Played a mech round and they seemed pretty OP.
I wonder how strong they are compared to mechs, and if they’d be balanced if they took a specialist slot. (I guess the other option would be making them tech locked?)
Seems weird it has so much firepower even compared to the tank.
the reskinned powerloaders are pretty strong yeah
We had a working joe mech kill the entire hive and then the entire alymayer remaining crew who all shot it a bunch. Basically indestructible but it’s an admin spawn event
I can say with certainty that I played like 95% of mech events from Forest. I’ll drop a post about it in a few hours after I return from college, but it’s not “indestructible” for sure, and even fragile if you know how to approach it properly.
Until that, I summon my good old feller @Ordosian incase he wants to speak up too from his experience.
I only remember the old mech which was powerloader, xeno slashed them in 2 slashes and all the pilots capped.
Mechs are like specialists, most of it is skill based.
There are four different guns that the mechs have, however they can only have two of the guns per mech.
’Siegebreaker’ - Most powerful, can destroy thick resin walls in one shot and stuns xenos except xenos with explosive resistance. Cooldown is medium so it can ‘stunlock’ but it does suffer accuracy penalties. However, it can one shot runners. This weapon has the pseudo IFF which does not let it fire if there is a friendly in the way, however it can still accidentally shoot a marine if they walk into the shot. Which will instakill a marine.
’Chaingun’ - Been given IFF in the recent tests as it was useless otherwise. It is a good follow up gun for siegebreaker or just a good covering fire gun. You have to fire in bursts otherwise the accuracy goes abysmal.
’Shotgun’ - New Addition, I believe it fires the heavy buckshot with a range of 3 tiles. It cannot PB so it can only fire normally. Does not have IFF and will kill marines in a instant. Has a flamer underneath that can be toggled on and off. Normal flames.
’Cupola’ Basic SG weapon with IFF. No frontline mode and can’t change the ammo type. Has underneath flamer like shotgun.
Additionally, mechs are immune to queen screech, boiler gas and facehuggers and have a load of ammo for the guns. However that is due to them not being able to be reloaded currently. I know that @forest2001 wants to make them into actual vehicles in the future (Event TM only still) which would allow them to be reloaded properly and probably remove the high amount of ammo that they get and be more balanced.
Are they strong? Yes if in the right hands. Mechs are like on base SS13. They can only shoot in the direction they are facing with a default firing angle of 160*[Cannon has a firing angle of 90*] Which means that if a mech is running, it can’t actually protect itself from the back unless it decides to stop and turn around to shoot. Good teamwork and movement from Xenos can instantly take out the mech or cause it to retreat.
Also, the mechs are hit by bullets like no tomorrow. They have no IFF against bullets so majority of the time, the mechs die to FF. This includes snipers which absolutely shred the mech. Especially the AMR.
I only saw them in one round, maybe the first time they were tested out, and overall they weren’t good from what I witnessed. A specialist is all-around dramatically stronger.
They were basically easier to kill smartgunners. The ones with chainguns were hilariously useless. Might as well have hopped out and used your personal rifle the chainguns were that bad.
mechs are neat but they are like…
So what if we gave sadar 500 HE rockets that are semi auto, then we strapped 3 HPRs to their other arm, and finally, put them in a mobile cadebox.
Well, thats a mech.
The only times I’ve seen mechs tried out, they’ve always died to friendly fire way faster than anything else. They’ve got to be on the front to really do anything substantial, and they’re so big and obvious as targets that they easily get hit with focus fire both from friendlies and the xenos.
In the tests I’ve seen, the marines tended to win, but it also never seemed to actually be the effect of the mechs and more just them being used as fodder to force an initial advantageous position until they were destroyed after which the rounds just played out as normal.
