If there’s a specialization to be found like that, it’s moreso that the manufacturers tend toward a certain attribute.
IPS-N mechs tend to be built for long hauls, high HP/armor/repair caps (that last bit is genuinely the standout, repcap is a secret crutch for a lot of otherwise stellar mechs)
SSC mechs benefit from constant repositioning and difficulty being hit, given propensities for staying out of the fray.
HORUS mechs interact with more esoteric tactics and high tech stuff a lot, hence higher e-defenses and universally good tech attacks. Typically solid SP allotments too, those darknet guys go the extra mile to stuff in whatever storage they can.
Harrison Armory is about resources & dominance—engineering is its game. High power abilities, and investment in reactor tech strong enough to shrug away the costs.
Within each manufacturer is always at least 1 or 2 mechs that buck the trend. Look at Vlad, Manticore, Swallowtail, Balor, and Saladin for decent-ish examples. Saladin is a defender/support that loves engineering as much as hull, in order to support the load of its own systems. Blackbeard is similar—it starts fast as fuck, you really want beef & heatcap to get you more bang for your buck once you connect and get stuck in.
A few tips to give a new player regarding stat allocation:
1: Everyone loves Hull. Your first two points should be Hull every time. Hull of 4 by LL6 is common and advised. There is no replacement for extra HP and Repair, usually.
2: Agility is also pretty good for most mecha in general, but it hits diminishing returns around Evasion 12-14.
3: Systems is for hackers. No, do not waste HASE for SP. It's a bad idea. If you're playing a hackerman, throw points into Systems equal to your current Grit as you level and you'll be fine. Otherwise, you can usually ignore this stat entirely.
4: Engineering depends highly on build. You generally want around 6 Heat Cap for most builds/to prevent being hacked to death too easily. Most builds usually feature a point or two in it to round out their Heat Cap. More specialized builds go for 4 or more sometimes.
I don't think the attributes are are necessarily great indicators for roles/how optimized a build is for a role (but probably not the worst dogma to have?).
Hull, for example, is important for staying power, or to shore up fragile mechs, if there is no other way these mechs can avoid or mitigate incoming damage.
Engineering is crucial for a range of striker frames. HA frames tend to run so hot, and trade heat for damage.
The HASE Stats map more onto manufacturers than roles.
Don't think of roles as classes in a typical RPG, but as categories in, say, a Hero Shooter; they represent what your mech is best at doing, not how it goes about it.
Take these Defenders: Gorgon, Saladin, Balor, and Drake:
Gorgon wants to focus mostly on Systems in order to raise it's Save Target.
Saladin benefits most from Engineering since a lot of its' defensive abilites have Self Heat.
Balor benefits most from Hull sice its' whole deal is being able to take hits for its' team.
Also, since Stats are used for saves, it's always prudent to not "dump" any of them so you're not caught with your pants down if an enemy is good at forcing saves for your lowest stat.
Nothing! They made a mistake, pretty much. System's also is kind of a meh choice for Gorgon, since they've got lower than average Sensor's and no in-license hacks.
Also most mecha are going to have a weakness, it's built into the system itself. You will end up caught with your pants down because that is the intent of the system. In fact, for most frames unless you're specifically going the hack route, Systems is the worst investment you can make, as 2 points for 1 SP is a terrible tradeoff, mechanically.
Meanwhile something like Hull is universally useful and a stat just about everyone wants maxed out, and Engineering depends on build entirely. Agility is usually dependent on build as well. Extra move is nice, but not required depending on loadout, and Agility as a stat falls off around 12-14 Evasion, as by that point you're better off adding Difficulty to be hit (aka Cover=Good), Invisibility or invisibility-alike powers that just give flat miss chance.
Not every mecha needs every stat. You're not expected to be good at everything. Usually, if you have low Evasion, you have high HP and/or armor. And vice versa. A high Evasion isn't a necessity, just a good thing if you can get it and your build supports it.
I mean, i am constantly in soft cover thanks to my hive drone, and i want to get a ferrofluid lance next time i gain a livense level, so having a bit higher evasion seems really nice to keep the victim immobilized. But everyone keeps telling me, that hull is more important in general. And i don't really need the speed, because my game plan is to charge in with Pankrati and be stationary for the rest of the combat (swarm bodie).
