A closer look at defense in LR and maximizing tunes.

[Mom]

With the advent of tuning in the Nexus-Last Raven generation of Armored Core, users get precision control over how they want their AC to perform. Tuning a part or two for extra cooling can be the difference between a semi-ok aggressive AC or a great one. Tuning for weight and leg capacity can open a world of new possibilities in design ideas. Tuning for shell or energy defense can solve specific vulnerabilities in certain ACs and make them viable in PvP, etc.

 

We'll be looking at defense specifically here, and how it relates to tuning and what you can do to squeeze every last bit of performance out of your AC.

 

But first, we must understand a fundamental mechanic of how defense has worked throughout the AC series. Rather than defense gradually increasing for every numerical number (ie 1724shell defense being greater than 1721shell), the game lumps these numbers in tiers, so half the time the defense you end up with after tunes will be largely wasted. (ie, 1724shell after tunes could be the same as 1702shell).

 

 

 

To take a closer look at this, we'll be using a personal example of mine-- a quad with 1751shell and 1752 energy defense. In older AC games, the tiers usually resided around every 50 points, so tuning to get defense just over every xx00 or xx50 mark was a safe bet. However in LR it's not so simple.

 

To conduct this test I'll be going into split screen mode and setting up an AC with an R2 and pouring 60 R2 shots into the quad I want to be tested. I'll write down the remaining amount of AP after the 60 R2 shots and continue to go up or down in defense via adjusting my tuning to see where I hit the next defensive tier.

 

 

Here are the numbers that follow:

 

1751 shell defense... 3972 remaining AP after 60 R2 shots

1747 shell defense... 3972 remaining AP after 60 R2 shots

1744 shell defense... 3972 remaining AP after 60 R2 shots

1741 shell defense... 3972 remaining AP after 60 R2 shots

1739 shell defense... 3972 remaining AP after 60 R2 shots

1736 shell defense... 3912 remaining AP after 60 R2 shots (difference of 60 ap)

 

As you can see here, I had to go all the down to 1736 shell defense before I lost defense, so I'll re-adjust my tunes so I can have 1739 defense (lowest amount of shell defense I can have with my tunes before I hit the next lowest tier).

 

Now then, before I settle on the 1739 number I want to try a number or two above 1752 to see if I can hit a higher tier with not too much tunes invested.

 

1755 shell defense... 3972 remaining AP after 60 R2 shots

1760 shell defense... 4032 remaining AP after 60 R2 shots

 

Somewhere between 1755 and 1760 is where the next higher tier is, but in this specific case I don't think I want to spend the extra tunes to get that next tier, so I'll settle on 1739 shell defense for now.

 

 

 

Now it's time to test energy defense tiers, for this I'll be pouring 30 shade shots into my quad:

 

 

1752 energy defense... 2615 AP remaining after 30 Shade shots

1745 energy defense... 2592 AP remaining after 30 Shade shots (difference of 23 ap)

 

 

As you can see here, I already hit a lower tier, so I won't be going down with my energy defense, instead I'll try going up. I'll tune to get a largely higher energy defense number to save time with the testing:

 

 

1766 energy defense... 2675 AP remaining after 30 Shade shots

 

 

I hit another tier, so I think I'll try lower numbers to see if I can save tunes.

 

 

1756 energy defense... 2645 AP remaining after 30 Shade shots

 

 

I already hit a lower tier. As you can see the energy tiers in this case are much smaller than the shell tiers. I'll go higher now to see if I can get that tier I was just at previously.

 

 

1760 energy defense... 2645 AP remaining after 30 Shade shots

1762 energy defense... 2675 AP remaining after 30 Shade shots

 

 

Here, I found my magic number at 1762. With this I've gained two additional energy defense tiers over my original tunes.

 

 

 

I usually pour saved tunes after testing into weight. After all this testing and re-arranging tunes, let's see what I ended up with:

 

 

Original: 1751/1752 defense, 7581 weight

Revised: 1739/1762 defense, 7577 weight

 

 

Even though on paper the revised doesn't seem to accomplish anything, I actually keep the same amount of shell defense, while I gain energy defense, and save 4 weight (the weight in this situation is near meaningless, but there will be other situations where you can make big cuts in weight-- up to 50 or 60 units in weight at times.)

 

A couple tips on how to maximize your tunes. In general, heads tune better for defense because they can usually gain 2-3 defense per tune, which can be the same as many cores, arms and legs. They also don't tune for weight nearly as well, so it's good practice to get your defense tunes in through the head. Legs and Cores generally tune best for weight for the opposite reason heads tune best for defense. These guidelines aren't always 100% true though, as you can have heavy heads that tune poorly for defense (Longhorn, as an example) and lightweight legs that tune poorly for weight and supremely well for defense (Dingo2 for example).

 

One last note-- and a very important one at that-- as that you should have your frame completely finalized before you do this type of testing, because the defense tiers are completely different for every single possible frame combination out there, so in my case the 1739 shell defense tier for my Longhorn/U2/82SL/88A frame could be completely wrong for a frame like Queen/U2/82SL/88A.

 

These can be tedious tests, but if you like to squeeze every last ounce of performance out of your favorite bots, this is a good way to do it.

[Shirtless Crackhead]

This is what I was trying to convey when I was talking about the defense tunes on Pin Prick.