Isaac Jones

**Isaac Jones** is a pilot in *Into the Breach*.

## Location

Isaac Jones can be acquired by completing islands.

## Background

Isaac has seen too many timelines collapse, and seen too many permutations for how things can go wrong - his high intelligence actually works against him, rather than make him more confident because he can imagine all the ways things can go wrong (think Chidi Anagonye in The Good Place). He feels ill-suited for being a soldier (his squad mates usually agree, but his scientific knowledge is indispensable).

While he and Bethany are technically brother and sister, there hasn't been a timeline where they both were alive to realize this (either Bethany dies at a young age, or Isaac dies - only one of them could be saved in the womb b/c of a chronic medical condition their parents had). He respects machines and sees them as equals due to being raised on Pinnacle (he has faith in Zenith, perhaps too much as he feels she's too intelligent to do anything wrong).

Isaac is as much of a genius as his sister, although self-doubt weakens him. He has considerable knowledge of aeronautics, physics, gravitation theory and manipulation, and a number of other fields. It is likely Isaac could master any science he chose to, his only block is his own perceived limitations.

## Personality

Paranoid & pessimistic. Generally a good person but not handling all the stress well, and his attitude can sometimes be demoralizing - he's suspicious of his own successes and victories. Definitely a "this timeline's already half-lost" kind of guy. Stutters because of temporal research studies... it's caused a nervous system problem in his speech patterns.

## Strategy

Having an additional Reset Turn can be quite invaluable in rectifying a mistake or experimenting with options. However, veteran players will not normally have to use this feature, at which point Isaac Jones is less relevant.

There are situational uses where an additional Reset Turn ability is useful to strategy. All buildings have a shared chance to resist damage based on your Grid Defense, determined by a hidden random number that is generated and seeded at the start of each timeline. While this value is hidden from the player and resisting damage is most useful on the Vek's move when it is too late to Reset, you can check if a resist will trigger on your turn from:

* intentionally targeting your own buildings
* pushing an opponent/object into a building
* an Explosive decay actor exploding on death

Note that this value carries over to subsequent maps in the same timeline until a building gets hit. The player can continue hitting buildings, making note of which attacks were resisted, and reset; after the reset, the exact same resist order will play out as buildings get damaged. Increasing Grid Defense **can** change the outcome if the resist value is higher than the seeded number; in other words, a resist can still be possible with the same seed later in the run, when Grid Defense percentage is increased.  Essentially, Isaac Jones additional Reset Turn makes this strategy less risky, though it still relies on luck to successfully manipulate the number to the players favor; see "Fish for Resists" for more information.

With the Advanced Edition, the additional Reset Turn can benefit the pilot Adam by allowing an additional activation of his Chosen One ability per battle. However, this combo requires finding at least one of those pilots per playthrough.

## References

1. ↑ [1]Dev comment on building resistance based on a seeded random number
2. ↑ [2]Video explanation: Guaranteed Grid Resist