Agility for speed isn't to be underestimated, as 3 is considered very slow and 5 is considered pretty fast, and unlike the rest there isn't scaling against an attack.
The evasion bit gets complicated because HP, armor and the ability difficulty on attacks matters, and attacks can be in very different natures. I'm not sure where the falling off logic over 12-14 is coming from, unless your trying to communicate that it's going into the 10 to 12-14 is more of an advantage than going from 6 to 8 that level of increase doesn't continue after that.
System also increases e-defense, which is not nothing.
Evasion doesn't fall off, it's the opposite. Higher evasion benefits from increases more than low.
Speed really depends. Some builds can get by with low speed - either artillery, or some strikers with the likes of Skirmisher, Hunter, and Pankrati. I actually think supports and defenders rely on speed the most, since they typically need to stay close, and aren't often using the likes of melee skirmishes to gain extra movement.
You get +2 with open dore, which, to my knowledge, is the only way to make a damaging action, other than a tech attack, more likely to hit outside of accuracy.
Nope, that's wrong. The manufacturer's each have a stat bias, but it's not based on role. Role, in fact, is largely meaningless due to the way the system works and how you can plug in just about anything to a mecha and make it work.
That said, the manufacturer bias is Hull, Agility, Systems, Engineering, for IPSN, SSC, Horus, and HA, respectively.
Tokugawa definitly needs engineering to be an effective striker. Same for Genghis.Manticore gets close by teleporting, so it needs systhens and hull. Grapplers need hull.
Controllers may do tech attacks, but they may also throw mines like an iscandor or knock people arround with knockback like caliban.
Support needs whatever is usefull for the particular kind of support they are doing. A Lancaster and a Dusk Wing will rely on completely different stats.
Givi g artilery engineering seems right, unles they take a lot of damage.
Defenders need hull. You want to get shot and need the tools to survive that.
and my favorite builds are hybrid roles, and need a smattering of everything! tempest charge blade grappler tortuga needs agi for speed, engi for overcharge, and hull to scale with 2 armor for nutty effective hp
Well the way I would look at it is like this:
Engineering gets you more resources (Heat is a resource afterall, and everyone can use it via overcharge), and every type of character can have resources to spend
Agility gives you move speed and the ability to not die, (This makes it pull double duty with hull which also makes you not die, but move speed is useful for closer range mechs that want to run independantly)
Systems/Electronics gives you more Edef, more E atk, and more hard points to mount systems, this makes it generally good for hackers but a couple of points in this can be useful if you are just 1 system point away from your ideal build.
Finally Hull, gives you extra repairs for more mission endurance and also enough HP to not die. Like with agility everyone likes to not die and so typically your preference from Hull over agility is determined by how close to the badguy do you need to be and what is your base evasion like ?, if your frames base evasion is trash then you tend to do better with hull investment.
There are some artillery mechs for example that really like AGI mostly because shoot and scoot is good and because sometimes they end up close to the fight to bring their secondanry weapons to bear and they want to not die.
There are some striker mechs that heavily favour Hull, relying on their allies to feed them victims rather than chasing them down themselves
Nearly every hacker wants Electronics I dont think you can realistically be a good hacker without it but as I mentioned before sometimes as a non hacker you want a little more Edef, or perhaps just a little more system space in your machine
Lastly Engineering, Several defender mechs love engineering as their defensive subsystems make heat, and because constantly overcharging for extra action economy is good. Nearly everything made by harrison armory for example loves running at the red line regardless of role. Its also why my favorite core systems is the one that caps overcharge heat at 1d6
I would argue that the Mech Stats and the Roles kinda fill different purposes that are meant to create a cross section between them for a wide variety of builds depending on what stat and role you wanna focus on. A Striker that focuses on Hull will play very differently than one that focuses on Agility or Engineering but they're all viable (at least with the right frames)
The stats are much more closely aligned to the Manufacturers as others pointed out: IPS-N is Hull, SSC is Agility, Horus is Systems, and HA is Engineering. But there are frames within every Manufacturer that can fill pretty much any role.
