So Many Shells to Crack ... Including Our Own Mechs, in Mech Engineer
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- čas přidán 18. 06. 2024
- Welcome to Episode 10 of my First Taste mini-series for Mech Engineer!
Have you ever wondered what you'd get if you mixed XCOM: Terror From The Deep, Highfleet, and Mortal Engines? Keep watching, and you might find out!
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#LetsPlay #MechEngineer #indie
Mech Engineer playlist: • Let's Play: Mech Engineer
Mech Engineer on Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/14...
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3rd party music attribution:
Music from filmmusic.io
By Kevin Macleod (incompetech.com)
License: CC BY (creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)
End screen background music - "Frost Waltz"
End screen & character art:
Jackie Musto - www.kayandp.com/ - Hry
Sooooo... about that mission that doesn't have Aries in it
I would recommend guide "Optimus." The 20mm build in the Day 1 section murders everything when concentrated. Four mechs with the build suggested in that section can body an Aries.
My favorite moment was when Aavak said "It's engineering time" and engineered all over the bugs
17 tons isn't the weapon. it is the Weapon, The ammo, the magazine/batteries, the auto loader, and the storage that will need to be over engineered to take less space and weight on the chassis to feed and field the massive mech. 🤓☝️
You know what, this is perfect, this has completely satisfied my brain. Tons it is then!
Man, hearing you talking about Aries on a map that doesn't have them...
And then getting the formation disrupted by the actual threat on the map.
It's like my own playthrough.
Yeah, massive derp XD
Thanks for the response yesterday, I'm really loving this series! Just leaving a comment to boost engagement!
It's much appreciated :)
I think you really need to give shell cracker a backup weapon and make sure they have your best pilot. I noticed that shell cracker is constantly getting swarmed and panicking, running away or shooting wildly. If you gave it a shotgun or rapid fire laser to clear the swarm and fight itself out of corners with, I think your pilot would be a lot calmer. Alternatively, you could give it a partner mech who will stick by their side and cover the shortcomings and provide support.
Yeah, at the very least give it a melee weapon!
I don't think Shell Cracker is panicking, I think its just the free will mechanic trying to reposition so its in range to fire. Either way, a backup weapon would probably fix that.
Main issue of course is the mining mechs are very limited on weight/reactor unless it was given a super-light chain gun or something.
This game gives just the right amount of ressource managing vs strategic fighting I want. Games like Xcom and Pheonix Point sometimes tend to go more towards the fight side, especially time wise
I like how Aavak said that there were no Ares and then, he chose a slot for Ares. Adorable derp.
At least my derps are endearing I suppose XD
Machines can be rebuilt and repaired, but your pilots can't. Having everyone back alive in that environment is a great success in my book. Well done AI Overlord. o7
Smth I learned btw ... if you give a paused order to all of them that leads through walls, only the diggers will move on from the starting point. Everyone will move to the start point of the order though. Saves you from switching to diggers.
42:09 "We have no aeries in this mission." ... 3 secs later ... "I want you to target the aeries." : p
ARGH, am dum XD
Yeah the bullet shooters are such a pain even late game that I just avoid their tiles forever lmao
The firestorm might have a higher cap for repair cost than the other mechs because it is a different model.
To be fair, I would also panic if giant bugs started shooting anything at me. Or even moderately sized bugs. Energy blasts would be extra alarming.
You make a fair point XD
Man, I think one thing this game needs to have on the missiles is a minimum arming distance. It’s a thing for most modern munitions where they don’t explode until they’ve traveled AT LEAST a little ways away from the shooter. Hell, make it an ammo mod and it would still probably be better than anything else.
You can set min or max range of weapon in weapon config
@@star0794 Minimum FIRING distance and minimum ARMING distance are different. Minimum firing distance=only fire at things this far away. Minimum ARMING distance=projectile only detonates if it has gotten this far away from mech.
