[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

I'm in no real rush to level PUP right now, but I wanted to start getting some attachments and putting them in my automation regardless. I see myself favoring the Sharpshot and Mage frames, probably going for Sharpshot first (I'm a ranged attacker by nature).

Also, would it be OK to get the higher tier attachments so early or should I stick to the more basic ones?

[Sabaron]

I would buy out the shops and get all of the attachments you want to afford all at once. It's a big pain to attach them, so you'll probably want to do that as infrequently as possible.

I would buy everything except for the Assault parts and the Pulling the Strings parts--they are usually quite affordable (the reason SE made them stack 12). The PTS and Assault parts have a tendency to be extremely expensive. I would pick them up during assault and do PTS as frequently as you can to get the rest after you hit PUP60. Trade your PTS and Assault doubles on the AH.

I wouldn't recommend tooling your automaton with a "static" group of parts (e.g. buying the 16 parts you think are the "best" and sticking them on). PUP will retool frequently in order to tweak output.

Beware the Sharpshot Frame--even PLDs have trouble keeping hate off of it. If it dies and your Activate is down, you'll become a lolPUP for 20 minutes. The best part for the Sharpshot is probably the Stealth Screen as the only attached water part. You might find yourself dropping double or triple Water maneuver on it to keep it out of the limelight.

[Karinya]

What's the significance of it being the only water part? Does that increase its effectiveness compared to having the maximum possible amount of water parts?

Anyway, attachment setup obviously has to depend on the frame you're using and possibly on the situation (solo, pt, etc), so I don't think you can really have an "all-around" one. Many attachments are useless if the frame doesn't use magic, but very important or even essential if it does; a few are the same for ranged attacks, or for tanking.

[Hantz]

Originally Posted by Karinya

What's the significance of it being the only water part? Does that increase its effectiveness compared to having the maximum possible amount of water parts?

I would assume so that when you used Water Manuver you would be sure that it would use only that move.

[Sabaron]

When you activate a maneuver, the "overload" chance depends upon which parts are activated. Therefore, if you put two Loudspeakers and the Stealth Screen on and throw 3x Water and overload, your Stealth Screen drops and your puppet gets eaten by ravenous goblins. However, if the Stealth Screen is the only Water part, your chances of getting a Water Maneuver overload are much lower.

[Karinya]

Ah, I didn't know that, so there may be drawbacks to maxing out your parts of a given element.

Loudspeakers are ice, though. So just don't go overboard with the mana jammers and you should be able to multiple-Water with stealth screen.

I guess this means you shouldn't put accelerators on a Sharpshot, because if you don't you can multiple-Wind without overloading and get more racc from Scope?

Speaking of sharpshot, does anyone know if the atk parts (tension spring/2 and attuner) affect r.atk as well as melee? Do the acc thunder parts affect r.acc (in addition to Scope)? Does Turbo Charger allow a sharpshot to shoot faster? Does Dynamo affect ranged crit? Or are all of those attachments for melee only? (I already know that Volt Gun won't proc on ranged attacks... too bad.) And if so, what do you put on a sharpshot besides scope and stealth screen?

[Malacite]

I'm curious about a few attachments.

The ones that improve stats against higher level enemies, does this just mean NMs, high lv mobs, or anything that checks tough or higher? And how effective are they?

Also, I heard that if you use the TP part, your automaton will never open an SC for you, only close it.

Lastly, how effective is the Heat Sink attachment? Do you *have* to use water maneuver to get any effect out of it, or can I pile on Fire Maneuvers and hope for the best?

Thanks in advance.

[Sabaron]

I've never used the Heat Sink. Calcobrena is set up like this at the moment:

ValorEdge

Fire: Inhibitor, Tension Spring, Tension Spring II
Earth: Armor Plate, Armor Plate II, Shock Absorber, Analyzer
Thunder: Stabilizer, Stabilizer II
Water: Stealth Screen
Light: Auto-repair Kit, Auto-repair Kit II

I try to keep 2x Fire and 1x Thunder or 1xFire and 2xThunder up depending on how well my puppet is hitting. During pulls I let the puppet "cool off" and don't throw any maneuvers unless I need it to regenerate (Light or Light x2).

Overloads usually occur under certain conditions: 1) You try to maintain a very strong set of attachments (Light x2 with double repair-kits comes to mind) for a prolonged period of time, 2) You attempt a 3x Maneuver. 3x Maneuvers are your best shot at overloading.