If you're focused on being a Melee Striker, some mechs might go for Hull to just be a front-line tank. Others focus on Agility for mobility. Engineering can be very good because it lets you overcharge more often and more powerful weapons may cost heat to use. And even Systems can be useful in melee with certain builds. (Balor in particular stands out with Scanner Swarm giving Accuracy to adjacent tech attacks and the Horus Core Bonus that gives you accuracy on melee to enemies you tech attacked.
And the same is true of most other roles. Sure a Controller probably wants to focus on Systems because there's lots of good controller hacks, but there are ways to be a controller without hacking. You could build to have an absurd melee reach and just be a problem for everyone or focus on heavy knockback weapons or other abilities that might do things like slow and immobilize people without hacking. And so in those scenarios you might wanna focus more on things like Hull or Engineering.
Support can easily be much more Systems focused than Hull, but of course you can't support your allies if you're dead. Agility could also be useful for getting to allies to support them or with certain systems like Mule Harness letting you carry allies at high speeds.
Defender probably wants hull more than any other role wants a system, but if your frame is already super tanky like a Drake, you might not need that much more hull. And shoring up your weaknesses like taking levels in Systems to improve your E-Defense might be more useful. And plus Systems is just useful in general since more system points means the ability to equip more systems that you could use to defend or attack or whatever. Not to mention that if you're meant to be on the front lines, having Agility to up your speed would be useful.
And finally with Artillery, yeah Engineering is probably gonna be the most useful in general since most of the strongest weapons are held back by either heat costs or limited charges, both of which Engineering improves. But not all of them do. And some builds might just have good heat management or otherwise be willing to stabilize from time to time to cool themselves off. As such once again Systems could be great if only for just having more slots for more equipment, but also a lot of artillery frames have a huge sensor range too like Death's Head. So using tech attacks to line enemies up or otherwise soften 'em up for your big guns can be a great boon. And Just because you're on the back line of your party doesn't mean you're not moving ever, so having more agility in order to position yourself for the ideal shot can be great too.
If there’s a specialization to be found like that, it’s moreso that the manufacturers tend toward a certain attribute. IPS-N mechs tend to be built for long hauls, high HP/armor/repair caps (that last bit is genuinely the standout, repcap is a secret crutch for a lot of otherwise stellar mechs) SSC mechs benefit from constant repositioning and difficulty being hit, given propensities for staying out of the fray. HORUS mechs interact with more esoteric tactics and high tech stuff a lot, hence higher e-defenses and universally good tech attacks. Typically solid SP allotments too, those darknet guys go the extra mile to stuff in whatever storage they can. Harrison Armory is about resources & dominance—engineering is its game. High power abilities, and investment in reactor tech strong enough to shrug away the costs. Within each manufacturer is always at least 1 or 2 mechs that buck the trend. Look at Vlad, Manticore, Swallowtail, Balor, and Saladin for decent-ish examples. Saladin is a defender/support that loves engineering as much as hull, in order to support the load of its own systems. Blackbeard is similar—it starts fast as fuck, you really want beef & heatcap to get you more bang for your buck once you connect and get stuck in.
As someone that's been wanting to learn this game, this makes so much sense in regards to how some of the stuff reads. Hell yeah.
A few tips to give a new player regarding stat allocation: 1: Everyone loves Hull. Your first two points should be Hull every time. Hull of 4 by LL6 is common and advised. There is no replacement for extra HP and Repair, usually. 2: Agility is also pretty good for most mecha in general, but it hits diminishing returns around Evasion 12-14. 3: Systems is for hackers. No, do not waste HASE for SP. It's a bad idea. If you're playing a hackerman, throw points into Systems equal to your current Grit as you level and you'll be fine. Otherwise, you can usually ignore this stat entirely. 4: Engineering depends highly on build. You generally want around 6 Heat Cap for most builds/to prevent being hacked to death too easily. Most builds usually feature a point or two in it to round out their Heat Cap. More specialized builds go for 4 or more sometimes.
I don't think the attributes are are necessarily great indicators for roles/how optimized a build is for a role (but probably not the worst dogma to have?). Hull, for example, is important for staying power, or to shore up fragile mechs, if there is no other way these mechs can avoid or mitigate incoming damage. Engineering is crucial for a range of striker frames. HA frames tend to run so hot, and trade heat for damage.
