I'm just posting as a person who has played this game a bit, not really here in admin capacity, so the following is just my personal opinion.

I think the categories would make more sense as follows:

Categories: 2-island, 3 island, 4-island Subcategories: Normal, Hard Variable: Squad Type - (Custom, Steel Judoku, etc)

You could separate custom squads and assigned squads into subcategories as well I suppose.

The intention of subcategories is to better layout the redundant combinations, so that the category tab doesn't become bloated.

The IGT situation is kind of unfortunate at the moment. I abused it to get the lightning mech achievement, lol. Not sure what to do about that.

I don't really have a strong opinion on tracking carried over heroes or not. Keeping them disallowed might be preferable due to the time involved it setting it up.

I personally agree with you that we should have subcategories for normal, hard, different squads, etc, but the main reason that I at least I didn't wanted to have to many categories simply comes down to community involvement. Moving forward I feel that speedrunning Into The Breach will end up being a bit of a niche challenge run, and not to many people have really shown interest so I felt that it would be better to keep the categories to a minimum for the time being to keep the few people who will be speedrunning the game centralized around a few categories. This is subject to change, and if we get more people speedrunning the game we may add other sub categories etc. And I agree the IGT situation is kinda of unfortunate, we have gotten in contact with the developers, and its in the process of being fixed/overhauled but we don't really know how or if they will actually fix it so the way we time our runs may be forced to change depending on how they do it.

Thank you for your feedback, for me personally this is the first time I've moderated anything like this, and feedback and thoughts are always welcome!

I don't wanna dictate what categories people should and shouldn't be running, but right now all the separate squad categories make the leaderboards look... clunky? Not very aesthetically pleasing in my opinion. Will people even want to run different squads, or will they just go with the fastest one 90% of the time? Also, the ice mech/no ice mech split in custom squad feels pretty arbitrary to me. I can also potentially see myself running 2-island hard, which isn't listed right now.

I agree that there are too many categories. However I like the idea of Non Custom, Custom and Custom no ice mech. The no ice mech category does provide a run for people that don't wan't to use the broken combo of Bethany Jones as pilot in ice mech.

Yeah, leaderboards are "clunky", but if we get more people speedrunning the game that lets every squad get a chance to be ran.

Plus with Non Custom, Custom and Custom no ice mech, you could as well write Frozen titans, Custom, custom no ice mech. I don't think having every non-custom run be Frozen titan would be very interesting (bare from perhaps 4-island hard where you're gonna need a lot of skill to pull off a good time).

So, yeah. Subcategories cause otherwise ice artillery kills the other squads with no ice artillery.

I disagree with the new leaderboard change. I don't know about all of you but I don't want to run in 44 categories.

I think four categories would be alright. Could have Custom, Custom (no ice mech), Non Custom (no Frozen Titans) and Frozen Titans.

On that note, separating Frozen Titans and Ice Mech squads is just going to push the problem back. Then you're going to have Rusting Hulks dominate and some other custom squad we've yet to come with (for 2-island easy/any%, at least). Just let it be and don't separate it, in my opinion. I'd rather we introduce 2 and 3 island hard, where these cheesy strats might not work as well.

Imo if you don't separate anything, then 2-island easy runs become absolutely trivialized. Custom? 3 frozen artillery are NOT beatable (or perhaps by 2 frozen artillery and 1 other mech MAYBE) non-custom? same for the Frozen Titans. There's not gonna be a faster squad. GG. All 2-island runs are Frozen titans run where objectives won't matter and you just completely own the game without even spending a single core.

And, well, if you don't want to "run in 44 categories", then it's fine, you really don't have to. You can run the fastest strat. But I'd personally like to see some 2-island/etc done with "slow" squads, just to see how far you can push those.

You could also keep them in the same category but add a column you can filter by. (If you don't know what I'm referring to, look at https://www.speedrun.com/mc let's do with squads what they do with difficulty and version).

It may be worth implementing the boards in the same way as Terraria https://www.speedrun.com/terraria1.3.3 - with the squads (Rift Walkers, Rusting Hulks etc.) on side and 2/3/4/hard islands along the top. This would give all the squads and modes an equal share, and look less clunky than the current tabulation, with the concession of the runs being considered 'Levels' as opposed to 'Full-Game Runs' on the website - which can still be filtered easily along the side-bar.

Just a thought but I think we should remove 3-island runs all together. In my opinion you should just do 2 or 4 island runs because 2 island is fastest and 4 island is like the full game. 3 island is kinda just there

I may be interested in running this game someday. I have several suggestions, some of which were covered here:

1. Spleen's suggestion, i.e. list the 1st place for every team and difficulty on the front page.
2. Categories: "Any%", "Any% Hard", "4-Island", "4-Island Hard".
3. Place "Custom squad" at the top, and remove the "no ice artillery" category. Yes it's broken, but it won't be long before another broken strat comes by (Darn mentioned Rusting Hulks).

I think any% hard mode would be a great category to add. I also like the idea of keeping the subcategories for each squad, it'd be fun to see runs with slower and "Worse" squads like Steel Judoka be represented and ran, I would love to see it at least.

I think the no ice artillery category should stay at least for now, if new strats come along, and the community develops more so that the distinction becomes archaic and weird then it can be removed in the future. At least right now it seems like such a dominant strat that it kills the category without that distinction (although the argument can be made that other strategies can probably kill the category too). I think it's good for now though.

I also think an any% non-custom squad category is something at least worth discussing. Even if 99% of the runs are frozen titans or something it would give the people that don't like subcategories a board they can focus on and like. Maybe in the future different strategies are found as well who knows.

I think the first time you're frozen shield should break.

Well that's not up to us, but to the devs. Personally I think it would be fine if the shield wouldn't prevent freezing at all. Beth/Zoltan + Ice Mech is by far the most broken pilot+mech combination in the game.

I think there should be an any% all squads category, where you go through a win on every squad before finishing the run

So it's been a while since this thread has been touched, but given how things have slowed down a bit for most runners, I'd like to weigh in here (I didn't get the game until October, so I'm new to this community).

My thoughts:

1. Merge both custom squads into one leaderboard. being able to use frost mech is just a part of being able to run custom. Not enough people run both for it to be a separate thing.
2. Change the name of glitched% to Death Abuse%. It's not a glitch. It's working as designed when your mechs die.
3. Remove the Squad% without secret squad. If you wanna speedrun the game but you don't have secret squad opened you can type "makeitso" into the console and unlock them. Removes the need to have that in there. Besides, nobody has run it and it's an empty category.
4. Add a 100% category. This has been run by GameJam and is currently sitting as a one-off in the Squad% category.

Thoughts? FYI -- Would love to talk more with anyone in the ITB Discord. Check out the Challenge Runs channel for speedrun stuff. https://discord.gg/r6cm7CC