Armored Core V

[Seraphic]

Which order missions are you talking about? granted I did all the later ones with a friend I didn't think any would be particularly problematic solo.

I really haven't fooled with energy weapons at all, I tend to stick with "real" weapons like explosives and ballistics. what exactly are you finding troublesome?

I don't quite remember because Order missions, ironically, are difficult to follow in order or remember the number or location due to FROM's idiotic interface. When you beat all the missions, do they at least give you a chronological list?? Instead of that useless Order mission icon, they could have at least stamped each one with its designated number instead of requiring you to highlight it with the pointer!!

The mission I am talking about was somewhere in the 70s range, right before you begin your marathon against Zodiac ACs. The ACs aren't a big deal, but swarming you with dozens and dozens of missile pods and enemies isn't fair.

You know the general rule where you're supposed to be able to destroy an AC in about 5 to 10 seconds if you're equipped with its armor weakness? For me KE and CE is fine, but lately when I encounter a TE-weak enemy, my pulse MG and pulse gun takes like 2min to take down an AC. That's what I mean when I say TE weapons don't seem to have a proper damage output.

[VR7]

Just to clarify about the 5-10 second rule thing, it's not really a rule of thumb for combat; it's more of a rule of thumb for AC weapon design. Moreover it only really applies in an ideal setting where the enemy AC is a huge joke (does not move, does not even shoot) and lets you shoot the crap out of it. When fighting higher difficulty ACs or humans, don't expect to kill them within the first 10 seconds of encountering them unless they left you a nasty attack opening.

Because the garage test AC isn't a good choice for testing weaponry, your best guinea pigs are Flame Fly and the samurai tank duo.

Use two different types of damage weapons on an enemy, not just focusing on one. You should also look for what the enemy's defense caters towards, i.e. if you encounter an AC that specializes in CE defense but is weak in KE and TE defense (like a sniper), a standard rifle (KE damage) + pulse machinegun (TE damage) would make short work of him.

TE weapons generally cater towards heavy AC types. As primary weapons on a light/medium AC, they aren't anything exceptional and most of them can potentially drain energy needed for boosting around. If you want to equip a TE weapon, look for something that doesn't drain much and is useful in a support/harassment/etc. role.

Here's what I found a while back but forgot to note here: As another rule of thumb, light and medium ACs favour KE and/or CE defense; heavy ACs and tanks favour TE defense; snipers favour CE defense. This was a pattern I found when experimenting with building different AC types in the garage. On one hand this means you will have to play with parts more to optimize your defense ratings on different leg types, but it's also an indicator of what enemy ACs are possibly weak against since it's actually pretty hard to build optimal defense ratings.

I think heavy RJs count as medium ACs.

[mobiusdiablo]

Also, one of our territories is on fire. We need to go defend it sometime.

Tox, yeah the team looks full, and I don't see many people on, but I can't remove people until I can fill the empty spots with people who are guaranteed to be active. I suppose that time will come when someone personally recruits a member or when one of our friends on MT lets me know that they've picked up the game. =o

Again?! I had to defend one with a single merc (I died, but the mission was accomplished anyway).

I don't know if it's just me, but I can never seem to hop on when anyone else is, and it feels kinda dull. Thinking of joining another team to get more action as well and beef up my skills.

[Seraphic]

If you want to leave you have to beat me 1-on-1 first. =D

I haven't been on lately due to focusing on physics and having some out-of-town business last weekend, but this weekend should be fairly open.

Maybe it'd be easier if we all just posted our general schedules somewhere so we can coordinate?

What was your conquest-defense mission like, Mobius? Did another team attack or was it just AI?

[mobiusdiablo]

Well I'm screwed But if we do that, that'll defeat the purpose of me leaving so... XD

Schedule wise, I'm technically available most of the time, but I tend to like to be on every other day, and since I typically do multiple things at once... yeah.

Another team DID attack; this is where the Stronghold/defense missions come in - they'll come in groups of four with an operator I think, though there may be five.

[crashlegacy14]

Here's what I found a while back but forgot to note here: As another rule of thumb, light and medium ACs favour KE and/or CE defense; heavy ACs and tanks favour TE defense; snipers favour CE defense. This was a pattern I found when experimenting with building different AC types in the garage. On one hand this means you will have to play with parts more to optimize your defense ratings on different leg types, but it's also an indicator of what enemy ACs are possibly weak against since it's actually pretty hard to build optimal defense ratings.

I think heavy RJs count as medium ACs.

Reverse jointed legs have good CE and decent KE defenses. The AC I listed earlier has shit for TE defense and I've been eaten alive in as little as three shots from some guns.

