Hi all. Our campaign is well underway, and thanks to a ghast harvest I've got most of my necessary/sensible purchases made for now. So I can afford some fluff next. I quite fancy adding an Archeotek - I know they're not optimal and have accepted that the creds would technically be better spent elsewhere. But I want some gameplay variety and kitbash fun! Thinking is to start with torsonic cybertechnika and pay extra to upgrade to the mid level to give the plus 1 to melee strength. Gadgeteer skill and two las sub carbines. Go to trading post for a flail when I can, then later get spider rig and/or cyberachnid. Gadgeteer and sub carbines means 4 rapid fire dice with twin guns blazing, still hitting on 3s. Only S3, but I'll put my faith in lots of dice to get wounds. Torsonics at mid level and flail means hitting on 3s at S5 with 3 attacks on the charge, not too bad. Spider rig at a later date massively improves this. This character is my short range "threat". Movement stat upgrade a priority, possibly grapnel launcher to help with this. Appreciate any thoughts!
N18 Fun with an Archeotek
- Thread starter Tk421wayayp
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- archeotek van saar gang
as a cawdor player i look at posts like this and then look at my guys who have a broken gun tied to a stick and regret my choices
On the flip side, I would love nothing more than to be able to send wave after wave of my own ( expendable) men to their death, zap branagan style!as a cawdor player i look at posts like this and then look at my guys who have a broken gun tied to a stick and regret my choices
Back to archeotech stuff. The build you suggest should do well at mowing down juves and low equipped gangers but unless you start a campaign with one and build them up very carefully with choice xp upgrades they will still get minced by the combat monsters of death maidens Goliath stimmers and the like.
No Van Saar can match such fighters or hungry hungry hippos (corpse grinders) in melee but they are not meant to. That's what multi melta and lascannons are for.
As long as the archeotech targets the plebs in you opponent gang and the heavy and special weapons wielders take on the tougher targets they should work.
No Van Saar can match such fighters or hungry hungry hippos (corpse grinders) in melee but they are not meant to. That's what multi melta and lascannons are for.
As long as the archeotech targets the plebs in you opponent gang and the heavy and special weapons wielders take on the tougher targets they should work.
I would get a suspensor harness (from the Book of Peril) which allows you to carry a extra weapon, so four, and get a plasma gun for a backup. You will lag behind in movement so it makes it a little harder to get to close range for the subcarbines thus the archeotech can still do work when out of pistol range.
Agree! In all honesty the main pull is to give me some playstyle variety, beyond shooting at 18-24 inches (plus kitbash fun)! More than happy to have them intended for juve/ganger hunting, and the odd go at a champ with a lucky charge. Movement upgrade and/or grapnel launcher would be planned for movement help.
One of our local players uses that sort of set up, two las sub carbines with the rapid-fire upgrade. It's not the scariest thing in his gang (that's the champion with a Lascannon and all the upgrades) but it is surprising effective. The shear number of shots mean you are likely to do some damage, and it only takes one lucky hit to take someone out of action.
I think I'm sold on this approach for fun/different playstyle. Aim to grow towards replacing flail with spider rig and then if the group agrees stacking Gadgeteer and weaponsmith i.e. giving plentiful to a weapon then use this to synergise with Gadgeteer e.g. can get a rapid fire 2 autopistol with manstoppers! Makes him a close range beast with plenty of fluffy fun
Dream Arkeotek build for me would be, Bolter, Ocular Alpha (free), Grapnel Launcher, Armour, weapon Smith.
Use him to support your hip shooting champions and plasma pistol toting Neoteks for a fast moving, hard hitting run and gun style gang, if you fancy something a bit different playstyle wise.
Level him up with spider rig and the Cybernetica that gives him +2 S in Melee as you gain creds.
Use him to support your hip shooting champions and plasma pistol toting Neoteks for a fast moving, hard hitting run and gun style gang, if you fancy something a bit different playstyle wise.
