Armored Core general V2

I'm lucky in that I have group of close friends I know in real life that all play the game. There are four of us, plus four other people in our team, so generally I can find a mission any time I happen to pop in. But I have used the mercenary function before we made our current team, and it works fine so long as you're willing to work closely with strangers.

I did try out the mercenary feature, but there were connection troubles somewhere along the line and I got cut off before being hired, decided to have some food instead.

Also, I was switching my weapons around earlier, and I bought a gatling gun which I equipped in the right bay, but then later I wanted to switch it to the left bay, but it wasn't visible in the categories or anything under the left bay parts menu. Why is this? The junk gatling you get by default was there, just not the other one.

edited 28th Mar '12 12:57:56 PM by artfulscruff

This game must be even more niche than I thought. Apparently not much over a thousand copies have been sold in the EU. I'm still enjoying the game, but I'd be enjoying it a lot more if more people were playing. The only guy who seems to be regularly online on my team seems to have almost no interest in multiplayer, he constantly just goes off on solo sorties, not giving anyone time to join him, and it's even hard to find mercs at the moment.

Damn, really? It was looking like they might finally have an AC game that sells well... Well, at least we can count on Dark Souls and such to keep From Software afloat, even if ACV barely floats its costs.

edited 4th Apr '12 6:18:13 AM by Hydrall

And the moment I decide to get this game teams are already having "We quit," as their emblem. Grumble, and here I thought that there would have been some staying power. Oh well, guess I'll try to see what is out there in the game but man...

Join the team I'm in if you like. I mistyped the name earlier. It's Faerie Tail. Tail as in an animal's tail for some reason.

Hey everybody. I bought this game last Friday, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. Haven't tried multiplayer yet, on account of not having a headset (which seems important).

Did anyone else get the feeling several pages of the script went missing during development and they just decided to push through without filling in the blanks? I can understand doing a cliffhanger in the main storyline, and that low budgets meant that there was a whole lot of telling and very little showing, but some things (like your Heel–Face Turn in the beginning) just kinda happened/were there without any explanation. The M.O.H./Zodiac arc was handled a bit better, but still very sub-par if you compare it to Demon's/Dark Souls. I know it's probably a different writing team, but you'd think someone would've noticed these things. I mean, to me the random bosses like the Beehive group were more interesting than parts of the main story.

Also, about the whole "We Quit" thing: you can read about it here.

edited 4th Apr '12 1:52:31 PM by Lovecrafter

Today is actually my first day playing Armored core, and I wished more people on the team I'm on were online. Only one guy was on and he didn't have a mike, so communications were difficult (the in game text chat is slow), and we only ended up playing one mission together. Ah well, the game is still fun regardless, and being in a lv50+ team gives access to all the mech parts, so that's good. I wish that there was a faster way to earn money than just spam order mission 4...

Headsets do help, but I haven't found them to be essential. As for the story, I haven't been paying attention to it really, since I'd heard it was sub-par and it's not the point of the game anyway.

Someone want to give me the short version of the We Quit thing? I haven't had a chance to play today, and that thread smells too much like Serious Business.

Your nose is pretty much spot-on. Here's the reader's digest version:

As you probably already know, ACV has a mode called Conquest, in which you try to take over territory from other teams and then defend your newly-acquired turf from those who have the same idea. Today there was this "End of season" thing going on, which meant that all territories that had 0 AP were reset to unowned, and all others got their AP back to full. Now, apparently it takes a LOT of work to take down and conquer a territory, so many people were somewhat "unhappy" seeing their hard work undone. Also, there's no all-time leaderboard, so said hard work is not recorded in the annals of videogame history, which is apparently a Big Deal.

@ Wheyward: Actually, the fastest way to grind money is to farm the final boss of the main storyline. The fight can be done in under 10 minutes and you get about a million for it. Just be warned that his attacks got some of the most ridiculous hitboxes I've seen in my 18 years of playing videogames.

edited 4th Apr '12 2:09:51 PM by Lovecrafter

I might be inclined to give more of a crap about Territory and Conquest if I knew what the actual rewards are. I'm not even sure there are any. You seem to get more team points from that kind of mission than any other, but since my team was over level 50 when I joined I think we've got all the parts you can have available in the shop. Except I noticed the other day there don't seem to be any 'second generation' FCS units.

From what I've read, level 50 gives you all the parts that can be gotten, except for the Ultimate Weapons.

And Conquest doesn't really have any rewards, save for bragging rights and having your logo on the map where everybody can see it.

Edit: Man, does anyone else have this much trouble with getting the Zodiac in Story mission 01 to appear? It's the last one I need to beat, but that 4-minute time limit seems almost impossible.

Edit 2: FINALLY. Took about 20-30 attempts. Still unsure as to what made him show, since I almost missed an enemy, wasting precious time.

edited 5th Apr '12 10:03:27 AM by Lovecrafter

Finished story mode tonight. I thought there were more big bosses, unless the ones I've seen in vids are in order missions or something.

