Played early beta because giant fighting robots are cool. Grew bored because at the time the higher ranks were pretty much exclusively heat builds and if being competitive means copying everyone else then I'd rather not play.

Ended up coming back because oddly enough Super Mechs is fairly unique. Customizable robots you pit against each other in an online arena seems to be exclusive to this small, hardly noticed flash title. Which is bizarre if you think about it.

I was thrilled to discover the swords first. Game always needed proper melee combat! I was thrilled to discover the leveling system for weapons and weight restrictions. Great! Now I have more to consider when building my mech than what does the most damage! Was further wowed because there was now a single player campaign. If I didn't feel like getting stomped silly in the ranked battles I could hang back and play the computer to my heart's content.

Yay.

So I played. I played every day till I hit level 30, got some semblance of a decent mech, leveled my equipment up to roughly level 7, and then powered my way through the online matches till I hit rank 3.

...Now what?

The power requirements for upgrading my equipment further are ridiculous. I've been buying boxes with my SM almost exclusively and feeding the unwanted items to my preferred equipment but I'm still nowhere near maxing my weapons or torso out. I haven't even started on my legs yet.

Reaching rank 2 or 1 is near impossible with the equipment I have. The victories I've scored against black skulls are so few and half the time when I search for a fight those are exactly what I come up against.

I played the campaign till my fingers were numb and not only do I STILL not have anything anywhere near the mech I wanted to build but now I'm stuck in this practice mode post-campaign thing where earning SM is like pulling teeth.

I'm fine with a little grind. Really I am. I'm not asking for mythical items either. Everything I want for my final build is available in the cheapest box.

But even so tokens prices are so high and the items I want aren't sold for SM outside of the boxes. Some of the items are even box only. I feel like I'm busting my head against a brick wall and the fact is I'm not sure buying tokens would even help.

Am I missing something? Is there some trick to earning SM or influencing the outcomes of the boxes? Do the items that are box only or token only rotate so in a week or two one or two of the items I want might go on sale for SM instead of tokens or cost tokens instead of being box only?

What, if anything, am I doing wrong? How can I make the game fun again?

Haha I understand your frustration

As someone who only recently started playing SM and getting into the grind of things there, I noticed a similar situation. I played the campaign a little, got the hang of things, started murdering through the AI and thought, heck, I should try taking on actual players! Then I went into vs. and got curb stomped to the face by the first person I played. My equipment did jack to this guy and his HP was near double mine. So I went back to campaign to grind away, earn money until I got better equipment and got lucky to get some mythical's from gold boxes (unfortunately for me, I didn't realize my BD and SM were linked.... So when I saw I had 1000 tokens, I thought that's what I earned from leveling as I didn't pay close attention that i actually only earn 10 per level). Then I went back to Vs mode and found out, I happened to run into 1 of the few with a good build the 1st time. I went straight from the bottom completely undefeated until I hit rank 6. Then I lost a few, but for the most part, won a majority. Then... I hit the dreaded rank 3.... dear god. Majority of my matches are now with rank 1 and 2's with way better builds and heavily upgraded equipment. Best I have is level 7 equipment.

However, reaching these levels made me realize how important your mech's build was. Damage output was not nearly the only aspect. I've found huge success with my close range heat build compared to my damage build. And the attacking power of my mech dropped from an avg dmg of 80-100 per hit to 30-40 per hit, but I'm winning more matches keeping opponents in constant overheat in the 200's.

But the grinding, I actually think is good as is. It gives you something to aim for in the long term, not just immediate results. Most of those with extremely high upgrades have been here for years. They are very hard to beat and they deserve to be imo.

I find myself fluxing between rank 2-4 constantly now. Only thing I would suggest for change is that the Vs. matching system be tweaked. Either make rank 1's only able to fight other 1's and 2's (Not 3's by auto) OR make a new ladder rank. Perhaps create an S class ladder ranking that'll pull a good part of the highly competitive/strong mech players away. Maybe make it exclusive to players with a certain amount of xp acquired on their mechs in total (so counts xp on legs, torso, and weapons) and rank 1 with x amount of wins to enter.

I agree, fusion is very expensive. It cost me almost 200,000 fusion points to get my level 26 saurus rifle to power level 12.

As for earning credits, the best builds seem to be heat or physical. Also, look at the top players, you may get tips on how to build your mech from them. You may not have their weapons but you could try using similar strategies. One build that is fairly good at high ranks uses the 'Call of Lightning' sword, costs around 20,000 credits but it is worth it. Use this and weapons like deep drain (10,000 credits) and beating rank 1's will be easier. The best bit about this build is that every weapon can be bought using regular credits. Hope this helped and good luck beating rank 1's.

