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Friday Fun Thread for February 6, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I'd say no. It's less about fuck-you RNG, and more about being very unforgiving if you make mistakes like 'I think I'll try running a glass cannon mass infantry build against a faction with literal artillery and laser designators' or 'they couldn't hit an elephant at that distance' without actually investing in the appropriate enablers. However, there is always a counter or three to any given threat, it will just come with tradeoffs (opportunity costs annd otherwise).

(I will note that for now you should only play on the lower two difficulties- the highest difficulty is pretty unbalanced, basically giving you something like 60% supply and giving the AI 140% supply and breaking a lot of the ammo economy logic. This isn't RNG though, just list economy.)

The game's RNG is low in tactical shenanigans, typically following a law of averages approach, but high in mission framings like map setup. Tactically, the game follows a per-bullet-accuracy salvo, in which each bullet in a 10 shot salvo has its own accuracy and armor penetration roles, as opposed to XCOM's all-or-nothing salvos. This does mean your high-power/single-shot anti-armor weapons are swingy, but there are ways to get literal guaranteed hits with certain weapons.

The game's start-of-mission map settup is procedural generation, however, so it's quite possible to have particularly hard/brutal maps, like enemies with artillery who have spotters hidden in high-concealment forests or who can start killing units before most of your units can reach. There are absolutely tools to mitigate this, but until you learn what and how...

The game is actually pretty low-lethality for your irreplaceable investments. MENACE is a platoon-level tactics game, and your named/controlled characters are squad leaders. Squaddies are the members of your squads, and they act as both an increase to your primary squad-weapon damage output (1 more guy holds 1 more gun to shoot with) and as HP gates. The squad leaders- who are what you invest promotions and gear investments into- will never go down until all the other squaddies do, and when you do you have 4 turns to stabilize them to save them, and there are medevac assets you can invest / find in operations. Squaddies in turn are a relatively fragile-but-replaceable strategic resource. It doesn't take much to kill a squaddie, but you can invest in a base upgrade to recruit 2 a mission, and start with a medical center that will save 1 from death and has a 15% chance to save each subsequent casualty.

The game can be quite punishing if you ignore various threats and make bad investments at a list-building level. Every faction has its unique strengths, and good lessons learned against some factions become very bad against others. This also applies to specific mission formats, where sometimes a concentration of forces is all you need, and other times it's bad. I enjoy this in the sense that you need to not be complacent or try to build an all-rounder build, but constantly re-adjust your list. Other people hate it, and do things like call defense missions impossible (because they invest all their points in a few super squads who can't maintain enough map control).

The key system that helps mitigate/tie all of this together is the intel system. Intel is a campaign stat that indicates how much insight into the enemy you'll have. At the starting level 0, you'll only have a blip that there is something in a general area, at levels 2 you might generally know if it's infantry or vehicles with some units specifically identified, but at levels 5-6 you'll know exactly what type of unit is where. This system comes at the opportunity cost of other investments, but lets you align the right units and the right gear the right way. This basically removes most of the 'surprise!' elements that are technically RNG from you not knowing the full enemy list in advance.