What I do like as far as what i’m seeing is more emphasis on teamwork. You see the helicopters carrying ACs onto the field in droves; I hope it actually feels like a war with this one, all the others all but completely lacked that feeling to me.

I do wanna see what this new leg arm is all about it looks intriguing. I wanna believe it’s more tactical, as the leg armor leads me to think it plays slower that AC4 and FA. I hope there is actually visual damage to your AC’s like in Last Raven, like losing a limb or sorts; I loved that aspect it gave a feeling of real consequence. I hope the leg armor actually serves a purpose rather than cosmetic appeal.

I’m a little concerned about the whole “New “Over” weapons with “one hit kill” power can change the tides of battle” That worries me simply because of the whole idea of a noob killing me in one hit even though i’m a vet whose been playing since AC2, I’m iffy about that.

I’m interested to see what the AC models will look like, I just want there to be steeper penalties for reckless behavior, whether than like AC4 when the reckless one could easily kill you given the right AC setup.

I’ve seen something pretty interesting where an AC gets it’s arm removed only to have a weapon take it’s place, so I’m hoping that’s a reflection of actual damage; and not simply some story-mode mechanic.

I wasn’t crazy about the hover types but none of the legs look like the light legs I was so found of, but that may be a good thing. I’m a Ninebreaker, I’ll Adapt, I’ll overcome.

I honestly wish they’d ad a cockpit view already, might be a bit distracting now though,given the action. But I will say the smaller AC was the right choice to me, I can’t tell you how much I loathed the size of the AC’s up until now; I just couldn’t see myself piloting a 10 meter tall behemoth and still being that fast!

I would love them just a tad bit smaller, too see them go through alleyways or in an army motorcade with hummers and tanks. It’d be nice to turn over a car/tank and use it as a shield when your armor is low, dragging it across the ground as you make your way towards your nearest enemy you move it aside get close and finish him with the moonlight blade.

As his reinforcements ensue, you lure them into a narrow alleyway where your ally closes the rear sealing their fate in a hail of gunfire from both sides.

But i welcome the changes (cautiously) with open arms, also I’m forming a team for ACV ahead of time let me know if your interested

im gonna take my arguement further in relation to the previous AC’s. basically features from the previous AC’s that would have been nice to make a return in AC5.
(marked with ” * ” are my personal opinion)

LEGS
choosing your basic maneuverability was a good place to start when designing your mech. every type had its own varients (light, medium, heavy, damage resists, EN drain etc), pros and cons, which where further altered by what else you bolted on. the range of legs on AC3 were great. AC4 didnt have much at all. eg:
AC3# AC4#
BIPED 14 10
pro- all rounder
con- doesn’t really specialise
REVERSE 5 2
Pro- better turning and less EN drain
con- not as all rounded
QUAD 5 2
pro- fire big back weapons and move, carry weight
con- slower moving, heavy
TANK 5 2
pro- lots of defence, carry weight, fly and use big back weapons
cons- slowest moving, heavy
HOVER 5 0
pro- very fast and light
con- low def, low carry weight

*Already AC3 has 18 more legs than AC4, each with a strategy to consider, pros and cons. instead of developing these further AC4 left them out altogether. bring them back, add chuck a few more in. a heavy hover type for example

CORE
was my next step. the cores in AC3 made things very interesting. 2 types
existed. the OB type which had a % chance to automatically shoot down incoming missiles and an Overboost ability (nothing like going from 0km to 700km in under 2s) and modification slots. the EU type ditched the Overboost for a rechargeable cannon that auto targeted, and had more mod slots.
*AC4 had none of this bar Overboost. again a loss of strategy. you should be able to select what if you want a OB or a EU, and what type. that sort of thing

ARMS
arm stats have stayed about the same. AC3 had 13 to choose from, AC4 at 14. however the arms that ARE weapons left a bit to be desired. AC3 at 9 different types and AC4 at 4.
* in AC3 ,either be more flexible by holding weapons, or have more fire power with arms that are weapons. i thought arms were another major point of strategy. eg, grenade launcher arms had massive damage at 3400 per shell, and either shooting both at once or one at a time. total potential damage was 136,000 damage. trade off was the cooldown between shots (hence, one at a time firing mode) and limited ammo @20. so it was up to you if that was worth having those over a combination of hand held weapons. in AC4, the 4 weapon arms were pitiful. and compared to held weapons they weren’t worth the sacrifice. a wide range of arm weapons spices things up a bit.

