Mech Style Game
Hints:
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Keep moving. You are in a twelve meter (or larger) tall metal monstrosity,
if you are standing still, it would take a blind man facing the wrong way
to miss you. So mobility is necessary, keep moving or you will die quickly.
Also most mechs are capable of a torso twist, a twist that let’s you bring
your upper torso and arm weapons into play without changing your direction
of movement. Most people overlook the value of these movements. It allows
the player to fire upon targets that may not lie in the path to your mission
objective. In addition it allows for some maneuvers that would be otherwise
impossible (such as the famed Circle of Death: a pair or more of mechs turn
their torsos 90 degrees in the same direction and run around a target firing).
It also makes a player harder to hit, but it also makes aiming slightly more
difficult. Manage your weapons wisely. Energy weapons are usually unlimited
so do not worry too much about accuracy with them. Energy weapons are an
effective mix of power to heat/power drain ratio, especially considering
that they are unlimited. Ballistic weapons are a different thing altogether.
They usually are effective at longer ranges, cause a much lower amount of
heat/power drain but they do have an ammo limitation, you can only fire the
weapon as long as you have ammunition for it. But, even with this limitation,
they are still extremely effective due to the fact that they can cause a lot
of damage in a short amount of time. But one does need to be very accurate
and one must try not to take too much damage, when an ammo driven mech starts
taking large amounts of damage, there is the possibility of ammo explosion.
And when there is an ammo explosion there is the possibility of fracticide
(when the explosion of one piece of ammo causes the detonation of another
piece of ammo, and that piece of ammunition then causes the explosion of
others and so on). If the game you are playing gives you the option, be sure
to design your mechs intelligently. In a game where you can effectively
blast off parts of your target, your body parts can be blown off too.
Usually the first parts ot be destroyed are the arms, and with the arms
go whatever weapons happened to be located in the arms at that time. To
avoid losing your primary weapons, do not place them in a location that is
easily destroyed. Ammo weapons are slightly different. You want to place
them near the outskirts of the mech. When ammo explodes it causes flash
damage to whatever parts and components are around it. So do not place
ammo in the head where an ammo explosion will kill you.
Take the time to aim. With smaller and lighter mechs it does not make
much of a difference. Those mechs cannot take much damage anywhere and
a few shots can take them out. But with the larger mechs, those who have
the heavy armor and can take a lot of punishment you need to direct your
fire to vulnerable locations to avoid the hour long pounding on an assault
mech trying to pound through the armor. Take advantage of opponent’s
weaknesses. If you are in a faster and more maneuverable, if lighter
armed and armored mech, than you opponent, run circles around him, make
it difficult to connect with any of his weapons. Most of the time if you
are in something lighter and you are engaged with something heavier, it
is very common for the heavy to carry weapons that can destroy you with
just a few hits. The opposite is also true: do not let your opponent run
circles around you, it could be a diversion to distract you from the
heavy guns that are coming up from the rear that are planning to pulverize
you into something that looks like metallic grape jelly. Never be afraid
to change you tactics. The tactics for a light, fast mech will not work
for a larger, heavily armed monster mech. The same applies for different
types of the same weight class. A large, heavy medium range mech will
need to be piloted differently than the large, heavy long range mech
that has a lack of close range weapons. Always know when to throw the
book out the window. While in most of the situations the usual rules
of combat will suffice to bring you victory if you are skilled enough,
there will always be occasions when the rules of combat will only get
you killed. Game designers always love to throw in missions that test
your inventiveness and make you break out of your set ways.
