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[Frumple]

Mm, yeah. Beyond that, it's worth noting in regards to the late game that, unless you're specifically limiting yourself, there's very little preventing you from becoming very skilled in pretty much everything. Once you can churn through a dozen and change sewer levels, the sewer cleaning missions can very, very easily pull in over a million in cash per run, which can then be milled into the trainers for even greater skill gains (which can go into a bit of a positive feedback loop -- more money means more skills means more money), ultimately resulting in you having skills in the 10+ (or as arbitrarily high as you feel like grinding for) in everything with very little in the way of actual effort. GH1 is... pretty easy to break, really.

And yeah, storm pistols are pretty great. The Novastorm Buru itself is kinda' junky (like most of the Burus, really... better than the worst, but not exactly good), but stripping its weapons for something a bit more dodgy is almost always a great idea.

[beorn080]

The Buru Buru series really exists only to be stripped of weapons. The actual chassis has innate penalties to its stats, though the weapons tend to be pretty decent.

Personally, if you want to start with a decent mech, either go for the loaner, which, IIRC, is fairly decent, or head down to the temple in the SW part of the desert, eject from your mech outside, then head in and find the mechanic. I forget exactly what the reqs are, I think a lawful temperment, but he'll give you an Escher. Nothing too fancy, but has a rather potent anti air super heavy particle cannon mounted in a turret. Plus, the turret itself makes a lovely place to mount weapons.

Finally, for GH1, strongly consider installing some potent personal scale weapons in your mech. Rapid fire bazooka's being the go to choice for me early on. DC 22, which turns into DC 2x10, armor piercing, good to hit, 6 shots, and I think one or two other nice traits. Best of all, the near zero weight of them means you can install 10-20 of em with no penalties, plus the scaling up part of it means you will almost always hit.

[Bouchart]

Also, early on if you can get your hands on a drone launcher, it really helps out.  They're powerful enough to take out the low end mechs themselves.

You don't even need high skills to handle sewer missions.  Just use toxin grenades.  A single toxin grenade can clear most of any level.  It comes in handy at 200+ meters.  On my best attempt I got to about 264 meters and got nearly $4 million for it.

[Seriyu]

Mecha fighting is there for style points!

But yeah not really effective, understandably, as much as I'd like it to be.

(only vaguely on topic but I'd also like to say that the dev has done a great job with robot designs, a lot of the time you can clearly peg things as "gundam-ey" or "battletech ey" or whatever but his genuinely look pretty legit! a lot of the slimmer robots do get close to gundam but even then they look pretty unique)

[Frumple]

Oh, either of the unarmed styles are plenty effective once they get into the special attack stuff... if they ever actually get used. The problem with 'em is that the further you get into the game, the less likely that is. Even the other melee style (whatever the blazes that thing was called) is good mostly because it governs shields as well. Technically it'd cover THROW (And better, THROW RETURN) weapons too, but I don't recall if GH1 had any mecha scale T+R weapons. Can mod them in, of course (Or throw/return tokens! You can mod in mecha scale tokens without too terribly much effort.), but they're at best quite rare in the base game.

Still. Iirc, it only ("only") takes somewhere between twenty and thirty points of unarmed before you can walk up to a mecha on foot and kung-fu chop it to death. Which is just glorious. Completely impractical, but glorious.

[gimlet]

Isn't Mecha Fighting the skill used for all shield blocks - ranged and melee?   ISTR that's the case, and why I always tried to work the skill into my mix...

[beorn080]

Mecha fighting has one serious advantage over any of the other methods. It deals concussion damage straight to the pilot, in much higher amounts then mecha weapons. In other words, it lets you get whole mechs as scrap.

And yes, there is a guy who beat the final boss of the game, on foot, unarmed.

Also, drone launchers are overpowered in both versions. IIRC there are 1 shot and 6 shot variants. As a missile launcher, if you find a 6 shot, you can fire all 6 shots at once. 6 new targets appearing next to the enemy lance makes things VERY easy.

Oh, and for theft purposes, Tech Vulture is an amazing talent.

[Frumple]

Isn't Mecha Fighting the skill used for all shield blocks - ranged and melee?   ISTR that's the case, and why I always tried to work the skill into my mix...

... quite possibly. It's entirely likely I've forgotten, heh. I know it's armed combat or whatev' that governs it for SF:0 stuff (and unarmed doesn't do jack defensively without a trait or two), but if there's not a separate thing for mecha melee methods, then... yeah, it'd still be good for that alone.

And yeah, mecha-punching stuff to death has consistently been roughly the second best method of getting full scrap (the other being headshotting stuff with a cockpit in the head).

[blazing glory]

Mecha fighting has one serious advantage over any of the other methods. It deals concussion damage straight to the pilot, in much higher amounts then mecha weapons. In other words, it lets you get whole mechs as scrap.

And yes, there is a guy who beat the final boss of the game, on foot, unarmed.

Also, drone launchers are overpowered in both versions. IIRC there are 1 shot and 6 shot variants. As a missile launcher, if you find a 6 shot, you can fire all 6 shots at once. 6 new targets appearing next to the enemy lance makes things VERY easy.

