LANCER: LL0 Build Considerations (Weapons and Talents)
Making your first LL0 build can feel daunting. Here are some tips to make it easier.
You’ve got a gaming group going, now all you need is a Lancer to pilot around in whatever game your GM has cooked up. COMP/CON and the Core Book give some great starting points to making a character, but there are some things that are kinda glossed over. Here are some considerations to make and pitfalls to avoid when building characters at LL0 to maximize fun and minimize “Wait, crap, I don’t like this build,” specifically with regards to weapons and talents.
Talents and You(r Stuff)
Talents often work in sync with some weapon or system on your mech. In some cases, such as Technophile and Spaceborn from the Long Rim, they actually give you equipment. What’s important to keep in mind with talents is that they only work when they have something to work with. Take Duelist for instance. It’s a fairly straightforward talent, you gain +1 accuracy on your first attack with a Main Melee weapon on your turn.
It may seem obvious, but this talent needs a Main Melee weapon to function. If you only have a Heavy Melee Weapon, an Assault Rifle and a couple of Missile Racks on your Everest, none of those are Main Melee weapons, so you won’t ever get the Duelist bonus. It’s a good idea to cross reference your mech build with your talents in COMP/CON. COMP/CON even tells you which weapons are affected by talents with little chevrons you can hover over for more details!
Mech Skills - Don’t Divide and Conquer
Mech Skills can affect how your mech performs in combat. A mech with higher AGI is going to be a lot speedier and a lot more susceptible to tech attacks than one with high SYS. What you may not realize is that there are benefits to not splitting your points up off the bat. Each mech skill has both a primary (or two) and a secondary bonus associated with it. That secondary bonus is tied to having an even score in the skill. For instance, AGI is tied to Evasion, but for every 2 points you put into AGI, you also gain 1 point of Speed, letting you move around the map more. Each skill has its own bonus that you can read up on. And don’t ignore things like Repair Caps and Limited Systems; over a longer mission, having that extra Turret Drone or Repair Cap might save your ass when you need some extra firepower or are a few HP away from your mech getting destroyed outright, respectively.
Loading & Ordnance - They’re On There For A Reason
Loading and Ordnance, two tags that don’t seem like they do much but can actually cause problems. The more powerful weapons at LL0 have these tags, and for good reason: they handily slow down your ability to use them. In order to reload a Loading weapon at LL0, you need to Stabilize as a full action. There is no way around it. So you can spend a turn unleashing a storm of explosive mayhem!…only to spend your next stabilizing. But wait, you have Overcharge right? You can still do some solid damage!
Not if you have only Ordnance weapons. Ordnance on a weapon such as the Anti-Materiel Rifle means that, excluding Protocols, the first thing you have to do on your turn is fire the weapon if you want to use it. This can really hinder your ability to use the weapon if you’re in a bad position, as you’re forced to reposition first and fire on your next turn. Plus, you have to overcharge first before firing, which might not be great if you’ve been hoping for a chance to stabilize after a Witch had its way with you last turn.
Ordnance and Loading aren’t bad tags to have in and of themselves, to be clear. However, a lot of players fall into the trap of Loading up their Everest with Howitzers, RPGs, and Missile Racks, only to be disappointed when they’re only dealing damage every other turn. Have something like an Assault Rifle as a worst case backup, or keep the Loading and Ordnance weapons to your Main weapons and using your Heavy mount (which you should consider your primary mount as you’ll be using it the most, somewhat confusingly) for a more consistently available weapon are good choices. Superheavies fall into this category as well: you should aim to have a solid weapon (the Assault Rifle is a good choice for consistent damage output regardless of rolls with Reliable) to use when your superheavy is unavailable.
Mounts - Use Them To The Max!
Mounts are frequently misunderstood in Lancer. Just because you have the option to put a smaller weapon on a larger mount doesn’t mean you should. Doing this may hinder your ability to contribute, as an Assault Rifle or Charged Blade does almost nothing compared to a Heavy Machine Gun or Heavy Melee Weapon in terms of raw damage output. Not having an appropriately sized weapon in a slot is often a tactic reserved for more advanced players that know what they’re doing with this, as these sorts of builds often require licenses and talents from higher License Levels, though not necessarily as a measure of competence. For LL0, if you’re primarily looking to do damage and have the option to use a Heavy over a Superheavy, do it (unless of course you’re using one of the Dustgrave superheavies). They’re powerful, and they can be used more consistently (only needing a Skirmish!) than Superheavy weapons assuming you don’t have a Loading or Ordnance tag on them.
Conclusion
That’s all for the advice I have right now. I may make another one of these articles for new players in the future: if you’d like to see that, or something else in particular, leave a comment!
Good to see you spreading more Lancer community knowledge! I think this covers most all of the pitfalls players can make early on when building.
I think one other LL0 pitfall I’ve seen is taking the EVA system and another flight/propulsion system. For example, if you take Rapid Boost Jump Jets, you don’t need to take the EVA system to avoid issues in zero-g! Any flight system will do the job; EVA’s primary benefit is that it only costs 1 SP to make all that underwater and space navigation easier.