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[Blaze]

Well even with all those weapons, the weight of said weapons will probably massively drop your MV/TR ratings; so it's essentially the same in both 1 & 2.

Anywho, does anyone know whether the PV of your mech is applied before an attack destroys a target(s) or after for the purpose of XP generation?

I mean, early game you get tons of those crappy swarm missile packs which sell for crap. I figure since most of the PV (and weight) of missiles are tied up in the missiles themselves and not the launcher; you could load up your mech with them and fire them all off Macross style and still get quite a chunk of XP from it.

This is especially abusable with Light Nuclear Missiles as they have add a MASSIVE amount of PV which increases the enemy PV in random mech battles.

[Seriyu]

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.

Oh, so space suits do eventually get better? Okay. In my attempts I only saw terrible suits and really good armor that... wouldn't let you breath, that's okay then. I'll have to give it another shot. I did like it quite a bit more then GH1 despite a few niggling things like that!

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.

I always thought a good way to get around the "always moving since you're in space = melee sucks" would be to add a damage boost depending on how fast you're moving for melee. As I recall he's recoding Gearhead 2 anyway, or was, so maybe that's one of the reasons, I kind've forget why he started doing that.

[Frumple]

Well even with all those weapons, the weight of said weapons will probably massively drop your MV/TR ratings; so it's essentially the same in both 1 & 2.

Mm... not quite. I mean, it does jack up MV/TR penalties, true, but. It's considerably easier to get considerably higher stats and skills in GH1 than it is in GH2, and even beyond that stuff like robotics (again, training, sewers, hyper glue bots of infinite death) lets you put hyperpilots (a high robotics constructed sentient bot is basically a tiny physical god) in your multi-armed cactus-gun dakkabots.

Beyond that, as noted, it's much easier to get a much higher grade TR offsetting piece of kit in GH1 than in GH2... and even more, iirc, speed gives a bonus to dodging (or rather, a penalty to enemies' attack rolls). And, in GH1, effectively more attacks. So you go fast, your MV penalty is basically meaningless and any TR penalties you may have (which will be lower than in GH2, mind) is offset by shooting a bajillion times (and unlike GH2, again, that's very much possible with the infinite ammo energy weapons). GH2 really did scale back things a lot on the high end. For the better, imo, heh.

I do vaguely remember a charge bonus or summat like dat in GH2, though. Regardless, there's actually a number of THROW RETURN mecha scale melee weapons in GH2 (one fairly common, the rest mostly scattered among the custom junk), so it's arguably less of an issue.

[Blaze]

Melee actually got a ton stronger in GH2 with the addition of heavy actuators. One guy had a strongarm deal 500 damage to a BuruBuru.

But yeah you still actually have to HIT.

[E. Albright]

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.

Once you're rolling in cash, I've always been a fan of tacking on a couple of Assault Cannons with Shard ammo. The things they'll do to mecha armor are glorious.

[Bouchart]

Never tried Assault Cannons.  My preferred high end weapon is the Breaker Cannon.  It's Hyper, so it damages ever part of the mecha you hit.

[E. Albright]

The Shard ammo gives the (Swarm) Assault Cannon the Brutal effect, so it does double damage to armor. The pair of effects makes it surprisingly effective for a SF0 weapon. Though for that matter and in a similar vein, I want to say that early on Autoshotguns with Shard (dealing Brutal Scatter damage) work far better than they "should" against mecha...

[Seriyu]

GH1, what does unarmed count for in terms of value? 0 I assume?

Also if I take a skill and get an exp penalty, and later grab the trait that lets you get more skills with no exp penalty, will it erase the exp penalty?

How bad is the exp penalty anyway? Wait, is the exp penalty the added five exp to get a new skill? That's much better then I expected.

[gimlet]

*Improving* skills over the cap penalty is 5% per skill over the level, to all xp spent for all skills, including the existing ones.  So 1 or 2 skills over the cap isn't TOO harsh, but more than a few does get pretty expensive.

Some of the ways around this were:
- you can DROP skills that were useful early on, or that you wanted to try out, but not so useful in the later game, like maybe Survival, Performance, Pick Pockets, Dominate Animal or even Shopping or melee skills.  Investigation and CodeBreaking once you're past the campaign bits and missions where they're useful.
- really focus on knowledge - I liked having lots of skills, so most of my characters had knowledge about as high as was feasible
- take the trait that gives you more free skill slots - multiple times if needed.
- just eat the penalty for late game skills.  Get all the others up to the useful max (the level gains get PRETTY damn harsh at high levels, so you'll hit a point where the next level is too much work to reach).  20,30,even 40% penalty on a few skills isn't unsurmountable, especially if you don't have to get them as insanely high as you liked Mecha Piloting  (Cybertech, Leadership, Robotics)

Here's the text from the wiki:
"Each skill is linked to one of your attributes, and the combined scores are checked when a skill is used in the game. There is a limit to the number of skills your character can learn based on their Knowledge attribute. The formula is (Kn * 120%) + 5, so a character with a Knowledge of 10 can learn 17 skills, e.g. (10 * 120% = 12 + 5 = 17). If you go over this limit then the amount of XP needed to raise all of your skills will increase by a fixed factor; first 5%, then 10% (of the original 100XP) for each extra skill, which can quickly make your existing skills much more expensive to improve."

[kcwong]

I just tried... the official web page, wiki and forum are gone now... archive revealed no updates to them for a long time.

[gimlet]

To repeat from upthread, you can get to most of the archive.org archived wiki if you use the chaosforge address for it instead of gearheadrpg: https://web.archive.org/web/20121009172137/http://gearhead.chaosforge.org/wiki/index.php?title=GearHead   Keep your eye on the wayback machine date bar to try earlier and later capture dates.  SOME articles are just unreachable, but most of the things off the 1st page and at least half the Guides are readable some way.  So the latest capture of the Skill page is https://web.archive.org/web/20110831043546/http://gearhead.chaosforge.org/wiki/index.php?title=Skills

And dammit, the wiki page for Mecha Fighting https://web.archive.org/web/20110110075434/http://gearhead.chaosforge.org/wiki/index.php?title=Skills:Mecha_Fighting  DOES say that it is the skill used for shields.   (The GH1 doc/Character.txt says that Mecha Weapons "is also used to parry with a weapon or shield.")    May be time for some source code diving to find out which is correct, or maybe both are partially correct (Weapons for melee shield use, Fighting for ranged?) :p

[Bouchart]

I wouldn't get rid of code breaking.  Each door you unlock is 50 xp and there are some missions with tons of doors.  Also you can break into wallets holding millions of dollars.

[Blaze]

Is anyone interested in putting in a community mecha pack? I remember making one for GH1 (GH2 stymies this a bit since most mecha combat is done in space) with a bunch of SF1 mechs.

Also, is it just me or does the game just seem set on making battroids better than every other mecha type? I tried Zoanids and Groundhuggers but the first can't mount much stuff before getting slammed with penalties and the other can't dodge for crap.

[Bouchart]

GH1 does have a major bias towards battroids, with the exception of the Argoseyer and possibly the Monstrous.

[Akura]

I've never gotten GH1 to work on my computer. GH2 works fine. It's been awhile so I don't remember the exact error. Is there anything specific that GH1 needs to run?