A weapon with high minimum range can aim at something far in the distance only for the rocket to hit an operarius running directly into your face, or to hit a wall, and the rocket explodes and damages you still because it does not have a minimum arming distance.
Yurp, min arming would a /GODSEND/ in this game... it wouldn't help me in the instances where DIGRIG was just far away from the lance, but damn would it stop me worrying about every wall or tiny bug between me and the thing Shell Cracker is aiming at!
Yeah, i put the critical damage mod and maxed the damage output on my missle launcher, put it on my new mech with a shotgun and rocket launcher... It completely cleared everything off the map, including most of my team...
Ive since changed it to the shards mod, and changed the shotgun to a quickfire fire modded lazer.
Called it MGS Rex.
Also id recommend getting past the mech research.... The next one is absolutely fantastic 🤩
This man was so traumatized by Aires he is seeing them where none exist.
Yurp XD
Time/Chapter points for everyone:
DAY 15:
0:01-4:08 Nest-sweeping.
DAY 16
4:08-5:25 City management.
5:25-7:00 Tactical map overview.
7:24-8:38 Reading up on Flos.
8:44-12:36 Modifying the Shell crackers weapon.
12:36-13:23 Comment discussion
13:23-16:45 Lance composition setup.
16:46-26:24 BATTLE.
26:24-27:57 Debrief.
27:57-28:35 Pilot training and Recovery.
28:35-30:54 Mech repairs and modifications.
30:54-34:16 Research and Production.
34:16-35:04 City movement.
DAY 17
35:04-36:12 New cockpits.
36:12-36:29 City management.
36:29-39:40Tactical map overview and Nest-sweeping.
39:40-42:43 Lance composition setup.
42:43-50:04 BATTLE.
50:04-51:08 Debrief.
51:08-51:42 Pilot training and Recovery.
51:42-54:45 Mech repairs.
54:45-56:21 Research and No Production.
56:21-56:49 Strategic movement.
56:49-59:27 Closing remarks.
59:27-59:58 Outro.
Aaand it is complete. See you next time dear watcher, and i hope i have enough stat points in Will to make another list for next time!
Very cool list, Mr. Taylor from world-renown PapaLouie. We eagerly await more.
@@NuniaBiznaz Thank you too NuniaBiznaz, and all other watchers of The Almighty AI managing our Great City. For expressing your enjoyment of my list.
This series is so good! Thank you for all the work you put in! Its my favorite thing to fall asleep to 😂
You're more than welcome, I'm glad you're enjoying it so much :D
Shellcracker, more like Mechcracker
So true it hurts XD
@@Aavak Are we gonna make a Planetcracker after we leave orbit?
Oof and ouch. Cracking the Metalite bank.
we are now on episode ten of the first taste miniseries
So what we learned is... never trust anyone with big booms, ever.
I know I said this on an earlier video but a slow laser should always be carried in your lance so that the slow effect is never lost during a reload.
Will say the mech design that comes after the water one is quite an interesting one
I'm really loving this series, thank you so much for the episodes Aavak!
I hope everyone else is enjoying this as well!
Good day/night to all
Mmm Cooked Crab Colored is fitting to me its a warning to the bugs
I didn’t fully understand what you were saying about move orders with your mechs but from what I’ve found, especially on larger lances, mechs tend to be less effective and some don’t even fire their weapons from not being able to attack enemies past friendly mechs. As long as you are paused, you can individually order each mech and make a formation or strategically put certain mechs in certain positions and when you resume time, they will each move to their individual positions that you set
Biggest news on the first passed day was city damage no longer rising 4:33
Edit: never mind the report lies as seen on the next one
Saint Algoritmus bless you, Aavak! I will proceed to parrot the suggestions of fellow commenter PerfectDeath4 and recommend you make a multi-shot rocket weapon. Since the splash zone of the rocket scales off of damage, doing multi-shot will result in many rockets with lower damage per rocket, resulting in a much smaller damage radius, but should do very similar degrees of damage if all rockets hit one target/if one target is inside the splash zone of all rockets. This should be safer probably.