If you want to leave you have to beat me 1-on-1 first. =D

What was your conquest-defense mission like, Mobius? Did another team attack or was it just AI?

Defense basically has a team of 4+operator deal with an enemy player team of 4+operator. It's exactly like the missions you launch to take a field.

[Balthasar81]

If anyone wants to team up this weekend and have a specific time that they want can you post it? I wouldn't mind working with everyone again, that first weekend when a lot of people were on was really fun. And I don't think I can defend out territory effectively alone.

[mobiusdiablo]

I'll be on all day, but preferably sometime in the late afternoon/evening will work better for me. And as for my AC, with his Lordship Seraphic's assistance, I've discovered my AC (which I'm now nicknaming and plan on giving it Spallow colors) is not the problem; it performs excellently - with the right pilot. So I'm calling it right now - I suck and I'm a horrible pilot *shot* Nah, but I can use improvement.

[Seraphic]

So it looks like you can't S-rank order mission 76 unless you actually KILL the AC instead of whittling him down to his 'escape threshold' AP. Looks like I'll have to break out an Over Weapon for this one....

I'll be on today after I finish my picture. =o I want to begin our campaign against the southwest territory, but we need at least 5 players online.

[mobiusdiablo]

So it looks like you can't S-rank order mission 76 unless you actually KILL the AC instead of whittling him down to his 'escape threshold' AP. Looks like I'll have to break out an Over Weapon for this one....

I'll be on today after I finish my picture. =o I want to begin our campaign against the southwest territory, but we need at least 5 players online.

Or a pilebanker, if he decides to stay still

Standing by, just waiting for people to show up before booting ACV.

---

Well sadly only Seraphic came, buuuuuuuuuut we now may actually stand a chance in team battles now, as both of us now possess Giga Missiles. I've personally built a new long-range AC for that role, which does relatively well considering I intended it just to be a glorified missile platform.

[Seraphic]

Made some new schematics today:

Installed EN amps into my TE-centric ACs, and the damage output is completely nuts. Having a little bit of trouble with the increased EN drain, though.

Made two mods of Bucky which use a pulse gun and either chaff or jammers. Not entirely sure which is more useful. Probably jammers.

Modded my team point grinding AC to use Jammers in case some ACs drop in on me. I may not be able to win, but I'm going to annoy the living fuck out of you, and fucking pound you with gatlings and HEAT rockets/howitzers while you're paralyzed.

Made a tank that was intended to fight over longer ranges, but rail cannons are absolute garbage. It uses a howitzer cannon instead, which I'm basically using as a grenade-shotgun with some potentially nice range.

After all my tinkering, did one round of Free battle with Bucky-chaff. The other team was all mic users, and my entire team had no mics (at the moment.) The match was in the canyon, so I climbed a high ledge and waited for people. Two ACs went past without noticing me, so I dropped in behind the quad and wailed on him for a bit. He was heavily damaged, but the element of surprise was over, so I retreated and went ahead.

There, I ran into the straggler of the team who didn't advance with his team. You know what happens to the slowest guy on a team? The fastest guy on the other team finds him and out-maneuvers him. So, I kill him, and by the time I regroup with the others, all the enemies had fallen, and we won with no losses.

Also, did I mention that no one on my team had over 29k AP to start with?

Until we can have a day with more people online, I think I'll do free battle for more combat experience, but I really want to do conquest mode. We've lost a bunch of territories.

Who can be there this weekend?

[Outlaw]

Good grief whoever came up with Order Mission 71 must be an evil genius. Please tell me I'm not the only one brought to a screeching halt by this mission.

[mobiusdiablo]

Heeeeello, sorry for my absence. I'll probably be on all weekend, though possibly on and off. Going to try and build a long range version of my AC.

[Seraphic]

Good grief whoever came up with Order Mission 71 must be an evil genius. Please tell me I'm not the only one brought to a screeching halt by this mission.

Yeah, this was the really hard mission I mentioned earlier in the thread. I just S-ranked it today with some experimentation. Here is a general way to do it:

Use CIWS!! Keep your distance, avoid the missiles, and proceed carefully. (Should probably use a gat/battle rifle or something to take out targets.) Make good use of scan mode, recons, and the enemy counter at the bottom-right to make sure you don't overlook any enemies. Try to take out all the other enemies and turrets before engaging the Scavenger.

When fighting the Scavenger, I recommend switching to a laser rifle and just spamming it on him rapid-fire without charging. He'll go down relatively quickly. Just don't stand still, and don't sit in front of it. Expect it to HB to the sides and use cover.

Outside of those strategies, it's just practice and skill.

