ATXM4: Iron Wolf

Win Condition: Tausendfussler defended.
Loss Condition: Tausendfussler shot down.
SR Point: All enemies shot down within five turns.
Condition Changes (Turn 3):
Win Condition: All enemies shot down.

Doctor Kazahara's Tausendfussler and its anti-Aerogater cargo are being pursued by a rogue enemy force. With only minimal onboard weapons and no word of reinforcements, Kazahara's left to take them all down in a lone Fussler run in the opposite direction as fast as possible.

Our pilot for the start of this map is unfortunately not Kazahara himself, but a faceless EFA pilot. Compared to pilots of similar level, the EFA Soldier has poor Melee and Ranged stats, extremely low Maneuverability and Defense, average accuracy and poor Evasion. This is a pilot that's carried by his machine, and the Tausendfussler is unfortunately on the bottom rung of mechs, below even the Type 71. The EFA Soldier relies on the Tausendfussler's high HP along with his Vigor Spirit Command to tank hits, which would be a generally viable strategy just for surviving...if his SP pool weren't so low that it could only cast one command per sortie. His role is instead intended as a support pilot, using Trust to replenish allied HP and Cheer to double the experience they gain for one battle, hopefully the killing blow on a high-level boss unit. As stated though, the EFA Soldier's SP only lets him cast one of these, so if you intend to cast Cheer or replenish allied hit points, it's best to keep him far from combat.

And while your immediate reaction may be to direct him in just the manner from my opening statement, the best way to complete this map is to move the Fussler to the eastern side of the lake, where ATX will arrive to provide backup on turn 3.

Since the range-1 Gatling Gun is the Schwert's only postmovement weapon, and the enemy boss is stationary for this portion of the map, you can safely pull the Soldier a minimum of 5 spaces away from the enemies and force them to waste their turn chasing him over to where ATX will spawn, and otherwise spend that turn on taking minor Gatling Gun damage. The F-32 Schwert lacks the Messer's mobility and has easily shreddable armor, but tries to make up for it in HP and speed, darting over a whole 8 tiles per turn. She's small, has almost no weapon space, has an S in Air and a D in Space, with that S being restricted to an A due to the mystery pilots' terrain rankings. Her homing missiles are identical to the Messer's, making her a poor copy of it that's still above the Waldung. Next-generation fighter my foot.

The ATX team introduces a new mech for this map, along with the new weapon equip mechanic. The Gespenst Mark III Alteisen is our first permanent mech of the game, joining the team with no strings attached. She's a heavy armor, fast but low-mobility PT...minus the low-mobility part. Her high HP and EN let her go nearly anywhere on the battlefield and take a whole battery of hits with her armor. The Beam Coat on the Alt cuts 5 EN from her power supply to reduce all beam damage by 900 points, making for an amazing wall that can get right up there with the Type 0 with 500 more armor in upgrades. So the long and short of this setup is that the Alt is built to take hits like a Super, but still has the dodging abilities of any Real Robot. Kyosuke's Focus only pushes that further, making the Alt an all-star of the mechanics that would make any individual machine "good" but on one mech put it up as a mainstay unit for the whole game.