I feel that one large missile with shards is WAY more dangerous to a single target than multiple smaller missiles; as it's not the explosion killing the big enemy, it's the fact the explosion strips armour, then 5 or 6 shards with super high damage explode into its insides. It's the shards killing the high durability enemy, not the explosion, that just pops weenies nearby (but that's not the missile's job)
@24:32, lack of minimum arming distance, it tryed to shot the enemy and there was a wall on his face, he shot the wall and the nuke blow on your the midle of your lance, with late game mechs this can wipeout your entire lance in one shot. As i said, awesome game mechanic.
Late Feedback: I love the long episodes! Keep it up, but still get enough sleep, too
very time I see the Fire Storm or any of the plates I’m always reminded of Goliaths of Starcraft depending on the variant of the Goliath it a minimum one auto cannon and two rocket launchers
I think the mission in the end went quite well everything considered. I had much worse results in my tries with some enemies. My design seem to be quite inferior so far :D I will have to step up my game for sure. You did have a lot more luck with the pings, about the same with the clues though. Ridiculously far apart.
Also the mech hangar is very useful, because you really want to do as many missions per day as possible ... as always. But being able to take a full 8 mech double lance twice seems very safe.
Yeah, once we have some more pilots it's going to be amazing!
Your Mench Engineer episodes always make my day recently
One thing I've noticed on the non-fullscreen mission view below the pilots is a slider for 'free will control' and I'm rather curious what that does. It sounds rather ominous.
Dang I am with you, I just don't know about that large missile system. With so many little trees and stuff growing in these missions, line of sight is so congested.
Also: Bikklo had a negative relationship with Minimurgle when last I looked. Dunno if it still is, but that might be part of why Bikklo is so erratic on MM missions.
True!
Our Mech Great!
Saint Algorithmus, please bless this video
comment for the algorithm! i think the big rocket might be my favourite weapon system, the flash really adds an invaluable cool factor which increases its effectiveness a lot
That launcher needs to not arm the warhead until it reaches the minimum engagement-range 🤦
YES!
this comment is a sacrifice for the mighty algorithm to praise this labor of love "mini-series" with a lot of clicks!
problem with Shell Cracker and it's missiles.
Well it looked like minimal engage distance for it was greater then "pushback distance" from rest of the lance (visible at 19:30 - 19:45) where when big enemies were approaching, one missle flew after weapon activation, and then nothing until enemies were pushed back again. It wasn't due to reloading, nor due fire rate. Full fire rate of missiles can be seen at 25:20 when attacking nest. those flashes are from ShellCracker. That would suggest that balance of engagement range is not matter of only signle mechs, but group as a whole.
Additionally I saw (at 18:50) that your mechs tries to engage big resoruce piniatas through the wall with weapon that don't have range to reach.
So maybe take a slow, close look on weapon ranges might be in order... ? but not taking whole lance into account - not mechs separetly ?
I don't know the names of the enemies, but I think you know what I mean :D
Thanks for the tip :)
!derp
Enjoying the series a lot, anyway!
11:40 "Bro did you just eat all my cheetos" "...no"
Also bro:
love the series, keep up the good work
FOR THE EMPER... i meen the algoritm.
Continuing to really enjoy every installment of this series.
in my oppinion, it's not worth it to waste engineers for repairs, just pay the full metallite bill
I posted this on an older video, but I am pretty sure, using the 120mm cannon as a metric, that the mass unit of the game is 0.1tonnes. It lines up well with the Abrams' M256 (Rh-120 L/44) being about 2,000kg + ammo. That said, it's also extremely inconsistent because a 20mm rotary cannon is about 100-120kg with ammo weighing around 0.1kg per round. Even if you assume 10,000 rounds (1000kg of ammo), it should only have a weight of about 1 tonne, or a weight unit of 10. Maybe in universe this makes some sense because the 20mm ammo and guns we use are for aircraft, so they have spec'd into weight reduction? That said, the mechs being 24 tonnes makes some sense as that's roughly equal to a Bradley IFV (~28 tonnes)
So, my guess is it's roughly 0.1 tonnes with adjustments for gameplay purposes.
