While we’re all distracted by BattleTech‘s intricate and ponderous mech warfare, the polar opposite, lightning-quick approach to turn-based giant robo-combat has been busy too. Into The Breach‘s latest patch quietly fixes a dozen-odd problems I doubt many of us even noticed this ridiculously slick game ever had, including one that meant getting your whole team killed in the final mission didn’t always mean a game over. Me, I’m happy because this patch marks Into The Breach’s first step into ultimate perfection – becoming a game I can play while lying down.

Now, patch 1.0.22 sadly doesn’t herald a full touchscreen UI for Into The Breach, but it does make the difference between touch-unplayable and touch-playable for folk who own fancy finger-poky laptops such as Microsoft Surfaces, Lenovo Yogabooks or certain Dell XPSes, amongst many others.

Notes Subset designer Matthew Davis here, “We have not created a full touch friendly UI, as that would take months. But I have improved general capabilities along with some touch friendly improvements so it’s all very playable using nothing but touch on tablet PCs like the Surface. Ultimately I would like to design and include a full touch UI for the game, but there is no time line on that. This is just a stop gap measure.”

Nice to know it’s on their radar, though – ITB’s predecessor FTL never got any real touch support on PC, despite having a fully finger-friendly iPad edition. I’ve just give the patch a quick spin on my Surface Book 2 (review), and it’s mostly fine during battles. Where before there was a lot of double-tapping and unrecognised input with a finger, now I can do my bug-squishing fairly freely. However, there is some jank – I need a mouse or keyboard to select options from the main menu, for instance. A big improvement though. I don’t feel that I need new icons or anything like that, but a bit of refinement would be welcome.

As for the other fixes, here’s yer list, or browse’n’discuss ’em all over on the ITB forums. I don’t think I’ve encountered even a single one of these, although if I had ever run into a situation wherein the game let me win the final mission despite getting all my pilots killed, I probably wouldn’t admit it here.

Better support for Touch Screen / Tablet PCs (See note below)

Viscera Nanobots will now trigger on minor enemies (Spider Eggs, Blobs, etc.)

Deadly Environment / Unit effects are made more clear to the player

Potential fixes for some system compatibility issues

Satellites are now immune to Smoke effects

Fixed rare bug where a single game could be stuck resisting every Grid Damage

Fixed some rare token failures in pilot/CEO barks

Fixed bug where Mechs without weapons could become inactive

Small changes to the save backup system to prevent corruption

Phase Cannon will no longer damage buildings on the edge of the map

Mech falling down a hole will now negate the “Perfect Battle” achievement

Fixed various strange behaviors that can be triggered by the Blob Boss splitting

Unstable Mechs will no longer explode incorrectly if using the Psionic Receiver

Archimedes/Rong save and reload exploit fixed

Mission where Vek spawn from ACID tiles will no longer spawn units on Frozen ACID tiles

Losing every Mech in the final mission will correctly result in a Game Over

Viscera Nanobots will no longer revive units that fell down holes

Fixed: Info Overlay hotkey sometimes displayed wrong enemy unit info

Fixed: Rare bug where a repaired unit lost its weapons

Fixed: Secret Pilot / Ralph pilot skills could be attributed as “environment” for xp

Fixed: Health bars with 10 (or more) won’t look ridiculous

Attack Order UI fixes

Minor art/UI/animation fixes

Minor text fixes

It is a damn-near perfect game, it really is. Here’s my Into The Breach review on why that is, if you missed it.