Every Day We Fight Tips for Combat, AP, and Squad Builds

Every Day We Fight tips focus on initiating ambushes with free first shots, banking action points between turns, utilizing real-time reflex reactions, and targeting modular alien armor with ballistics instead of relying on dice rolls.

Ambushes and First-Person Firing

Combat encounters do not lock you into combat the moment you walk into an encounter area. Players can press Left Control to crouch and use manual squad splitting to position individual fighters on high ground or behind heavy cover before firing. The opening shot taken from stealth costs zero action points, allowing all three Thorns to retain their maximum 25 AP pool while denying Rifters the initial turn.

Attacking switches the perspective to a first-person shooter reticle. The game does not determine accuracy via roll tables, meaning hit chance depends entirely on physical ballistics, weapon deviation, and clear line of sight. Bullets land anywhere within the aiming circle, with roughly 50% weighted toward the center dot. If a target only occupies a fraction of that reticle, outlying shots can miss entirely.

Players can use specific controls to line up shots without wasting movement:

• Press Middle Mouse Button while in aim view to swap shoulder perspectives around full cover.
• Press W to lean over barricades or around vehicles without spending AP.
• Hold Left Shift to hold your breath, which zooms in and tightens the spread circle for roughly 3 AP. Letting go of breath without pulling the trigger refunds those AP immediately.
• Left-click fires a single round, whereas holding the fire button down continuously unleashes full-auto fire on supported weapons.
• To end your turn safely, hold down the Enter key until the progress bar completely fills.

Action Point Budgeting and Turn Overlap

Each squad member begins a normal turn with 20 action points, but up to 5 unspent points transfer into the subsequent round. This gives characters a maximum pool of 25 AP. Because single sniper shots cost around 9 AP and weapon reloads can demand 8 to 10 AP, exhausting an entire turn on low-probability attacks leaves fighters exposed.

When your remaining AP cannot buy a clean shot, rotate toward solid cover and bank the leftover points. Suppressive enemy fire and critical injuries directly reduce maximum AP and increase the AP cost of firing guns, making conservation vital during prolonged skirmishes.

Managing Reflexes and Overwatch

Every fighter and alien unit receives one reflex token per round, which governs both offensive intercepts and defensive maneuvers. Rifters display their reflex state right next to their nameplates. If an enemy holds an active reflex token, throwing an explosive often prompts them to scramble away, wasting the utility of the ordnance. Firing a low-cost pistol round or single shot can bait the alien into scrambling, clearing the way for follow-up explosives.

Setting an overwatch perimeter costs 5 AP and grants defensive coverage during enemy movements, but choosing overwatch consumes that unit's reflex token. If that Thorn takes incoming fire, they cannot scramble out of danger until the next round. Reserving reflex actions allows characters to dive away from thrown enemy grenades, relocate behind vehicles, or break line of sight in real time. Red holograms on the map mark last known positions rather than real-time locations, so sweeping crosshairs over terrain helps reacquire targets that scrambled behind visual obstructions.

Breaking Armor and Environmental Hazards

Heavily armed Rifters, such as Enforcers and Guardians, feature modular armor distributed across their helmets, chests, arms, and legs. Weapon blasts and sustained automatic gunfire degrade individual plates. Focusing attacks on a specific section exposes the red health bar underneath, allowing subsequent shots to bypass armor mitigation entirely. High single-shot weapons, such as the Longhaul sniper, strip plating efficiently, while Dylan's punch ability completely bypasses external plating to inflict raw health damage on a single-turn cooldown.

Battlefields contain explosive environmental props that deal heavy area damage without burning squad ammunition:

• Red gas canisters detonate with a single gunshot, creating blast radiuses that shatter nearby armor and clear cracked concrete walls.
• Civilian cars and utility vehicles possess independent health pools; shooting them repeatedly triggers massive fireballs that wipe out enemies taking low cover behind them.
• Environmental puzzles require specialized narrative tools: crystallized blue elixium clumps require the frequency resonator dart gun to shatter, while padlocks must be struck with direct line-of-sight fire because bullets cannot penetrate wooden doors.

Squad Progression and District Heat

Each member of your trio fulfills a specific combat role through their branching trees, which can be reviewed in detail in our skills guide:

• Dylan excels at frontline crowd control; unlock Proximity Punch early to knock down enemies that enter melee range during their own turns, alongside AP donation perks.
• Vivian handles battlefield misdirection; deploy her throwable Hologram to draw multiple bursts of alien fire away from teammates, or rely on her automated Kill Assist trigger.
• Leo offers defensive stability; his Covering Fire reflex reacts to aliens targeting squadmates, applying immediate suppression or outright kills.

Outside of combat, skill points can be refunded and reallocated at any time without penalty. Exploring streets yields scrap for hideout workbench crafting, unlocks additional manhole fast-travel routes, and discovers lore notes regarding Dr. Selena Faber.

Completing combat encounters gradually raises the district heat level. Level 3 heat increases enemy difficulty by 20%, but significantly improves drop rates for rare and epic weapon attachments. Surviving waves during ambush missions raises heat by one level per wave, while completing sabotage missions guide objectives lowers heat.

During sabotage operations, target the consoles directly when their white protective shields drop after destroying linked power cells; destroying all three consoles terminates enemy reinforcement waves permanently.