52:40 Just a guess, but 250 might be the cap for the starting miner mechs, but the more advanced mech types have their own caps that are higher. You click the button a couple of times before the cost starts going down from 600, so that's probably Firestorm's cap. A minute later when you do Dig Rig, it takes a couple of clicks to go down from 250.
That would make a lot of sense.
Oh man the Aries really messed you up this mission... :P
Btw, you mentioned that the cell at 20,7 still needs to see a nest, but it doesn't: It can see the nest at 19,8. I also highly urge you to give shellcracker a 20mm rotary shotgun. Because with how infrequent the rocket fires, I think you can definitely get away with a 2:1 ratio of boolets versus rockets. Especially given that the rotary's job would be operaria defense, which are resistent to the laser you're hoping to slap on shellcracker. And as we've seen with dig rig, you can't really overcome that innate resistance.
A fire laser will kill operarius just as well as any non energy weapon will, because their armour is low enough for fire damage to get through.
@Aavak as a stop gap a 20mm would still work though no? You won't fire the big missile often enough to need a reload and giving it some alternative means of killing would be good.
Missiles seem just too dangerous to be used as a main weapon. I'd probably consider them as an auxiliary, specialized weapon, something like a hand grenade or rocket launcher in fps games.
One missile build I saw was a high ROF scatter/multi shot. Since a single max damage missile has a big blast radius if you instead set it up so like 5 missiles are launched at once instead there is less splash but still high damage inside the stacking explosions. High ROF to counter the scatter's reduced ROF, some extra acc to bunch the missiles up. Havn't really tried it outside of the starting rockets.
Honestly speaking I don't think the rocket is worth it in terms of lost potential. Those lasers with fire seem to be doing similar stuff, other than not being an explosive weapon. At this point it's not just "will other weapons perform better" but also "will I lose my mechs eventually to friendly fire" kind of concern, and with all the randomness going on you probably shouldn't risk it unless heavy explosives are your only option for some reason. Getting another sniper rifle kind of gun is also an option.
I have 15 artillery shells ATM personally.
Perfect, thanks for the answer! Have you repaired the arty district?
@@Aavak Not yet!
Edit: To clarify, it is still Level 1.
@@Aavak
Signal boost of the reply edit, player with 15 shells are still on level 1 arty district.
So Pilots have a free will stat from what I understand, depending on different stats and such the Pilot may decide to move/change target. When it comes to moving it looks like Shell Cracker's pilot wants to get into firing range but is too close so tried to reposition. However, the "leash" on free will you have at zero by default (bottom left corner has a slider for this) limits how much this can be done. I'm assuming that is why shell cracker was separating from the group.
Ahh, that would make sense, yeah.
@@Aavak Some pilots like MiniMurgle look like their free will is VERY low so he basically stays where he's told.
But, the free will can be nice, like if a pillar is just barely blocking LOS the pilot has enough free will and leash will move.
It also seems like one Pilot actually moved into towing range and helped pull another mech.
I havn't tried turning the free will "leash" slider to the other end to see what would happen. xD
Hell yeah
Regarding the Target Priorities i like to give single commands to the heavy hitters to focus down things like brucuses... i never "waste" a target priority on them and it prevents my lance to deal to much dmg on them at the wrong time ;)
You can do partial research instead of your scientists being "locked in" for the entire time. You don't lose any progress and is a good way to min/max the scientists so they aren't wasted each day between big projects.
For the algorithm!