Level him up with spider rig and the Cybernetica that gives him +2 S in Melee as you gain creds.
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Gadgeteer and two las-sub-carbines can be fun for a gunslinger build, especially if you decide to augment at least one of the las-sub-carbines to have the Pulverize or Shock trait depending on the gang you're facing off against. Photonic Engineer also has its uses if you don't mind playing a little with fire or want to preserve your ability to re-roll failed Ammo checks for las weapons while using Gadgeteer. For something more diabolical, pairing a suspensor lascannon build with both Weaponsmith and Gadgeteer can make for a comically overpowered sniper, if a bit on the expensive side.
As for melee-centric archeoteks, I'd pass on Torsonic at the start and instead pursue going all in on Sindextrous first. With an average 4+ Weapon Skill by default, it really doesn't pay well to have the Van Saar fighter you kitted out for melee get disarmed or suffer a hand injury, and Sindextrous also opens up the door to being able to make attacks that cannot be parried (Omega) and without any penalty from having to turn to face your opponent (Gamma). With Alpha level Sindextrous taken for free, you could very well just pay the 15 credits to upgrade to Gamma level from the start and go to town from there with a spider-rig, or upgrade to Omega for another 25 credits if you're looking at using something else.
That's not to say you won't want Torsonic at all, but Omega level Torsonic is little better than an overpriced universal Suspensor (which isn't useful for a melee build at all), even with the exceptional discount that archeoteks get for cyberteknika - it only makes its credits back if said archeotek owns at least two heavy weapons across all of their loadouts.
As for melee-centric archeoteks, I'd pass on Torsonic at the start and instead pursue going all in on Sindextrous first. With an average 4+ Weapon Skill by default, it really doesn't pay well to have the Van Saar fighter you kitted out for melee get disarmed or suffer a hand injury, and Sindextrous also opens up the door to being able to make attacks that cannot be parried (Omega) and without any penalty from having to turn to face your opponent (Gamma). With Alpha level Sindextrous taken for free, you could very well just pay the 15 credits to upgrade to Gamma level from the start and go to town from there with a spider-rig, or upgrade to Omega for another 25 credits if you're looking at using something else.
That's not to say you won't want Torsonic at all, but Omega level Torsonic is little better than an overpriced universal Suspensor (which isn't useful for a melee build at all), even with the exceptional discount that archeoteks get for cyberteknika - it only makes its credits back if said archeotek owns at least two heavy weapons across all of their loadouts.
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The spider rig ignores parry already and torsonic alpha gives a nice surprise if the archeotek gets disarmed, ehich will hopefullybe enough to deal with any melee foe bad enough for the archeotek to survive to make reaction attacks. Ignoring the -1 from turning does sound good though, worth considering.
Sindextrous alpha is just better than Torsonic alpha when on a melee fighter, instead of getting a buff to unarmed for if you get disarmed you can just get immunity to disarm instead, and they have the same cost of 50cr, pre 50% discount.
Even still, throwing fisticuffs with an unarmed or disarmed Van Saar fighter is really only going to come into its own in a bar brawl. Anything short of that is credits spent on a fallback that you never want to find yourself using at all as Van Saar, not least of all when almost any melee weapon is always going to be better than being unarmed by default.
The only other benefit to Torsonic is in permanently negating reductions to a fighter's Strength characteristic, which is why I won't write it off but won't immediately go for it either. Beyond that, you're more or less stuck with half of a poor man's janky servo-harness, and you may as well just get the real thing once you've got the credits anyway.
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If you have the spider rig and are fighting in melee, as it is a melee weapon, you get +1 to hit at short and versatile range. So it's not 4+ but 3+ to hit in melee with the spider rig....and with entangle, you can't be parried and if you roll a 6 on any of your attacks, and you get a lot due to paired weapons, you auto wound due to shock. The spider rig really helps in melee....add the right cyberwhatever and you should be fine.
