New player help

Hi I'm Afwasmiddel (IGN: Urgot) from the Netherlands.

Somewhere 5 years ago I stumbled upon this game and decided to give it a try. I liked the concept and played it for a few weeks. Other stuff came up and I kinda forgot the game. About a week ago I decided to google mecha games in order to find this game again. I mainly play DotA 2, but I'm looking for some stuff besides it, cuz these kind of games can get really frustrating. Recalling the good memories I decided to search for it, with success.

So yeah I reinstalled the game and started playing. It felt really awkward at first but I soon got the hang of it. Because my account existed for 5 years I got flooded with freebies. When I checked my garage I found all the old bots and quickly realized these probably wouldn't do anymore. In the shop I found the garapon and used the tickets I had obtained together with some RT I had leftover from back in the days. This gave me some new units I could work with. After exploring the world a little bit I managed to find the anniversary area where I could obtain some more bots. Unfortunately I wasn't smart enough to get a heads-up on the current meta and I just went with some units I thought sounded and looked cool (mistakes were made). While levelling up in arena and completing orders I obtained myself a thank tickets which is the last freebie I used to obtain a new bot. Since then I've been fairly successful with certain bots in arena, but most of them really seem to suck... I used some Delight garapons with succes for new bots as well.

So basically I would like some opinions on what bots to use and how to get better bots. I'm not planning to spend any money on this since I don't know how long I will play this (and the shop seems kinda expensive for a game with this few players). The last week I've been playing this more than DotA 2 though and that's quite surprising. Anyway it looks like the game is slowly dying and the new cosmic league kinda disappoints me.

My current botlist:
Malca Nina (my most successful bot, a few tunes)
Serieux Blanche (pretty decent but not really my style)
Alcy Rivette
Diana D'Eclair
Elcott Reaver (fully tuned but weak as fuck for a melee...)
Nemlim Lamia (5th deluxe coin, I should have known better)
Yuuka
Ritter LazFlamme
Aquila Girl
School Misty
Blazed Baron FF
Sturbanger Mark 1
Yaksha Hayate
Gries Ripper

Sub garage:
Jikun Hu-kun
Orphenous Ere
Solfrost
Amateus
Aquila
Mediger Sign
Jikun Hu
Sovlancer
Steel Rider
Tesladonna
Winberrl
Cinbydion C
Sheeno
Accel Saber GP
Bugsycait
Jikun Long

The bots in my main garage are leveled. Most of them I fucked up with cartridges so I prob need to junk them and remake (wasted lvl limit removals >.<).
So far I usually go with Malca Nina, Serieux Blanche, Elcott Reaver, Alcy Rivette and Diana D'Eclair. I saw some good Blazed Baron FF's, but they all seem to have the sword twice so a no go for me. Plus I seem to miss some other parts to make him a good melee. Sturbanger Mark 1 annoyed me a couple of times so I tried it myself, but seems to be only good when the battlefield isn't moving too much and melees cant flank you. All my supports seem to be rubbish I hoped for Amy or Justicia with delight tickets but only got shit from that so far (Yuuka, Ritter LazFlamme and some of the silver mechas). According to the changelog for the upcoming patch the delight garapon will be removed and tickets will be harder to get so not sure if I can still farm bots this way.
With the rainbow sand I should get 50 RT for a new spin at the garapon but I doubt I will get lucky (already used UC-->RT as well).
So what direction should I take? On which bots should I focus and how to obtain new ones as a F2P player.

EDIT: I should note that playing melee seems to be rather impossible for me. I guess since I'm from Europe the lag is too much. Whenever some1 makes an evasive manoeuvre he dashes throughout my screenand I basically have to guess where he ends up. As an AIR unit this is less problematic, especially with Malca Nina's abilty to summon tracking pillars of flame. Any other Euro players having the same experience or is this just how melee works in the game?

Thanks in advance.

How about Diana? That thing's a pretty solid choice for alpha strikes.

