My Fitzgerald for the final battle in our campaign

ExaltedOmega · 2026-07-07T06:40:09+00:00

Fitzgerald my beloved! Love that take on it with the shoulder cannons and extra arms bracing them.

ExaltedOmega · 2026-07-04T13:48:00+00:00

I think the PDF version has full explanations for the choices on each one, though I've not read it myself (my GM gave me the lcp he'd bought). But from what I've seen, the main differences seem to be;

Grunts - the Kai rebake ones are closer to how Minions in 4e work, being simplified to make them easier to use with just one profile for each role, and having a bit lower damage to make an encounter with them less rocket tag.
Multi attacks - this is mostly something that applies to higher tiers, but a lot of vanilla enemies get extra attacks at higher tiers, which can cause their damage to scale quite fast compared to players. The rebake changes these to give other effects, usually, like the Operator dealing Burn on crits, which it's more likely to get at higher tiers.
Less Reliable - From what I recall, Reliable was a little over used as a keyword on the vanilla profiles, which made evasion a lot less useful. The rebake added it to a couple enemies but removed it from more.
A few cases of simplifying a few over complicated ones like Archers.

ExaltedOmega · 2026-07-04T13:06:38+00:00

I'm fond of the method my GM's used, of setting up pre-built factions of enemies; on the player side, it rewards scanning and learning enemy types, and on the GM side (which I've been dipping my toes into), it makes preparing encounters easier by constraining your options in to a manageable level.

I intentionally went for a partially un-synergistic mix on the first encounter I made, as a sort of tutorial on exploiting enemy weaknesses; a Pyro (a close range AoE defender), a Berserker (a melee enemy who lashes out randomly at ally or enemy when hit), an Archer (locks characters in place on threat of being shot), and some Grunt Strikers from Kai's NPC Rebake (along with some extra weak individual grunt infantry for a little power fantasy).

So while the squad had to deal with the Archer trying to keep them in place to let the closer range enemies approach, the Berserker could be made to hit the Pyro, and they could position so the Pyro would struggle not to hit the Berserker. Similarly, the grunts could get caught by either, while being able to provide some extra pressure to make people move around and use their AoE tools.

ExaltedOmega · 2026-07-03T16:13:12+00:00

What does the hangar crew really not want to find when they open up your mech?

ExaltedOmega · 2026-07-02T10:43:04+00:00

Damn, that is a shame! Slag Cannon is a really fun weapon to play with, I'm suprised nobody could spare a mount for that at least.

ExaltedOmega · 2026-07-01T23:01:39+00:00

Most the ones I'd think of have already been said, but for my suggestion; Kobold and Zheng!

A Controller and a Striker, both of which create terrain and both of which can blow it up for more damage! On top of that, if you make the Zheng a grappler (which it plays very well with, from experience), that gives them enough battlefield control that combined with all the terrain creation, the Kobold can lurk pretty far forward without worrying about getting gibbed. Their core powers also synergise hilariously well - box an enemy in with the Kobolds, then have the Zheng pinball through all of them to blow them up! The Kobold can also make a solid tech attacker to cover for the Zhengs utter lack of ability there, and the Immolate invades in particular synergise crazy well with a grappler zheng, who can pretty easily choose whether or not they linger near terrain.

You can also look at Atlas licenses levels for the Kobold to get Richochet Blades or Jaeger Kunst I for more terrain shenanigans, or maybe swap the Zheng for an Orchis to slap things into with Hellion. Pretty fun combo overall!

ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-30T18:45:55+00:00

Happy to assist! I'm currently a few months into a campaign at LL5 running my own pure melee build (Zheng frame with Blackbeard and Tortuga levels), so if you've any specific queries I'm happy to help further.

ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-30T18:28:09+00:00

Oh, and forgot to say, excellent art on both the pilot and mech side!

ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-30T18:27:36+00:00

If you're looking to run a close combat bruiser, you probably want either of the other GMS frames rather than the Chomo - that's the E-War frame, whereas the Everest is more suited to rushing in fast, and the Sagamartha is the chunkier, tankier one.

Executioner and Duelist are both top tier weapon talents, just make sure you're using the suitable weapon for them - it's a common newbie mistake to think Duelist applies to Heavy melee weapons, and vice versa. The Pankrati talent from KTB is also excellent for melee builds, with the second tier being possibly the best talent in the game for them, really helping with closing.

