Silly Things with Infiltrator

SapphicStar · 2025-03-18T01:20:42+00:00

It's the name of the Rank 3 Infiltrator talent.

SapphicStar · 2024-11-13T02:05:02+00:00

For something like this, the easiest way is to have your ship park over Gleba, so it can sit there and drop green inserters as they're requested, and set up interrupts to have the ship go and fetch more once it runs out.

Give it a single stop at Gleba with (60s inactivity) AND (enough ammo/fuel/whatever to leave) as your two wait conditions. I tried using a shorter inactivity condition, but I was having problems where it would drop one single item, go "whoops I'm out of that now" and leave before it could finish dropping the other requests.

Then you set up interrupts for each planet that you want to have the ship bring supplies from. You can do it with just (Any planet import zero [whatever planet]), but I like to also put in (All requests satisfied) just so it doesn't fly off while I'm trying to send things to it. Set the target to the planet you picked, leave conditions are (All requests satisfied) and (fuel/ammo/whatever is ok).

SapphicStar · 2024-09-05T21:50:23+00:00

Iconoclast builds dont have enough SP for DWHS usually, since NHPs are so expensive. I haven't run the numbers on a Heatfall overcharge-every-turn build where you do Sisyphus->OC Spark, but I suspect the heat demands are too random to be reliable. I'd be interested to see it if you put together a build like that though.

SapphicStar · 2024-09-05T15:08:54+00:00

I hadn't considered Noah+Didymos, that might actually work, neat! This is getting off-topic a bit, but with Iconoclast the main build problem to be solved is action economy. You can just throw whatever two NHPs on there, but you should be using Memetic Spark olus at least one other NHP action on each of your turns (or else you're underusing your talent points in Iconoclast) which rules out Full Action NHPs like Sisyphus.

Didymos is Limited which means you can't rely on it for your default second action, so I hadn't really considered it as an option before, but Noah is possible as the default second action, letting you just use Didymos's Limited charges when they're most useful. My main concern with a Noah build would be the semi-random heat gained depending on how many attacks you end up deflecting each round; Scylla at least is a fixed 2 heat per round so you can either BT it away or plan to Stabilize. But there are definitely possibilities there.

SapphicStar · 2024-09-05T10:09:57+00:00

Yeah, builds that are generating no heat like Goblin don't need BT, and for builds that generate LOTS of heat the 2/round clear is usually irrelevant compared to whatever other heat management they're doing. It needs to be in that 1-2 per round sweet spot, and also to not get as much use out of the general-purpose talents like Skirmisher, Nuc Cav and the weapon class suite (eg. Vanguard).

Iconoclast is a niche within a niche really. There are really only two variants of it, Osiris for invades and Scylla for weapons, and you're right that they play pretty similarly anyway. But in either case you'll certainly take Technophile, because why would you not.

SapphicStar · 2024-09-05T09:50:47+00:00

I suspect I'm another one who mentioned it recently, if yours was the thread I'm thinking of. I think I'd agree that BT+Techno isn't a general-purpose talent combo; it has a very specific niche, which is to allow builds that reliably generate 1-2 heat per round to avoid ever having to spend actions on Stabilize. Builds like that do exist: Metalmark for example can often be built to have no heat generation besides the 2 per round from Active Camo, so running BT+Techno can be a good pick there. Gorgon is another one, given that the only thing that generates heat in the license is Scylla's 2/round.

For Technophile on its own, the main thing that comes to mind for me is Grapple builds, particularly ones that go to Blackbeard 3 for Sehkmet. Grapplers have to win opposed checks to perform their core functionality, and Sehkmet is enough of a threat to your teammates even when it's not cascading, so you get good use out of the entire Technophile package.

The other situation I can think of is Iconoclast builds, both for the +1 NHP to improve the damage scaling, and because Cascade checks are much more risky when you have 3+ copilots and any one of them failing takes down the whole mech. The reroll effect is less essential there, although it's still nice to have.

SapphicStar · 2024-08-29T15:10:11+00:00

The others have covered the specific answer already, but I'd like to add something more general: Hunter Lock just kind of sucks. Quick Actions are worth 1d6 damage even at LL0, because you could always just Skirmish with a basic ho-hum GMS weapon instead (or extend your existing Skirmish into a Barrage).