Mechs with neckties.
i came to the conclusion to go on "nest" missions, do the first stage above ground just for the brucuses and then retreat after collecting the loot. After that the Nest will have a red outline, i have more ressources and i still don't understand why i should avoid the nests ^^
The algorithm code cracker The Spiffing Brit have released a video that's singing the praises for the full series supercut videos, for tapping into the sleep viewer demographic.
So, 5 or 10 episodes supercut and a full series megacut at the inevitable victory?
Aavak, I have an idea that is either amazing or horrible, with no in-between: shotgun missile launcher. 😂
Maybe you should have a mech for each specialized enemy so that you can always fight in the late game under a majority of circumstances.
If you are going to keep using missile launcher you need to develop your tactics around it and not just use it as just another apart of the lance. The way I use it is I have it way in front of the lance while lance covers it and use it to artillery the whole map.
Yeah you can't just futz around with it.
Yeah, that's what I'm hoping to learn over the next few episodes: how to use it properly if I can. It might just not gel with the way I play, but we'll find out in the next few missions :)
Hey Aavak. Would you mind making a recap video on how to get started? your videos really helped me getting off the ground and there aren't many resources online. And I feel that most people may not be too keen with watching 2-3 1h long videos just to understand what's what.
I wouldn't mind at all, though if you could give me an idea what you mean by recap? What bits of information you found especially useful etc?
@@Aavak Well early mech loadouts, what to focus on in research or base upgrades, production. Stuff like that I guess.
I am going to need remedial training on the repair mechanics, I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around how it works.
Repair mechanic of the city or mechs?
@@kholdanstaalstorm6881 mechs; I feel like I've been unnecessarily burning too much metallite on patching up my mechs after a rough mission.
@jonskowitz
Yes, that I haven't wrapped my head around that yet either.
So far, I've gathered that it's a resource management situation, weighing raw resources against manpower at that given time.
@@kholdanstaalstorm6881 kind of what I figured, but I don't understand enough about it to make informed decisions
I wonder if it might be a good idea to clear the surface of nest sites just for the experience and resources before nuking them.
So, at 10011 metallite, you needed 2528 in repairs which you brought down to 1594 using 228 engineers, making a difference of 934, or a total savings of roughly 4 metallite per engineer. Is that an efficient use of engineers, or would you generate more value using the engineers to build more resources like components and motors? I'd also be curious to know what the diminishing return rate would be for engineers reducing repair damage costs
🎉🎉🎉
very curious about how the water missions will change things up
they’re inevitable, right?
I think that there is a different way to look at why you would unlock new mechs. Currently you are planning to spand lots of resources, ~250 engineers and 5 production slots an a new mech while unlocking one will give you a mech for 110 scientists, but i agree that unlocking a mech is less important than improving your reactors and motors.
Second, while the storm imoblizes the city it can be a optimal time to test how the current mechs fair in an underwater mission.
Theird, do you know how long the nests in the biomass in asia will take to spawn a red titan, I remember you mentioned that in a early episode but i don't remember if you gave a time line
I have no idea on the specific time it takes, I'm afraid. I just know how the mechanic works but I've not witnessed it in action.
cool
Until they implement safeguards on the missiles and rockets (they can't explode within an unsafe range from a mech) I would recommend never using them.
I think am I starting to see a few things here that are important to bear in mind for the future.
First being the idea of a dedicated healer pilot. Unless you can put multiple drones in one mech and that means he sends out that many drones to heal, I'm going to have to say this is a poor idea. It is already poor in the sense that you are condemning a mech to not not having plates or extra cooling but you are removing many other possibillities from the table. Instead a better idea would be to give everyone the drone abillity. Enemies tend to focus the closer target (this may be innacurate but as far as I could observe, it was the case) and that means, it doesn't matters if there is 1 shooty boy or 5 shooty boys, they will always go for the mech in the front. If everyone can heal, and everyone has only 1 drone so they can still have a mech designed for it's job, then in a lance of 4, you have 4 drones healing the only mech taking damage and the bigger the lance you field, the more drones you have focused on whomever is taking the damage. This makes it much harder for the enemy to damage systems. Although nothing can be done now, I think a better idea is to go for the drone skill on all pilots first and foremost. The accuracy is nice but that's all it is, the 2 skill takes long to come and the drone repairs are not nice, they are vital.