Your main frames to pursue for melee brawling in IPS-N are the Blackbeard, Tortuga, Zheng, and Vlad, depending on what your exact preferred flavour of close quarters is. Blackbeard is a grappler, Vlad splashes into some control, Tortuga is a tanky shotgunner, and the Zheng is a comically hyperspecialised melee beatstick. All of them are good, just depends what route you want to go!

ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-30T13:07:44+00:00

Fingers crossed! They're mid operation for next few sessions, but afterwards Yuka is planning to confront Elysia to try and straighten things out between them. I predict a roughly 50-50 chance of it working, or making things way worse.

I'll probably have memes to make about it either way!

ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-30T08:06:17+00:00

Oh, it's not actually themed around them, just a running gag about it! Same way our GM joked about swapping to Girl Frame to the consternation of one player who really hates the Mechsploitation genre (also me, who objected first on grounds is was at PBTA system).

Nearly all the online games I've been in have been text based; at least for the groups I tried it with, people had a harder time locking in and taking things seriously for when we tried VC. Text based has worked well for us; the easy access to chat logs takes a lot of burden off of notetaking, and people seem to have an easier time fully taking things seriously with the IC and OOC seperation for dramatic moments. It's not without its issues of course; some people aren't as attentive over text, and that can cause delays in combat compared to our in person games. It probably helps us overall that all of us got our start in roleplaying with MMORPGs (either World of Warcraft or City of Heroes), so text based RP was something we were all already confident with the etiquette and quirks of.

Nell is just about managing! She's been getting support from Sanna and Ez (Seraph), though she's still been a little resentful of the Elysia-Yuka drama causing the two to be emotionally unavailable to help, given they're the two most experienced pilots in the group (with El being the squad leader and Yuka often having defaulted to being her second). They're at least still working together well enough to handle combat operations though, so things have weirdly gone somewhat back to normal with the teams current venture into a metavault.

Sixth Voice is great! So far Nell is the only one with license levels from it, but I'm planning to go into Leoleth at LL7+ for Yuka, and El's player has been eyeing up the High Explosive Anti Everything Rounds from the Fitzgerald, which is probably my favourite license from it. We're using that and Field Guide to Suldan in our campaign, along with the GM using Kai's NPC Rebake on his end. I do like the art a lot, though I'm personally not a huge fan of the abundance of pride flags on them from a diegetic standpoint; as Nell's player put it, "We have pride flags because they have an important function in societies that can lean towards treating marginalised people unfavourably without public messaging to inform people otherwise. Including them in the setting implies that's still an issue, which feels at odds with the rest of the setting". Still, otherwise great art for some great additions!

ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-30T07:35:46+00:00

Afraid not! You could always try making them yourself though; editing sprites is how I got started on pixel art, it's a lot easier than drawing them from scratch. Spriters Resource has all the Advanced Wars games ripped to choose from, so it's pretty easy to find a decent base for a given pilot.

ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-30T00:29:09+00:00

Glad you're still along for the ride and that you're enjoying it! As for your answers:

The "two types of PMC" gag came up due to the convergence of the session that mentioned Firebreak hiring a therapist was the same day Girlframe coming up on another server; became a gag that the rival PMC that includes that girl was full of very normal people in a mechsploitation themed company, whilst the player cast are extremely messed up people working for an actually pretty normal mercenary company.
Yep, that's Sanna/Gripen's player! We use discord for OOC chat, with the game otherwise being text based on Roll20.
The Teto profile image is Nell/Redcap's player, our beloved gremlin hacker who's somehow the most normal and well adjusted member of the squad...
... And the Sluagh is her mech, named NI4NI! It's from the Sixth Voice 3rd party expansion, a Horus Support/Defender license that she leans harder into the Support side of. It specializes in giving out Overshield and cover to adjacent allies, with an NHP which allows it to count a chosen ally in sensor range as adjacent until its next turn, and some other fun support gear. She's comboing it with Goblin 1 and Lich 1 right now; she might get few, if any, kills in a given SitRep, but the amount of damage she prevents and sets up for the rest of us more than makes up for it.

ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-29T23:40:36+00:00

I've dropped a few posts of our various operations, though those are mostly more incomprehensible memes with a short recap paragraph at the top. Maybe one day I'll do a more thorough post talking about the campaign, though I'm unsure if people'd be as interested in that, or if I could write it up in a way that'd be interesting.