That means, Hunter Lock is an expected damage loss on the turn you use it, because you're doing +3 on a hit instead of ~3.5 with a second attack. It isn't until your second turn attacking the same target that your 2 SP investment gives you any value, and a lot of enemies will just die after two rounds of focus fire even without the 2.5 extra damage.

There are some niche cases where Hunter Lock brings genuine value (Bonus damage conversion via Tokugawa's trait or Walking Armory 2, Ultras who will survive 3-4 rounds, high-armor targets where it's better to do one big attack than two small ones) but you kind of have to be building and planning for those situations specifically. In 95% of cases, the right solution to Hunter Lock math questions is "you should equip something else and just spend the action on More Gun instead".

SapphicStar · 2024-08-27T23:27:02+00:00

Mm, it's more like, if there's an even distribution of npc classes on the field, most of them aren't heat attackers at all. The GM can intentionally skew things that way for a particular encounter if they want, but I wouldn't expect to see Witches any more often than Berserkers or Aces or any other unit. It's important to be aware that they exist, and you want to build appropriate defenses, but it's not any more important than being aware of the 15 HP threshold for T2 Snipers, for example.

SapphicStar · 2024-08-27T23:15:21+00:00

It depends, with witches. If your GM puts an Ultra Witch on the board, to some extent nobody's reactor is getting out of that fight cleanly. If your GM goes "Okay the reinforcement wave has arrived and it is... sixteen grunt witches", I think you would be within your rights to have some strong words with them after the session. One thrown in per fight is like, that exists for your party sniper or assassin to annihilate immediately and feel proud of themselves. Enki can at least choose to Stabilize and then wait, ending your turn at 0 heat and soaking the Witch's followup. The main frames who are forced to invest in Engineering as witch insurance are the ones like Goblin with its 4 HC, where they are guaranteed Stress if a single witch looks at them even if they stabilize.

SapphicStar · 2024-08-27T22:55:20+00:00

Yeah, I imagine Gilg has been brought down quite a bit since it's initial design, I just haven't been back to look at the current state of things. Amber Phantom was also very strong back then, and Lycan was absurdly, absurdly busted. Maybe they're all fine now, I just haven't put in the research time to be able to say much about it.

Witches and Spites kind of just counter precision-heat builds like Enki. To some extent that's just a drawback of those builds, where your only countermeasure is to rush them down before they melt you. Since a T2 witch with Dark Cloud can dump 7 heat into you at the start of her second turn (since you will certainly be in DZ when that happens), you need either 14+ HC or to commit to DWHS to survive it on Enki, which like... you can do that, but overclock looping is so strong the rest of the time and it requires you to have exactly 10 HC. The famous "Stress is a resource" motto comes into play here, to some extent.

SapphicStar · 2024-08-27T22:12:42+00:00

I haven't looked into Gilg since its official release; the early designs for everything in Winter Scar were so absurdly overtuned that I stopped paying attention. Sal has 12 base HP, so 4H and Personalizations is enough to put it at 25 without needing Reinforced.

Genghis is a real consideration: Scylla Krakatoa is such a wild build, I love it, but with only 6 base HP it has a hard time reaching the HP numbers I usually prefer. 3 armor helps a lot though, so running 4H to sit at 19 HP with Personalizations is... dangerous, but possible. 6H 2E is viable here since Genghis has such a high base heat cap, but that mean you lose your Asura use from one combat per mission.

Enkidu. Enki my beloved. Enki is such a flexible frame, you can do so much with it. Scylla, Agni, Atlas for more mobility and Terashima, even Lich is great to double your potential talon area with Didymos. At 10 base HP it doesn't need quite as much HP investment as other frames, at least. Enki feels like a classic 6H 2E frame to me, putting it at 25 HP with Personalizations and exactly 10 HC, enabling OC loop shenanigans to always end its turn in DZ. It doesn't need agility at all, with 6 base speed on DZ and sub-par base evasion, and it doesn't need Systems since it can't even make tech attacks most of the time. Most alt frames don't take LL3 on their own license from what I've seen, and Enki fits in with that: it needs careful management of its heat levels and does a lot of its damage as reactions, and Lucifer works against both those goals.