She's got good weapon space--more than you'll ever use--and an S in ground warfare, with A/A for Space/Air and B in Water. She's medium sized, perfect for Kyosuke's Hit/Evade and aggressive attack stats. She also has 3/5 of her weapons as postmovement arms, with a max range of 4, effective range of 3 and unmoved range of 5. The Heat Horn doesn't see much use due to being range 1 and sharing that with the two of the Alt's three ultimate weapons. The Revolver Stake is her main loadout--it's an extremely powerful melee weapon with six shots and a range of 3. Upgrading the Stake also upgrades Kyosuke & Excellen's Rampage Ghost combination attack further down the line, making it necessary for the endgame and a very versatile weapon overall. The Heavy Claymore is the Alt's initial best attack, with 4 shots Range 1-2 and a 110 Will restriction. So it's easy to trigger but difficult to use due to not being postmovement. (Kyosuke fixes this with his Assail Spirit Command, which enables the use of premovement weapons as postmovement weapons for one turn, which also makes the Claymore a great bosskiller.) In addition to mostly being strong postmovement weapons with great accuracy and +35 to +50 Crit bonuses, the Alt's main armament is consistently kinetic or supreme across the board. That reveals a key aspect of the Alt--her melee focus, kinetic weaponry, beam coating & high range paired with Kyosuke's Accel makes her a devil of the water. The Alt can simply march in and let the enemy waste EN on her with beam weaponry, then slaughter them using the Stake or Claymore with Infight and 1.2x counterattack damage. The Alt is already a perfect fit for Kyosuke; slap a Water Jet on her, pump some PP in to upgrade Kyosuke's terrain rankings later on, and the two will have a field day at the beach.

(Note that once the reinforcements show up, we actually get an almost-exact copy of the EFA Soldier for our second Tausendfussler, letting us work around the "one Spirit per map" restriction the EFA is so fond of, but without Cheer factoring in.)

For this map I chose to make up for Bullet's unsuitable mech by assigning him to Kyosuke's old Gespenst Mark II (not Excellen's, because hers has that "custom" weaker Jet Magnum) and putting Excellen in the TT. While Excellen can't make use of the T-Link Ripper, she can use the Mega Beam Rifle or the equippable M13 Shotgun (pictured) for much better damage than Bullet could use the Ripper. These changes are all temporary though, as the early maps of Original Generation love to cram your pilots back into their story-determined units.

In order to score the SR point, focus on mobilizing your units to the southwest, using Kyosuke with Strike or Sanger with Sense to pursue Tenzan. I generally use other units before Sanger, because he's something of a Jeigan character in Original Generation in that he doesn't have much room for growth or customization, and his raw power makes him an easy XP stealer that prevents your other pilots from developing early on. Note that even if you shoot down Tenzan before the Schwerts, the Schwerts will still remain on the map, so you can still score the SR point if you take him down first.

Tenzan's piloting a Lion Test Type, which has decent armor, poor mobility and speed, and HP/EN comparable to the Gespenst Mark III. It has an S in Air, A/A for Ground/Space and a C in Water. The weapon space is expansive and its medium size does help with keeping Hit/Evade consistent. The units' onboard weapons are lacking due to her only postmovement being a weak Gatling and none of her main arms being usable at Range 1, creating a deep flaw where the Lion TT cannot defend herself in close quarters despite being an assault-oriented Armored Module. The 6-Range Homing Missiles and Railgun do make her an ideal sniper for Hit & Away/Snipe pilots. Ultimately the first generation in flight-based AMs is less clumsily implemented than in their PT counterpart, but this Lion brings nothing to the table that the Wildraubtier FM didn't already, or do better.

The big guy himself is basically what you want out of a Lion pilot, with Gunfight L1 to amplify the Railgun damage and an emphasis on his Range stat. Revenge powers up his counterattacks, but Prevail L1 is somewhat misplaced since Lions taking hits is a rare sight--for the most part they either dodge or go down in one blow. Thanks to his Defense, Tenzan can survive one blow from the Revolver Stake, but Heavy Claymore blows him out of the water and he can't really use Prevail even after taking so much damage since its main use is in stopping attacks that the Lion herself can't handle. He also can't use that S-Air thanks to his own terrain rankings, and so long as you have Focus active, that 241 sum Evade shouldn't mean too much.

