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Mech Style Game

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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.