Gundam: Battle Assault 2/Offense

Combo Properties

Chains

The cancel system in Gundam Battle Assault 2 (GBA2) has no official name so they are called Chains. Unlike many fighting games, such as Capcom's Magic Series, where you can do any light into any heavy, GBA2's chains are more like the Guilty Gear series' Gatlings, where each character has their own unique set of cancels. This includes some very bizarre cancels but generally it's intuitive. As a rule of thumb, the GBA2 characters (Wing and G Gundam) have more cancels and the GBA1 characters (Gundam, Zeta, and ZZ) have less.

Notably, most normals can't chain on block or whiff. This limits blockstrings to generally working more like they would in a game with links, where you repeat plus normals to try and push your turn while occasionally adding mixups. The main exceptions to these rules are spammable attack like some characters WPs. Several are cancelable on both block and whiff, but usually only into another WP. Every characters' chain table is listed on their page.

Special Cancels

Special cancels work like most fighting games with the exception that, just like normals, they can't be canceled into on block or whiff. This means you rarely if ever end blockstrings with a special, and special cancels are exclusively used for combos, either for extensions or enders.

Some normals aren't special cancelable at all, generally these are normals that shoot a projectile but they can be any normal. There are also some specials that can't be canceled into, thse generally being unblockable attacks or funnels, although there are exceptions.

Supers are considered specials too so they have all the same cancel rules.

Juggles

There aren't really juggles in the traditional sense like in most fighting games. Rather, hitting an aerial opponent behaves similar to hitting a grounded opponent where they get put into hitstun and will regain all their actions once hitstun runs out with no kind of teching. This means aerial combos are limited with a few exceptions, generally just being a button or two into special. If an opponent hits the ground while in hitstun it ends immediately, which can allow for some interesting resets but generally just means you go into a pressure sequence. There are no juggles of any kind post knockdown outside of supers.

OTGs

Once an opponent is knocked down, either by an attack that knocks down or an overheat, they have invulnerability to all attacks except MEGA SPECIALs until they hit the ground. Once the opponent is laying on the ground, they can be hit "Off The Ground" (OTG). OTGs deal 50% damage. All attacks have the potential to hit OTG, but most attacks won't reach unless you're fighting a bigger enemy. Generally, crouching kicks and ammo attacks will reach. For the most part, OTG damage can be avoided by quick rising but there's a few setups that assure OTG damage.

Notably, supers ignore these rules. Supers can hit the opponent at any point post knockdown, allowing players to add on some assured damage at the end of a combo. These still take the usual OTG extra scaling of 50% as well as a separate 25% damage reduction. They can be looped, which is especially useful if it'll kill. In some characters' cases (like Zeong), this is the best way to use their super.

Attack Properties

Ammo

An attack that uses up ammo. These are generally limited to 26P projectile attacks. Each projectile attack uses up different amounts of ammo.

Projectile Priority

If a projectile comes into contact with another projectile with a greater priority, the weaker projectile's attack will clear while the higher-priority projectile will continue moving and maintain its active attack. If two projectiles share the same priority, both projectile's attacks will clear.

Internally, projectiles have 16 different possible priority values that are assigned to them. The game appears to only use 4 of these possible values (1, 2, 4, and 8). Some examples of projectile priority values for projectiles are:

8	Master/Burning's Tenkyoken (hcfP)
4	Rose's Lightening Shoot [projectile shield] (qcbP)
2	Nu Gundam's Beam Rifle (qcfP)
1	Vulcans or GP-02a's Hyper Bazooka (qcfP)

Some projectiles have cycles of active attacks that retrigger after a set period of time and don't trigger a removal animation on contact. These projectiles can have their initial attack beaten with a stronger projectile, only to reactivate their attack flag later. Examples of these types of attacks are Deathscythe's Beam Sickle (qcbP) and Tallgeese's Mega Cannon Plus (qcfK).

Invincibility

Just like other fighting games, GBA2 has some moves that are invincible, meaning they can't be hit at all during this duration. Characters still have collision during this, they just can't be hit. Most supers have at least 1 frame of invincibility but few are fully invincible on startup.

Unblockable

An attack that cannot be blocked. These are often prompted with a voice line saying, "You can't defend!" With the exception of stuns, unblockable attacks are also considered projectiles and can be used to contest them. As a consequence, Shields absorb their hits. These are not made equal, as some are very good like Rose's, and others are very bad like Altron's. Most can't be special cancelled.

Grab

A move that puts the opponent into a locked animation when it hits grounded. Unlike most fighting games, grab type moves in GBA2 are all blockable and function more as hit grabs. When they hit an aerial opponent, they deal 0 damage but some hitstun, making them hard to use generally.

Super Armor

A move or character that has this property will not enter a hit state when hit. Instead, they will usually pause in place, then continue whatever action they were already performing before being hit. This pause will be 2 ticks faster than the attack would pause the attacking player, allowing the super armored player to recover a bit faster than the attacker.

A character hit with super armor will take 66% reduced damage.

Some attacks do not have a hitpause value for their attacks, but will still set off a pause for the super-armored player on hit. This will allowed the attack to continue hitting without allowing the super-armored player to move before the attacker gets their next hit across. An example of a move that does this is Ball's Jackhammer (qcbP, or 24P).

Stun

Stun is the equivalent of a grab in Gundam Battle Assault 2. They're performed by doing fSP or bSP (4SP or 6SP) when close to the opponent. This causes the character to perform a 14-tick unblockable attack. The attack deals no damage and stuns the opponent. This leaves them open for a full combo, although the stun counts as a hit so it adds to damage scaling.

This move on hit can be cancelled into special moves and boost.

Stuns can be avoided in a few ways. The first way is to simply move out of the range very quickly, usually by backdash or a thrust jump. Stun attacks are not made equal though, as they have varying hitboxes. This means that some can't be evaded as easily. The other main way to avoid them is to use a spot dodge. The activation range where stun can be used is the same between every character and is fairly large. None are small enough to whiff inside their activation range but some can be low profiled.

Chip Damage

Almost every special move in the game deals chip damage to some degree. Chip damage is damage done by blocked special moves, commonly seen with projectiles but almost all specials will do some chip. The amount of chip damage is equal to 1/9th of the damage of the move had it hit. Check Game Data for exact calculations.

MEGA SPECIAL

MEGA SPECIALs are this game's supers, which work rather uniquely. Characters start a game with 3 supers, which can be spent at any time by doing 2,6,Attack+Attack. Every character has a different super, some of which are simply better than others, but there are some consistencies. The player activating super will be invulnerable during the super flash. Most are attacks with the exception of The-O, although some do have more utility use. Finally, as mentioned earlier, all can be used for extra damage after a knockdown or overheat. Otherwise, there's lots of variation on how they work; some have extra invincibility, others are projectiles, and a few don't even combo into themselves on hit.

Nu Gundam and Ball do not have MEGA SPECIALs.