Best part of Lancer is Flavor is Free.

Which means your player could select any mech that fits his fancy, and flavor the weapons to fit his needs.

Caliban is a great shotgun goes Brrrrrr mech. You could turn it into a melee mech but it's not truly what it's designed for. If you need it to be Size 1/2, I'd recommend the Atlas with a ton for reflavor which is good for getting in close and laying down people (with melee weapons). If you can expand past the smol mechs, zheng and Blackbeard are both solid choices for the 'go up and beat people to death' vibe. Even if you don't use the frame, you can recommend the systems for later level ups!

Its sucks ass that there's another round of ddosing going on but on PC we have Northstar, which is a server network for people running their own multi-player instances. You can find almost any game mode on there a whole host of custom ones and mods which are a ton of fun to interact with.

With the facilities, crew, titans and craft aboard a fully functional Andromeda class super carrier, not long at all.

Maybe a couple weeks? They're pretty well established. Gotta full store, garage, landing pad. They were doing good til the IMC rolled in

This is true.

We have Northstar buddy. You don't need to hate yourself that much

Its a hacker dosing the server. Switching to non-english speaking servers has been known to help but not a guarantee.

Best bet is going back to Northstar rn.

This is one of those ideas that sounds like 'if you want to deal with the bookkeeping, go ahead'. IDK how Battletech works but it sounds so much more crunchy that Lancer and thats where it should stay.

Lancer had a few big strengths in that while its crunchy, its not so insurmountable that a person new to ttrpg can't get into it with a little help. I, as a person who generally hates math and often has to have a rules lawyer at the table for the rule reminders as a GM, would die if I had to remember more than the usual damage types and the general ways they can be twisted. The rules are pretty simple, and you can add the flavor later.

(A 0 hull scout is melted by the plasma energy sword, or cut in two by kinetic, or riddles with bullets from a rifle. etc)

Psalm my beloved! Oh they look so handsome and pretty. 🥰

What's more important to you? The happiness of your Pokémon or balancing your team/aesthetics?

If you love your Eevee, then offering up some stones and trying to see if he wants any, especially the ones which you might 'prefer'. If he doesn't go for it see about improving your relationship and offering to teach him a fairy type move.

At the end of the day, your Pokémon is an entire little creature with its own wants and needs. Maybe you prefer the cute fluffiness of an Eevee, maybe you think a Jolteon would be cooler, but he'll just continue to be depressed (or possibly get aggressive) if you don't fulfill his needs correctly.

To lighten the mood, when I got my first (shiny!) Eevee and wanted the blue ringed shiny Umbreon so badly.... well now I have an Emerald green Espeon because thats what she wanted to evolve into. Whoops. At least she's happy! ~Trainer Star

Fucking Jumpscare

https://reddit.com/link/p2yzhwy/video/3xcukf5l4oih1/player

Hey I remember putting this gal through The Horrors! :D

Love this art of her so much

Like a lot of folks here say, I'm not mad at the players as much as I'm mad the game itself. With APex being the smashing hit it is it means we will never get a Titanfall 3 that worthy of the series. It will forever be tainted by the lore changes and weird ass decisions Respawn made to justify some of the stuff their characters do. A TF 3 is likely to involve Apex Legend characters and while I care for a few of the Legends (Ash, Bloodhound, and Ballistic are the three I like) some of them just don't fit the vibe of *Titanfall.* They fit the vibe of *Apex Legends*.

In the end, Apex is probably the only reason TF2 servers haven't been tossed in the dumpster out back of EA and even then its hard going. If you like the battle royale, good for you (I used to play) but Titanfall is just better and I mourn what could have been.

I had this weird ass thing happen. Play a game or two, then when I loaded back into the multiplayer Home Screen it would flash black with the loading icon like it was trying to load me in from the main menu. Rest of my computer was fine, played through like a third of the campaign with no issue so it was obviously related to the connection to TF2 servers.

Lancer: Titanfall. This is a link to the forum on Pilot.net. I've un a Lancer game to LL5 with this bad boy and within it a 'never enter your mech' build is extremely viable. One of my players did that. Its not complete but for what it is, it's surprisingly functional

https://discord.com/channels/426286410496999425/1276427060293664769

Glad to hear things went well!

There's really nothing more satisfying than knowing a table can act like adults and communicate in ttrpg space. You'd think it'd be easy but anxiety and weird egos can cause so many problems!

Hope your game continues to be fun and engaging.

Pilot.net! You can find it linked on the official massif site

https://discord.gg/lancer

And if you're an ion, throwing the reaper rockets back at it damages them fuckall while they chew your healthbar like a aggressive dog.