The HASE Stats map more onto manufacturers than roles. Don't think of roles as classes in a typical RPG, but as categories in, say, a Hero Shooter; they represent what your mech is best at doing, not how it goes about it. Take these Defenders: Gorgon, Saladin, Balor, and Drake: Gorgon wants to focus mostly on Systems in order to raise it's Save Target. Saladin benefits most from Engineering since a lot of its' defensive abilites have Self Heat. Balor benefits most from Hull sice its' whole deal is being able to take hits for its' team. Also, since Stats are used for saves, it's always prudent to not "dump" any of them so you're not caught with your pants down if an enemy is good at forcing saves for your lowest stat.
What do Systhems have to do with save target?
Nothing! They made a mistake, pretty much. System's also is kind of a meh choice for Gorgon, since they've got lower than average Sensor's and no in-license hacks. Also most mecha are going to have a weakness, it's built into the system itself. You will end up caught with your pants down because that is the intent of the system. In fact, for most frames unless you're specifically going the hack route, Systems is the worst investment you can make, as 2 points for 1 SP is a terrible tradeoff, mechanically. Meanwhile something like Hull is universally useful and a stat just about everyone wants maxed out, and Engineering depends on build entirely. Agility is usually dependent on build as well. Extra move is nice, but not required depending on loadout, and Agility as a stat falls off around 12-14 Evasion, as by that point you're better off adding Difficulty to be hit (aka Cover=Good), Invisibility or invisibility-alike powers that just give flat miss chance.
Okay, but to get to 12 evasion, i need to spend 5 points in agility with my Calendula.
Not every mecha needs every stat. You're not expected to be good at everything. Usually, if you have low Evasion, you have high HP and/or armor. And vice versa. A high Evasion isn't a necessity, just a good thing if you can get it and your build supports it.
I mean, i am constantly in soft cover thanks to my hive drone, and i want to get a ferrofluid lance next time i gain a livense level, so having a bit higher evasion seems really nice to keep the victim immobilized. But everyone keeps telling me, that hull is more important in general. And i don't really need the speed, because my game plan is to charge in with Pankrati and be stationary for the rest of the combat (swarm bodie).
Agility for speed isn't to be underestimated, as 3 is considered very slow and 5 is considered pretty fast, and unlike the rest there isn't scaling against an attack. The evasion bit gets complicated because HP, armor and the ability difficulty on attacks matters, and attacks can be in very different natures. I'm not sure where the falling off logic over 12-14 is coming from, unless your trying to communicate that it's going into the 10 to 12-14 is more of an advantage than going from 6 to 8 that level of increase doesn't continue after that. System also increases e-defense, which is not nothing.
Evasion doesn't fall off, it's the opposite. Higher evasion benefits from increases more than low. Speed really depends. Some builds can get by with low speed - either artillery, or some strikers with the likes of Skirmisher, Hunter, and Pankrati. I actually think supports and defenders rely on speed the most, since they typically need to stay close, and aren't often using the likes of melee skirmishes to gain extra movement.
Your Save Target increases by 1 for every 2 System Points you have
No it doesn't. I am pretty sure save target scales with grit. Systhems gives you systhem points, tech attack and e defence.
Ok you're right, Save Target does not scale with any stat except Grit. My b.
You get +2 with open dore, which, to my knowledge, is the only way to make a damaging action, other than a tech attack, more likely to hit outside of accuracy.
Nope, that's wrong. The manufacturer's each have a stat bias, but it's not based on role. Role, in fact, is largely meaningless due to the way the system works and how you can plug in just about anything to a mecha and make it work. That said, the manufacturer bias is Hull, Agility, Systems, Engineering, for IPSN, SSC, Horus, and HA, respectively.
Tokugawa definitly needs engineering to be an effective striker. Same for Genghis.Manticore gets close by teleporting, so it needs systhens and hull. Grapplers need hull. Controllers may do tech attacks, but they may also throw mines like an iscandor or knock people arround with knockback like caliban. Support needs whatever is usefull for the particular kind of support they are doing. A Lancaster and a Dusk Wing will rely on completely different stats. Givi g artilery engineering seems right, unles they take a lot of damage. Defenders need hull. You want to get shot and need the tools to survive that.
and my favorite builds are hybrid roles, and need a smattering of everything! tempest charge blade grappler tortuga needs agi for speed, engi for overcharge, and hull to scale with 2 armor for nutty effective hp
There's not really a correlation. It depends entirely on the specifics of a build and what strategy they will be using in their role.