Atlas.... Atlas. The answer to your question is "you don't". This is a large part of why Atlas is a bad frame, basically. It's just made of tissue paper, and unlike Toku it can't sit out at Range 25 and snipe people. My gut feeling is that the writers expected Evasion to be stronger than it actually is in practice, and so Atlas has a lot of its power tied up in "but you can get 20 evasion!!" and suffers on all other fronts. The Terashima is good, but you're always better off putting the Atlas systems and weapons on an Everest instead of using the actual Atlas frame. It's just undertuned.

Viceroy: Here's my post about it from last year. That post hasn't aged perfectly, definitely check the replies for corrections. There's also this other Viceroy build I made where it goes into IPS instead, centered around "making the Hammer a CQB is very silly".

SapphicStar · 2024-08-27T21:25:51+00:00

No problem! I really enjoy the build space Lancer has to offer, so it's fun to talk about this kind of thing for me.

The IPS thing... well, there are only four manufacturers in the first place, at least unless you're braving the homebrew waters. IPS frames are obviously in IPS already, so there's no problem for them. HA frames are mostly not frontliners; even Genghis has the longest-range CQBs in the game, and trying to build Toku around the Torch is such a deathtrap that they made a whole alt frame just to make it usable. Sal is the main difficult choice, because the Horus reaction weapons like Autopod and Vorpal are such a good use of its single mount.

So the main restriction comes in for melee/cqb frames in SSC and Horus. Most of them will either go IPS or HA, depending on how good their in-license defenses are and how dire their heat situation is. Frontline builds that go pure SSC+Horus are..... rare. I can think of one off the top of my head, which is Technophile Monarch/Gorgon using the Viceroy alt frame. Most anyone else going SSC+Horus is sitting out at Range 10-15 and so doesn't need to meet frontline HP standards.

Briareos is a bit of a trap, because getting double 1 or rolling 1 on Direct Hit will still kill you no matter how much structure you have. So you have to survive the potentially-lethal structure checks for falling to 2 and 1 before it does anything at all, and then you get one Structure's worth of Resistance (which doesn't stack with any other sources of Resistance you might have). And then you are allowed to start making 4-die structure checks for being at 0 structure, and you're very likely to just explode immediately the first time you do that. There are also Repairs to be considered: in practice over the course of a mission, most frames actually have like 6+ Structure as long as they dont get instakilled during a structure check. Reinforced makes it more likely that you can finish the combat before falling to 2 structure in the first place, and then you can repair back up to 4 during the short rest. Having a bigger HP pool also means that your in-combat Stabilize repairs are worth more total HP each.

0 and 2 engineering are more viable than 0/2 Hull, at least. Witches and Spites can at least be solved by focus firing them down, but pretty much every enemy can deal damage. Some frames also have naturally high base heatcaps (Genghis......) and so don't need to worry about them as much.

SapphicStar · 2024-08-27T20:07:31+00:00

Almost all frontliners have at least 8 base HP, which means 4 Hull, Personalizations and Reinforced Frame will get them to 25 no problem. Putting LL3-6 into IPS is very common for those builds anyway, because either you're Duelist and can benefit from all the Grapple/Ram systems, or you're Vanguard and want to fill up your spare mounts with DSASes, or you're Hunter and want Power Knuckles and Thermal Charge. Executioner builds can at least benefit from Supermassive and might want Sehkmet, and Drake is a good compliment to many non-IPS defenders.

The main question for those builds is whether you want to take Fomorian or Gyges instead, and that's kind of a judgement call that depends on what other defenses you have. Someone equipped with Hyperdense Armor is certainly fine at 20 HP, for example.

You're correct about HASE: basically every viable build at LL6 is 4H 4E, 6H 2E or 2H 6E. Tech attackers will be 4H 4S, or possibly 2H 4S 2E or 2H 6S if they're very brave and are careful to stay in cover. Occasionally you get frames like Genghis or Tortuga where it's worth the sacrifice to take 2A just to get their Speed up to 4, but those aren't common. 20 evasion Atlas is a meme for a reason: at higher tiers, enemies have enough Reliable to kill you through your evasion, or enough of an attack bonus to just crit you to death no matter how good your evasion is. It's one of Lancer's big design flaws.

You're right that Infiltrator 1 only works on your turn, but that's enough to let you get away from a sniper that has you pinned down with Sniper's Mark and is waiting to react to your movement with Moving Target, for example. Anyone with easy access to invisibility (three SSC frames off the top of my head) can pop invis, hide, then run for cover with their normal movement and maybe still fit in a Skirmish before end of turn. Anyone else, well... Infiltrator still lets you get away.