HEAD
in AC3 heads were more complicated, they affected system recovery, map sensor, bio sensor, ant ecm, missile indication, anti stealth and radar. im not sure what they provided in AC4 bar some had a better radar
* i didnt fuss too much over heads in terms of strategy. only thing i really focused on is if it needed a radar or not. in both games the missions have been pretty mono directional, no need for a radar there. but in multiplayer, some of the maps in AC3 had room for some cat and mouse games, there were times when you were glad to have fit an actual radar rather than depending on the one in your head. AC4 maps left no room for cat and mouse, even with the worst radar’d head you could find your opponent easily enough by jetting around aimlessly.
if you equip a tough but stupid head, and aren’t gonna equip a radar. you should pay the price for it and actually have to keep sights on your target or you’ll lose them.

BOOSTERS
here’s were AC4 started getting good for me. in AC3, the faster your booster, the more energy it chewed through.
*say you had a heavy tank leg’d mech, probably want the fuel efficient boosters more than anything else. you’ll fly slower, but you’ll save energy for dodging incoming fire etc.
in AC4 you had to select 4 boosters. your main boosters for flying up, back boosters for flying forwards, side boosters and Overboosters. choosing how your boosters behave in what direction was a great idea.

GENERATOR
very different between the 2 AC’s. in AC2, as ‘coldbrand’ said,
“managing your energy carefully was one of the biggest components of the game.”
and i couldn’t agree more. if you had the biggest capacitor, sure it could hold the most energy. but if you failed to manage and drained all your cap, it was a very long wait till you were up and running. again. then there were others that drained very quickly, but the recharge time was a 10th of the big bastard generator. you also had a red bar in your cap meter as a reserve. energy drained from here alot slower.
In AC4 generators weren’t such a big deal, if you had poor management and sucked the thing dry, you could still thrust about on the ground at 300+km. however, generators now also provided PA energy too, which was a nice idea to have a bit of a shield to soak up some damage, especially for the lighter mechs.
*i feel it was at this point, where you could still thrust about on an empty cap, that you dont need to consider leg maneuverability at all, and alot of AC’s mech strategy is simply lost. a tank leg type that can boost about on the ground at 300kmph forever. why bother with any other leg types (unless you wanted to fly up of course).
a combination of the two would make Ac just that little bit more intense.

RADIATORS
Cooling could of been a major problem in AC3. not only did you have to consider your mechs cooling after everything you want it to do, but you had to consider the heat off enemy’s weapons aswell.
*nothing like piloting a heavy mech who was simply designed to defend as much as possible, to the extent that getting hit by 2shells from the grenade launcher arms weapons causes a mere 600. only to be overheated and losing 100s of AP per sec until your defeat. these big machines would generate alot of heat, a radiator simply makes sense

FCS
judging by the youtube videos of AC5 gameplay, id say the FCS is much like it was in AC3, apart from not being a square anymore. a bit of a relief from AC4. the targeting system drove me nuts.

STABILIZERS
made their appearance on AC4, made sense that if you had 2 heavy guns on 1 side, and light weapons on the other, it would make sense that your mech was off balance. further more you could tip your mech off balance to aid movement. eg. shift the weight to the front so the mech moves into a forward motion faster. shift the weight to the left so when making left turns while moving, you turn faster cause the center of weight is on the inside. this will effect the oppersite side of course, but it can be used to an advantage

WEAPONS-MELEE
AC3 had 5 variations of the laser blade, each filling their purpose respectively. long bladed/low dmg sword for hitting more mobile mechs, short bladed/high dmg for when mobility is on your side. even a ‘thrown disc’ laser blade if you didnt want to get all that close. AC4 was missing the thrown disc, but all was well
*there should be a way of selecting how you attack. in both AC’s, your blade attack depended on what leg type you were using. 2 legs/hover had the normal slash, quad or tank had more of a stabbing motion, stabbing did way more damage, at the cost of less chance to hit, ie instead of that big arc of a sweeping blade, its just a thrust forward like a lance. but, if im in a heavy mech and i wanna hit something faster than me, a sweeping motion is much more likely to hit that a stab. and if agility was on my side, id rather stab the target for maximum damage, rather than sweeping at something i know i couldnt miss.

*furthermore, more melee weapon types wouldnt go a miss. trading a quick laser blade for a slower, but more powerful laser axe sounds plausible. and i dont mean more melee weapons like gundam wing where every robot has an exotic melee weapon like a double axe or a bladed whip.
but if the weapons were considered either a pierce, slash or blunt attack type. and say an energy or solid version (energy is weaker but much lighter, solid hits harder but heavier and slower), kinda like on “front mission 3″. melee combat would be alot more interesting

WEAPONS-SHIELD
AC3 also had 4 energy shields to play with. not much point on a light mobile mech, but for the ones that were easier to hit, it made a difference.
*remember that giant missile launcher, had 4 ammo, took ages to lock, missile itself was very slow. but when it hit, BOOM. well that weapon did 6800 dmg, bearing in mind the max AP you could get out of a mech was 9999. with the help of shields, i could reduce that damage down to 136!!! shields were awesome, and i was sad to see them excluded.