After the stage is over you'll get a Water Jet part, and from the engagement you should have a Chobham Armor that you can equip. As discussed previously, you can put the Jet on the Alt and equip Excellen's mech with the Armor, to compensate for her weak stamina while turning Alt into a water devil. Of course, putting the Chobham on the Alt and a Water Jet on one of the Gespensts is another option, since Kyosuke's Accel lets him move freely in the first place while the Jet can help catch Gespys up, and the Chobham can save you a difference of $35000 in the long run to put the Alt's Armor on the same level as the Type 0 (the difference between four and five levels of Armor is enormous.) For new game+ the Water Jet route is probably best for the Alt, while first runthroughs can benefit more from the saved cash and early defensive power. Taking the Chobham route will also leave you room to start upgrading the Revolver Stake, an important step towards Kyosuke's long-term development as a frontlinesman and bosskiller.

Next map: Soaring Dragon

ATXM3: Kill or be Killed

On route to Langley, an EFA Tausendfussler transport ship is assaulted by Aerogater mechs, leaving the on-board pilot Brooklyn Luckfield to defend the Fussler's cargo. In order to secure the Fussler's escape, Brooklyn has to deploy alone and fight off the AGX-01 "Bug" Megillots.

Win Condition: All enemies shot down.
Loss Condition: Allied mech shot down.
SR Point: Win condition met before
Tausendfussler reaches the west end
of the map.

This is another map heavily slanted heavily towards the enemy in terms of numbers, but we're in a superior machine and after three Megillots have been shot down, we'll receive three reinforcements to even the odds. So in the grand scheme of things our little army has doubled once again from the preceding stage. There's no strict turn limit on this SR Point, but if the Tausendfussler gets to the end of the map then you've lost the point--effectively that's three turns to destroy all of the enemies in. You shouldn't need to use Bullet's Alert Spirit Command here, because the Megillots have pretty poor accuracy and their attacks are weak enough that his type-TT can take it, but do take the time to cast Accel for Kyosuke and be sure to take advantage of Excellen's Hit & Away. There are a couple hang ups about this map, however.

First, the Tausendfussler. The Tausendfussler is a low-mobility, low-armor air transport. It falls even behind the FM in armor, is size LL--the largest class of machine--and has only A & A in Air and Space despite being a dedicated transport craft. It has only a point-blank postmovement weapon, weak 6-tile Homing Missiles and low accuracy bonuses from the weapons. The AA Autocannon does have +40 crit but it's too underpowered to make use of it. The Fussler's only saving grace is its huge HP and EN--even though it has no onboard weapons to use that EN. It's a battleship with none of the qualities that make a battleship good. Its huge size prevents it from hitting anything while getting hit by everything, it has no armor to back that HP with and its weapons demand a Hit & Away skill that Tausendfussler pilots just aren't trained with. In other words, a giant kingpiece.

Nobody asked you!

Second is Bullet. Bullet is not a bad pilot by any means, and is actually well balanced right now in terms of melee vs range. His accuracy and evasion are on par with Excellen, while he's got Kyosuke's defense. A nice middle road, with accuracy/evasion Spirits that draw from the series staples. Alert makes him unhittable for one battle, while Strike ensures that for the next player and enemy phase all of his attacks will hit. Alert is great for going into the enemy phase with, and since it costs just 10 SP for most pilots, SP Regen makes it free to cast early in a map where you're just setting units up. Telekinesis further boosts Bullet's acc/eva for each level he takes in it, making him a dodge master, while Infight reveals my real problem with this map and many to come, that Bullet's real role is as the melee pilot he was back in Alpha. His terrain rankings are the same as the majority of ATX members, A in all but water. This is perfect for a Gespenst, but Bullet's Gespenst is special and especially customized for him so that it will specifically be worse than a normal Gespy. What he needs is a melee mech, and if you confine Bullet to the mechs the story hands him for the OG games, then Luckfield will be severely lacking for the next 59 or so maps.

The TT is not all bad news. She has slightly higher HP and EN due to her customized nature, and otherwise is only different from a standard Gespenst in terms of onboard weapons. Functionally the Plasma Cutter is a weakened Jet Magnum that works regardless of Will and fails underwater. The MegaBeam Rifle is 105 Will-restricted with just 6 ammo, but has a good accuracy bonus and is almost on par with the Jet Magnum in terms of damage. The trouble is that while all of these are great postmovement additions, they only work with 2/3+ distance in tiles from the mech and target, and Bullet is a melee pilot.