Serieux, Malca, Diana and Alcy. Go with these 4.
We've been getting freebie's regularly since the end of 2014. We'll get a card campaign on tomorrow's update, basically you'll have to play arena to collect card and when you collect specific number of cards you'll get prizes. Delight ticket and garapon will be removed because they'll replace them with new Delight garapons.

elmatalast wrote:

Serieux, Malca, Diana and Alcy. Go with these 4.
We've been getting freebie's regularly since the end of 2014. We'll get a card campaign on tomorrow's update, basically you'll have to play arena to collect card and when you collect specific number of cards you'll get prizes. Delight ticket and garapon will be removed because they'll replace them with new Delight garapons.

So basically the 4 I focus on already glad my judgment was right

Iirc the Amy in the delight gara is her vanilla version. She's following the rather old playstyle of a back-up gunner with an on-demand heal-gun. Nice to have and sorta fun to use (you get a lot of things to do), but not exactly meta (Trintia, Buff Devastator, Amy V, Medi Aide Angel, Extra Origin Melfi and Regina Winberrl BU are more popular and do the job a lot better), you don't miss that much in terms of gameplay.

Diana is pretty solid. Some people keep joking that she doesn't need any tunes to do well, some people do not consider it a joke at all. In any case her unison mode (when she dismisses Roi and just keeps the arms) is sorta imba. She gets a lot of shell damage, so you can really shoot at anything. Of course AIRs are prefered (doing 3 digit dmg is fun). I think most people still play her as a short boost+quick land unit with a good FLY (get at least 34). The parts you get to use in unison mode seem to work best with a single grapid...beta? tune (the one that reduces range, never drop their ammo!) applied on each of them. I didn't do any weapon tunes on mine and she's okayish (for my standards I suck at aiming), but if I was to tune a second one, I'd definitely get these tunes. Cart wise she's easy: capa, fast recovery, quick land+short boost and maybe stun regain - you can probably fit-in broad radar if you want, but that's a matter of taste I guess. Some people swear on her EIW, but imo that can be ignored unless you want to utilize both of her modes (EIW only increases her barrier in unison, but mounted mode benefits a lot more with extra ammo and force on almost everything). I didn't see a mounted Diana in ages (iirc Diabolical used to have one?).

You probably want to look into drives and core tunes. The latter can make a huge difference in a bots performance (blazed baron with burning runner in example).

No idea about Lamia, some people say she's cool if you give her the proper handhelds or something. Never played her. I've been told that "Reaver's alright". Maybe she just needs some practise or such. I rolled one myself a long time ago and found her confusing with the retreat thing as a combo finisher.

I don't even remember the types of the bots you listed in your subgarage, but Mediger Sign's healing arm is pretty popular on full support characters. you probably want to take good care of him. I think Sheeno is that LND gynoid? There used to be some rather notorious revenge spamer builds.

Maybe it's just that your targets are so laggy? There're also some subweapon moves that legitimately grant you invuln frames.

Zwiebel Force wrote:

Diana is pretty solid. Some people keep joking that she doesn't need any tunes to do well, some people do not consider it a joke at all. In any case her unison mode (when she dismisses Roi and just keeps the arms) is sorta imba. She gets a lot of shell damage, so you can really shoot at anything. Of course AIRs are prefered (doing 3 digit dmg is fun). I think most people still play her as a short boost+quick land unit with a good FLY (get at least 34). The parts you get to use in unison mode seem to work best with a single grapid...beta? tune (the one that reduces range, never drop their ammo!) applied on each of them. I didn't do any weapon tunes on mine and she's okayish (for my standards I suck at aiming), but if I was to tune a second one, I'd definitely get these tunes. Cart wise she's easy: capa, fast recovery, quick land+short boost and maybe stun regain - you can probably fit-in broad radar if you want, but that's a matter of taste I guess.

So basically something like this?

Diana D'Eclair:

Of which some tunes can be replaced with EX tunes, but I don't have that much mats.

I think that's the basic idea, yes.

http://www.cosmicbreakfanforum.com/t15870-rocket-punches-are-the-best-punches

What kind of playstyle you need with her? I usually find myself not finding any targets and when I move forward I get fucked by melee's.

Try going for 38 fly, I finished tuning Diana on my main account on JP. 38 fly is way better than 34, you can flank airs easily too on certain maps!

Afwasmiddel wrote:

So basically something like this?

Diana D'Eclair:

Stun Regain is a garbage cart on builds that aren't tuned to make the most of it. Get Blast Guard instead.

