ACV General Discussion

[Niji]

Quick differences from previous AC games that I've come to notice while playing:

-There are 3 damage types, KE, CE, and TE. Damage type varies per weapon. As far as I know, there are no weapons with damage combinations.

-With 3 damage types, armor now comes in 3 parameters as well, with all frame parts having different KE, CE, and TE defense levels. For the demo, each part is skewed to a particular defense type, so you probably won't get a perfectly well-rounded AC frame at least in the demo, or you will but on average a lower overall defense value.

-No more Primal Armor. Hooray!

-Nice touch with some enemies. Your bullets actually bounce off some opponents, and the word "Ineffective" flashes on your hud. This is probably telling you that the attack type you are using is hitting your enemies' strongest armor type.

-QB is there, but not as abuse-able as before and it is noticeably slower to chain QBs and you can do as much as 4-5 before you blow out.

-You cannot use QB to turn anymore, thus making positioning much more important. ACs can actually out-turn other ACs again.

-While boosting, turn speed becomes lower. Turning boost off makes your AC turn faster.

-Boost hopping is technically back, but harder to perform as you have to manually turn off boosting during decent every time. Maybe there's an option for manual boosting as default in the controls?

-Loads of new weapons. Howitzers are back, they travel faster, launch more projectiles, and actually do splash damage now.

-Tanks function like tanks in AC before. Meaning, folding weapons can function on the move only with tank legs.

-Folding weapons cannot be stored on the back.

That's it for now. Feel free to correct me on some things or ask me questions if ever.

Defenses are purposefully skewed to make weapon and opponent choices more significant. This makes the operator and scan mode roles much more meaningful to the players, as you can die a very inglorious death to someone if he can expose your weaknesses. Only heavyweight ACs are allowed to have truly rounded defenses, but they must forfeit a large amount of space for weapons and a lot of mobility to have it. Midweight ACs have the ability to gouge one defense and bring their other defenses up to about 1000 (average-ish) if they stick to just using pocket type weapons (smallest size guns), they lose a lot of mobility and almost all weapon space this way. Lightweights just can't gouge defense, they get one decent defense and two bad ones and a ton of speed. Because of how defenses work, having weapon variety on your AC is a huge boon; but also fights against your own ability to stack defenses, making you vulnerable to more weapon types in turn.

Inneffective is a result of the defense system. It happens with ACs too. When your defense is really high relative to the guns attack power, the gun will do 1-5 AP damage and the bullets will bounce or sheer off and do nothing. If you exit optimal range for your gun the gun will likely bounce off and do 0 AP damage.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, if your defense is too low a gun can do up to 2.5x listed attack power in AP damage. So a 1,000 KE atk rifle could do up to 2500 AP damage a shot if the opponent is running like 200 or so KE defense. You can see how this becomes very crazy with cannons, which are very hard to get enough defense to stop, as their damage can skyrocket to absolutely absurd levels of damage if anywhere near optimal range.

Try this: Take 2x Gatling Guns vs the Test Mode MW Biped and gun him down with them. Then take 2x Battle Rifles vs the same AC. Then do 2x Pulse Guns vs that same AC. See the difference in killspeed/number of hits to kill him. You can also scan the guy to get his defenses down, then if you keep scan mode up the right side bars will tell you your expected damage for whatever range you are currently sitting at. Trying getting closer to him in scan mode and getting farther from him in scan mode with different guns to see damage scaling and damage over range traits.

Tanks can use cannon weaponry while on the move, but they also lose the ability to zoom in because of that. There's a tradeoff, though not too big of one. You can't hangar cannons of any kind either, you're correct.

Be careful of grounded tanks turn speed. As a special trait tanks get modified turning speed when grounded and not boosting. Much like RJ gets modified jumping ability, quads with stability, and bipeds with their kneeling shields. The tanks get roughly 2x turning speed when grounded.

There's no manual boosting, no. Just boost toggle. Boosters only make you fall slowly and push you around sideways in this game. There is no quick-turn, yes.

Please don't boost hop in ACV.