This is all part of a bigger issue. The Gespenst Mark II Type-TT is the first mech we get specifically designed to work with Telekinesis. The T-Link Ripper is literally unusable without at least Telekinesis L1, but Bullet may as well not have it--due to how his stats develop and being an Infight pilot, Luckfield's damage with the Ripper will usually be identical to his damage with the MegaBeam Rifle. This is the problem with Bullet; he gets constantly assigned to mechs that in no way complement his stats and usually mislead the player as to what he's supposed to be doing. The TT would be more usable in the hands of a ranged pilot, but even then she's held down by her plethora of beam weapons. I went into this a little in previous maps, but water in this game is not so much a terrain type as a debilitating status effect that stops all beam weapons from working as intended. So Plasma Cutter is Bullet's best weapon but only works on dry land and in space. I would recommend the TT to Excellen since she has a weakened Magnum anyway, but the Ripper is Telekinesis restricted and she'll be getting her own custom mech soon enough.

Original Generation 1 is so inundated with water maps that having beam weapons as a main loadout with no kinetic alternative is an immediate mark on that mech's record, and the TT is definitely not doing herself any favors by having her alternative be ranged. Right now everything's fine since we're on land and the AGX-01s are weak, but these problems are only going to snowball if we let them, so getting Bullet a more appropriate mecha is one of those things that players have to constantly manage in the background up until the middle of Original Generation 2. (It doesn't help that he's force-deployed a couple times in the TT and another ranged mech later on.)

The Megillots are low-mobility, low-armor like the Fussler. They only have a B in ground and A/A in Air/Space despite being AirGround mechs. They're small and accurate with good HP, but lack weapon space and only have 80 EN to use their Ring Laser main weapon. Charging is their only postmovement, it's only range 1, and everything they have to fight with is weak. I would put it below the Messer but better than the Waldung. Their charge puts them in the direct line of fire for Bullet's Plasma Cutter in this stage, so we've really nothing to worry about.

After three Megillots get shot down, Kyosuke and Excellen will join the fight in their Gespenst Mark IIs, along with one new allied unit...

The Grungust Type 0 is our first real glimpse of what an endgame mech looks like, with armor, HP and EN straight out of Mazinger and Gunbuster from past games. Type 0 takes hits perfectly, reducing most damage to SRW's baseline 10. Its best terrain ranking is an S in Space, with As in Air and Ground and a B in Water; this is the best of the ATX mechs we've seen so far, and its dedicated pilot has an S in Space to complement it. He actually has an S-Ground and A-Water, so eventually equipping the Dustproof part to modify Type 0's Ground rank so that it matches Sanger's may be a good idea. (You can do the same for his Water rank with a Water Jet, but the circumstances of Sanger's deployment across the game are such that you'll almost never have the Type 0 in water.)

Type 0 comes with the Break Block skill, preventing armor-reducing missiles from taking effect--the ultimate wall. The Type 0 is also almost nothing but postmove weapons, limited only by their close range. The Boost Knuckle is a paradoxically ranged melee weapon effective at 2-4 tiles with a strong accuracy bonus and power just behind the Jet Magnum. The Hyper Blaster is range 1 melee, and supreme so it's not affected by water. The Colossal Blade is a 5350 (!!) power 140-Will restricted melee weapon and this mech's best attack, with a whopping 55 critical bonus. All of these weapons are high accuracy, and while they do drain a ton of EN, upgrades can fix this. (The Boost Knuckle is limitless though.)

The Type 0's pilot even learns Spirits to push him to 140 Will from turn 1, making it basically unstoppable if upgraded accordingly. The final onboard weapon, the Armor Breaker, does not damage but reduces the enemy's armor to almost nothing, leaving them wide open to followup attacks. Overall the Grungust Type 0 is the best mech we've been given in these past three stages, and is leagues above the Mark IIs.

