Seeking advice in transitioning from early to mid game

[Joseph Hewitt]

And yeah, even if you can dodge most everything, things like LINE, BLAST, or SCATTER weapons will still almost always hit you.  Luckily they split the damage randomly over the mech, but that still means you'll be happy to have at least some armor to soak up those kinds of hits.

This is one of the great things about the Pixie: hardened armor on all locations means that blast attacks just bounce off without causing too much degradation. Similarly, the anti-beam coating on the Corraich means that they can pretty much wade right through nukes (anti-beam provides defense against beamguns, energy melee weapons, and anything with the HYPER tag).

As kind of a counterpoint to what Johnny said, don't load your mecha with more weapons than you can fire. Twin railguns might sound cool, but a single reaver railgun may be a better choice.

[EuchreJack]

Thanks everyone for the advice!  I feel much more confident going forward!  But I would love more advice, especially on robotics pro and con.

Mech is tagged for Red Mask Raiders in addition to the usual because I see no point to giving myself a toy that can't kill me.  I'm probably going to leave this in my next mech pack, although separate from the regular Savins since it has modified limbs.

I'd suggest leaving it out, at least in its current incarantion.  Why have mecha engineering if mecha are optimized?  I think JH said that when designing mecha, there should always be some flaw so it can be optimized with mecha engineering.

Perhaps some lesser version could be released instead?

That said, players will most likely vary on their opinions of "optimized", and I've loved the mecha packs so far.  Just asking for a little caution.

[Joseph Hewitt]

That said, players will most likely vary on their opinions of "optimized", and I've loved the mecha packs so far.  Just asking for a little caution.

Unless you mass adjust everything down to 0 tons, there is no such thing as "fully optimized". The level of technology seen in the L5 region is about the maximum you're going to find in the GH universe, barring uniques and advanced mecha. My general rule of thumb for negative mass adjustment is no more than the size of the module or armor rating, and that this represents the state of the art. Exceptions are permitted if there's some balancing circumstance- the Pixie gets better mass adjustments than this because it's a Class 4 designed to go toe to toe with Savins and Rocs (in-universe, its construction is justified by the MUGL Engineering team's trademark combination of brilliance and overcompensation).

Lunar mecha tend to get mass adjustments of up to half their module/armor rating. Terran and Martian mecha tend to get mass adjustments of up to -2. All three worlds are capable of using state of the art tech for their high-end models (or at least the big governments/corps on these worlds are capable of that).

[EuchreJack]

Awesome, glad to know that!  Rules of thumb are quite useful for modding purposes!   

[plllizzz]

When you go for Savin, go for the big guns

Breaker canon for each hand it's a good start

you may find use for Ovaknight external armor - it's quite havily downmassed and useful

Reaper's Savin Shield with the thrown weapon can be a lifesaver at times, but you must consider the penalty to hit with breakers

as for mounts, either put something with blast on them, downmassed energy weapons or rip them off

still, you should prolly try some mecha enginnering - putting some of Vadel's Class 8 overchargers here and there can make a real difference in movement speed, and if you'd like to go melee, it's pretty crucial to close that distance as quick as possible

[JohnnyDmonic]

Thanks everyone for the advice!  I feel much more confident going forward!  But I would love more advice, especially on robotics pro and con.

I'd suggest leaving it out, at least in its current incarantion.  Why have mecha engineering if mecha are optimized?  I think JH said that when designing mecha, there should always be some flaw so it can be optimized with mecha engineering.

I ended up limiting it to just the Bohemian Collective, so it probably wont come up much, and at 4.5 mill PV, pretty rare even at that.   While it's optimized to a large extent, there's several things that I personally would do differently with it if I was actually going to use it, and I think it'll be amusing to have an enemy with nukes that unlike the gigas gets more dangerous after they're fired than before.  If by amusing I meant surprisingly frustrating, anyway.

Also, while I'm sure Mr. Hewitt has said it, it's also been said by other people:
http://www.gearheadrpg.com/wiki/index.php?title=Guides:Design_file_guidelines#Balancing_Point_Value_Through_MV.2FTR_and_Mass

Heh.  I had an amusing writing style back in the day.

As for robots, I did one run-through with robotics, only made 2 robots and neither were sentient, so I'm not sure I have any good advice on that.  It seems fun, and I might try it again sometime.

[EuchreJack]

LOL, that's what I was refering too!  Funny how these thing turn out.  Sounds like a good design.

[Cornuthaum]

Getting the Red Wing pirates ticked off at you - and getting their recurring characters to attack you with custom Corraichs - is a fast track to victory. I only got two custom corraichs before my renown migrated to "Lol, Rocs" territory, but those dropped modded Reaver Railguns that weigh substantially less than the normal model (4.0 and 3.0 tons respectively, compared to the standard 6.5 tons of a reaver railgun)

And you can fire those in tandem - one two one two one two one two and never stop until you run out of ammo.