two reasons: Fervor and Divine Intervention. While Fervor means giving up a medium weapon (which includes the Radar), it also allows Exconde to reach frankly ludicrous levels of mobility. On straights along reasonable terrain (grass, sand) you'll be shaving around 33-50% off of your movement cost. Ironically this means that Exconde often has the AP left to fire his light weapon, when without it he'd have to spend all his AP just for movement. Fervor also combos wonderfully with Zig-Zag for obvious reasons. Divine Intervention is an incredible perk for survival. It can feel a little random at times, but I've noticed that the AI has a habit of immediately activating a anti-hardware unit after a taxi moves up. He pairs especially well with a CQB focused Lim or Yaz, letting them easily get into Shotgun or SMG range. Bog is cheap. That's pretty much all there is to him as a taxi. Recycled Parts allows you to minimize the supply cost you have to spend on your taxi. Juryrigged can come in clutch when you're hit by a debilitating defect, but I wouldn't recommend relying on it. Fortify is nice just to be hit a little less often and take a little bit less damage. Overdrive can compensate for Bog's poor AP by allowing one explosive turn. Rewa is usually better used as a combat pilot, but she does have one advantage. The Roadkill perk greatly increases the effective of the Run Over ability. While not as mobile as Exconde, this lets Rewa ram into an enemy unit, strip them over armor and morale, and puts her infantry into a great position to pop out and clean things up. Achilleas and Ivey are all better suited as combat pilots. They can be a taxi pilot in a pinch, but they lack useful perks. Achilleas is far too expensive on supply even if he has good defensive perks, whilst Ivey's just a worse Bog when it comes to being a taxi. The Support Darby is a little pricy, but she's by and far the best forward recon SL in the game through a combination of Covert Ops for extra concealment and Vanguard. She's also fantastic at preemptively hunting down threats to the taxi, such as marking HQ units or ATGM teams. Kody and Wett also have Vanguard but the former is better used as a killer, and the latter has painfully low base AP. Tech can serve as a discount MI unit by using his innate perk either fire a special weapon he has no business firing, or using a Target Designator to mark something that your pilot can then fire on. It's more fun than it is powerful, but the option is there. If by some ungodly method you managed to get Pike's AP up to 120 (by Growth or by drugs), you can use him as a permanent 60 AP accessory for a combat pilot. Pop him out, use Taking Command, pop back in. Once again, this is more funny than actually useful, but I thought I'd point it out. Outro And that's it, that's all I had to say on the subject of Mobile Infantry! I'd like to emphasize that due to how flexible this playstyle is, you should experiment with loadouts and taxi-SL combos I haven't mentioned, and I'm sure people in the community will have some ideas I never even considered (and I'll be happy to add them to the guide). I hope you were able to get something out of this guide. Good hunting and go fast!