Major Sanger Zonvolt is a pure melee pilot, befitting for the Type 0. His 144 defense is great for its ability to take hits, and he even learns Guard for tough boss fights. His Hit/Evade are up there with our snipers too, so that Sense Spirit is going to remain decorative for a few stages. His one fault is his lack of customization; Sanger only has one skill slot left at introduction, best saved for SP Regen. Command boosts nearby allies' hit/evade, Infight helps him with his Colossal Blade and other attacks, Counter lets him get the jump on bosses, Prevail lets him keep on tanking the damage he takes, and Hit & Away is just icing on the cake to swap him out for another point-blank pilot like Kyosuke.

After you clear out the Megillots, reinforcements arrive and Sanger will pull back to let you handle the rest. This is not a difficult stage by any means and you'll already have the SR point by this time, so feel free to rush in with Excellen's Support and Kyosuke's Fortune, and try not to let anybody fall behind in levels. You'll now have enough cash to begin upgrading your mechs, but I'm going to say to hold off on that until we've gotten some more permanent forces. Next map: Iron Wolf.

ATXM2: A New Beginning

Kyosuke's been moved into Langley after the Wildraubtier accident, so for this stage we're handling a training exercise under Major Sanger's direction. Kyosuke's also been paired off with Excellen for the exercise, to demonstrate their piloting ability and how well they handle the Gespensts--it's a welcome improvement over the FM.

Win Condition: All enemies shot down.
Loss Condition: Kyosuke shot down.
SR Point: Win condition met within 4 turns.

This map almost doubles the enemy count from the previous one, but we have double the number of player units to compensate. Like in the previous map, you'll want to cast Kyosuke's Accel right away to line him up with the tanks as quickly as possible, but on the following turn you'll want to try to set him and Excellen up so that they're immediately next to one another.

This is so you can make use of Excellen's support skill, which lets her get in an additional attack at half power when she's next to an attacking ally (if they are on the same elevation; allies in the air cannot be supported unless Excellen herself is in the air.) As in the preceding map, never attack the same enemy twice on your own turn. This will be the first time that Will comes into play in a major way--Will is a stat that resets to 100 in each battle and mainly serves to restrict what weapons you can use, in this case the Jet Magnum, which can only be used at 110 Will or higher. Each pilot has different ways of gaining Will, but in general downing enemies will cause their Will to increase, as will successful actions and certain Spirit Commands. With his melee stats and focus to give him 85+% accuracy on the F-28s, Kyosuke should be able to one-shot full HP planes using the Jet Magnum.

(Note that Excellen's Jet Magnum is 200 points weaker than Kyosuke's. This should give you a good indication of what type of pilot she's going to be.)

Map 2 gives us the use of the Gespenst Mark II-M, the first of many variations on a 16-year-old PT design. The mass production model is sturdier than the FM but not as specialized. While the FM had S-ranks in Air and Space, the Gespenst has an A in everything but Water, which suits Kyosuke just fine as he has the exact same rankings. The Gespenst is less mobile and not as fast, but has massive weapon space that the FM never did. It's also a medium unit like the FM, dealing average damage with reliable accuracy. The Mark II has several powerful postmovement weapons, two of them being range 1 and one of those being the Jet Magnum with its aforementioned 110 Will restriction.

The M95 Machine Gun is its bread and butter, with a range of 3 on a reasonably agile mech and a boost to accuracy (+40 instead of FM's Beam Cannon's +30 and a +45 Crit instead of +10.) Because the Gun is a ballistic weapon, it's effective even underwater while the Raubtier's Beam Cannon peters out under those conditions. The M95 is also ammo-based instead of EN-based, so it fires a flat 15 times instead of being restricted by enemy-drainable energy. It's immune to AB fields and similar tech, making it well-rounded and dependable. Split Missiles give the Mark II a range of 5, so while it can't snipe it's certainly not wanting for range. While energy weapons dominate high-scale maps where EN can be restored by way of floor tile, the Mark II does have its Jet Magnum reserved just for that. The Magnum is melee and only effective at range 1, so it's ideal for Kyosuke, while ranged pilots like Excellen should stick to the M95. Overall the Mark II is an impressive PT that can suit just about any pilot.

