Best Build
All credit goes to whythecynic !
- RA2 Lancer + Supercharge + Liquid Cooling
Whichever secondary you want, I like a light shield, pack a missile launcher for hilarity:
- Tsubasa torso + Cooling 3 + Heat Sink 3 + R2 Hotrod + T1 Reach
- Tsubasa legs + Cooling 3 + Light Plate
- 2x Elbrus arms + Cooling 3 + Heat Sink 3 + Light Plate
My preferred playstyle is with extremely mobile maneuver elements running high cooling for rapid fire, so this is the slowest of the machines I’ve built.
A heat dissipation of 71.7 means you can fire the RA2 once every 0.88 seconds. Run distance of 20, thrust distance of 48. Optimal range is 74-103m but you do 50% damage from 0-74, so there’s little reason not to shoot anyway. The Lancer hits a little weaker than most sniper rifles but is pinpoint accurate and can shoot through cover. This machine is pretty much unstoppable.
Don’t let anything get near it, of course… its extremely low weight and durability make it vulnerable to both shooting and melee. Get rammed by pretty much anything and you’ll be seeing stars for a while.
As for the issues I’ve faced, the greatest one has always been mobility, then heat. Good dash distance is more important than high running speed, but the latter is still useful to reposition or to peek from cover without using up precious heat. Mobility lets you avoid damage and get into a position to deal it in turn. Without mobility, battles become impossible; without cooling, they merely become longer.
Heat is the fundamental limitation on everything you do. Firing weapons and dashing generate heat. Bumping up that dissipation is going to take the next priority, the easiest way usually is by swapping out the reactor for a R2 Hotrod on uncommon (green) and rare (blue) torso pieces.
Lighter parts generally give you better cooling, but that has to be balanced against the presence of an offensive module slot which lets you load up a heatsink module. Green and blue heatsinks also reduce your power generated (and thus running speed), so at some points it’s actually better to run parts with weight saving modules instead of cooling ones.
Then you start to craft equipment tailored for your needs, and that means rolling for specific perks. Tsubasa pieces are light, have good cooling, and the torso has an offensive slot. Arrow Ls are basically budget Tsubasas. Bein Medium pieces have unusually good cooling as well, but they’re somewhat fragile and also don’t have good module slots.
There’s a lot of interacting systems in Phantom Brigade. Figuring them out, running up against the weaknesses of your composition, then planning how to compensate for them, that’s my favourite part of the game.
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