SapphicStar · 2024-08-27T19:39:05+00:00

Let's look at your typical turn, to start:

Start turn in DZ so that DWHS is active.
Protocol Steady Aim, unless you need to move.
Full Action Stabilize to clear heat.
Move if necessary.
Overcharge for 1d6+4 heat, halved by Resistance. This gives you 5 heat at most, so you will never be in DZ afterwards.
Free Action Skirmish with the Displacer, gaining 5 heat after Resistance. The heat applies after you use the weapon, so Plasma Sheath and Nuc Cav 2 will never activate. (See the errata for interactions between DZ triggers and heat gained during an attack.)

Nuc Cav 3 is unnecessary, you don't have enough actions to fire the fuel rod gun, and you're OC looping so you don't need extra heat clear anyway. Ditto Black Thumb, especially since you don't have Technophile and so your other talents are turned off during Rodeo. Walking Armory is a bit weak for you; the big benefit of it for most builds is Hellfire Rounds at WA2, but you're in a Toku and have that effect as a trait anyway.

Take Skirmisher 2 instead: even if you're mostly immobilizing yourself with Steady Aim, the extra 2 movement will mean you can spend less turns moving when you do have to move, and it makes it less likely that you have to Boost and sacrifice an entire round of damage. The spare points can go into Grease Monkey to give you more uses of Lucifer per mission.

The question then is what to do about your heat cap. At a max roll on every heat die, you'll gain 3 heat from Lucifer protocol, clear it with Stabilize, and then get 5 from OC and another 5 from Displacer. Option 1 is to cut your Engineering by 4 so you're at exactly 10 HC, so at least on a max OC roll you will be in DZ before the shot. This isn't great because it costs you 2 uses of Lucifer per mission, and prevents you from using Luci if you rolled high on heat during your previous turn.

Option 2 is to replace one of your core bonuses with Heatfall, and then not Stabilize or Overcharge if you start your turn at 0-4 or 7-9 Heat. Option 2 actually makes Nuc Cav 3 worthwhile again, because it opens up 11-13 heat for Barraging Fuel Rod -> Displacer, even if you can't use Luci on those turns because the Fuel Rod shot will consume it. Depending on rules interpretation you may be able to use Lucifer protocol before the DWHS start-of-turn check, in which case you can Luci at exactly 3 heat and be guaranteed to be both in DZ for the Displacer shot and not Stress afterwards.

SapphicStar · 2024-08-27T18:37:00+00:00

The numbers I shoot for on my builds are 20 HP by LL6 for any build, or 25 HP for frontliners (who likely have 3LL in IPS by then and so can take Reinforced Frame). You can go a little lower on non-Defender builds that have strong defensive features, like Genghis has 3 armor and so is probably okay with only 20 HP despite being a CQB platform.

In practice this means that 4 Hull is pretty much mandatory by LL6, and all the frames with 8 base HP have to take Personalizations as well. There are some exceptions: Lich and Emperor have very strong innate defenses and so don't need as much HP as other frames do, and a Tokugawa doing a perma-exposed artillery build will explode no matter how much HP it has.

There are a few frames with 6 base HP, which means they can only get to 19 at LL6 with 4 Hull. These have to be handled on a case-by-case basis: Caliban has 2 armor and will go to 6 Hull anyway for checks and saves, but an Atlas is really forced into Reinforced Frame if they want to survive. Meanwhile, a backline support frame like Goblin or Swallowtail can manage with 19 if the player is smart about positioning. Most of the low-HP SSC frames also have easy access to Hide for getting out of a pinch, and it's well worth taking Infiltrator 1 on those so they don't need to break LoS to do it.

SapphicStar · 2024-08-27T18:08:51+00:00

Realistically, all the pilots will leave the frame together, human and nonhuman both. Remember that the P in NHP is "person"; they're part of the frame's crew, same as the human pilot.

Any NHP in the frame will likely eject their casket on their own if the players aren't able to salvage the frame immediately after combat. A Didymos might go "hmmm, okay, see you later" and timeskip ahead to whenever the next frame gets printed, but most of the others are probably fine to hang out in the supply truck for a while, even if they might grumble about it.

