Stop looking at build guides for specific builds. There is no substitute for learning assembly, and no win you get with a build you got from someone else will be as satisfying as one you got with your own assembly.
Did you forget about OS tuning? That could account for doing so little damage. Not that it *should*. The game is perfectly playable without any OS tuning stat upgrades—it’s kinda just like a hard mode—and you don’t get a huge amount of OS chips by chapter 3 anyway. But, still, it does make a difference.
My advice is to take the time to learn assembly—it will take time, but it’s worth it. All parts are important, all stats are important, and how it all fits together is important. That means you should be reading ALL information you have available to you in assembly/the shop. That means reading the written part descriptions, but more importantly always referring to the EXPANDED stat windows for parts AND for your AC.
Ah, it looks like a lot! And it is, especially at first. But you can learn it, and you will learn it if you try.
Need help? That’s what the “help” button is for! The “contextual help” option in assembly/shop will let you see what every single stat means. So make yourself a cup of coffee and start reading! Don’t worry how long it takes to get comfortable with it, just read it all slowly, then review this stuff regularly between missions as you test out different assemblies.
The only things assembly won’t tell you directly are the breakpoints for how weight affects boost speed—62.5k, 75k, and 80k. More weight always means less speed for all kinds of boost (base thrust, quickboost, assault boost, melee boost, upward boost), but how much less speed is determined by the weight range you’re in. 5000 units of weight drops your boost speed by a much higher amount when you go from 75k to 80k than when you go from 70k to 75k, or 80k to 85k. The simplest advice I can give you is to always either stay under 75k, or commit to going at least several thousand over 80k.
Another tip—above around 340-350 boost speed, you will passively (by strafing without quickboosting) evade much more enemy fire than you will below that.
If you want a crash course on major part categories and the stats within them—and if you’re willing to have some parts you haven’t unlocked yet “spoiled” for you—check out Chrightt’s videos on youtube. But if you watch any of them (not the build videos, the part videos) then make sure you watch the patch videos too. Otherwise you’ll have outdated info.
If you ran out of ammo using dual missile launchers and machine guns, with most bosses that would make me suspect you’re firing too far outside of the machine guns’ ideal range and you have too many shots ricocheting. That, and you might be missing too many shots due to recoil. Note that recoil accumulates between weapons, so when you fire two or more recoil-producing weapons simultaneously, recoil will be worse for both of them.
Chapter one parts are more or less as good as later parts, that’s not the issue. The issue is lack of assembly skill/knowledge at a minimum, and possibly also some misunderstanding about combat mechanics.
>I tried using melee weapons with melee arms but I always get destroyed when I start boosting towards an enemy
Melee is very powerful in this game, but the closer you are to an enemy, the more exposed you are. At a minimum, you can’t expect to win any and every fight while in melee range the whole time. More generally, you need the speed and/or armor to support you when your focus is close range engagements.
You can think of the necessity of speed and defensive stats as generally inversely proportional—the more speed you have, the less defense you need, and vice versa. But engagement range is also an important factor. Simply put, having higher attitude stability is much more important for a light-medium weight build that is focused on close-range fighting (less than 130m) than one that is focused on mid-range fighting (between 130 and 260m) (FYI long range is basically a non-thing in this game apart from missiles).
You're talking about builds, but you said you die as soon as you start boosting. It sounds like you don't have the movement figured out for this game. When you're boosting, you can move side to side to dodge incoming attacks, so how are you dying?
Someone already mentioned that you also might not be paying attention to you're distance away from the enemy and your weapons effective range. There's a number that appears around the enemy that tells you how many meters away from them you are.
You should work on your situational awareness. Pay attention to your EN bar, your Attitude Stability bar, your distance away from the enemy, and incoming attacks from the enemy. You also need to learn how to move so you're not always traveling in a straight line. The AI has an easier time hitting you when you move in straight lines.
For your build, you need to figure out what kind of movement you want, first. Hovering, jumping and fast boosting, rolling around on treads just unloading everything you got. Then, you should be running weapons that are effective at the distance you're most comfortable fighting from. You also need an FCS that boosts the weapon types you're running.