The big mech, ship and flying fortress are from special server events in the online mode. These are currently only available in the Japanese version of the game. Hopefully we'll get those guys soon, because they look awesome.

I haven't seen any footage of the ship yet, but I've read somewhere that it looks like one of the vessels from Workshop 3.

That first one definitely looks like fun. It looks like something Robotnik would build.

So what kind of mechs are you all using online? Right now I have a pretty balanced mech, using two TE weapons and a CE and KE rifle; they are able to adapt to most situations. Mostly medium body parts too. Trying to use this mech online is trouble some however, since despite my team being filled up, hardly anyone is on...

I'm using a UW-specialised heavy biped, equipped with a 3500-round gatling gun, a H.E.A.T. howitzer and autoseeking CE missiles. The UW I'm using is the Giga Missile.

It's not exactly the most effective build, but being able to pulverize opponents out of the blue can be pretty funny. The big drawback of this setup is the weakness to KE weapons, which are the things people use the most. I guess that's the price you pay for getting two shots out of the Giga Missile and taking minimal damage doing so.

edited 5th Apr '12 10:12:03 PM by Lovecrafter

I usually use a middleweight AC as well, for all mission types, equipped the the 3500-round gat, a battle rifle, a normal rifle, a pulse machine gun, and CE missiles. I'm not really a fan of TE weapons, their range is too short for my taste, or at least the way the rounds just dissipate is. It too is suitable for most situations, its main weakness being TE attacks.

So, I decided to take this territory thing for a spin. I read the news blurbs for a while and noticed that the Executive sector rarely gets mentioned, so that's where I set my sights. Did a whole lot of Obstructive Tactics missions first, to get a feel for the map and get my team level up to 50. Then I blew the dust off of my old "Order Mission boss killer" Tank AC and dived headfirst into a 4 on 1 Blitz Conquest versus an M.O.H. NPC team...

...And got my rear exhaust soundly handed to me. Rushing into the fray and trying to shred 4 M.O.H.s like they were a Zodiac duo was not my brightest plan. But I still had 30000 team points left, so after a quick study of the mission log it was time for round 2.

I got lucky again and faced another M.O.H. team, although not the same guys from before. The match started off with a quick skirmish against two of them, but no real damage was dealt by either side. They backed off for a moment, which I used to sneak all the way to the other side of the map and started blasting away at the choppers. I brought down four out of five without encountering another AC, then realized to my dismay that three of them were holed up around the last one. The fight was fierce, but I somehow managed to avoid facing all of them at once. Three wrecked M.O.H.s, an undefended chopper and over half of my ammunition supply later, I was the proud owner of my own piece of turf in the Executive Sector.

I found the actual conquesting to be really fun, but grinding team points really starts to get old after a while. Anyone else have any thoughts/cool stories regarding this mode?

And in case anyone wonders: My one-man "team" is called Lovecrafters (emblem is the Gorgon one you get from a boss), and I'm on the EU PS 3 server.

edited 7th Apr '12 9:33:03 AM by Lovecrafter

Eh, my extent of territory conquest is pretty limited with my team, most people are not on, so any territory grabs are rare. Mercenary work is actually pretty fun, if a bit confusing because you cannot chat with the other team. But are the Mo H mechs actually A.I.s? If so that would explain why when I went on a 3v4 as a merc and my team faced them we destroyed them.

And if anyone is curious, I'm playing on the NA/360 servers.

Yup, the M.O.H. are computer-controlled bots. They own the territories not yet claimed by players, and if a territory at 0 AP goes undefended for more than 12 hours, it gets defaulted to them as well.

I haven't actually done merc. work yet. Supposedly the ranking system is really silly and makes you bleed money.

I don't understand merc work either. I started at rank C and haven't risen, and you don't get a lot of cash from it (you'll almost certainly make a loss in story missions).

So, I can get Armored Core For Answer at my local Gamestop for semi-cheap.

I've never played an AC game, never seen footage of one, all I know is it apparently has giant mecha in it.

I do not have any form of multiplayer capability other than 2-player with someone else in the same room.

Is it worth it for me to get this game?

Holy ninja, Batman.

But yes, it would totally be worth it. I've never actually played ACFA's online mode, and I still have like a hundred or so hours clocked on it.

Edit: Well, actually. What sort of games do you like? ACFA is a fast-paced third-person shooter, with emphasis on mobility and customization. Does that sound like something you'd be interested in? It's not like we psychically know your tastes.

edited 20th Mar '15 3:39:18 AM by Hydrall

While I don't go crazy for the genre, I'm generally comfortable playing shooter games (I've enjoyed me a bit of Halo and Battlefield over the years; used to love Ratchet And Clank, which progressively became more and more shooty with each instalment, and I really love the first two Bioshock games, if they count).

I'm also really into stuff like Dynasty Warriors Gundam, Super Robot Wars, and JRP Gs (especially the PSX Final Fantasy games) and the like, so lots of customization as a major part of gameplay isn't really going to be a turn-off.