Second Lieutenant Excellen Browning is our new character for this map. She's a ranged pilot with great accuracy and through-the-roof evasion, Kyosuke's opposite in piloting technique. Don't let her flirting fool you--while Kyosuke slams the frontlines with Jet Magnum, Excellen belongs at the back casting Snipe (not shown) for range 5 with the M95 or range 7 with the Split Missiles, picking off enemies before moving in with Hit & Away to park herself next to a defensive wall. Not that she'll need it--Excellen's evasion makes her nigh-untouchable. Her innate Support skill is also perfect for lining her up with offensive units, to double-attack and make further use of Snipe with. While Prevail is great for Kyosuke's defensive stats, Excellen can make full use of Expert to cut own on energy spent sniping with her later mechs. Her high cost spirits like Love can also benefit from Mental, which reduces SP costs down to 80% of their maximum, in one casing saving her a full 12 SP that turns into 22 after a turn with SP Regen. Gunfight is another good skill for her, as it's the ranged version of the Infight that I talked about getting Kyosuke last map.

Exie's Support skill operates like Kyosuke's Counter, getting one more support attack per turn per level of Support. So at Support L4 she make four support attacks per phase, or defends for an adjacent ally on the enemy phase while taking half damage. I mentioned Hit & Away briefly, but it's a skill that lets her move after attacking to freely reposition your units and make room for someone else, or set up support attacks for next turn by moving her in next to Kyosuke et al. Taking into account her two innate skills plus SP Regen, you ultimately have three slots to fill out for her.

Following this stage we can upgrade our pilots and mechs for the first time, but we don't have enough PP to nab SP Regen yet (it should be your first priority with all pilots) and the upgrades on these Gespensts won't carry over to later mechs. Because of that, I'd recommend conserving funds and PP for now, and instead proceeding into the next map: Kill or be Killed.

ATXM1: Broken Wings

(Yes I am well aware of the irony associated with TLI doing a Kyosuke route walkthrough but I've played Ryusei's route far too many times by now)

This guide is composed using two resources, my personal save file that I use to play through stages initially and then the fresh save I get screenshots from. So my recommendations don't just come from someone who's pushing $6 million+ in playthrough returns and has 600-999 PP saved up for every character, but from experience in both normal and second playthrough-on gameplay. Additionally, I'm not someone who's looked directly at the game's code but I am familiar with SRW mechanics in general. So there may be mistakes from time to time regarding the specifics of one ability or another, in which case I welcome corrections as my goal here is to be informative.

ATX Map 1 sees our introduction into the world of Original Generation. Two hundred years after mankind's advance into space, in 179 Space Era the exploration vessel Hiryuu encountered previously unknown mobile weapons in the vicinity of Pluto. Identified as extraterrestrial mecha and codenamed the "Aerogaters," this encounter was soon followed by the crash of Meteor 3 in the Marquesas Islands. A perfectly spherical asteroid containing advanced technology later identified as alien in origin, termed as "Extra-Over Technology," this meteor and the Aerogaters prompted Doctor Bian Zoldark, who was studying Meteor 3, to alert the Earth Federation to an imminent invasion on part of the Aerogaters. The Earth Federation Army began rapidly reorganizing their "Personal Trooper" mobile weapons development as part of a response to the coming invasion, and now several years later Kyosuke Nanbu is participating in the testing of airborne PTs.

Win Condition: All enemies shot down.
Loss Condition: Kyosuke shot down.
SR Point: Win condition met within 2 turns.