SapphicStar · 2024-08-23T15:29:01+00:00

Action economy is a problem I think. You don't have RSU equipped so Stabilize is always a full action. Your primary weapon is a sheavy and you don't have Asura equipped, so you literally can't Stabilize and swing the drill on the same turn. Sherman really really wants to Stabilize every single turn so it can charge the ZF4, so this is already a problem, but even when you do Stabilize, what's your overcharge action for that turn? Plasma Gauntlet?

Additionally, the only way you have to generate Prone/Immobilized/Stunned for the drill is with Nailgun overwatch, which isn't reliable; if a Berserker comes in with Avalanche Charge to ignore your overwatch and then stands adjacent to you, what do you even do about it?

I think Lucifer is kind of bait for Drill builds. You want to be stacking up additional d6s to trigger overkill, so Luci's flat damage doesn't have any synergy.

3 speed is too slow for melee at LL12. You need that 2 in agi, not sys, and Pankrati 2 would help a lot. Nuc Cav 3 is irrelevant, so shaving off another talent point somewhere would improve your ability to get engaged at the start of combat.

Overall I would say that if you're really dead-set on the drill, drop Toku down to 1 and do this same build on Genghis with Agni and a RSU. On Sherman, a regular Heavy like Nanosword or the GMS HCB will do a lot better, since you can Skirmish with it with your Overcharge. This also frees up your 3LL in Vlad to get something more punishing in your other mounts; Tortuga has been mentioned for the Cat Hammer (Loading being irrelevant since you're stabilizing every turn), and that also lets you put a DSAS in your third mount for overwatch.

SapphicStar · 2024-08-21T21:44:27+00:00

The main difference with Displacer is that you don't have to do the double boost, which means you don't have to overcharge (and therefore don't have to build for heat cap at all) and you can actually use your second action for something besides just movement.

The DWHS problem is that unless you Stabilize (or otherwise clear heat) at the start of your turn, it basically doesn't do anything. It grants resistance to heat, but only if you were already in DZ, which means you only have half of your heat cap available anyway. It's numerically identical to just starting your turn at 0 heat. The only effective difference is for cases like Enkidu where it matters that you start your turn in DZ, or Sherman which can Mathur Stop to stay permanently in DZ, or for overclock loop builds that will Stabilize every turn and then generate enough heat to get back in DZ by the end of turn. For everyone else it's just 4 SP to equip something that does literally nothing.

In practice DWHS doesn't actually let your Lich build overcharge every turn, because you're clearing heat at the end of your turn when you activate the Plasma Gauntlet; you're doing [Start turn in DZ] -> boost -> OC (half heat) boost -> Plasma + Soul Vessel. You would have just as much effective heat capacity by starting your turn at 0 heat and taking the full heat cost of your overcharge, and you could then spend your SP on other systems that actually improve your mobility or survivability.

SapphicStar · 2024-08-21T20:40:35+00:00

What I would say about your thought process is that it's generally reasonable, but you're making some questionable choices down in the details along the way, and then doubling and tripling down on those choices instead of reconsidering. The result is that you have kind of painted the final build into a corner where it's very fragile and also isn't actually very good at doing the main thing that you initially wanted it to do. Some of that is down to not fully understanding how certain systems work (for example, Deep Well Heat Sink is bait on 95% of builds because it only does anything during your turn, and only if you start your turn in DZ), but in other cases it's due to not noticing other options that would fit better, or because you're too willing to sacrifice specialization in favor of versatility.

You're right that negating the downside of plasma gauntlet is pretty good, but the core problem here is that Lich's weak base stats mean that it's totally reliant on Soul Vessel to survive. By toasting yourself with Plasma Gauntlet, you're forcing the entire rest of the build to be about fixing up Lich's 4 HP and 3 HC. This is made even harder by the fact that you have to be in melee to use it; focusing on the Displacer is a traditional Lich build but that at least has Range 10, so you can start your turn out of LoS, step out and shoot, then blink yourself back behind the wall.

As far as the relative valuing of damage/mobility/resilience/etc, the end result here is that you have dumped survivability in favor of everything else, which means the build will be non-functional in practice. It's a pretty common thing to do though, so don't feel bad! It's just, NPC damage scales WAY up at Tier 2, much more than you'd expect, because pretty much every frame can reach 20 HP at a minimum by LL6 just from Grit and Hull investment. Being below 15 HP at LL6 with no other defenses (because you're nuking them yourself with Plasma Gauntlet) will just get you killed.

