The Art of Mech War (III) Technology II

[Strategy, Tactic, Warfare]

III. TECHNOLOGY
5. MECH ASSEMBLY


"Acquire a Niode Mech and it will fight like a Titan, equip it wisely and it will fight like a God of War"

"Only when you know every detail of your Mech, you can begin to improve it"


Each Mech Class develops different capacities or skills that make them unique compared to others. The task of a good Mech pilot, is to know well the potential of his Mech and optimize it, to improve the chances of victory.
5.1. EQUIPMENT STRUCTURE


5.1.1. Analyze the Mech Capabilities.


 A Mech obtains the ability to equip modules in the following structural parts:

 Cockpit: 
The modules located in this area are principally aimed to improve shot accuracy (precision).

 Chassis:  
This area normally hosts the maneuverability and avoidance systems (dodge).
Engine: 
The modules located in the reactor area mainly improve the speed of the Mech.

 Shield: 
The external structure or exoskeleton protects the rest of the Mech, preventing enemy damage through the installation of shield modules.


 You can install an equipment gear through the Hangar >> Equipment. 
  1. Dragging the right piece in its corresponding slot (a cockpit in any of the blue slots for cockpits, chassis in the purple slots, engine in the yellow slots and shields in the white slots)
  2. Double clicking the desired equipment gear directly from the equipment storage shown to the right side of your Hangar (after select the Equipment option). 
Keep in mind that only can be equipped those equipment pieces that are valid for the Mech tonnage that you were assembling.

 The amount of structural slots increases depending on the Mech tonnage, its structural potential (the upgrading bonuses) and the practised upgrades to unlock that potential.

 Each one of the structural equipment areas allows the installation of modules that will increase the manufacturing capacities of the Mech or provide them with new capacities.

 But from all the skills that can be acquired and increased with the support of the installed equipment modules, it is very important to keep in mind the main skills, that are acquired especially through the following structural areas:

 Structure Area >> Main Skill source (Optimal value to aim) 





  • Cockpit >> Precision (Optimal value: 96%)
  • Chassis >> Dodge (Optimal value: ~ 65%)
  • Engine >> Speed (Optimal value unlimited)
  • Shields >> Shield (Optimal value unlimited)

Therefore, when choosing a cockpit, chassis or engine module, you must ensure that the main skill is among the highest provided in the market, or at least with the best values that you need, but keeping balance to avoid to exceed the maximum value for precision or dodge.
5.2. INITIAL EVALUATION 

 5.2.1. Analyze the Mech Capabilities

 First, you should examine what are the strong points and which are the weak points in the Mech you are equipping. If it helps you keep these aspects in mind, write them on a spreadsheet or in a paper sheet.

 Based on the skills of the Mech, you can calculate the equipment pieces to acquire to reach the optimal values ​​of the main and the secondary skills.

5.2.2. Comparison and Collection Goal  .

 Check the markets to determinate the Equipment you need to optimize the Mech according your preliminary planning.


5.3. EQUIPMENT ACQUISITION

 After the evaluation, you will know the skills aimed for your Mech. A very important question is to keep building the main skills on your Mech with optimal values.

 These are the objectives when deciding which equipment to choose for your Mech,

5.3.1. Effectiveness
  • Priority: Prioritizes the equipment choices to optimize the values ​​of the main skills. 
    • In general, a good pilot should keep those skills with the values ​​as close as possible to the optimization objective or above (Precision, Dodge), or the highest if there is no optimization objective (Speed, Shielding)
"Speed is the essence of War"


  • Synergy: Enhance the secondary skills that were useful in your build and choose equipment that included the skills that best empower each other. 
    • Once covered the main skills, you can take care of the secondary:
      • What skills does the Mech benefits?
      • Watch for synergy, enhancing the useful powers you may find in the Mech's build and upgrade sequence.
      • Ignore those skills whose presence is negligible or that are not present in your planning.
    • It is also possible to include skills that the Mech lacks for its inherent build, but remember that it will always be easier to enhance those capabilities you already have inherently in your build.

  • Concentration: Maintaining high levels of a few skills is better than diversifying into many skills with low values.

 5.3.2. Efficiency

  • Economy: Choose crystal pieces when the benefit of the Niode equipment were very small. Choose those pieces that within their cost, better benefit you. If a piece of Niodes offers a small benefit with respect to its crystal alternative, reserve the Niodes for a change that were more advantageous.
    • Search first among the crystal equipment. There are some crystal modules that are very desirable options and hardly replaceable by Niode equipment, which although they exceed these crystal pieces, offer a very small benefit for the cost involved in their acquisition.
    • Although the most frequent thing will be to find some Niode pieces really superior to crystal, you have to be cautious and compare well ones and others.
  • Recycling: If an equipment module turns obsolete, it may be a good idea to sell it to recover some Niodes with which to obtain new useful equipment, but caution, make sure you won't be needing in the future the equip to replace.
5.4. SKILLS & SYNERGY 


Among the many skills, some of them work better when they are used in combination with others, harmonizing and improving each other.