Right from the start of the game we're thrown several curveballs. This map is four-on-one and our only mech is the Wildraubtier FM, which has its transformation disabled and so is permanently unable to use the terrain to get a defense bonus. To elaborate, there are several installations on the field that restore HP and EN for every turn that you stand on them while passively lowering your accuracy and increasing your defense. These installations' accuracy and defense properties can only be taken advantage of by units that are standing on them, so an airborne Personal Trooper like the FM can't use them, though it can still get access to the restoration properties, which restore 20% of the mech's maximum HP and EN.

The blue-roofed tiles south of the tanks confer the same bonus and ironically can only be used by flying units, but you can't make use of them in this map without risking the SR point. This map is intended to evaluate your use of turns; since you only have one unit to attack with, you get a limited number of shots at the enemy force. The basic idea is to never attack the same enemy twice--you get two shots spread out across two turns, so attack a different enemy on each turn and counterattack everything on the enemy phase to score the SR point. (Also note that the enemy's phase is considered a part of the turn, just like the player phase. So you can win on the enemy's move and still get the SR point.)

Kyosuke has access to two spirit commands in the first stage, Accel and Focus. These should be cast immediately on the first turn to let him charge in between the Type-71s and F-28s so that all of them are within range of the Wildraubtier's Beam Cannon, while giving him a 30% increase in accuracy and evasion so that he can make every hit count. Let's do a more in-depth evaluation of the units in play.

The Wildraubtier is the first generation of airborne Personal Trooper. As such, it's vital to the development of air control in a post-EOT world, and its design is based on existing fighter models. Its Flight Mode has nearly paper-thin armor but high mobility on par with the F-28 Messers its design borrows from. The FM is designed for air and spaceflight, with S marks in each, and needs a comparable pilot; ground-based pilots like Kyosuke only hold her down.

Wildraubtier FM is outfitted with AA missiles that let it snipe enemies from up to 7 tiles away, while the Aerial Bomb and Beam Cannon give intensely powerful postmovement weapons that can strike at point-blank range or from a distance. The idea with "postmovement" weapons is that an armament with a P next to its name can be used after moving, which gives it a much wider theoretical range than what the menu shows, since you can reposition your mech freely and still get the attack it.

This makes the FM a versatile machine that is never vulnerable; she's best suited for a ranged specialist with Hit & Away, Snipe and accuracy-oriented Spirits. The Beam Cannon is also energy based and would benefit from EN Save, and has one more property that isn't such great news. Because it has the "Energy Beam" property, the Beam Cannon is rendered ineffective by the high density of water (versus air and vacuum), severely reducing its destructive properties. The Raubtier still has the Aerial Bomb and AG Missiles to combat these problems, but they lack power--she's effectively been cemented as an Air & Space unit by these properties and her terrain rankings.

Kyosuke himself is a strongly melee-oriented pilot with high accuracy, evasion and defense, and spirits geared toward those defensive stats. His Fortune skill gives him 1.5x cash returns from downing enemies, and his Counter skill lets him strike attack the enemy before they do on their own turn. Counter can be used more often with level, so at Counter L2 he can interrupt two attacks, at L3 three attacks, and so on. As such, the strategy with Kyosuke is to isolate him in a field of weakened enemies for maximum cash gain on their attack.

The problem with this map is that Kyosuke's terrain rankings are AABA, while the Raubtier's are SABS--Kyosuke's Air and Space rankings are one rank less than the FM's, and how terrain ranking works is that if either the pilot or the machine exceed one another, the ranking gets rounded down. So in this case the Raubtier's S ranking is rounded down to an A, because that's the highest rank that Kyosuke has, limiting how well he can use her in combat.

The other problem is that Kyosuke's ranged attack, while not abysmal, is definitely not something you want a Raubtier pilot using and so the FM's attacks are weaker than if she were being piloted by a range-oriented character. This will not be an issue once we can pick our own pilots for deployment, but for now it's something you'll have to grin and bear as Kyosuke can only one-shot enemies with a counterattack in this state.