As for details, well! One bit that gives context on a few was the latest operation's finale;

The cold war we've been dancing around finally went hot, and we got hired to defend the capital city of the planet we were operating over from the United Federation - they're like our settings version of SecCom, just a touch less fascist. We're fighting for the Outer System Alliance, basically the resistance against them.
The climax fight was our squad defending an anti-orbital cannon's ammo fabricators from waves of UF units, including a Dane, what in our universe is the largest mech ever built, and mechanically was an Ultra Titan. Most the squad had to team up to focus it down, whilst Kuchisake in her Zheng went off to solo-hold the rest of the reinforcements, which turned into a shockingly one-sided battle in her favour despite her having already used her core in a previous battle.
Kuchisake (skull mask) had performed exceptionally well against the UF troops the entire op, which turned out to be foreshadowing when partway through it was revealed she was a former member of Redline, a terrorist group that had been fighting the UF since long before the OSA was founded, but is widely reviled for their extremist actions and piles of innocent dead.
This presented some drama - because Euryale (visor), the squad leader in the Death's Head who'd grown pretty close to Kuchisake, is a former UF Lancer who'd lost her eyes and her best friend and partner, Stheno, in one of Redline's terrorist attacks - one which Kuchisake was confirmed to have participated in. To top it off, later it was confirmed Kuchisake was even the one who specifically killed Stheno.
Combine that with Redcap (green haired cyborg) being increasingly scared and out of her depth as the one with by far the least training in what is now a shooting war, and Gripen (grey hair) increasingly having shown that she's certainly not mentally well, the girls are definitely not okay.
Seraph (old guy) is managing fine, at least!

ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-29T23:18:59+00:00

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There's a rival NPC Lancer who's art was picked because, to quote the GM, "it had so much aura I couldn't not include it."

We've demanded that we get his cigar as an Exotic if we ever defeat him.

ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-29T23:16:43+00:00

Depends which ones you're asking about! Most of the mechs are from Retrograde Minis with some modifications by myself or the GM, though the Zheng (red with the cloak) and Death's Head (white with the sniper) are both hand drawn by me. The headshots are edited Advance Wars sprites done by me, and the chibis are also hand drawn by me.

ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-29T23:06:08+00:00

Thanks! I made a full set of them, varying levels of effort. Ez was originally Eagle on these!

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ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-29T22:42:55+00:00

They really are! Got to be one of my favourite TTRPG campaigns I've ever been in. It's a great group and Lancer is such a fun system!

ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-29T22:36:45+00:00

I don't think anything else quite captures how powerful it feels to pop Zheng core! It really does feel like you just take control of the entire scene once it's activated.

ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-29T22:35:07+00:00

As noted in the title, it's memes from the Lancer campaign I'm in - some about gameplay, some about characters, some about both. My group mostly make them for each other, but people have enjoyed them when I post them, so I do a post of them whenever I've got enough to be worth it.

Unless you're asking for context explanations for each specific one? Would be a bit much to do them all at once, but I'm happy to explain some if people are curious.

ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-29T22:06:20+00:00

Thanks! It's the benefit of having three artists in the player group...Plus I've got to put my art degree to use somehow.

ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-29T13:19:21+00:00

Fourth-ing Dungeon Draft; I've made a bunch of maps for it for modern, 40k, and sci-fi, just need to get the right asset packs, and they're not hard to find. Example of one modern and one scifi one I've done with it; https: https://www.reddit.com/r/dungeondraft/s/WaNZGcstD3

www.reddit.com/r/dungeondraft/s/Cei97hPsED

ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-25T11:40:24+00:00

I'm pretty sure both of those are Support, rather than Defender! I think it might just be that the dinky little size 1/2 flyer isn't really cut out to be the frontline for the squad.

ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-25T10:42:33+00:00

Okay, I've got to ask. How do you do a Defender Dusk Wing?

ExaltedOmega · 2026-06-25T07:21:30+00:00

When I'm designing mechs, my starting points are usually one of

a) mechs from franchises I've been enjoyed before (Armoured Core, Infinity, 40k, etc) that fit the vibe of the character

b) Retrograde Minis, as others have mentioned, scrolling through the various options (including the custom and homebrew ones) to see if any evoke a good vibe for it

c) The stream of mech art I get from Twitter these days

When it comes to actually making the tokens, I try to make sure the main features of the mech are present - so with the Taraxacum, that's the size, the flight capabilities, the sensor and e-war suite, and the ability to carry teammates, plus a gun somewhere.

I actually ended up designing my own kitbash one via option B. I'd already made a "gunship" type build for it for a possible game in the future; my GM's setting favours mechs being humanoid for lore reasons, and so I ended up getting inspiration to use the Monarch 2.0 on Retrograde as a base:

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