WEAPONS-guns
AC3 @25 and AC4 @35 equipable guns to your arms, i’d say AC4 had won this round. more weapons including missile and rocket launchers, as well as storable guns, very nice.
*i could just be getting greedy, but i felt some more guns could of been added. or rather, some firing modes thrown in, say an energy machine gun, flame thrower, more variation of hand held missiles and rockets
*on another note, rockets were useless in AC4. manually aiming a big cumbersome rocket has always been in the AC series. but the seemed to forget that every one has unlimited cap on ground. so lining someone up was beyond difficult. these weapons simply had no place, and were broken.

WEAPONS- BACK
AC3 had 4 more back weapons and a bit more variation, including dual mounted weapons and ammo storage’s.AC4 seemed to be missing alot, missing such things as a shoulder mounted machine gun and dual mounts. it did have a PA rectifier, which i guess was a form of defense. but that was largely based if you had made PA a big part of your design.
*i love that with the “BFG” back mounted weapons, you had to stop and brace yourself to fire one, unless you were a quad or tank type. sacrificing all movement is a big deal for mechs designed for agility, no to use a “BFG” you really had to be committed
*smaller back turrets, why not have a light machine gun that can fire while you move. rather than depending on missiles if you wanna move alot and shoot.

EXTENSIONS
both AC’s were sufficient here.
*add them all together and throw them in. added missile interceptors and decoys, stealth and ecm, PA and energy boosters, added defensive and movement boosters. they all had a use and could be used to balance your mech further, or tip the scale to where you need it most ( a high mobility medium tank leg type that has a few extra battery’s for when hes caught with an empty cap, hell yeah). a few more added like weapon stability, sight range, ammo, grenade shell. extensions were that great little trick you could throw in at the last minute at a click of a button.

INSIDE
more or less, they were another version of extensions. i believe thats why the were taken out in AC4
*i always felt that “inside” was used when you had time to spare, time to think and prep. however in AC3 alot of these inside gadgets were pretty bad. eg your’ve decided that this ‘area’ is gonna be where you ingauge, so why not set up a few mines. you set them all um and in comes your enemy, but oh no, all the mines that shot out your arse are floating above head height and out of harms way. so you think ”
hmm, how about mobile floating mines”
same thing, except they self destruct after a minute anyway. so pointless. adhesive mines are your next bet, a big scatter of them shoot out and stick tho what ever surface you aimed them at, 10 seconds later they self destruct. mines are a great idea, pointless in that game however. the rocket that set targets on fire was another good idea done badly too.
*however some inside gadgets were just awesome. ECM and probes could be shot out, missile decoys were always good. radar decoys, stationary or moving, was a great idea for multiplayer.
*i think inside gadgets should be brought back in, but they would only work well if they were fixed and there were some bigger, more suspense filled maps.

OPTIONAL PARTS
in AC3 you could add mods to your mech to specialise it just that little bit further, or just fine tuning it. from added blade damage to shield coverage, energy weapon RoF and consumption. mech turning and breaking ability, bonus to defensive and impact shock.
*this should come back in, squeezing every last bit of performance out of your mech to get it to achieve up to your standards.

GAMEPLAY- PHYSICS
some of the physics i thought would have been worked on from AC3 and put back into AC4. apparently not. things such as:
Impact Shock- the bigger this was in relation to the “mass” of your mech, the more it affected you.
*eg your a light mech using air to surface combat, your target gets a lucky shot with his grenade launcher and hits you in the face. the force of the explosion violently pushes you in the opposite direction from where it struck, in this case you’d go flying towards the ground. say you were reasonably close, you’d hit the ground with such force that your mech would be slow to recover from the impact shock of hitting the ground so hard, effectively stunned for a second or 2, and open for another attack.

Mass was another one that had seemed to disappear. it was there, but not as obvious and too easily controlled.
*eg, i was fond of a very heavy biped setup i had created on AC3. i found that if i was fly, used my over boost, cut it off and tried to land on a tower, it was ridiculous to do so accurately. once my heavy mech had reached 700+km and i cut the Overboost while in the air, id “fall” just as fast, makes sense and all. but to slow that beast down was astonishing, fly in reverse for a good 8 seconds to bring my speed back down to 0kmph and drop on to the landing area i had picked. also if i was thrusting along the ground and stopped it took considerate time for me to stop “skidding” and come to a complete halt. flying a heavy weight took a bit more thought and consideration

Recoil. watching your ultra light mech get down on 1 knee and unfold its oversized twin mounted Gatling guns at its intended target was a sight to behold. watching it slide backwards at 140km after each shot (think of the firing rate on a minigun) was something on a whole new level. as bad as that seemed, it had also become an advantage. land on a ledge, set up gun and aim at the other player, shoot and fall behind cover, nice wee tactic =)