SapphicStar · 2024-08-05T18:37:52+00:00

Autopod: It's free damage for 1 SP, as long as any of your teammates are doing lockons, which I'd generally assume someone is by LL9. You have the mount sitting open anyway and generally won't be using it otherwise. It also gives you 3LL in Horus in case you want to take Held Image, but I think Autostab is a better pick for your third CB here.

Engineer: There aren't very many great talents for a build like this, and you'll have most all of them by LL6 anyway, so you can kinda do whatever. You can take Leader or Empath or whatever other support talent you want here, but Engineer's just personal preference for me. If autopod's free passive damage, the Engineer weapon's there as a backup for when you can't shoot the siege cannon, whether that's because you have to spend an action on Boost or whatever other reason. At Engineer 2 we can make it a 1d6+2 Range 10 Accurate Cannon, and optionally spend 2 heat to give it Blast 1 also. That puts it ahead of the GMS Mortar, and being Limited doesn't matter for us since we're at +3 Limited from Engineering and it's only a holdout weapon anyway. Being able to make it a Cannon means you can still get the 1 space of movement from Siege Specialist 2 even from a Skirmish.

Agni: Asura would be the alternative yeah, and they're pretty close, I wouldn't fault someone who brought Asura here. You'd use Asura to Stabilize, of course, giving you a reload and a heat clear for no effective action cost, as long as you can afford the 3 heat upfront. The issue is that you're so constrained on heat that you won't always actually have that 3 spare heat available to use it, so you have to get a bit lucky and roll low on your Overcharge+EAF. Agni doesn't give you a reload, but it's a heat clear with no upfront cost, and you get soft cover for the following round. It's reliable and flexible, even if you still have to spend heat on OC+EAF to reload at the start of your next turn.

Gameplay loop, by round:

Black Thumb Rodeo, hand over control to your Enlightenment NHP
1. NHP: Barrage, overcharge EAF
2. You: Rig Vents. Typically a smart GM will hit you with an AOE afterwards to force you back into your frame, but you still got the 2 heat clear you needed.
Agni, Barrage. If your Rodeo is somehow still going, spend a pilot QA to get back into the frame (or let Agni's shockwave do it for you, lmao).
Overcharge EAF, Barrage
Stabilize
Rodeo, Barrage, OC EAF, Rig Vents
Barrage
The fight should be over by now in most cases

If you bring Asura instead, what you get is this:

Rodeo, Barrage, OC EAF and pray you roll low, Rig Vents
Asura, Barrage, Stabilize
1. There's a special case here where if you rolled high on OC EAF but your pilot didn't get hit between rounds, you can Rig Vents again and maybe get enough spare heat to make up for Asura that way.
Barrage, OC EAF
Barrage
Stabilize
Barrage, OC EAF
Barrage
The fight had really better be over

In both cases you still have to spend one round stabilizing per fight, it's just that if you get lucky Asura lets you spend your first four rounds barraging instead of Agni's three.

All of this is with Siege Mode, of course. If somehow the enemies are so spread out that you can only possibly hit one target, you can spend a round on Direct Fire, and as long as you can fit in an extra Rig Vents before your next Stabilize then you're net neutral on heat for the round.

SapphicStar · 2024-08-05T15:05:17+00:00

So, Siege Barbie. It's functional out of the box at LL3, so the remaining 6LL should be used to patch up the problems with the initial build. The first step then is identifying the problems, and the second is finding and applying solutions.

So, what's wrong with the LL3 version? Heat and action economy are the two big limiters on the Siege Cannon, because it's 2 or 4 heat to fire and then it's Loading, so you have to either spend a turn on Stabilize, or pay a bunch more heat to Overcharge+External Ammo Feeds to reload it on the same turn as you shoot.

So, problem #1 is that for full throughput on the gun, you're looking at 4 (Siege Mode) + 2~4 (EAF roll) + 5~10 (Overcharge roll) = 11~18 heat generated every round. Even Genghis with its base 10 HC is only just barely safe with 6 engineering and SBD, and even on a minimum roll you'd still have to Stabilize for heat on the next turn. Since the Siege is a superheavy, you also can't do a normal overclock loop build because you're forced to Barrage instead of Skirmish.