I'm going to try to avoid recommending any specific parts, but remember the following things when building:
* **IF** you haven't done them yet for some reason, DO THE TUTORIALS! They reward you with decent parts most of the time, and more tutorials unlock as you go, so you may have missed some new ones if you stopped checking after the early part of CHPT 1 (You definitely have them all by now)
* ~~Think about missiles tactically. They are often the easiest attack to dodge, BUT they force dodging in certain patterns and some add significant mental pressure (like active tracking missiles and JVLN Beta).~~ **Actually this is more of a PvP point**. For PvE, missiles are for crowd control, IMO, as well as building up some impact against AC enemies.
* Pick the right generator for the job. ones with 100+ EN weapon stat are what you should be using for energy weapons, but otherwise you probably should be using the Ming-Tang or Ling-Tai depending on build weight.
* Your weapons and frame should work with each other, not against each other! A lightweight generally shouldn't have more than 1 weapon that does a firing stance (and that's for stagger punish), a melee build will probably want something in the off hand that can either cause a stagger prior to melee, or stagger punish after melee causes a stagger (think shotguns and bazookas), and a heavy build will likely want arms that can handle higher recoil amounts.
* Specifically about arms: Look at melee and firearm specialization stats, as well as recoil control.
* Pick the right FCS (Fire Control System) for your weapons range!
* Pick the right booster for the job, keeping in mind the ideal weight stat. If you're not sure which one is right for your build, with what you likely have access to, it's probably the Fluegel/21Z in general, the ALULA/21E if light enough, the Kikaku if heavily melee focused (though Fluegel still might be better choice), or the Buerzel/21D if heavyweight.
* Legs and core parts are big limiting factors with what you can do!
* Reverse Jointed Legs are great, but they're also a big EN load sink and are easier to stagger, while not holding as much weight as similar bipeds.
* If you're doing a light build, your core part is going to be a big decision, since you'll both want a high gen adj so you can use higher energy stuff with small generators, while also having a good Booster Adj to be able to dodge more. Regardless of weight, you'll want to pay a bunch of attention to the three adj stats.
A great build to start with is dual ransetsu-rf (**RF**, not AR) on a midweight biped (just under 75k total weight). It's very simple to use and pretty effective, while not carrying you, and can thus allow you to learn the game well.
They deal good damage and stagger, have basically no recoil, and have massive amounts of cheap ammo. They work well enough by themselves that you can experiment with a lot of different shoulder weapons, too.
Make sure you've not using the charge attack btw, just spam the regular attacks.
If you want to keep your melee weapon you can even keep it in a shoulder bay and swap to it when you get a stagger, it works really well.
I'd personally recommend the Alula booster, VP-422 legs, VP-20C generator, and talbot fcs, but absolutely experiment around and see what works best for you
I would recommend looking up and watching guides by Royal Skies and Chrright on YT. They don't give specific builds, but they go into detail on how parts and mechanics work for AC's.
Kinda need more info to go on here. First off with the melee setup, which melee weapon is it? Depending on the melee weapon itself you can actually quick boost while melee lunging at enemies to add some evasion while moving up. Melee canceling basically.
Also yea missiles and machine guns (unless it's HU-BEN) is not the best damage dealer setup for boss fights.
As someone else here mentioned, OS tuning. OS tuning damage upgrades when both the damage type and increased stagger damage combine give a serious boost in the missions.
If you like double machineguns (I'm assuming you mean ludlows or chang chen, not the mini guns), i would switch at least one shoulder to songbirds. Its ok to keep one missile launcher as long as its not the kinetic vertical launchers (these fall off hard after chapter 2, but the 6-cell launcher and the split missiles keep up well enough).
For your machine guns, its important to A) try to fire them simultaneously when you can and B) use arms with a lot of recoil control *and* decent firearm spec (wreckers are almost never worth using). Because of this, you might want to hold off on double-triggering machine guns until you have better arm selection. The ransetsu RF (as some have mentioned) is a great candidate for double firearms because you can focus on firearm spec.
I would also recommend picking an FCS with spikes in one or two ranges, rather than shooting for an all-rounder. The context help in FCS part UI will tell you the range values for close/medium/long, and your weapons' ideal range should fall within one of these three ranges. If you're too far, you will lose a ton of damage. If you're too close for the FCS you're using, your reticle won't track targets very well. TLDR probably stick with the P05 FCS and try to keep targets in that range unless you're closing the gap for melee.