MAPS
the maps didnt seemed well thought out. AC3 maps where pretty good, but i found myself wanting bigger and more tactical maps more and more. the maps in multiplayer on AC4 seemed single minded. all of which focused on the ‘small and lots of action’ maps which is good, a quick game is a good game. but having ALL of the maps like that means limiting some freedom in terms of creating mechs. i mean everyone could of bolted on unguided rockets if they wanted to, but knowing they would have very limited effectiveness in every situation on every map, why would you.
*in both games, i felt the maps were really bad in the sense of giant flying robots, big arsed weapons, 100s of combinations, tactics and strategy . and a shitty uninspired map with not as much as rock or 2 to use as cover. and a game lifespan of 5-10 minutes.
a few big maps thrown in with more tactical environments, considering all types of mech combat strengths and weaknesses. and i dont mean cave on one side, clearing on the other, have fun guys sort of thing. there should be something the aerial combat mech can make use of in the cave, so that he does have a reason to chase after a target into the cave time and time again.

DAMAGE
in AC3 you had the ability to blow someones arm off. a nice reward for your hard work (using that melee spike weapon could do it in 1-2 hits. ofcorse the firing delay of 4 seconds made sure this weapon was useless, in AC4 nothing had changed and figuring out where you and your enemy would be 4 seconds in advance had a very very low rate of success). but arm destruction was taken out in AC4
*why take it out?! every mech game that had limb destruction has been successful. obviously its AC, so a few things would have to change. personally, i think having head,core,arms,legs and weapons being destructible would bring alot to AC. say there were stages of damage, 1 2 3 and 4 for example. your arm gets damaged to stage one, theres a few dents and burnt marks, but the arm is still looking good, 10% penalty for firing stability and aiming time etc, but your not worried as of yet.
stage 2 its starting to look serious, parts of the armor have been torn open, glimpse’s of the inner workings of the arm are starting to make an appearance, the occasional spark and ember falling out,
now its -25%. your starting to change your combat tactics to reduce risk of impact on this arm now.
stage 3 its looking really bad, whats left of the armor ripped apart armor seems to be holding the chassis together, electrical surges, sparks and fire are erupting from the serious marks of abuse left from your foe, the arm keeps stuttering at tasks it had no problem with prior to this battle. its now at -60% and your doing all that you can to save this arm, at this point you’d rather take a several shots to the head than another blow to your arm.
stage 4, your opponent has finally crippled your arm, its either a mutilated husk or completely blown away. everything your’ve done to save that arm flicks through your mind. where your’ve succeeded, where your’ve failed. and from it you try to understand, to learn and adapt.
your enemy is in your sight, admiring his methods of tearing you apart. and you find yourself smiling back at him, cause you know your’ve seen all that he is capable of, where he is strengths and weaknesses lay, and your’ve still got another good arm and a plan to take this f*cker out with

already the gameplay has change many times over, and that was over an arm. imagine if loosing a head meant a crippled FCS (there would have to be a back up FCS on your core, otherwise not much point continuing playing). or weapons became inaccurate, misfired, struggled to reload.

all that aside, i believe once he core is crippled, your mech should die, seeing as that where the generator is and your pilot. legs would be bit more difficult to pull off, but i imagine if both were at stage 4, or both legs were treated as 1 part, youd be walking a stump and whats left of the other, quad could afford to miss a leg or 2, tank would be pulling to one side more than the other and a loss of friction, hover would be be dragging say its arse end along the ground while the front end is violently shifting height. that sort of stuff

i think the parts themselves should effect the damage they take. like, the more fancy a part gets, the easier it is to break, within in reason ofcorse. eg if i shoot a katana front on, at the edge. the sword will receive some damage but will otherwise survive, if i shot it side on it would break in half easily because it wasnt designed to receive that much force on its flat face
however if i did the same thing to a mace, it would survive just as well from a side on attack as it would a front on
so the mace wins in terms of abuse, but obviously a katana would be more deadly in combat then mace.

CONCLUSION
so ive just looked back and realised how much ive typed out, sorry for the rant guys. feel like a dick now.

but yeah, from the youtube videos AC5 looks ALOT better than the previous, i can only speak english so my understanding of the actual content of the game is limited to visuals and reactions.

as ive said, im weary of how this one will turn out, and this is why

I don’t really mind if the game speed is maintained. What I hope for is some kind of defense grounded heavies can use against lightweights and bladers. Remember when ACs used to have EO, shields, and missile interceptors? Hopefully something like that comes in, because chasing flies can be such a hassle, especially if lag is involved.