5.4.1. Crit-Kill

This is one of the most powerful skills, since it will destroy the successfully impacted Mech, regardless of the amount of damage caused to the opponent or the Shields he were using.

 It is always useful to keep an elevated Crit-Kill skill on your Mechs, but it is particularly useful to destroy overpowered Bosses in Missions and Raids. 

5.4.2. Massive Damage

If you had a Mech with Double Damage Augmentation (2x Damage), then why not equip and enhance all the possible augmentations so the shots became a serious threat for the enemy?

 These three skills are definitively synergistic and a good idea to build together:

 x1.5 Damage
x2 Damage
x3 Damage

 These, can be also combined with a single Weapon type damage enhancement to increase more if possible the augmentation.

 A 100% weapon damage increase is as much as a 100% in 2x Damage!

 Lab Test Sample:

 Let's see how the different augmentations can affect a successful hit causing 1,000 damage.

 A: x1.5 Damage 100%
B. x2 Damage 100%
C: x3 Damage 100%
D: Laser Damage +100%

 Combined effect:

 (A): 1,500 damage
(B): 2,000 damage
(C): 3,000 damage
(D): 2,000 damage
(A+B): 3,000 damage
(A+C): 4,500 damage
(B+C): 6,000 damage
(A+B+C): 9,000 damage
(A+B+C+D): 18,000 damage
We can verify that the damage increases drastically the more augmentations we could combine.

Massive damage is the fastest way to eliminate an opponent, but if it is not combined with other optimizing skills that improved the performance of your Mech, you will be producing an overkill.

5.4.3. Overkill

We call overkill the massive damage that goes far beyond what is necessary to eliminate a target.

 Although the massive damage will undoubtedly be effective to destroy an enemy Mech, it will not be efficient. The way to turn it efficient will be using that high damage to affect additional targets, combining the overkill with multi-targeting skills.
5.4.4. Optimizing Massive Dmage and Overkills

Combining an overkill with multi-targeting skills will drastically improve the Mech performance.
  • Burn: Apply a percentage of the damage caused as burning damage every round after a successful hit. (Check Burn for further details)
  • Fork: Apply an additional percentage of your standard damage to a second Mech near to your main target (randomly targets the Mech located above or below the main target (if there are no targets, the effect does not apply).
  • Splash: Apply an additional percentage of your standard damage to share among those Mechs near your main target (affects to both, the Mech above and beneath the main target. If there are no targets, the effect does not apply).
  • Trample: Apply an additional percentage of your standard damage to the Mech behind your main target (if there are no targets, the effect does not apply).
  • Wide Fork: Apply an additional percentage of your standard damage to every other Mech in the current enemy active battle line (if there are no targets, the effect does not apply).
The more of these skills you may equip in your Mech, will increase the synergy and thus, the caused damage in a great way.

5.4.5. Disruptive Skills

Other Skills with a high synergy to consider are:

  • Freeze & Slow. These two separated skills are very useful to disrupt the opponent's Mech, but combined, their different effects will practically leave the target out of combat long enough to let your destructive skills deal with take it down in a permanent way.
5.5. EFFECTS TO AVOID
There are some effects skill type that constitutes flaws or vulnerabilities that are advised to be avoided as can turn what in appearance could seem a good Equipment Piece as a curse.
  • Weapon Type Damage Vulnerabilities: Caution. In general, it is desirable to avoid them, although if the piece of equipment is very good and the vulnerability can be countered with the equipment of Shields, it could be under control.
  • Kickback: It is usually a good practice to ignore any piece of equipment that includes this undesirable effect. Equip gear with this effect is the best way to self-sabotage your Mech and help the enemy to destroy it.
  • Speed Reduction: Another way to retrogress a Mech is to reduce its speed. Speed is on of the first order skills, so your goal is to increase it as much as possible, not to reduce it. Avoid whenever you could those pieces of equipment with speed reduction, unless you had equipped your Mech with a so high speed that allowed you to sacrifice a small amount.
5.6. FINAL ADVICES

  • It is of interest to keep a Wish List for the Equipment you need. That will save you from acquiring by mistake redundant gear or pieces that weren't a priority for your Mechs.
  • Try to stick to your needs, or else you could end up with more equipment pieces than necessary of a certain type, and deficit in which you really needed.
  • Acquire as soon as possible the Crystal pieces that you may use to full equip every Mech. Even if you are aiming to fully equip it with Niodes, temporary filling the Equipment slots with crystal modules will improve its performance.
  • Wait for the Equipment Sales to acquire the Niode Equipment. Even a small discount might save a high amount of Niodes in the long term of time.