Another thing and it comes to no surprise, is the missiles and explosives in general, they are really bad news for the lance. While they can do some good work, between the time they spend not shooting to not hurt the lance and the slow fire rate, they are actually a big detriment, not only in self damage caused but also in overall DPS.
Lastly the cannons. The the damage per shot is low and the rate of fire is extremely low. They have accuracy, they have range, what they don't have is the DPS to be a weapon capable of removing threats in any expedient manner. Perhaps if a mech could field 6 or 9 of them then I could see the point of a sniper mech but 1 or 2 are actually a detriment to the lance overall with the extremely low DPS. They only really do any kind of good work when they get a straight line of enemies to penetrate through but that isn't happening often enough to warrant it's use. I'd stick to lasers and miniguns. There is a little bit of a range loss but it's not a big issue and the DPS will increase massively which means targets get removed from the field, far faster which keeps the lance safer.
I also think you should spare a thought to the use and increased production of artillery. You've been using it to blow up walls for the most part and even then it's rare for you to touch artillery, but with the newer threats, especially ones that actually can shoot, artillery can play a big role, not in taking them down as they are enemies with high HP so I doubt artillery would take them out, but when threatning enemies are out that means they deserve your undivided attention, dropping artillery on them or right behind them on the path of the small fries means that you don't need to deal with the small fry and can deal only with what needs to be dealt with right now. As such, not only artillery is very useful, but it's increased production is justified as you'll want to have several uses per mission.
Ideally, the more mechs able to field drones that repair other mechs, the better, but in terms of time to train them, it's not something I can aim for immediately. So medic mechs will have to be the stand in for now. Also, there's a point where I'm fielding so many people with drones, who could have had some combat focused aux (and skill) but don't realistically add anything tangible to healing -- it will need testing, but I suspect there'll be an 'overheal' threshold where adding more repairs doesn't really help anything. My gut says 2 or 3 is where that would be, but we'll see. I wasn't able to closely follow how fast the drone repairs happened on the mechs up to now, but it seemed blisteringly fast already.
@@Aavak I agree that there will be a saturation point in most cases and from what I could see it was rather fast on the repairs yes. That being said 1 drone per mech with everyone having the skill isn't much of an investment (and yes this is thinking of say a newer playthrough, right now you have to make do with what you have of course) and having a dead skill early on instead of accuracy isn't actually bad since drones aren't too far in and they are much more important. The way I see it however is that 1 drone per mech isn't bad because rather than thinking about what normally happens I like to think in terms of a possible big burst of damage especially on higher difficulty missions so you can still keep up with it or worst case scenario fights like titans. Anything the idea is anything that won't instantly destroy a mech is ignorable in terms of damage though of course, the first line of defense should be an overwhelming offense.
For the algorithm 🎉🎉🎉🎉
The heavy rockets are nasty but you should try them with the Shards mod and max fire rate, also i have a problem where my group will stay in one place after i gave them orders to move to that location and they wont attack anything unless the enemy starts hurting the mechs any idea why ?
Well maybe bcs you choose the low reaction pilot so they sometimes get stay in same Position. After i choose all best reaction pilot i almost never get mech stay in same position after giving order except when get after capture by tentacle or the pilot panic
@@star0794 Its like this. I give them order to move to X they start moving right away and shoot the enemies on the way but when they get to that position they like freeze enemies come to them hit them 1-3 times and then they start shooting again.
@@KiszonyBanan2009PL its maybe between pilot panic,enggine over heat,reloading weapon,after get tentacled or just bug in game
algorithm