Protips
This page is a collection of tips collected by goons during play. Feel free to add your own!
Trading
You need to understand how to use the trade window, it is fairly simple once you understand how it works. The trade window is a butterfly style with one box for items you are trading and one for the person you're trading with. To get items into the box, you open up your backpack or container windows and drag and drop items into the trade window. A handy note: your money is in your backpack and you must drag with the left mouse button from the digits in the backpack window (a stack of bills icon will appear) and into the trade box to trade money.
Skills
In the HUD, there is a button labeled Skills. These work almost exactly like skills in Ultima Online -- You have a skill cap of 800.0, and as you do various things these skills will increase. You can have a maximum of 130 points assigned to 1 skill. Decent skill layout, courtesy of Famiru: http://www3.kcn.ne.jp/~wasakota/hbdl/UCGO.JPG
Things like the Mobile Suit skill and Close Combat skill (and maybe a few others) work together to determine your eligibility to pilot the more exotic models of mobile suit. An easy way to identify a pilot ineligible for their MS is inability to jump/run at the full (or even reasonable) potential of the suit, if this happens hangar your mobile suit and figure out what's wrong, because apparently forcing yourself to pilot a suit you do not have requirements for can lead to crashing the suit! This has not been tested -- it's been my (Cactus Hat) experience so far that all it means is that you can't drive the MS for shit and you should just hanger it anyway for now.
Skills develop significantly faster in Space compared to Earth.
Ownership
When you leave a MS unattended for a certain amount of time (about 30 minutes), your ownership of the suit goes away, which allows anyone to just hop in and drive off with your fancy MS-06S Zaku II Command Type or whatever.
The optimal way to switch ownership is to trade the MS. MS's can be traded like normal items, but you must disembark from them (/getoff). At that point, you can drag them with left mouse button (LMB) into the trade window and trade with someone. Once it is all complete they will be the new owner of the MS.
Another (sub-optimal and stupid, don't do this) method is to disembark , select the MS by clicking on it so there is a green hand on it, and type /release. Then whoever wants it can either select it and type /owner, or double click on it to hop right in. The problem with this method is that the first person on foot to run up and double click on the suit will be able to drive off with it, so don't do this unless you are certain nobody is around, or you really want some 14-year-old Japanese player to hijack your MS.
Buying, Crafting, and Improving Mobile Suits and Weapons
Nobody seems to know quite how to actually craft suits yet. Someone try it out, ok?
Understanding MS Improvements
Mobile suits can be crafted to have improved characteristics from suits you buy in stores. To upgrade you need a spare suit and a MS factory (found in cities). At the factory dismount (/getoff) and double click on the factory to open its building menu. Your unmanned MS should be sitting on the ground, click and drag the MS into the factory window (an icon will show up that you can move around) and buttons on the right of that window will light up. From here you can improve, color (not available yet), and disassemble your mobile suits. Do not disassemble your mobile suit.
Mobile suits have a number of statistics that define them. First is engine class, engines have both a class and a level.
The engine class affects top speed and acceleration wile level is the overall quality of the engine. A-Class stresses top speed over accel, while E-Class is accel over top speed. There are four levels to each engine class, although level 4 engines only drop during event battles. A 3A engine, for instance, is the best top-speed engine (Ignoring level 4, of course. Save those engines for something like a Gelgoog or a Gundam.) while 3E will be relatively slow as hell, but will take no time at all to get going.
There are also types of engines. Ground-types are TJ, Space types are TR, and there is at least one more type, HJ, for... something. Perhaps it's a hybrid Ground/Space type?
The second set of statistics for MS's are the stat allocations, on your suit they have letter grades, but most Japanese players use a number system. A stock MS will say in its machine window or the hangar Pow F, Hit F, and Def F. In the Japanese system, this translates to 000. Each 0 represents a statistic from 0-7. The first digit is Power, the second is Hit, and the third is Def.
No suit can have any of its stats upgraded more than 7 times total, meaning you can put all 7 into one stat or spread them out as you see fit. According to a Japanese player named famiru, "good" stat layouts are 007 (maximum DEF, good for PVE in general), 700 (maximum POW for PVP raiding), or 205 (balanced but upgraded). 070 is a good sniping build.
Ryusei sez- A 3A 007 MS-06 with a TR is your best friend. With one, you honestly won't need to get a new machine until you're ready to move on to, say, an MS06 F2 Commander type (All-around badass), the R-2P High Mobility Zaku (Beam rifle-friendly! Best used in space), or the Gouf (Ground only, melee specialized). It's space-ready!
Buying Crafted Mobile Suits
Famiru also taught us how to call out to people hanging around the MS factory for the kind of suit we wanted to buy. A call looks something like "007 L3A MS-06" -- that would net you a maximum defense zaku2 unit, a very solid MS. Phrases like "plz sell" are pretty well understood by most crafters.
Generally when you call for a MS to be crafted, a Japanese player will say something with a number like "2,400,000 ok?"-- this is the price for the MS. If you agree with the price then he will probably say something like "plz wait" -- that means he's making it for you. When he's done, he will usually open a trade window with you. Drag the proper amount of money from your backpack to the trade window and you will have a shiny new MS!
Buying Crafted Weapons
As far as famiru explained there is only one grade of weapon. EX, which simply means "better than stock". Any weapon you can buy or fit to a MS has an EX variant. EXs are crafted at weapons factories, so that is where you should head if you want to buy EX weapons off the street. Calls for these are simpler, just 'EX beam saber plz sell' or what have you.
Chat Groups and you!