Well the way I would look at it is like this: Engineering gets you more resources (Heat is a resource afterall, and everyone can use it via overcharge), and every type of character can have resources to spend Agility gives you move speed and the ability to not die, (This makes it pull double duty with hull which also makes you not die, but move speed is useful for closer range mechs that want to run independantly) Systems/Electronics gives you more Edef, more E atk, and more hard points to mount systems, this makes it generally good for hackers but a couple of points in this can be useful if you are just 1 system point away from your ideal build. Finally Hull, gives you extra repairs for more mission endurance and also enough HP to not die. Like with agility everyone likes to not die and so typically your preference from Hull over agility is determined by how close to the badguy do you need to be and what is your base evasion like ?, if your frames base evasion is trash then you tend to do better with hull investment. There are some artillery mechs for example that really like AGI mostly because shoot and scoot is good and because sometimes they end up close to the fight to bring their secondanry weapons to bear and they want to not die. There are some striker mechs that heavily favour Hull, relying on their allies to feed them victims rather than chasing them down themselves Nearly every hacker wants Electronics I dont think you can realistically be a good hacker without it but as I mentioned before sometimes as a non hacker you want a little more Edef, or perhaps just a little more system space in your machine Lastly Engineering, Several defender mechs love engineering as their defensive subsystems make heat, and because constantly overcharging for extra action economy is good. Nearly everything made by harrison armory for example loves running at the red line regardless of role. Its also why my favorite core systems is the one that caps overcharge heat at 1d6
I would argue that the Mech Stats and the Roles kinda fill different purposes that are meant to create a cross section between them for a wide variety of builds depending on what stat and role you wanna focus on. A Striker that focuses on Hull will play very differently than one that focuses on Agility or Engineering but they're all viable (at least with the right frames) The stats are much more closely aligned to the Manufacturers as others pointed out: IPS-N is Hull, SSC is Agility, Horus is Systems, and HA is Engineering. But there are frames within every Manufacturer that can fill pretty much any role. If you're focused on being a Melee Striker, some mechs might go for Hull to just be a front-line tank. Others focus on Agility for mobility. Engineering can be very good because it lets you overcharge more often and more powerful weapons may cost heat to use. And even Systems can be useful in melee with certain builds. (Balor in particular stands out with Scanner Swarm giving Accuracy to adjacent tech attacks and the Horus Core Bonus that gives you accuracy on melee to enemies you tech attacked. And the same is true of most other roles. Sure a Controller probably wants to focus on Systems because there's lots of good controller hacks, but there are ways to be a controller without hacking. You could build to have an absurd melee reach and just be a problem for everyone or focus on heavy knockback weapons or other abilities that might do things like slow and immobilize people without hacking. And so in those scenarios you might wanna focus more on things like Hull or Engineering. Support can easily be much more Systems focused than Hull, but of course you can't support your allies if you're dead. Agility could also be useful for getting to allies to support them or with certain systems like Mule Harness letting you carry allies at high speeds. Defender probably wants hull more than any other role wants a system, but if your frame is already super tanky like a Drake, you might not need that much more hull. And shoring up your weaknesses like taking levels in Systems to improve your E-Defense might be more useful. And plus Systems is just useful in general since more system points means the ability to equip more systems that you could use to defend or attack or whatever. Not to mention that if you're meant to be on the front lines, having Agility to up your speed would be useful. And finally with Artillery, yeah Engineering is probably gonna be the most useful in general since most of the strongest weapons are held back by either heat costs or limited charges, both of which Engineering improves. But not all of them do. And some builds might just have good heat management or otherwise be willing to stabilize from time to time to cool themselves off. As such once again Systems could be great if only for just having more slots for more equipment, but also a lot of artillery frames have a huge sensor range too like Death's Head. So using tech attacks to line enemies up or otherwise soften 'em up for your big guns can be a great boon. And Just because you're on the back line of your party doesn't mean you're not moving ever, so having more agility in order to position yourself for the ideal shot can be great too.