Basic combat or "Look Ma! I'm dancing!"

Yes, I know - you can just Lock target, stand still, hit spacebar to Alpha Strike (AKA: fire all weapons) and the guns keep firing until the target blows up, yeah?  How hard is that, huh?

Well, that's the crude essential, but the refinements mentioned below can make a significant difference, preventing you from taking damage and thus saving valuable Reactor/Accumulator power otherwise spent on Armour Repair.  Note that the techniques below relate to fighting bog-standard NPC drones, which will be your loot fodder in the first week or two, but the techniques will never come in wrong.

 

Know Your Lock and Fire ranges... and the enemy's

Do this from your very first fight, and thus get into a habit that becomes instinctive

When starting in a shiny new Arkhe, by and large you and the mobs you will be hunting for loot will get target lock-on at about 125 metres.  Thereafter, various Extensions (AKA: skils) help make a difference and when you can afford mods like Sensor Amplifiers and other electronic targetting/weapon aids, that makes even more difference, generally increasing Lock range and Weapon range.  This is good.  Ideally, you need to have a longer Locking range than your target and if you can get weapon ranges increased as well, even better!

As a simple example, say you are fighting some pretty basic drones - the type with the fairly common 125m Lock range - on your own and a few more start heading in to join the fight, as they do.  You have the prospect of a couple actually shooting you at the moment and another couple moving in to Lock you prior to firing...  Keep glancing at their ranges, and do the old "float like a butterfly" routine as often as possible - dance around, keeping as many as you can outside their sensor Lock range and the result is they simply cannot even start to fire at you!  Even if they are currently firing at you, try and draw the target YOU are shooting at a bit further away with you, hopefully getting one or two of the other drones outside the magic 125m sensor range As soon as they lose target lock they cease firing and have to spend 12 seconds re-establishing their weapon lock, and in mech combat, 12 seconds can be a long time.

Now, by adding a Sensor Amplifier when you can afford one (start at 300k) you get about 35% extra Lock range and a 25% reduction to the time it takes you to Lock your targets.  You can see where this is going, I bet...  By the time you can afford one of these your skill bonuses should be kicking in, and at this time I currently have a target Lock range of 195 metres and a weapon range of about 170 metres.  The majority of NPC drones still have a 125 metre target locking range, poor buggers.  This gives me a "sweet spot" zone at the far end of my target lock range of about 30 to 40 metres where I can both maintain target lock and keep firing, and my poor target cannot even lock onto me, let alone fire.  This is GOOD.

At about 195 metres, maybe one or two of my weapons cannot fire at that range, but crucially, I still have my target sensor-locked and they almost always will have lost theirs by that point. When they do, close in a bit and start up the guns that stopped firing, because I don't have to spend 12 seconds trying to get another lock-on, and my poor target does!

Anyway, that's the broad principle.  There are a few NPC mechs at Light Mech level that have higher than standard target lock range, but life isn't always a box of chocolates, and you'll soon learn which ones these are.  Personally, I consider my Sensor Amplifier the best 300k I have spent apart from getting my Light Mech, because it makes the "float like a butterfly" technique so effective and thus it stops me taking a LOT of damage.

 

Aggro Range

Again, broadly speaking, NPC aggro range is 300 metres.  On your map, which you should keep open at all times in a small window tucked somewhere, right-click anywhere in the map and change the white circle around your Mech to a 300 metre radius. In combat, zoom in until the white circle almost fills the Map and you can see at a glance what is going to aggro.  It would be nice if you could have two circles around your Mech, maybe a green one for your weapon range and a red one for for Aggro range, but life isn't always ideal!

 

Armour repair or "Oh shit! I left the damn thing on!!"

We've all done it, I bet... activated the armour repair module, forgot about it in the heat of the "pew-pew" and saw that the bugger has drained the Accumulator dry when the wepons haven't enough power to fire.  Learn from your very first combat to click the repair module once to turn it on, then click again after a second or two to turn it off.  This gives a quick pulse of armour regen and, when Accumulator levels look good again, rinse and repeat.  Leaving it on without fancy skills and even fancier repair modules is a sure-fire way to drain all your power.  This is bad.

 

Use the terrain

Annoyingly, even a gentle slope can cause everyone's weapons, both NPC and player, to sometimes plough into the ground even at near point-blank range.  If fighting 3 or 4 enemy drones, try to make this work for you.  Skirt the edge of a ridge or just try and keep to the higher slopes if you have to, and you will hopefully hit your target while your enemies weapons hit the ground.  It doesn't always work out, but no harm in trying, eh!

Dodge around plants and ground features, too, timing your weapon fire so that you fire just as you have a clear line of sight, then duck back so as much enemy fire as possible vandalizez the landsacape.

 

So, there you are - basic combat.  If I find out anything more that might be useful to us newbies, I'll pass it on.