effective ways to capture body-cockpit mecha

[peter]

I have a very low success rate when trying to capture mecha unless I can just shoot the head off.  (Not that I'm complaining about having four Ovaknights and five Radcliffs kicking around...)

 I have lancemates that rip mecha to shreds, so I can't just pick away at a mecha until they fail an ejection check.

 What works for people?  wear down their armor with harpy missiles and then use armorpiercing weapons in hopes of destroying the cockpit?  Get in close and use mecha fighting?  Use missiles to do concussion damage?  Use armorpiercing weapons right from the start?  Use heavy laser cannons which do enough damage to get through the armor by brute force?  (but won't have any MOS when they get through).

 I'm mostly interested in mecha that have bodyarmor as well as intrinsic armor in the body module.  I seem to capture a decent trickle of mecha that don't have bodyarmor...  And it always seems like Savin pilots die more easily in no-salvage missions


 BTW, my lance right now is: My chimentaro, an Ovaknight, a Radcliff, a Daum, and a Daum2, all heavily modified.  Mecha missions aren't a challenge, so I haven't finished kitting out the rest of my ovaknights.  I'll have to look at the code sometime to see how lancemates mecha are counted for determining threat values.  (i.e. would I be facing tougher opponents if everyone were in Ovaknights?)

[Anticheese]

For most body cockpit mecha:

1) Do called shots on the head untill it is destroyed

2) Immobilise it with called shots to the legs

3) Use Mecha-Fu on it, It deals concussion damage and is free to use.

This works best on Buru Buru mecha and similar

For things like the Razer (Head cockpit), All you need to do is step 1

The problem with blasting away at an enemy Mecha is that you destroy the mecha faster than you kill the pilot, Thats why I use Mecha-Fu.

For the heavily armoured ones, I have twin heavy missile pods installed (DC:150, BLAST 4 ish, BRUTAL) that quickly wear down armour to the bare essentials, It helps alot in traditional combat too.

[peter]

Quoting: Anticheese

For the heavily armoured ones, I have twin heavy missile pods installed (DC:150, BLAST 4 ish, BRUTAL) that quickly wear down armour to the bare essentials, It helps alot in traditional combat too.

 Yeah, those missiles (from the Harpy) are extremely effective!  A full-clip burst can shred a crowd of Savins.

 Yeah, what you suggest is similar to what I do, except I don't usually get up close before my lancemates destroy them.  Is Mecha-Fu a gearhead 2 thing?  Or do you mean the Kung-Fu talent, which works for mecha also.

 Making them crash helps a lot, because it's a big impact on the eject roll, and you'll get a lot of penetration from the big to-hit bonus.  Savins have an arc thruster installed in the body, so they don't crash until that's destroyed (and both legs and both arms).  They are _really_ hard to capture.  I guess that's what makes it a good design.

 What do you do about your lancemates while you're trying to capture something?  Or do you fight at Warhammer arena?
My lancemates always have a lot of powerful long-range weapons.

[Joseph Hewitt]

Quoting: peter

Is Mecha-Fu a gearhead 2 thing?

I think he was just talking about mecha fighting, since there is no talent or ability named Mecha-Fu.

Quoting: peter

What do you do about your lancemates while you're trying to capture something?

Lancemates are a problem. Usually when I'm trying to get salvage I leave them in town. There should be a way to tell them to back off when you're attempting to force a surrender... how should that work?

[Epsilon]

Quoting: Joseph Hewitt

Lancemates are a problem. Usually when I'm trying to get salvage I leave them in town. There should be a way to tell them to back off when you're attempting to force a surrender... how should that work?

Perhaps a new key command/menu that lets you give orders to lancemates instead of talking to them? It would be nice if you could command robots like that, too.

[Joseph Hewitt]

What should the order do, though? Don't attack the PC's target? Don't attack downed mecha? Stop attacking entirely?

[Anticheese(Guestmode )]

Quoting: Joseph Hewitt

What should the order do, though? Don't attack the PC's target? Don't attack downed mecha? Stop attacking entirely?

Have a new command, say "c" or "C" that opens up a cursor display, You can select an NPC (Ally or Enemy) and give it orders such as "Concentrate fire on this guy!" (Against enemies) or "Cover me!"

I think it would be feasable for at least 10 of theese commands to cover most proberbal circumstances...

[macksting]

Alternatively, you could just put in an "I'm gonna take him on man-to-man!" option, causing your lancemates to withdraw as quickly as possible from the battle, leaving the area. Might be easy to impliment, and seems in-genre to me.
Granted, any time I can tell my lancemates or wingmen to cover me, I'm a happy camper.