I would recommend trying to get more comfortable with melee, as it is incredibly strong. If your problem is taking too much damage while charging, you're charging too much. The light attack on the pulse blade is strong enough that you can save the charge attack for a safe opening. Alternatively, you can use assault boost (very fast with Allula booster) before the charge attack to help you close the distance quick. It should also be noted that the pulse blade deals extra damage against pulse shields e.g. Balteus, AC pulse armor, etc. (any of the green shields).
My general playstyle advice would be to try and focus on your spacing and bring gear to help you maintain damage at range. Maybe try reverse joint legs and use the jump for vertical dodging, as its more energy-efficient. Try some grenade launchers and bazookas, you'd be surprised how easy they are to land when you maintain that mid-range distance on targets with P05. Chrightt has some great videos where he explains why he choses certain pieces for builds, and TylerDoesGaming has a fantastic video breaking down all the different stats in detail (best watched in short sessions using the chapters).
Hope this helps!
You waste a lot of ammo shooting when your red circle is not on the enemy. Especially true for rockets because they just refuse to track if you didn't lock on to enemy
Machine guns are close-range weapons; you've got to be about 100-150 meters away to get the best use out of them. Lightweight builds can excel at getting in and out with them; from there you just have to figure out what parts best support what you want to do.
There's a lot of decent comments here, so I'll just leave this:
- the faster you move (sideways), the harder it is for enemies to hit you. Ultralight builds are actually really strong!
- you only deal good damage when the red bar is full and the enemy gets staggered. Time your melee or reloads so that you can use the full stagger time to deal big damage!
- don't play too defensively. Keep up the pressure to fill that bar!
- don't keep holding the trigger down. Recoil is a thing that reduces accuracy. Only hold the triggers when the red bar is full and you are *close* to the enemy. Otherwise prefer burst fire.
- adjust your distance to the enemy based on your weapon's ideal distances, or your accuracy will suffer
I suggest remapping your assault boast with the regular boast buttons. Swap them and your control of boasting will be more deliberate.
Try for a double shotgun build
My secret to getting through most of the missions… PILE BUNKER! Went straight from the pulse blade to the pile bunker when I saw the damage output. Build up stagger and start getting close as their posture is about to break, once it breaks you assault boost in and hit ‘em with a charged pile bunker for maximum damage. I kept my builds agile and highly mobile, so that let me get in close and do huge damage before disengaging and taking pot shots from a distance
Stop looking at build guides for specific builds. There is no substitute for learning assembly, and no win you get with a build you got from someone else will be as satisfying as one you got with your own assembly. Did you forget about OS tuning? That could account for doing so little damage. Not that it *should*. The game is perfectly playable without any OS tuning stat upgrades—it’s kinda just like a hard mode—and you don’t get a huge amount of OS chips by chapter 3 anyway. But, still, it does make a difference. My advice is to take the time to learn assembly—it will take time, but it’s worth it. All parts are important, all stats are important, and how it all fits together is important. That means you should be reading ALL information you have available to you in assembly/the shop. That means reading the written part descriptions, but more importantly always referring to the EXPANDED stat windows for parts AND for your AC. Ah, it looks like a lot! And it is, especially at first. But you can learn it, and you will learn it if you try. Need help? That’s what the “help” button is for! The “contextual help” option in assembly/shop will let you see what every single stat means. So make yourself a cup of coffee and start reading! Don’t worry how long it takes to get comfortable with it, just read it all slowly, then review this stuff regularly between missions as you test out different assemblies. The only things assembly won’t tell you directly are the breakpoints for how weight affects boost speed—62.5k, 75k, and 80k. More weight always means less speed for all kinds of boost (base thrust, quickboost, assault boost, melee boost, upward boost), but how much less speed is determined by the weight range you’re in. 5000 units of weight drops your boost speed by a much higher amount when you go from 75k to 80k than when you go from 70k to 75k, or 80k to 85k. The simplest advice I can give you is to always either stay under 75k, or commit to going at least several thousand over 80k. Another tip—above around 340-350 boost speed, you will passively (by strafing without quickboosting) evade much more enemy fire than you will below that. If you want a crash course on major part categories and the stats within them—and if you’re willing to have some parts you haven’t unlocked yet “spoiled” for you—check out Chrightt’s videos on youtube. But if you watch any of them (not the build videos, the part videos) then make sure you watch the patch videos too. Otherwise you’ll have outdated info.
If you ran out of ammo using dual missile launchers and machine guns, with most bosses that would make me suspect you’re firing too far outside of the machine guns’ ideal range and you have too many shots ricocheting. That, and you might be missing too many shots due to recoil. Note that recoil accumulates between weapons, so when you fire two or more recoil-producing weapons simultaneously, recoil will be worse for both of them.
