hey, i'm planning to get armored core 6 despite never playing any of those games before and since you seem pretty knowledgeable about them i was wondering if you have any tips for someone totally new to the series?
Sorry for the super late answer!
The first thing I can tell you about Armored Core is that you have to get comfy because half of the game is high speed intense high octane combat, and the other half is accounting. Brother, I know how much you want to go back to the part where rifles go bang and swords go swoosh and you have enough Gs on your body that you could passably cosplay a plate of mashed of potatoes, but you gotta do the Excel spreadsheet part, too.
It's really not as bad as it seems, and once it clicks, you know exactly what to look for. But if you want to get all the juice out of the tenga, you have to sit down and take a deep gander at how the systems click. Once you do, trust me on this one, an endless horizon of options will stretch before you because that's when you'll know exactly how to tailor your big death machine to your exact specifications and playstyle. It's deep, but also deeply rewarding!
Next up, something universally useful in Armored Core: Turning Speed. If you can mod, upgrade, or otherwise improve your "Turning Speed" (or equivalent) stat, crank that up as often as you can. It's always a powerful tool, it's always very useful, it's never superfluous. This ties in to the next point:
Your strongest weapon is your camera. When fighting other ACs, player controlled or otherwise, your strongest tool, throughout the games, has been to keep your opponent in your camera, and to stay out of your opponent's camera. Movement is huge in Armored Core, you need to move so as to 1) keep your enemy in your sights, 2) stay out of your enemy's sights, and 3) line up shots. We call this "lining up a vector" or "keeping the enemy in a vector". What this means is that you want to set up your enemy in such a way that they are moving in a direct vector relative to you -- directly towards you or away from you -- so that your shot with stronger, single shot weaponry will land and deal significant damage. You set up this vector while also trying to not be 'caught' in one yourself, and as you may think, this is hard, because if they are in your vector, you are in most situations also in theirs. So, the solution? Be outside of their camera while they are in yours. Can't shoot what they aren't aiming at, right? This is a lot to take in, I know, but you don't have to commit all of this to execution off rip, just keep it in mind, develop your playstyle and learn naturally with this in the back of your head until it clicks and you start being able to see, through your own playstyle, how it is you'll do that.
One final thing I want to recommend is that you don't fall for the allure of The Big Damage Number without considering other factors. Especially when learning, you want to make a balanced build: Have your single shot strong weapons, like a grenade launcher or sniper rifle, paired with a weaker but easier to land weapon, like assault rifles or machine guns, and compliment this further with some sort of auxiliary tool or weapon, like flares that give you leeway, or missiles that can put further pressure on your enemy. In general, when starting out their Armored Core journey, I recommend to people the following loadout: Grenade launcher, assault rifle, laser sword, missile launcher. This is a well rounded toolkit that'll keep you effective at most ranges, and more importantly, will reveal to you, your own preferences. Once you become a super Newtype ace pilot fuckhouse, you'll doubtlessly make your own deathkaiser machine with quadruple railguns or missileboats or pure melee builds, but to get to that point where you know exactly what you want to do, a balanced build helps in letting you learn where your heart leans, what kind of movement-to-bulk ratio works best for you, which weapons are your favorite, etc.
