Guides:Capturing Mecha

Missing one model in your collection of Buru Buru variants? Too poor to pay for that OvaKnight? Well, in that case capturing mecha is going to be your game.

You capture mecha only in fights where you get salvage (so pay attention to the dialog before the mission). The Warhammer Arena in Gyori is the only arena in *GearHead 1* to award salvage. It's often easier to capture mecha in an arena fight, because you don't have lancemates with you interfering with these strategies. Any mecha which is inactive but not destroyed will be captured by the winning side. This happens when the pilot dies or ejects.

Pilots eject when your team's Intimidation roll beats their (personal) Intimidation roll by more than the percentage their mecha is undamaged. This is a loose approximation. (See ShouldEject in aibrain.pp.) The relevant part of that function (i.e. the part that applies to enemies of the PC ejecting) is:

```
Mek is the enemy AI mecha.
Dmg := PercentDamaged( Mek );
Intim := TeamSkill( PlayerTeam, Intimidation );
if BaseMoveRate( Mek ) = 0 then Dmg := Dmg - RollStep( Intim ) - RollStep( Intim );
ShouldEject := Dmg < ( Random( 45 ) + RollStep( Intim ) - RollStep(SkillValue(Mek,Intimidation)) );

```

Damage in this case means structural damage to all their mecha's components (not armor). This does include the Damage Points of weapons and other gear in destroyed limbs. Basic points: enemies have to be less than 75% undamaged before making an eject roll, and they have to be more damaged than at their last eject roll. Immobilized mecha have an extra penalty against them.

You can use lots of small attacks to make an enemy pilot make a lot of eject rolls. They only make an eject roll when it's their turn, so if you really want to capture something, try shooting them with a single Swarm missile every now and then. (Swarm, like area attacks, gives you -2 Penetration instead of a Spot Weakness bonus to Damage and Penetration.)

Any mecha with a head cockpit is easy to capture, as the pilot will be forced to eject or die if the module containing the cockpit is destroyed. And unlike destroying the body on torso-cockpit mecha, that doesn't destroy the mecha. So make called shots at the head. Gajira Heavy Missiles combined with a good sensor work well for this. Haywire missiles are good against lighter mecha (where you have to worry about destroying the body, too), or with high Spot Weakness.

Ovaknights and Radcliffs have head cockpits remember that, so you can take them out before they fire! Other head-cockpit designs include the Century, Corsair, Condor, Joust, Kojedo, Musketeer, Phoenix, Razer, Wasp, and all Zoanoids.

The toughest nut to crack is capturing a torso-cockpit mecha without waiting around for the pilot to eject. Often because your lancemates will blithely destroy a mecha that you're so close to capturing, or if your Intimidation skill is low.

This usually comes down to killing the pilot. Pilots take damage either directly, when damage penetrates all the way to the cockpit and through its armor (if any), or as concussion damage when the whole mecha is rocked by a large impact. Missiles, melee weapons, and mecha fighting do more concussion than other forms of attack, with mecha fighting being the best. It's also less likely to destroy the mecha too quickly. The higher the DC of the weapon, the higher the chance of doing concussion damage. (Area attacks (scatter, blast, line) count as multiple DC1 attacks, and so aren't useful for concussion. Bursts don't do any more concussion than single fire.) In pseudo-code, it's something like

```
concussiondmgamount := (weapondamage + concussion bonus)/(target size)
   (the bonus is +3 for missiles or melee, +7 for fighting)
concussion damage is applied to the pilot and all inventory items.
  The pilot has a 75% chance of taking Random(concussiondmgamount+1) damage
  Every inventory item has an independent 25% change of taking Random(concussiondmgamount+1) damage.
    This includes your general inventory, and the inventory of each hand, arm, leg, weapon, etc.

```

Damage to a module (e.g. the body) has a 1 in 3 chance of being going half to the module, and half to a random sub-component. This is how you sometimes destroy arc jets, weapons, and so on, rather than just the limbs they're in. If the cockpit is unarmored, it's likely that any damage from a mecha-sized weapon will kill the pilot if you score a cockpit hit. Penetration (MOS) isn't a factor in doing damage to subcomponents, unless they have armor you need to penetrate. ARMORPIERCING weapons do provide a way to do small amounts of damage to the internals of an enemy right away, instead of having to punch through with a very high powered weapon which might destroy it outright, or having to strip off all the armor. You're not as likely to kill a pilot this way as with a more concerted effort, but it is a good way to capture the occasional mecha that doesn't have external bodyarmor or an armored cockpit.

(some of the details of damage-taking should go into a page about the combat system, and just be linked to from here. --llama 22:53, 10 August 2006 (CEST))

Anticheese has this to say **(edited by peter)**:

> "For most body cockpit mecha:
>
> *1. Do called shots on the head untill it is destroyed
> 2. Immobilise it with called shots to the legs
> 3. Use Mecha-Fu on it, It deals concussion damage and is free to use.*This works best on Buru Buru mecha and similar.
>
> The problem with blasting away at an enemy Mecha is that you destroy the mecha faster than you kill the pilot, Thats why I use Mecha-Fu.
>
> For the heavily armoured ones, I have twin heavy missile pods from a Harpy installed (DC:150, BLAST 4 ish, BRUTAL) that quickly wear down armour to the bare essentials, It helps a lot in traditional combat too."
>
>

Peter Cordes has this to add:

> "Making them crash helps a lot, because it's a big impact on the eject roll, and you'll get a lot of penetration from the big to-hit bonus. Savins have an arc thruster installed in the body, so when they're skimming they don't crash until that's destroyed (and both legs and both arms). If they're walking when you shoot off a leg, they'll crash, but only temporarily. Even then, they have cockpit armor, so even ARMORPIERCING weapons have a hard time reaching the pilot. They are \_really\_ hard to capture. I guess that's what makes it a good design."
>
>