The Rusting Hulks are designed to spew damaging, electrified smoke with the Jet and Rocket Mechs. This lets them easily disable attacks and inflict high damage, but hinders itself as they cannot attack in smoke.
Take no Mech or Building Damage in a single battle (Repaired damage is still damage):
Strategies[ | ]
The Rocket Mech can be moved next to a Vek and fire its rocket in the opposite direction, hitting nothing and dropping a smoke cloud on the Vek to prevent its attack.
The Pulse Mech's Shield Self upgrade is a good early unlock. The shield will active whenever Push is used even if you don't push anything. It can then be used to block damage or indefinitely block a spawn point refreshing its shield each turn. Shield Ally can be used on buildings, protecting them in advance.
Upgrading the storm generator simultaneously increases the Jet and Rocket mech's damage by 1, which makes it a priority upgrade. +1 range on the Jet Mech also lets it produce more smoke and attack flexibly. Smoke damage also bypasses the armor from the Shell Psion.
Aerial Bomb can be used to limit the movement of the Vek, as they will avoid moving into smoke.
The Rusting Hulks make it easy to deal with powerful enemies by simply negating their attacks, but smoke clouds last for the entire battle. Try not to spread smoke around carelessly, or you could run out of options later in the fight.
If advanced equipment is on, Nanofilter Mending trivialises this squad as it lets them remove their own smoke to attack - the lost smoke tiles can be replaced by the Jet Mech or Mosquitoes.
Since the squad's biggest weakness is its own smoke, Camila Vera is bar none the best pilot for this squad. Others to look out for include:
Kazaaakpleth - Grants a decent attack on the Pulse Mech.
Kai Miller - Allows the Jet Mech to immediately deal 2 damage, enough to kill off 3-health enemies on island one when accounting for electrified smoke.
Ariadne - Makes the Jet Mech much more survivable.
Flying: Flying units can move over any terrain tile.