Somebody here was saying that, in general, high-damage impact weaponry deals nice damage to pilots as compared to picking the mech apart with small guns. The small guns, mind you, allows you to arrive at ejection, but yes, Savins and Vadels require a slightly different tactic. So I'm trying out an artilleryperson to see if this works.

[Anticheese]

Quoting: peter

Yeah, what you suggest is similar to what I do, except I don't usually get up close before my lancemates destroy them. Is Mecha-Fu a gearhead 2 thing? Or do you mean the Kung-Fu talent, which works for mecha also.

Mecha-Fu is my word for using arms/legs/tails to attack other Mecha, Having Kung-Fu is a nice extra.

Quoting: peter

What do you do about your lancemates while you're trying to capture something? Or do you fight at Warhammer arena?

I usually dont get lancemates untill day 14, Not only for the attack benefit but for the fact that they make great cannon fodder.

The Warhammer is a great place to pick up scrap Mecha, its where I've learned most of the dirty tricks.

Later on in the game it makes sense to get 5 ranks in Intimidate, Not only does it help with bater segments but it improves your chances of the enemy ejecting...

---

@Joseph

Could we expect to see Lancemate commands? If they can make it into GH2 that would be great, If they could make it into both GH's then that would be even better.

[Joseph Hewitt]

Quoting: Anticheese

Could we expect to see Lancemate commands? If they can make it into GH2 that would be great, If they could make it into both GH's then that would be even better.

I think you can definitely expect them in GH2, but whether or not they'll be back-ported to GH1 will depend on how much the aibrain unit is modified between now and then. I wouldn't hold out much hope for it, though.

[Anticheese]

Mixed blessing there, The first 9 words are a case of "Yay!"

The rest says "Oh bugger."

On the brighter side I have heard of plans to port GH1 into the GH2 engine, So perhaps if that is done...

[peter]

Anticheese: what kind of sucess rate do you have on killing pilots in torso-cockpits when you're really trying to capture a mecha?  I don't think I do much better than 20%, except by immobilising them and then damaging them very gradually, waiting for them to eject.

 Against mecha without cockpit armor, single-fire armorpiercing weapons (PHS-8, or Battle cannon in single fire) sometimes hit the cockpit, and this works well.

 The game could use some long-range (max 96 to 120) armorpiercing missiles.  The ammo could be heavier than normal.  "Shaped Charge" missiles.  Not very anime, more current high-tech.  

 I haven't really tried mecha fighting very often.  I'll have to go fight at warhammer until I'm facing mecha worth capturing.  Heh, I just got the argoseyer and the gladius and gave them to my lancemates.  I'd rather keep my Chimentaro, because I'm used to its weapon mix, and I have to stop myself from spending way too much time messing with my mecha.

[macksting]

My usual solution to the issue of spending too much time messing with my mecha, late in the game, is to sell off about 80% of my captures, stripping them if I think they have bits that are fun (like Chameleon heads and arms, Buru Buru beam guns, and a few tails) and hacking the rest of them apart with machete to get my fix in.
My storage mecha (plural) are also kept for this purpose. So many extra pieces!
If I'm actually in the mood to drastically improve something, I'll pick up a Gigas or a Vespa (yes, I do love extremes) and start playing around with all of the above equipment on how I can mess with them, tweak them out, and generally make them invulnerable.
The ECM's and such are always the spendiest part...

[peter]

When I see a class 6 ECM, a class 9 tarcomp, a class 10 sensor, or a class 7 arc jet or overcharger, I buy several.  I leave them in the field HQ not in any mecha, so I can have them delivered wherever I want.  If I put them in a storage mecha, I'd sometimes say "it's not worth sending the whole mecha here, I don't really need that part right now".  But if I can just pay 150$ to have an arc jet shipped wherever I am, I'll probably do it.

 It's not wading through the piles of salvage that's the problem for me, it's deciding what I want in my mecha, and agonizing forever about the tradeoffs, and what kind of strategy I want to use in combat.  I've gotten to the point where I can relax and be confident that my strategy of "kick their asses with my uber-skills that I spent millions training" doesn't require optimal equipment or a the most manoeverable mecha.  Just something that can skim fast and switch to walking to turn fast, and has lots of overchargers.

[macksting]

I confess too much fondness for the pure action of fiddling. The one time I made a character without Mecha Engineering, I never finished the game.
I suppose leaving them in HQ is the better idea.

Such classy equipment is depressingly rare! I'm prone to put in token efforts, like Class 4 or 5's, just for fiddling's sake.