Ok  guess I will need the fly indeed judging from that video. Btw when can I expect my rainbow sand to be changed into RT? I kinda want to roll the new garapon with it.

Another question I stumbled upon, I rolled a Trinita which I use for healing. I noticed however that the Health bars I see only display the first half of HP. Basically I don't see any dmg unless they get below half or something. Which is really frustating when targetting for heals. Just waiting for people to call to get healed is boring so I would like to see who to heal beforehand.

Afwasmiddel wrote:

Ok  guess I will need the fly indeed judging from that video. Btw when can I expect my rainbow sand to be changed into RT? I kinda want to roll the new garapon with it.

Another question I stumbled upon, I rolled a Trinita which I use for healing. I noticed however that the Health bars I see only display the first half of HP. Basically I don't see any dmg unless they get below half or something. Which is really frustating when targetting for heals. Just waiting for people to call to get healed is boring so I would like to see who to heal beforehand.

just spam Repairing and spam them bubbles, people are gonna go in them to heal so you dont have to worry bout healing who, just spam and done ._.

Afwasmiddel wrote:

Ok  guess I will need the fly indeed judging from that video. Btw when can I expect my rainbow sand to be changed into RT? I kinda want to roll the new garapon with it.

Another question I stumbled upon, I rolled a Trinita which I use for healing. I noticed however that the Health bars I see only display the first half of HP. Basically I don't see any dmg unless they get below half or something. Which is really frustating when targetting for heals. Just waiting for people to call to get healed is boring so I would like to see who to heal beforehand.

There was an actual answer for this long ago but I couldn't find it. Here's a thread that may give you an idea though:

http://www.cosmicbreakfanforum.com/t3586-purple-health-bar?highlight=health

Iirc: White= 500 or more, if the HP dops below that it becomes light blue and at some point the shade gets a bit darker (below 200???), then it starts depleting. I usually shoot at anything w/o a white bar l0l

Well thx for the info at least that's something to work with. It's a rather odd system though. Too bad you can't change the colors or something to be more clear, same for the crosshairs. The lightblue is just invisible when fighting in bright maps or when lots of action is going on with explosions fields and bubbles everywhere.

From what I recall:

Full HP is pure white, damage is dark blue/purple, around half (yellow) HP is a lighter shade and if it's the same color as the blue/red surrounding the actual bar then it's low HP (red on your HP indicator). Either way that's kinda unnecessary with a bot like Trintia, it was pretty valuable with bots like original Melfi and the like where you had to make each shot count.

With Trintia and other bubble healers, just spam repairing, drop bubbles in safe places near the battle (NOT all the way back at your PS where absolutely nobody is but also not right in front of the enemy art wall), poke things with her spear and if people run to you and drop near/next to you and their bar's not white then shoot a heal at them. Up to you if you prioritize people with more stars/more broken bots or not.

Afwasmiddel wrote:

Well thx for the info at least that's something to work with. It's a rather odd system though. Too bad you can't change the colors or something to be more clear, same for the crosshairs. The lightblue is just invisible when fighting in bright maps or when lots of action is going on with explosions fields and bubbles everywhere.

It's clear when you get used to it.

Solid white: >400 HP
Light blue: 200-399 HP
Dark blue: <200 HP

Heal people with light blue/dark blue health bars. If they're solid white, don't bother. That's it. This system also applies to enemies you wanna target as well:

Solid dark purple: >400 HP
Light purple: 200-399 HP
Red: <200 HP

could have sworn that white is 500+

Why would it be 500? The bars don't separate every 250 HP, they separate every 200 HP.

Keep up with your team if you're healing, no one likes medics who stay in the back

Ok I am not sure if this is normal but when playing Trintia and trying to cast heal bubble about 33% of the time my animation goes off without producing a bubble. It consumes the ammo but nothing happens. I don't get stunned or anything. It even happens when I'm standing somewhere solo on the map. It's very frustrating when people gather for heal and you can't your bubble out for some mysterious reason... Any1 knows what causes this?

I think it's just lag? It used to happen a lot to me with my buff dev when I was using my old PC, but now that I got my new one it doesn't happen anymore... I never could figure out exactly why that happens though