Welcome to Complex 0b10! We hope you will find much excitement within our facility. For your convenience, we have put together some information to help you get the most out of your visit.
=== Preparing your luggages ===
Many travellers report feeling some anxiety when deciding on what to bring in their travel. With so many useful items and so little space, there are bound to be some agonizing decisions!
To help you in this process, think about what is truly essential in your journey. It's a short list: power, propulsion, weapons, heat sinks, and storage. So long as you have all of those, you're ready and on the bounce!
Now, beyond these essential items there are a few other items that improve your combat effectiveness. Unfortunately, many travellers get waylaid here because some subtle factors ruin their plans that otherwise look good on paper.
For instance, you will find that your lively interactions with the denizens of the facility require you to replace parts often. Recognizing these needs, the management of the facility provides numerous stockpiles for some commonly sought items: power sources, propulsions and weapons. However, the current economic conjecture does not allow the facility to maintain as many stockpiles for the more exotic parts.
Consequently, there is a real risk that you run into a dry spell when trying to replace highly-specialized parts. Some travellers attempt to counter this problem by hoarding the specialized parts they depend on. Not only is this strategy not guaranteed to work, but more importantly, it increases the risk that you run out of essential parts! Just last week, we all had a good chuckle when one fellow traveller hoarded 3 cloaking devices, only to find that all of its remaining power sources got blown up.
We therefore recommend hoarding only exotic parts that significantly decrease the rate at which you need to cycle parts. Armors and force fields are good candidates because they absorb damage. Targetting computers and particle chargers also help by suppressing damage at its source.
By the way, there is a running gag in the facility, led by our R&D people, who design hilariously flawed combat parts and scatter them around the place to confuse unsuspecting tourists. So if you come across things like thermal converters, be aware that the locals are probably laughing behind your back. The Lord helps if you actually go and wear one of those.
=== Choosing what to wear ===
There has been some debate lately as to the garments that the modern combat bot should wear. For some, the rage is all about big, bad, and slow combat bots that shoot everything down with a massive, full-metal-jacket-in-your-face volley. Although this style is certainly alluring, it is not always very practical.
Psychological studies reveal that the locals are highly influenceable by demonstrations of force and will flock to visitors putting up an unusually good show. Being the center of attention is flattering, but you may find that you need a breather after a while.
However, outrunning crowds on tracks or legs will not do, so consider getting airborne when you can. You may find it difficult to lift the mass of your typical combat gear. The trick here is to optimize your parts to achieve both high resilience and high mobility.
Propulsion parts fit both these roles naturally. Armor and force fields are ideal for resilience, alas both are exotic items whose availability is spotty. When supplies dry up, you can cope by wearing commonly-available legs, wheels and tracks which have 80 coverage, high integrity (up to 800!) with no mass, energy or heat requirements.
For mobility, either flying or hover units will do. Hover units have the advantage of requiring less energy/heat upkeep, lift more, have lower overweight penalty and are easier to find. Flying units can jump over crowds. You will need 3-5 units to achieve a speed between 45 to 75, depending on much storage you carry.
If you are worried about not finding enough hover units to cover the loss by attrition, we have good news for you! Upon entering the Factory level, you will automatically be subscribed to our renowned drone-based part delivery service. We will regularly dispatch a pack of drones carrying an ever-increasing amount of power sources, heat sinks, EM weapons and hover units to keep you well supplied in these essential parts, at entirely no cost to you! For your convenience, we will announce when a delivery is under way, but you need not take any particular action. Our drones will find you with a reliability that our customers have come to expect. We recommend using salvage-preserving thermal weapons to rip open the packages.
Thus, don't be afraid to invest liberally in propulsion slots. Up to 10 propulsion parts with 2 weapon slots is perfectly viable! Not convinced? Then consider our comparative analysis of a 4-wide volley versus a 2-wide volley.
Pros:
- +35% more firepower over time.
- May kill an enemy in one volley, denying counter-attack.
- Weapons are high-coverage parts with decent-to-good integrity.
Cons:
- Firepower penalty if not using identical weapons.
- Waste by overkill.
- +35% heat and energy usage over time.
- 2 less slots.
- Increased weight.
- Increased recoil.
- Increased reaction delay.
- Heat surge makes you easier to hit.
- Doubled weapon churn due to doubled coverage.
- Need to equip and carry more weapons.
- Reconverting between damage types take 2x time/matter.
- No benefit for launchers.
- Unsustainable when using overloaded weapons.
Finally, one last tip for your travels. Agile combat bots need not fear chute traps and we highly recommend paying a visit to those lovely, soothing wastes beneath the facility.