Once Kyosuke gets a suitable melee mech his performance will far exceed any and all expectations. For his development I'd recommend Prevail, Revenge, Infight and Expert. Prevail is a skill that increases the pilot's Hit/Evade and their mech's Crit/Armor by a certain percentage the more that their HP falls. Like Counter, Prevail comes in levels, starting at L1 and maxing out at L9--it's most worthwhile at L7 onwards, where at 20% HP a unit will get a 30% boost to their hit, evasion and armor, making this a free Focus and an extra boost to their defenses, while at 10% HP it jumps up to 35%. Prevail L9 gives a full 45% boost to accuracy, evasion and armor at 10% HP; the result is that it takes exponentially more hits to kill a pilot with Prevail as they get closer and closer to 0 HP, such that enemy fire will be reduced to doing the bare minimum 10 damage per hit and whatever current mech has the Prevailing pilot has for all practical purposes tripled its hit points. This is chiefly ideal for Super Robot pilots, but Kyosuke's mech is a distillation of Super and Real that has the advantage of being both extremely evasive and capable of taking many, many hits.

Revenge is recommended because it complements Nanbu's Counter skill, doing 1.2x damage on a counterattack. Taking into account his already impressive melee stat, with Kyosuke in the right mech he can cut enemy attacks short by taking them out before they come into play. Infight is a basic L1-L9 skill that boosts melee damage, reinforcing Kyosuke's natural offense and his Counter-Revenge combo. Expert conserves EN, using all weapons at 70% of their natural cost. After Kyosuke gets his custom mech, Expert may appear to be a strange recommendation, but he does get an attack later in the game that's EN-based and will serve as your main boss killer. The mechanics of the attack are a little specific to be getting into right now, but to maximize its effectiveness you have to pay its cost two to four times a turn and sometimes on counterattacks, so Expert is definitely something that you'll see a lot of mileage out of.

Unfortunately, we're talking about these skills in a vacuum, and Kyosuke can't actually have all of them. Pilots are limited to to six skill slots, and Kyosuke comes with three prefilled; Fortune, Counter and a ??? skill that he learns by leveling up. His fourth skill slot is taken up by SP Regen, a skill that regenerates a flat 10 SP every player phase. SP Regen is expensive at 100 PP, but it's also virtually impossible to complete a first playthrough without and every pilot that you intend to use long-term should learn it. Spirit commands are extremely important to the Original Generation games, moreso than in any SRW before or after, and late in the game you can restore entire fleets by picking the right terrain to camp out and defend on while SP Regen builds up your skills for healing allies and then initiating all-out attacks. For the final two slots I tend to go for Revenge and Infight to complement his play style, but if you're on a second playthrough or later you can probably stick Prevail on him for a 10-damage-per-fight Kyosuke.

The Type 71 Waldung is an S-Ground tank with intermediate grade armor, a 7-tile main gun and a poor postmovement autocannon. Because the autocannon is extremely weak and only has a range of 1, the Waldung is easy to lure out with mechs that hang just outside of its effective range. Unlike the Raubtier FM, the Waldung is a small-sized unit, which means that it's very agile but has poor offensive power versus virtually anything larger than itself. There are four sizes in Original Generation, from S to LL, with smaller units featuring greater accuracy and evasion while larger units get defensive bonuses.

Unlike its ground equivalent, the F-28 Messer has poor armor and is king of the air. Its mobility is almost twice that of the Type 71 and its small size makes it both deadly accurate and evasive. The Messer has much better postmovement weaponry from its Homing Missiles, but due to its S size these lack power, and none of its onboard systems can snipe at the same range as the 71. It's the best of the worst, with superior extra weapon space to seal this position. Note that despite their S rankings on the ground and in the air, neither of these units can actually use those ranking due to the AI only having an A in each.

At the end of the stage we lose the use of the Wildraubtier for the time being, so there's no chance to invest the money earned from this stage. Next map: A New Beginning.