A guide to New Mech Systems

[Aphelion]

The new mech systems are pretty great; but I can see how they could be difficult for someone new to SS13 to get the hang of. It took me a few attempts to learn the basics which I will cover in this guide.
 

So- what am I covering in this guide? 

Components required in mech parts

Spoiler

A mech consists of four different parts, the legs, chassis(torso), arms, and sensor(head). There are many different variations of these parts that allow the mech to move in different ways, or equip specific things. For example, the Combat Torso can have machine-guns mounted to its shoulders, this feature is exclusive to this component.

 

On top of every part, there are several components that need to be added to the parts, which I will now list.

Sensor:

Camera

Radio

Exosuit Control Module

 

Arms:

Actuators

 

Chassis:

Diagnostics Unit

Power Cell

Armor

 

Legs:

Actuators

 

The majority of these components can be found under the robot category of the Mechatronic Fabricator. With the exception of the Armor and Exosuit Control Module.

The Exosuit Control Module is what gives the exosuit the capacity to use certain equipment, for example, you may print an exosuit engineering system control circuit, and an exosuit medical system control circuit using the Circuit Printer. Adding them to the exosuit control module before adding it to the head will give it the capacity to use medical and engineering equipment.

Equipment used in mech production

 

Painting Components

Spoiler

Each component can be painted individually, to make your mech look even more unique. You can do this with the paint gun located on the robotics desk

  Paint Gun

You use it by clicking it in your active hand, and selecting the color setting. You can then paint your components a nice bright red to burn the retinas of your enemies.

 

Painted mech components

 

 

Assembling the mech

Spoiler

In order to assemble the mech, you need one final component. The Exosuit Frame, this is used to attach the legs, chassis(torso), arms and head to.

Mech parts, and exosuit frame

 

Exosuit components all added to exosuit frame.

 

Once adding the components, it's just a simple set of steps to finish the mech.

Add Wires

Use wirecutters to neaten the wires

Add 15 steel sheets for external armor

tighten external armor with wrench

Weld external armor with welding tool

and finally, use a screwdriver to finalize the mech.

 

When fully assembled, the mech's eyes should light up in one way or another. They may not do this, depending on what sensor(head) you have installed in the mech.

Finished Mech

 

Disassembling the mech

Spoiler

If you want to swap out components, or change something other than the mech's equipment or powercell. You will need to disassemble it.

To do this, you only need to follow these steps.

1. Enter the mech and enable maintenance protocals.

2. Exit the mech, and use a wrench on it.

3. Weld the mech

4. Wrench the mech to loosen the armor sheets

5. Crowbar the mech to remove the steel sheets. (It will delete the sheets, you will not get the steel sheets back)

6. Use the crowbar to remove whatever part you need.

 

Following this you can take parts out of the different modules of the mech, and just give it whatever different parts you need before reassembling it. 

 

Equipping the mech

Spoiler

Now, equipment.

The steps for equipping the mech are fairly straightforward, you click the mech, with whatever you want to add to it in your active hand. Then a prompt will ask you what limb or section you want to install the tool to.

For example, the Medical Drone Bay will tell me that I can install it in the mech's shoulder.

Mech with tools for installation

 

 

Piloting the mech

Spoiler

Finally, your mech is complete, outfitted with the latest and greatest equipment you could manage to cram into it.

Now how do you use it?

You can enter the mech by dragging and dropping your sprite into it.

Upon entering the mech, there will be a set of controls on the left hand side of the screen. On the lower right, you can see things like maintenance protocols, closing and locking the cabin, turning on or disabling internal air supplies, and on the upper right you can see what equipment you have installed.

You simply need to click the box with a specific item to use its main function. (For example with the Hydraulic Clamp, if it is installed, selecting it and clicking something will let you load a crate, box or closet into the mech's storage bay.)

Something very important to remember is that many items have secondary functions, or (in the case of Floodlights) will only be usable by holding down the Alt key and clicking the item in the HUD. (Again for example, the Hydraulic clamp. Alt-Clicking it will unload whatever item you have picked up).

 

Hopefully all this information is useful to anyone looking to get into robotics. I really encourage experimentation, as it seems like every component adds a little uniqueness to the mech.

 

Entirely complete mech, equipment and all.

Edited January 3, 2020 by Aphelion
Corrected some words, added a little more information

[geeves]

Hey man, this is a really neat guide, looks good. I find your use of colour delightfully abhorrent. I think an outtake would be a big emphasis on "Alt-Click your equipment to use them", since I didn't know about that myself, despite following the PR to port mechs as it was made.

[Aphelion]

47 minutes ago, geeves said:

Hey man, this is a really neat guide, looks good. I find your use of colour delightfully abhorrent. I think an outtake would be a big emphasis on "Alt-Click your equipment to use them", since I didn't know about that myself, despite following the PR to port mechs as it was made.

Thankyou
And yeh, the two hardest things for me to learn was the function of the Control Module, and that Alt-Clicking was how you used flood-lights and such.

[ben10083]

@Aphelion Thanks for the info, out of curiosity, has there been any addition to exosuit equipment? Has there been any changes to mech weapons? 

[Aphelion]

5 hours ago, ben10083 said:

@Aphelion Thanks for the info, out of curiosity, has there been any addition to exosuit equipment? Has there been any changes to mech weapons? 

In comparison to the vanilla mech code? Yes, quite a bit.

I can't  quite recall all the equipment now, but the list has been considerably thinned.

 

We've still got laserguns, tasers(Now titled 'electrolasers'), and machine guns, but we don't have alternate versions of them. There is also an X-ray laser gun that you can outfit the mech with, if research has illegal technology up. I believe there is also a flashbang launcher.

 

Instead of a jetpack, there are legs specifically to enable hovering. They consume more power and in exchange let you freely move up and down.

 

For medical, the biggest change is the Medical Drone Bay, which can shoot a stabilizing beam at nearby people if they are hurt. However, other than that all the same medical equipment exists.

 

Engineering basically just gets an RFD now, there's no cable layer. Still RFD's are very useful tools, particularly in a mech because they run entirely off power.

 

Lastly, there are a few misc bits of equipment, like a flare launcher or an extinguisher.

 

Major stuff that's missing from vanilla mech gear would be power generators, force-field projectors, and repair drones. I think it's sort of worth the trade though.

 

Edited January 6, 2020 by Aphelion