I am not sure if this is actually the case, but I think having a lot of "power" on a particular element (such as my fire setup) causes overload more frequently--I notice this mostly on Light Maneuvers with the double repair-kit (this setup overloads frequently). I don't think I've ever gotten an Earth overload (I think the Armor Plates don't really "use a lot of power" if that makes sense, but I have no empirical data for this feeling. I'm pretty sure I've never spammed earth maneuvers since the only time I ever use it is to activate stoneskin or if the puppet takes hate in which case I put up 2x Earth and a Light which doesn't seem to cause overload. Since I'm only PUP16, I'm not exactly sure of this. The heat sink I believe will allow you to maintain 2x Fire in rotation such as Fire, Water, Fire, Fire, Water, Fire, Fire, etc. If you try Earth, Fire, Fire, Earth, Fire, Fire, etc. spam, the puppet will overload in a short time.

If you're using a heatsink for a 2x Fire, then you're down a maneuver, because (unless you have some other Water attachment on) you've just wasted 1 to maintain 2 when you could just do a more conservative pattern like say Fire, Thunder, Fire, Fire, Thunder, Fire, Thunder, Fire, Fire, Thunder, Fire, Thunder, etc. When I throw a manuever set, I don't toss a new one until the last one actually falls off--I think the speed you toss the maneuvers also affects the Overload.

Exploring the World of Overload

I'm disappointed. There doesn't seem to be any data on attachment-related overload rates. Everyone always does overload testing with no attachments which seems to be more of a control group. In fact, in the above thread (the only primarily Overload-related thread I could find on Alla without paying them for a search feature) he doesn't even mention it, but yet in his controls he is always careful to not have any attachments. I'm assuming he's just working on initial control group stuff, but I was hoping that being so far into ToAU that we'd have some data on the parts themselves (at least the interesting ones like ARK). /sigh. Oh well.

[silentsteel]

There was something really weird that happened to me yesterday. I was playing around with my pup a little bit & I attached a Mana Tank for the heck of it (he was tank frame) and he got vit +6... I accidentally detached the mana tank & it went away, but when I reattached it, it didnt come back <.> Heard anything like this?

[Tule]

Silentsteel that is a glitch that happens occasionally. Heat sink doesn't require a maneuver but maneuvers will make it more effective. The ENM attachments that work on higher level monsters only work on mobs that con T or higher.

[Malacite]

Okay that's what I wanted to know, because I heard from a friend that he tried it at the lower levels against T and higher and it did nothing...

while another friend of mine was chaining IT by lv 6 before even the Tier II attachments were out.... Basically, I was wondering if those higher lv enemy attachments would allow for a low lv PUP to chain T and higher with ease as my friend did before these adjustments came out. I should also note that this was also with the original elemental values of each frame too.

[Tule]

It most likely can, if your friend was chaining ITs at lvl 6 before all the buffs then with the new attachments should be able to chain even higher. The automaton has been buffed up quite a bit since it came out.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

Is there a list of the parts that drop from Assault?

I did The Ashu Talif #2 assault quest the other day and we got a Turbo Charger, so I went ahead and installed that. It was a 300k part according to AH.

[Silent Howler]

There seems to be a lot of unanswered questions regarding automatons and attachments...

And what Karinya says is true, there isn't any all-round perfect attachment setup for every situation. Even if you divide it into the four different automaton types, there will be situations where you may want to use a combination of two rather than a set.

Speaking of which, I noticed a little behavior quirk when using Sharpshot/Harlequin combination. (My reason behind this was that I wanted to work on its magic skill, but the Sharpshot head seemed to provide more favorable capacity for the attachments I owned at the time.) However, I noticed that when I used the Deploy command the automaton would not always run up to engage the mob in melee combat, even though it was not equipped with a ranged weapon or could cast magic.

[ioshua]

I just hit 40 and I'll have to agree with everyone above. Pick up every attachment you can reasonably afford. You will eventually find a use for all of them. I've been duoing with a summoner and now a whm (she was 40 and switched back) and even with the same frame I'm using somewhat different attachments. I couldn't even make a suggested list as I usually change my builds a few times a session.

The same applies to maneuver usage. Since we're duoing and I'm the tank we stick to dc-t so the need for jacking up thunder or wind for acc isn't that big of a deal. I usually cycle an earth, pull, light, wind, fire, water and then cycle wind-fire-water until the fire gets eaten by a weaponskill and then change to fill in whatever is needed. Since I don't double up very often (some mobs I will, it just depends on the situation) I rarely overload. Comparing it to when I was using a storm/storm setup and funneling ice into an ice heavy build I'd pop on a regular basis. Maybe I'm just more cautious now but things just go more smoothly the longer I play.

The best thing to do with a pup is really to keep your options wide and your mind open.