Hmm... I guess there's no harm in rethinking my build and letting my parts collection build up again. I'd rather not do a heat build if at all avoidable. I can't help thinking of it as "cheap" even now despite peaking at the higher ranks of the current ladder and realizing it really isn't any more. But there's always room to experiment.



I can respect that. Still the frustration factor is big here. It's easy to feel like you're stuck and not making any progress at all. I wouldn't feel that way if there was a clear price for the items I want.

But the way things are now I just have to keep saving up to 5000, buying a box, and hoping for the best.

And that can be really disheartening.

Well, you can also buy quite a few weapons etc in the shop. The boxes are pure luck - sometimes you get great stuff, sometimes... Not so great stuff.

Have you tried different strategies? You don't always need to have the highest levels - if you can make you opponent overhead, run out of energy or get their resistance in the far minus, you can bring down opponents that are much more scary than you on paper.


You can actually buy quite some power with tokens, but again, perhaps you should try different set ups? Focus less on the grind, more on trying to build the best mech with what you have.

I've been messed up badly even with my heat build by energy drain builds (2 of my weapons are swords) and by long distance builds (4 of 6 weapons are range 1). My newer mech version is extremely focused on close combat compared to my last which was very balanced. However, if my enemy does make 1 mistake, I can max out most on their heat. This happens to only be the build I'm currently playing with though. Low dmg output, but extremely high heat. By no means do you have to focus on heat builds. I'm probably gonna change up to a physical build soon as I now have quite a lot of good items in that category.

As for the frustration and disheartening, I can agree with you. I've been winning enough to keep me satisfied, but I've also had some bad streaks where I lose 5+ matches in a row. And I'm the same way, I'm just buying more item boxes everytime i hit 5000 SM. Lately though, I've avoided upgrading. Upgrades don't boost the weapon THAT much. Least, not until you hit multiple fully upgraded items (which is why the strongest rank 1's are so strong). But me leveling an item I'm not sure about yet to level 3-5 just isn't worth it. +3-5 dmg per hit just isn't gonna make the difference on most cases. I'd rather see how well my build works first. Maybe I'll see if I just had that extra dmg per hit, i would of beaten that rank 1 (and it happens often) then I will focus on upgrading. Yes... it'll be a nightmare, but my build overall should be be whats efficient.

Also, i know this may not seem like a good strategy, but if I find I'm just not doing well, i'll purposefully lose a few matches by making a 2nd mech (that I know won't win) with items I usually wouldn't use (to see if they're worth investing some time in). I still gain SM and xp and my rank drops. That way, I can focus on experimentation and then when I get enough info, I'll attempt to use to rise up ranks again (and see the progression of how well the new build works while I face stronger players).

Here is some past build I use pre-mythical era.
Try these!
Physical build:
This one is particularly more reliable since you can hit your enemy at every range outside 6+.


Heat Build: You want to camp a corner with this build.


Energy Build: You want to lower your opponents energy first before using teleport+sword or Hook+sword combo.

The amount of items you have, my god women! Do you have 10 of everything?!

I might have to try out some of those builds though ^^

I didn't think to ditch the charge or shield features honestly...

The only reason that Rank 2s and 3s get paired with so many Rank 1s, is because there is an abundance of them. When I went through what you did, it took me a couple of weeks at least to get to Rank 1. But once you do, you very rarely shift back into Rank 2. The situations getting even worse every day too. There is a gigantic class gap between even Rank 3 and 2..

On the electric build, You can ditch the charge for add a shield. The point of charge is to close a gap or catch an oppnent in a corner.

Same thing with the heat build. You can place extra pressure by staying in close combat by adding a charge.

For the physical build, any oppurtunity to use the demolisher goes first. I would not waste a utility item just to use demolisher unless it was for finishing kill.

Generally, Torso Upgrades are worth it for first 1-5 levels. You get 5 HP per level.

If you can level all your weapons by at least 3-4 before one level on torso, it's worth it.

Level up Torso = +5 HP
Level up weapons = +1 It takes 5 Levels of a single weapon to match the level up for a torso.

So if you can level multiple weapons by at least 3 levels before leveling a torso, It's worth it.

Why 3? Cause generally, you can use 2 weapons per turn which =6.

I've kinda thought about all this over a year ago. I was a smart cookie. =)