When trying to get the 'charge master' subquest on the last boss, I dropped all my weapons when he was at critical AP. I missed a few kicks and on the last one, I obviously was going to come up too short, but then he did his blade charge and rammed his head into my foot, killing him, and taking out half my AP. It was hilarious.

Mobius, here are the matches where you hid underground and came out at the last second to kill us: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmpDA_W_dtQ&hd=1 Funny how I died after the timer went out, haha. I uploaded some other vids, but I'm too lazy to link them right now.

Our territories are losing AP, but I can't get anybody to attack, let alone some people to help me defend.

I had a fucking awesome time in Free battle today. I didn't get to record them unfortunately, and I likely won't be able to until I get a new wireless router that won't disconnect every 2min. Here are some highlights:

-People have no idea how to counter tanks. Not even tank players. In one match, there was a tank charging my team, so I went around a building and flanked it. After hitting it from behind for a bit, it turned around and we damage-raced--I won. That tends to happen when I can hit you with 12 VTF missiles simultaneously.

-Destoyed a bunch of people with my shotty/pulse gun ACs.

-In a couple of 2 on 2 matches, my opponent and I kept destroying each other simultaneously. It happened several times in different matches.

-Won about 85% of team matches. I usually ended up with the most damage, but usually with more kills. One team I was on did extremely well. We never even had anyone shot down even once. Unfortunately, I lost contact with them when my ps3 exited the game suddenly on its own.

You know, Free battle is a good way to get in contact with other teams, especially if you can get a hold of teamleaders. If you can friend them on psn, we can have an easier time arranging Invasion/Defense missions with other teams. Get on it!

[Outlaw]

Use CIWS!! Keep your distance, avoid the missiles, and proceed carefully. (Should probably use a gat/battle rifle or something to take out targets.) Make good use of scan mode, recons, and the enemy counter at the bottom-right to make sure you don't overlook any enemies. Try to take out all the other enemies and turrets before engaging the Scavenger.

When fighting the Scavenger, I recommend switching to a laser rifle and just spamming it on him rapid-fire without charging. He'll go down relatively quickly. Just don't stand still, and don't sit in front of it. Expect it to HB to the sides and use cover.

Outside of those strategies, it's just practice and skill.

Duly noted, I am not looking forward to S-Ranking that one.
I did managed to beat it though; kept on trying till I exhausted all my frustration and just kind of got "in the zone" so to speak.

[Seraphic]

Experimenting with the 'firing stability' stat for arms. To be honest, it doesn't make sense for 'arm stability' to affect a weapon's rate of fire. It should affect accuracy. But whatever--a lot of my schematics shoot much faster now. Funnily enough, my shotty schematics were using arms with some of the worse stability beforehand, so I swapped all of them out.

Also, my lightweight biped 'Rust' is now a complete monster.

Fought the final boss with a tank, going in with the full intention of dying horribly, but ended up winning and taking no damage at all. And I didn't kill him before he could attack me. I just dodged everything he threw at me, surprisingly. I think they reduce the hitbox of the blade charging attack for tanks or something. Dual autocannons (with the 5 reload speed) is hilarious.

It looks like we're getting another season reset tomorrow. Who is available this week and this weekend to take territories?

[Seraphic]

Okay, I've started a huge campaign on the Mining Sector territory. I dropped a bunch of territories down to 0 AP and got us up to 325k team points by myself. Now we just have to wait for those territories to be handed over to Men of Honor and we can go into Conquest to fight them for it. Right now our Conquest cost is only 50k.

After we get our team rating up again, we can pair up to really start earning points from campaigning against 10k territories. We can earn at least 50k points each run!

***

Also, why do subcomputers have a "missile computation" stat when you can't equip missiles and subs at the same time???

[Turinu]

Maybe it computes the trajectory of incoming missiles? Lol.

Sorry I haven't been on in ages. Hopefully I'll have some free time to get on this weekend, catch up, get thoroughly drilled in how to play again, and do stuff with you guys. :<

[Outlaw]

Also, why do subcomputers have a "missile computation" stat when you can't equip missiles and subs at the same time???

Doesn't the description say that subcomputers also help your teammates?

P.S.
Just got around to making the ubiguitous perpetual Glide Boost AC.

[Seraphic]

Looks like the top two teams in Mining Sector capitalized on my hard work yesterday and snatched up all the territories I freed up. God, we really need to coordinate our work a bit. How do I get a hold of you guys, anyway? Bah, I'll just break 'em down again...! >=o

I think I'll be on most of today and Saturday. Please let me know when you'll be present. If you see me on psn, don't hesitate to message me if you need me for anything.