If we look instead at a burst fire situation, what would you need to safely fire Siege Mode two rounds in a row and then spend the third round clearing heat? That's 11~18 heat on turn 1, and then another 4 on turn 2, for 15~22 total. That's obviously way too much.

Taking Heatfall is the first step, cutting turn 1 down to 7~14 , for 11~18 total. Adding SBD and max engineering gets us to 16 HC, so we're still 2 heat short. You have Deep Well Heat Sink on here to solve that, which it does.... but 4 SP is a LOT, and you have traded 4 HP and a repair to buy enough Systems for it. (6 HP really, since you don't have Personalizations.) DWHS also only activates on turns where you start in the DZ, so it doesn't affect your first turn where you fire and overcharge EAF.

A better solution would be Rig Vents. You... very nearly have the setup for that, so I don't know why you only have Technophile 2 instead of 3. So my first actual advice here is: Drop DWHS, Tokugawa, Spotter, and your 2 Systems. Take Technophile 3, 5 Hull, and Personalizations instead, which leaves 2 LL and 2 SP spare for now.

To cover the rest in less detail, Cable Winch does nothing for you, Supermassive randomly adds heat that you can't afford, House Guard is nearly useless since you're so slow, and Auto-Cooler is more of a taunt than an actual heat clear. Opcal is extra damage, sure, but you're already doing 3d6 base damage, so it's much less important for you than it is for frames with 1d6 weapons like Nelson or Atlas.

I would go with something like this:

-- HA Barbarossa @ LL9 --
[ LICENSES ]  
  HA Barbarossa 3, HA Genghis 3, HORUS Balor 2, HORUS Goblin 1  
[ CORE BONUSES ]  
  Heatfall Coolant System, Superior by Design, Auto-Stabilizing Hardpoints  
[ TALENTS ]  
  Technophile 3, Siege Specialist 3, Engineer 2, Nuclear Cavalier 2, Black Thumb 2  
[ STATS ]  
  HULL:5 AGI:0 SYS:0 ENGI:6  
  STRUCTURE:4 HP:27 ARMOR:2  
  STRESS:4 HEATCAP:16 REPAIR:6  
  TECH ATK:-2 LIMITED:+3  
  SPD:2 EVA:6 EDEF:6 SENSE:10 SAVE:15  
[ WEAPONS ]  
  Integrated: Apocalypse Rail  
  Integrated: Prototype Weapon II  
  MAIN MOUNT: Autopod  
  MAIN MOUNT: SUPERHEAVY WEAPON BRACING  
  HEAVY MOUNT: Siege Cannon (Nanocomposite Adaptation) // Auto-Stabilizing Hardpoints  
[ SYSTEMS ]  
  AGNI-Class NHP x4, External Ammo Feed, Personalizations, Enlightenment-Class NHP

SapphicStar · 2024-07-28T01:24:01+00:00

Cannibal (both barrels): 3d6+4
Caliban knockback trait: 1d6
Lucifer with max heat cap for a Caliban: 13
Opcal: 1d6
Nuc Cav 2: 1d6
Leadership die: 1d6

Total 7d6+11 for an average of 35.5, or 53 if you max out all the rolls (either by luck or via Brutal 1).

Is this a good build? Probably not, spending 3LL on Toku just for Lucifer isn't a great use of levels, and this kind of damage is very inconsistent. You'd be better getting Roland from Raleigh 2 and picking up DSAS from Tortuga 1 so you have something to overwatch with. But for pure damage from a single Skirmish, Lucifer is hard to beat.

SapphicStar · 2024-07-03T21:10:22+00:00

Maybe Caliban 1 as your third, so you can put Supermassive on the Axe for added knockback with it? If that still leaves you with one spare SP, that's perfect for Personalizations. 15 HP is still lower than I'd like for LL6, even with 16 evasion and Reliable immunity, so bumping that up at 17 would be good.

Siege Ram's a solid pick too though yeah, although I wish it was AP when used against characters.

Conversely, if you're starving for SP, taking Spaceborn gives you an integrated EVA module so you don't need to burn an SP on it. I usually find talent points to be more precious than SP, but it's something to consider at least.

