Part 13: Post-Mission 4 Upgrades, Skill Parts and Unit Analysis #3.5 (Special Taurus Edition)

Time for our post-mission shenanigans. As usual, here are our top aces:


Since Tekkaman Blade is no more, Duo and Bless now share the 2nd/3rd place with 8 kills.




Unit Upgrades:

To avoid getting taken by surprise again, I'll upgrade our lesser units a little bit:



The Blue Earth gets a bonus in HP and Mobility.



Noin's Taurus (urgh...wasted money) gets HP and Mobility as well.



Deatchscythe gets a power-up to his weapons.



The Valhawk/Valstork get extra EN and Mobility.



Finally, the Sandrock gets extra EN and Armor.




Unit Parts:

Let's go over those presents we got from Dagger:



He gave us our first useful part: a Booster.
Boosters are pretty basic. They give +1 to the equipped unit's Movement Range.

Duo and Bless have Accelerate (and Bless is more of a ranged attacker) while Quatre isn't a top attacker.

With all that in mind, Kazuma gets the part which takes his movement to 9.


Skill Parts

In previous SRW games, you could spend your BP-esque points into Pilot Skills.
In W, however, you get new skills for your guys by giving them Skill Parts.


We only have 2 right now. One BP+1 (which does what it says on the tin) and one Infight+1 - Infight is a skill that increases your pilot's melee attacks' damage and critical rate.
The effect gets higher and higher as the skill builds up.

I'm gonna be giving all BP+ parts to Kazuma. He'fs the main character so he deserves to be slightly stronger than everyone!

However, I'm gonna be saving the Infight part. We'll be using it soon enough and it'fll be someone that's a whole lot more melee-focused than Kazuma (and stronger than Duo).


BP Upgrades



Noin gets most of her points into dodge (fucking Taurus) and a wee bit in Shooting.



Duo gets his 2 points spent into melee.



Kazuma gets one into melee and one into evasion.



Finally, Bless uses his two points to up Shooting.



Now, to keep consistency, let's do a quick Unit Analysis for Noin and her Taurus.
I'll probably a bit here...




Noin is average on all accounts. None of her stats shine but she doesn't have any glaring weaknesses so she should be able to handle herself if you give her a hand (she's essentially Gundam Wing's Noal). Her attack stats are less than stellar with less melee than Quatre and Shooting at the same level as Noal (155).

Letfs go over her pilot skills:

• Shoot Down
  
• Support Attack L1
  
• Support Defense L1
  
• Commander L1

She's supposed to be a support sub-attacker and it shows. Both Support Skills in one character can be useful in the early game and Command Aura is always nice. Shoot Down won't happen much since her Skill stat is, again, subpar.

Now, for her Spirits:

• Trust
  
• Accelarate
  
• Focus

That's actually not bad. A real pilot having Focus and Accelerate this early gives it a lot of value and having a backup Trust could be useful.

Now, let's go over the thing that REALLY brings Noin down in my book: The goddamn Taurus.




This thing's awful. It's got piss for mobility which doesn't help the fact that it's got low average armor and HP; it's got no safeguards and the pilot isn't as dodgy.
Mind you, I say no safeguards because if you're using her you'll NEED to keep the Taurus in airplane mode or it'll be stuck on the ground and lose 1 movement (making you waste SP on Accel). Problem is, the Taurus can'ft use Shoot Down in airplane mode which doesn't help at all.

Another issue is that, while Noin does know both Supports, these skills only work when the supporter and supportee are on the same plane. Meaning, if Noin is flying up in her airplane mode, she needs to switch back if she wants to support a ground-based unit like all our other guys (except the Valhawk in Airforce mode or Blue Earth) and, like I said, the Mobile Suit Taurus sucks even more when it's grounded.



It's weapons have decent range but, as it was said above, Noin isn't the best attacker. Still, they at least keep her out of (most) counter-attacks.
It also has a repair module which, I guess, adds some value to it in this early game and Noin's accelerate can make it reach far targets quickly.


Conclusion: The Taurus is "meh" in its airplane form and awful at Mobile Suit mode. It's there as filler unit until you get better mechs (read: pretty much anything that isn't a Taurus). If this were a squad-based SRW game like Alpha 3, she'd have a room in the team because of her spirit commands but, alas, it's not.

I'll use Noin for now due to her supports and spirit commands but as soon as my team starts growing and I can fill up the battleground with better people, she's out and she'll never come back.


That's all for today. Come next mission, some of my favorite series in the game show up and we get some proper robots and not some crappy planebot!