Oh, and for theft purposes, Tech Vulture is an amazing talent.

So if I get good at punching in a mecha then I can get intact mecha more often?

[beorn080]

Mecha fighting has one serious advantage over any of the other methods. It deals concussion damage straight to the pilot, in much higher amounts then mecha weapons. In other words, it lets you get whole mechs as scrap.

And yes, there is a guy who beat the final boss of the game, on foot, unarmed.

Also, drone launchers are overpowered in both versions. IIRC there are 1 shot and 6 shot variants. As a missile launcher, if you find a 6 shot, you can fire all 6 shots at once. 6 new targets appearing next to the enemy lance makes things VERY easy.

Oh, and for theft purposes, Tech Vulture is an amazing talent.

So if I get good at punching in a mecha then I can get intact mecha more often?

Yes. Granted you still need to get close to the mechs, but yes. Effectively, there are two types of damage that get dealt in mech combat. Regular and Concussion. Mecha Fighting does a LOT of concussion damage vs regular. Concussion is low amounts, but it hits the pilot. So, basically, you're killing off the pilots and stealing the mechs.

Other ways to do so are to get intimidate up, which causes foes to eject, and to pick up tech vulture and a LOT of repair. I wouldn't swear to this, but I think I've gotten full mechs with Tech Vulture in GH2 with a LOT of repair.

[Seriyu]

So wait do mecha get special unarmed attacks? I know personal scale do, I've seen iron monkies doing those random name punch attacks, but I wasn't aware mecha got anything special doing pure unarmed, rather then throwing weapons (that don't exist).

Also while I'm here, my one beef with GH2 was that every dungeon had no atmosphere, and as a result any armor that wasn't a space suit had no use, it bugged the hell out of me; does that lessen later on/is there a way around it later on?

[gimlet]

"cockpits in the head" - haha yeah, I remember keeping a file open with a list of those, *boom* salvage.

And looking in the docs, in gh1 it appears to be Mecha *Weapons* that is used to "parry with a weapon or shield".  I know in gh2 some of the skills were combined, that's probably what I was thinking of.  For sure in the later game it gets really hard to hit with non-thrown weapons, even extendable ones, because it pays to keep your mech moving pretty fast, and the enemies move at a pretty decent clip too.   And it's possible to stuff in a LOT of thrusters and really zip around - add on stuff like "Born to Fly" for more bonuses    I don't remember if "Stunt Driving" applied while flying, I'm pretty sure it did while hovering though, and it's relatively easy to pile on enough Arc Thrusters to hover pretty dang fast...

[Frumple]

Also while I'm here, my one beef with GH2 was that every dungeon had no atmosphere, and as a result any armor that wasn't a space suit had no use, it bugged the hell out of me; does that lessen later on/is there a way around it later on?

There's actually a handful of GH2 dungeon areas with air (particularly notable are fungal infections, which are decent dosh), but no, most of them are sans-atmosphere. You are kinda' in space, heh. Most of the better armor in the game is sealed, though, and if you really don't like it you can mod in stuff to get around it pretty easily.

[beorn080]

All of the best armor is sealed. And by best, I'm talking the stat boosting armors. Those are REALLY nice, if horrifically expensive. An Allure skinsuit always helps, and some of the powered armor gives some incredible boosts.

[EuchreJack]

For sure in the later game it gets really hard to hit with non-thrown weapons, even extendable ones, because it pays to keep your mech moving pretty fast, and the enemies move at a pretty decent clip too.   And it's possible to stuff in a LOT of thrusters and really zip around - add on stuff like "Born to Fly" for more bonuses    I don't remember if "Stunt Driving" applied while flying, I'm pretty sure it did while hovering though, and it's relatively easy to pile on enough Arc Thrusters to hover pretty dang fast...

Same is true for almost the entirety of GH2.  Since most fights occur in space, most fights occur under flying conditions.  Go ranged or go home.  I'd suggest at least one energy weapon so you can still fight at range after your ammo runs out.  It's possible to keep firing energy weapons without power, they just don't do as much damage.

Weapon configurations vary drastically between GH1 and GH2.  In GH1, the player gets to act whenever they move, so faster mechas get a lot of attacks, thus you generally want as many weapons as possible.  In GH2, proper initiative rules (you only get to act when you get initiative) plus a much stricter mecha weight system means that it is generally better to have a small number of exceptional weapons.

It's also a lot easier to add a high-end targeting computer in GH1 than in GH2.  In GH1, you just buy a Targeting Computer 10, strap it on your mecha, and you can load yourself down with tons of weapons and not suffer a minus to accuracy (because the Targeting Computer 10 reduces your penalty to hit due to mecha encumbrance by 10).  In GH2, targeting software has to be loaded into computers at 50 memory per penalty reduction.  Since the highest commercially-available computer has 200 memory, the best targeting computer you can buy is 200/50 = 4 reduction in penalty.  I'm sure better computers are available on mecha, but it's gonna take a while to get those computers, and I believe the best computer is still less than the GH1 computer.  I don't think it's possible to combine computers, but I'll check.