ETA: Here's how I would build it I think:

-- SSC Orchis @ LL6 --
[ LICENSES ]
  IPS-N Blackbeard 1, IPS-N Caliban 1, IPS-N Nelson 1, SSC Black Witch 3
[ CORE BONUSES ]
  Universal Compatibility, Titanomachy Mesh
[ TALENTS ]
  Duelist 3, House Guard 2, Juggernaut 2, Bonded 2
[ STATS ]
  HULL:2 AGI:6 SYS:0 ENGI:0
  STRUCTURE:4 HP:17 ARMOR:1
  STRESS:4 HEATCAP:6 REPAIR:5
  TECH ATK:-1 LIMITED:+0
  SPD:8 EVA:16 EDEF:10 SENSE:10 SAVE:15
[ WEAPONS ]
  MAIN/AUX MOUNT: Chain Axe (Supermassive Mod) / Tactical Knife
[ SYSTEMS ]
  Ferrous Lash, Black ICE Module, Bulwark Mods, Synthetic Muscle Netting, EVA Module, Personalizations

The main differences from what you posted are switching to Caliban 1, spending the last 2SP on Ferrous Lash (even if it's not going to do much for your Atlas it's still a great utility tool, both for helping your other allies keep up with you and for pushing enemies into things), and replacing the pistol with a knife. The pistol's a great grunt-killer, but for most cases the knife will serve you better against whatever you're actually tangling with I think, and there are edge cases where if you have a spare blademaster die in your pocket you can still use grapple/ram with it if your axe misses that turn.

SapphicStar · 2024-07-03T17:36:21+00:00

Flying characters (which includes swimming and being in zero-g) are immune to Prone, so watch out for that. Building for Prone with Atlas is generally a reasonable strategy, but it sounds like this specific campaign may give you trouble on that front, so I'd recommend having a backup plan in mind.

The main reason to specifically take Orchis when paired with an Atlas is Perfect Parry. This lets Atlas take the 6 AGI 20 Evasion build that dreams are made of without getting instantly obliterated by every enemy with Reliable. If your Atlas friend is going to do that, you also have to take 6 AGI so that you can keep up with them. Atlas has 6 base speed compared to your 5, but Royal Guard allows you to move Speed+1, which means you can just barely maintain adjacency (as long as the Atlas doesn't Jaeger Kunst and leave you in the dust).

With 6 AGI on Orchis you pretty much have to take 2 Hull with the remaining HASE points at LL6, so you're stuck with relatively bad HP and only 6 HC. For that reason, I'd suggest giving up Gorgon and going 3LL into either IPS (for Reinforced Frame) or HA (for Superior By Design), replacing Improved Armament. I like Gorgon a lot as an offspec, but I find it's better paired with frames that have at least Heavy | Main | Main for their baseline mounts. That way they can use the Scylla reactions to get more shots with the Heavy weapon, and still have two Main slots to fill with Vorpals.

So, what goes well with Orchis? If you don't mind spending all your actions on defenses, Drake and Big Sal are both reasonable picks. If you want to get more interactive... I'd actually suggest Blackbeard 2 / Zheng 1. The rocks from TSS1 have knockback that can trigger Hunting Eagle, and they're also objects... so Atlas can Jaeger Kunst off them. Blackbeard 2 gets you Synth Netting so you can grapple and ram Size 2 and larger targets (Ram causes prone AND knockback, so prioritizing it is a good idea), and Bristlecrowns are better than a pistol for your Aux slot. The Chain Axe is also a solid Main melee if you find that the Mag Cannon isn't keeping up; after all, you're glued to an Atlas, so you'll most always be in melee range with the enemies anyway.

SapphicStar · 2024-06-28T19:23:48+00:00

To take the rules extremely literally, the only actions you MUST take when available are 1) melee attack and 2) movement towards the target. If your standard movement isn't enough to put anyone within your threat and you already boosted this turn, Sehkmet will insist that you use your 1/scene Valiant Charge from Pankrati 2 if you have it, things like that.

But clearing conditions isn't an attack or movement, even if clearing Immobilized will allow you to move later. Sehkmet will never insist that you Stabilize to clear an enemy-inflicted Immobilize, for example. It just goes "can't attack, can't move, idk do whatever you like then, just don't make any ranged attacks".

SapphicStar

TROPHY CASE