To make chat groups outside of your team, you simply need people on your friends list (under the community tab), then you click their names and click "invite" to open up a chat room with them. They can proceed to invite other people as well. To add someone to your friends, you need to click them so the green hand icon is on them, open the community window and hit 'add.' A window comes up while they wait to accept the invitation, and then they will be added to your list.
Japanese Standard Coordinate System
If you hear Japanese players saying 46/59 then it probably means that something is happening at the coordinates S yy.46xx E yyy.59xx, where the 'y' numbers would be your general area, and the 'x' numbers are the fine-tuning.
NPC hunting information
For hunting NPCs, the further you travel out, the better. There are assorted friendly NPC bases out on the frontier - our friend famiru showed us a front-line camp a long ways out of Adelaide, surrounded by decently high-level NPCs, which he says often give good loot.
/mark, /transport and your Fat Uncle
When you find a place you want to return to later, type /mark. This will allow you to place a bookmark there. Later, when you explode/go back to the city/whatever, you can (while on foot, it does not work if you are in a MS) use the command /transport, which for a small fee (1500EF) will stick you in the wonderfully named Fat-Uncle VTOL transport craft and fly your ass back there.
Surviving Adelaide 49 and getting rich in the process
First order of business upon arriving at Adelaide 49 is to drop a /mark on the repair place. This way, when your damage exceeds %50, you /auto directly to the fixit truck. This is important because you will take damage running away from the enemy and also they tend to overrun the camp. Time is of the essence in both cases. The built in Ade49 marker will take you directly to the bank which is sometimes useful.
Next up is the actual combat. Please not that the farther away form camp that you get, the tougher the EF forces get. However, the quality of loot increases. Thusly, THE FARTHER YOU GET AWAY FROM BASE CAMP THE MORE PEOPLE YOU SHOULD TRAVEL WITH!! Another thing, it doesn't matter which direction you go. Pick one and blast away.
Lost? type in /auto and select ade49 or your ade49 repair spot. That'll get you back to base.
Looting. The best part. Aim for hovertrucks and GM Command units. They give the best the loot. The loot preference order of stuff known to drop is Level 3 MS Repair kits (20 of these go for 500k), GM Beam Rifles (300k) and MS engines(100k-35k values have been seen so far). Load up your stuff and /auto back to the built in ade49 marker. Deposit goods into the bank. Once you have 20 items in the bank, buy a Fahrenheit truck from the vehicle vendor. Park that back in your hangar and hit /transport for a fat uncle ride back to Adelaide. At Adelaide, run to the hangar and grab your Truck(you might also want to drop a /mark here to save yourself a few minutes). Drive to the bank, load all the stuff into the truck.
Repair Kits and Beam Rifles are sold at the Weapon Vendor.
MS Engines are sold at the Mechanics joint.
Rinse and repeat until you are stupidly rich and powerfully skilled.
Outer Space, Zssaeo 3, and You!
By Ryusei
Ah, space. Zeon rules space, y'know. Assuming you have a mobile suit with a TR Engine, this is the best place to start out in. Make absolutely sure you have a 007-grade suit, otherwise I can't honestly guarantee your safety, even in the Zssaeo 3 Fleet 004S zone.
Anywho, make sure you have the "Roll Left/Right" and "Pitch Up/Down" keys set up in a comfortable position, because you're going to use them a -lot-. You can click and hold the right mouse button to control your pitch, but it's a bit tricky. Movement in space is obviously different, and (mostly) complies with Newton's laws. If you strafe or go forward/backward in one direction, you'll keep going unless you quickly tap the opposite direction once to fire your thrusters to a stop. This is much like braking to a stop after a long run back on Earth, except it's mandatory here, especially if you want to visit a vendor.
To get to space, transport yourself to Darwin Spaceport and hitch a ride to Issaeo, or whatever the initial area's called. It's the only destination, you can't miss it. From there, immediately transport to Zssaeo 3. Zssaeo 3 would be the equivalent to Adelaide back on Earth. Plenty of stuff to destroy, little to no Feddie player presence. Finding your way around the space station's a little tricky; every last shop is located in weird boxy freight ships, not the space station itself!
Each ship is pretty self-explanatory. Their function is written right on the ships themselves. Nevertheless, here's how to find them:
The Bank/Zeonic Weapons/Zeonic Machines/Hangar ships are located at the central structure of the space station.
Everything else, IE Repair/Mechanic Tools/Materials, are at the outer ring of the space station, along the tower-like structures.
Oh yes, /taxi works here!
Once you familiarize yourself with this, /auto over to Zssaeo 3 Fleet 004S. This is the equivalent to Adelaide's little supply camp by the southeast outskirts. Here you will find a V formation of five Pazzock-class transport ships. They provide all the typical functions of any outpost; you access them by clicking on the central module of each ship. Keep in mind that for some odd reason, you can't sell anything in this zone. Because of this, you'll either have to bank for later or go back to the space station to sell off your latest engine haul!
Still with me? Good. /mark next to the repair ship and fly out. Doesn't matter which direction, but I tend to go directly away from both the space station and outpost. Enemies here are RGM-79 GMs, Balls, and Publics. They're pretty much the space equivalent to Adelaide's GM Trainers, Type 61 Tanks, and Hover Trucks. None are too tough, but do be careful because it's a lot easier to get surrounded in a 3D environment. Nice shit drops here, just don't get carried away. Because of the blackness of space, it's a lot harder to tell if anything dropped. If it did, you'll probably have to risk picking what you need up as fast as you can during battle, because it'll be a bitch to keep track of its position as you fight everyone else off. From here, it's a matter of being careful and making lots of dough and skills!
Did I mention your skills develop quicker in space? That's because they do.
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