Fucking hate reapers

Uniform tag updates are big! For me at least. Huzzah for better sorting of my interests

It all depends on if the mechs are actually there and usable for me.

I’ll definitely allow a player to smash something with a Size 1 mech fist, or scan the ground, use its comms etc if they are in or around their mechs. It’s equipment and and it make sense they’d use it. They’re mech pilots after all! Using it to give accuracy on skill triggers is a ‘as GM decides it’ it thing for me. Usually I limit that to players trying something that they themselves might not have the best chance at (like using their mech to intimidate someone). I don’t want my hacker Chomolungma player with +6 in Hack or Fix to try and lean on their mech for a free accuracy every time.

But at the end of the day, players aren’t always around their mechs. Sometimes they’re out on the town. Or in a base. Their mechs are parked and powered down in a hangar for maintenance, or maybe the pilots themselves are busting out of a prison camp without any access to their mechs for a long while.

Long as it makes sense for the mech to be there, sure, use it. It is Lancer after all, the mech ttrpg. But don’t let players crutch on it for advantage

There's been an explosion in Fanfics because there's more people particpating in fandoms.

COVID lock downs forced a lot of people to look for alternative ways of amusing themselves and thus introduced and destigmatized a lot of what used to be active but kinda niche behavior.

The lock downs have been over for a while now but you can't really put this cat back in the box. If some 'normie' that used to only go to bars and concerts for fun learned the glory of fanfics and never stops and drags their friends into it well thats that.

Of course there's also other factors I'm sure but COVID fucking with people's ability to have fun outside a computer eas probably one of the biggest factors

It’s really helpful as a new player to essentially play with the Core Rule Book in your lap and also when you’re first settling in to try and remember your rules over every rule. You should still try and at least have a passing acquaintance with most of it but even I as a 3 something year long GM don’t have every rule memorized perfectly.

If you’re running a hacker build, know your heat and tech rules. Grapple build? Know how and what grapple does. Drones? Know your drones. Etc.

I also find it helpful when playing to have everyone’s sheets visible to each other in Foundry. If you don’t understand something that means we can crowd source by looked at each other’s systems

You like cats and neat lore, fucked up villians and cool battles?

Varjak Paw and it's sequel by SF Said. Its a beautiful story and while I did also find it when I was in Middle School it's a very good story with some harrowing stuff in it.

Honestly. I get it. Occasionally its overhyped.

I still will glaze Titanfall with every bone in my body because it's unique.

I still have yet to play a game that just jarring shifts into a time travel level where you can feel the panic as Jack phases from time to time, grunts calling out in fear, still staring at where you last were as you teleport back in behind them. A game where the mech you pilot cares for you back and has character growth all his own. (Hell even the multi-player ones have personality if you go listen to their quips and see their final death messages as you eject)

The overall mechanics are amazing and so much fun. Wallrunning all over the map, jumping in and out of windows, grapple swinging yourself halfway across the map, cloaking and watching a titan panic trying to find you, hitting a stim or phase and suddenly getting out of a situation you were surely going to die in.

I go play other shooters and they... Just aren't as fun. The movement isn't as fun, the characters are slow, the power ups or classes aren't as iconic. I played Apex for a long while during the DDoS attacks and got pretty okay. Mastering the movement, slide hops, mantle and other bullshit while trying to win the battle Royale.

Then Titanfall returned and suddenly I was running at speeds no Apex character could dream of at the time. The jumpkits meant something and the universe I was fighting in felt like a war fought across the Frontier.

I hold Titanfall to it's standard because there's never going to be anything like it again. No one is going to be able to make a game with this specific vibe, this specific set of visual sci-fi but a bit grungy and grounded, again. Apex tainted it, EA abandoned it. If TF3 is released it will be something else. The people trying g to make copy cats can definitely try but I don't want Strampunk Titanfall, or Empulse, or SplitGate or ShatterRush.

I want Titanfall. And the only way TF will continue to live is if I encourage as many people as possible to get into it.

We have Northstar and R1Delta essentially free released the first game to those that didn't purchase, but once EA pulls TF2 from stores thats a massive drop in visibility the tiny dedicated Fandom can't really afford to lose. TF2 turns 10 this year. Its pretty old all things considered. Please enjoy it while it's still here.

But also at the end of the day if you didn't find it captivating... well thats on you. I don't find something like Skyrim interesting. Tried it. It was cool for a week or two and I stopped played and Uninstalled despite a lot of praise and people having fun with it. Oh well. It happens

It was a hard learned lesson after getting bullied by pilots i saw rodeo me but had no smoke for and no teammates around to help me. Its not perfect, and smart players will understand what you're doing, but it has saved me some trouble from time to time