QUOTE (TopHat @ Aug 13 2009, 06:51 PM)
Sounds like a great game, I'll give it a go
Interesting about the Slave Mechas.. methinks this game is somehow related to MS... and that there may be no mechs in MS at all!
W00T 100 posts
alright, first of all, if any of you recall robot concept art and 3d graphics we thought were for mechscape, the slave looks exactly like it, so that may have been concept art for this, or for mechscape, or perhaps both.
Second, you guys are complaining about unbalance and overpowered Slaves. Let me lay out for you my awesome tactics.
I started this game in multiplayer with everything but a slave. I did tests on the various weapons in testing grounds and chassis and found that redundancy is the best. What you guys are getting killed with is gun slaves. They lose their versatility in favor of one extreme of combat, so obviously if you try to charge in you will get torn to shreds. Aquila dies the absolute fastest in roughly a second of being exposed to a gun slave.
So, how do you fight something that is unrivaled at short range? The Slave has lots of hp and can take a hit. The thing I have found is that mostly everyone uses slaves with one type of weapon, usually chain guns or flak cannons or something. So I started using a Golem with redundancy in mind. I equipped it with missiles, lock-on system, and heavy rockets. The result was fantastic. I had no close-range firepower, but in games with other people, the combination of one or two slave teammates covering close quarters for me and me sitting back and providing artillery strikes as cover led to winning every fricken game I have played so far except one. I make or break all of the games so far because I actually take a much-needed supporting role. I also get lots of points, and half of the time I'm in first place. My Golem had slave parts equipped for maximal missile storage.
I then tried different chassis and found the Slave to work best for missile redundancy. It can carry something like twice the amount of missiles. I replaced the lock-on missiles (rapier) with the other ones that have twice the area effect but are unguided. My first upgrade was the shoulders that let you have 6 missile slots vs 3 for Slave chassis. I then used the Golem and Slave chassis with these parts and it's absolutely awesome. I now have two primary builds for multiplayer. The first is a Golem hybrid artillery/death from above platform. It has two artillery guns, two heavy missiles, and the rest are those unguided missiles I mentioned. The second is a Slave chassis-based dedicated missile platform.
My strategies generally involve staying away from the enemy and letting my teammates keep them away and do the up close fighting. I then simply arc my missiles at enemies as half the time other players stand still, unknowingly. What I do is I wait for my Heavy missiles to fill up, then launch a salvo of 2-3 to soften targets with full hp or outright kill them. Then I will finish the target with my lighter missiles if they are in range, or just blast them again with another heavy missile. I alternate missiles depending on how many I have. If I have lighter missiles and someone is in range, I blast them with 4-5 and that usually kills. If someone gets close to me, I have nothing to deal with them except missiles so I mostly just run or a teammate is close by to help, but often times I still have a few missiles left in reserve and so I wait for opportunities to launch them all at once and spam that target out of existence. I start running before they get into close range so often times their mini-guns miss me while I blast away.
Half the time I just die if they get up close as missiles and rockets take time to fire.
With my Golem chassis, I get more offensive and closer up, killing lighter Aquila chassis with artillery, and alternating missiles for heavier targets. The duel artillery guns work well close range as long as the enemy mech has some distance between you and him, and if you are on a hill or he is on a hill it is especially good as they try to get up close to me and I just keep blasting. The artillery takes a lot of hp with each hit, but again it's slow, so it's best to bombard it from longer ranges. I have found the Aquila dies in a few hits from artillery, and a few more for the heavier chassis. I don't like tortoise as they are the only thing that contests me at long range, but I still outgun them because they are just sitting ducks due to their slow crawling speed. It's very easy to kill them if you have 4 heavy missiles loaded and an arc.
Key to this is to use a scanner to extend your arc so you can lay down precise fire. Because of the game mechanics, mechs move slow and are predictable. If you launch missiles, if the first is on target all of them should hit assuming you aimed them all well. If the person is moving, I just lead them and fire to where I can tell they will be.
Anyways, Golem and Slave chassis with expanded shoulder with 6x missile slots and you have yourself a good missile boat.
I'm working through the campaign and saving up cubes to get some other weapons and modules. I want to test out the sniper cannon and other things but most of what you need to pwn all of the gun-slave spammers comes to you by default and you don't even need to finish the whole tutorial. All else is free style.
Another thing I have been toying with is an Aquila chassis based aerial death machine. As I unlock better reactors/capacitors, I realize that with it's four slots for modules, you set up three capacitors for the aquila and a targeter and have enough energy to stay in the air for a good deal of time.
If you get some advanced modules that give you lots of storage, set up one reactor, two capacitors, and one targeter. Then equip it with non-energy based weapons. I would say chain guns are good, but they have a very narrow field they can shoot at, which is one of the disadvantages of gun-slaves. If you are high above them or out of their direct field of fire, they are pretty useless to hit you even if you are right in their face. Which means taking advantage of this to make an air-based bombing platform sounds like a great idea. Missiles, bombs, heavy weapons with a wide firing arc, plasma weapons if you are good at managing energy.