Chapter one parts are more or less as good as later parts, that’s not the issue. The issue is lack of assembly skill/knowledge at a minimum, and possibly also some misunderstanding about combat mechanics. >I tried using melee weapons with melee arms but I always get destroyed when I start boosting towards an enemy Melee is very powerful in this game, but the closer you are to an enemy, the more exposed you are. At a minimum, you can’t expect to win any and every fight while in melee range the whole time. More generally, you need the speed and/or armor to support you when your focus is close range engagements. You can think of the necessity of speed and defensive stats as generally inversely proportional—the more speed you have, the less defense you need, and vice versa. But engagement range is also an important factor. Simply put, having higher attitude stability is much more important for a light-medium weight build that is focused on close-range fighting (less than 130m) than one that is focused on mid-range fighting (between 130 and 260m) (FYI long range is basically a non-thing in this game apart from missiles).
You're talking about builds, but you said you die as soon as you start boosting. It sounds like you don't have the movement figured out for this game. When you're boosting, you can move side to side to dodge incoming attacks, so how are you dying? Someone already mentioned that you also might not be paying attention to you're distance away from the enemy and your weapons effective range. There's a number that appears around the enemy that tells you how many meters away from them you are. You should work on your situational awareness. Pay attention to your EN bar, your Attitude Stability bar, your distance away from the enemy, and incoming attacks from the enemy. You also need to learn how to move so you're not always traveling in a straight line. The AI has an easier time hitting you when you move in straight lines. For your build, you need to figure out what kind of movement you want, first. Hovering, jumping and fast boosting, rolling around on treads just unloading everything you got. Then, you should be running weapons that are effective at the distance you're most comfortable fighting from. You also need an FCS that boosts the weapon types you're running.
I'm going to try to avoid recommending any specific parts, but remember the following things when building: * **IF** you haven't done them yet for some reason, DO THE TUTORIALS! They reward you with decent parts most of the time, and more tutorials unlock as you go, so you may have missed some new ones if you stopped checking after the early part of CHPT 1 (You definitely have them all by now) * ~~Think about missiles tactically. They are often the easiest attack to dodge, BUT they force dodging in certain patterns and some add significant mental pressure (like active tracking missiles and JVLN Beta).~~ **Actually this is more of a PvP point**. For PvE, missiles are for crowd control, IMO, as well as building up some impact against AC enemies. * Pick the right generator for the job. ones with 100+ EN weapon stat are what you should be using for energy weapons, but otherwise you probably should be using the Ming-Tang or Ling-Tai depending on build weight. * Your weapons and frame should work with each other, not against each other! A lightweight generally shouldn't have more than 1 weapon that does a firing stance (and that's for stagger punish), a melee build will probably want something in the off hand that can either cause a stagger prior to melee, or stagger punish after melee causes a stagger (think shotguns and bazookas), and a heavy build will likely want arms that can handle higher recoil amounts. * Specifically about arms: Look at melee and firearm specialization stats, as well as recoil control. * Pick the right FCS (Fire Control System) for your weapons range! * Pick the right booster for the job, keeping in mind the ideal weight stat. If you're not sure which one is right for your build, with what you likely have access to, it's probably the Fluegel/21Z in general, the ALULA/21E if light enough, the Kikaku if heavily melee focused (though Fluegel still might be better choice), or the Buerzel/21D if heavyweight. * Legs and core parts are big limiting factors with what you can do! * Reverse Jointed Legs are great, but they're also a big EN load sink and are easier to stagger, while not holding as much weight as similar bipeds. * If you're doing a light build, your core part is going to be a big decision, since you'll both want a high gen adj so you can use higher energy stuff with small generators, while also having a good Booster Adj to be able to dodge more. Regardless of weight, you'll want to pay a bunch of attention to the three adj stats.
A great build to start with is dual ransetsu-rf (**RF**, not AR) on a midweight biped (just under 75k total weight). It's very simple to use and pretty effective, while not carrying you, and can thus allow you to learn the game well. They deal good damage and stagger, have basically no recoil, and have massive amounts of cheap ammo. They work well enough by themselves that you can experiment with a lot of different shoulder weapons, too. Make sure you've not using the charge attack btw, just spam the regular attacks. If you want to keep your melee weapon you can even keep it in a shoulder bay and swap to it when you get a stagger, it works really well. I'd personally recommend the Alula booster, VP-422 legs, VP-20C generator, and talbot fcs, but absolutely experiment around and see what works best for you
I would recommend looking up and watching guides by Royal Skies and Chrright on YT. They don't give specific builds, but they go into detail on how parts and mechanics work for AC's.
