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[ScrapIron Prime]

Got in to spend on two Marauder 3R chassis tonight and check out the usability of the system before investigating game play.

- Likes -

Active and Inactive skills are a great idea. Keep these.

Simplified skill tree for just "weapons" is cool, and it's layout is useful, with laser skills on the left, missile down the middle, and ballistic on the right. Nice touch that the gauss recycle are all right in one spot early on the table.

A single point in consumables gets me back to 2 consumable slots, and not too many more gives the option of an extra UAV. Nice.

A modest investment in sensors gets me full Seismic Sensors and 3/5 of Radar Deprivation without delving into too much esoteric stuff like we had to the last time.

- Dislikes -

I need to XP up each instance of each mech. For example, if I bought three Warhammer 6R mechs for my drop decks, I need to spend XP and unlock skills three times. This is onerous, though it does dodge my next point.

Previously, if I wanted to change a mech from autocannons to gauss, I need to spend a few minutes in mechlab, including swapping out 2-3 modules. Now I need to do that (minus the modules) but I also need to swap out perhaps 10-15 skills in the tree (at 4000 to 6000 mech XP to do so, assuming I've already unlocked them, but the XP cost is trivial). This is a lot of legwork, AND I HAVE A SUGGESTION.

Each mech, once skills are unlocked and activated, now has a massive list of quirk adjustments. As a veteran, I know what they all mean and appreciate the clarity of seeing all of them. As a new player, that list is daunting and not too helpful, looking for all the world like a giant pile of book-keeping minutia. Is there a way to simplify this?

- SUGGESTION -

With active and inactive skills, a mech takes even longer to switch from one loadout to the next, having to do it in both mechlab as well as the skill tree. This would be an excellent time to introduce a SAVE POINT for a mech that a player can buy with MC. Purchasing and activating a SAVE POINT would take a snapshot of one mech's current loadout and skill tree picks, and a single button could revert everything to that state. And the SAVE POINT could be re-saved as often as the player likes to account for new skills and new designs.

So a player who purchases two SAVE POINTS for a Warhammer 6R, for example, could switch it back and forth between a dual gauss build and a PPC or Autocannon brawler at will, without any of that time mucking around in mechlab or the skill tree.