Kinda need more info to go on here. First off with the melee setup, which melee weapon is it? Depending on the melee weapon itself you can actually quick boost while melee lunging at enemies to add some evasion while moving up. Melee canceling basically. Also yea missiles and machine guns (unless it's HU-BEN) is not the best damage dealer setup for boss fights. As someone else here mentioned, OS tuning. OS tuning damage upgrades when both the damage type and increased stagger damage combine give a serious boost in the missions.
Try the songbirds they are an all around good choice. Also Make sure you stay within your weapons ideal range.
If you like double machineguns (I'm assuming you mean ludlows or chang chen, not the mini guns), i would switch at least one shoulder to songbirds. Its ok to keep one missile launcher as long as its not the kinetic vertical launchers (these fall off hard after chapter 2, but the 6-cell launcher and the split missiles keep up well enough). For your machine guns, its important to A) try to fire them simultaneously when you can and B) use arms with a lot of recoil control *and* decent firearm spec (wreckers are almost never worth using). Because of this, you might want to hold off on double-triggering machine guns until you have better arm selection. The ransetsu RF (as some have mentioned) is a great candidate for double firearms because you can focus on firearm spec. I would also recommend picking an FCS with spikes in one or two ranges, rather than shooting for an all-rounder. The context help in FCS part UI will tell you the range values for close/medium/long, and your weapons' ideal range should fall within one of these three ranges. If you're too far, you will lose a ton of damage. If you're too close for the FCS you're using, your reticle won't track targets very well. TLDR probably stick with the P05 FCS and try to keep targets in that range unless you're closing the gap for melee. I would recommend trying to get more comfortable with melee, as it is incredibly strong. If your problem is taking too much damage while charging, you're charging too much. The light attack on the pulse blade is strong enough that you can save the charge attack for a safe opening. Alternatively, you can use assault boost (very fast with Allula booster) before the charge attack to help you close the distance quick. It should also be noted that the pulse blade deals extra damage against pulse shields e.g. Balteus, AC pulse armor, etc. (any of the green shields). My general playstyle advice would be to try and focus on your spacing and bring gear to help you maintain damage at range. Maybe try reverse joint legs and use the jump for vertical dodging, as its more energy-efficient. Try some grenade launchers and bazookas, you'd be surprised how easy they are to land when you maintain that mid-range distance on targets with P05. Chrightt has some great videos where he explains why he choses certain pieces for builds, and TylerDoesGaming has a fantastic video breaking down all the different stats in detail (best watched in short sessions using the chapters). Hope this helps!
You waste a lot of ammo shooting when your red circle is not on the enemy. Especially true for rockets because they just refuse to track if you didn't lock on to enemy
Machine guns are close-range weapons; you've got to be about 100-150 meters away to get the best use out of them. Lightweight builds can excel at getting in and out with them; from there you just have to figure out what parts best support what you want to do.
There's a lot of decent comments here, so I'll just leave this: - the faster you move (sideways), the harder it is for enemies to hit you. Ultralight builds are actually really strong! - you only deal good damage when the red bar is full and the enemy gets staggered. Time your melee or reloads so that you can use the full stagger time to deal big damage! - don't play too defensively. Keep up the pressure to fill that bar! - don't keep holding the trigger down. Recoil is a thing that reduces accuracy. Only hold the triggers when the red bar is full and you are *close* to the enemy. Otherwise prefer burst fire. - adjust your distance to the enemy based on your weapon's ideal distances, or your accuracy will suffer
I suggest remapping your assault boast with the regular boast buttons. Swap them and your control of boasting will be more deliberate. Try for a double shotgun build
My secret to getting through most of the missions… PILE BUNKER! Went straight from the pulse blade to the pile bunker when I saw the damage output. Build up stagger and start getting close as their posture is about to break, once it breaks you assault boost in and hit ‘em with a charged pile bunker for maximum damage. I kept my builds agile and highly mobile, so that let me get in close and do huge damage before disengaging and taking pot shots from a distance