Front Mission

- Your main character should either choose missiles or machine guns as his weapon focus. They offer the quickest ways of killing things, and as a result keep him alive.

- Rifles are mostly useless unless you get Switch and Aim.

- Guide is seriously broken beyond belief, so if you want a challenge don't abuse it.

- Check carefully to see if your Arm melee damage is larger than your Melee weapon damage. It sometimes is.

- Movement is better than Leg HP every time. Use high-HP bodies but high-Move legs.

- Integrated weapons are useless most of the time.

- There is only so much XP available in the game. Don't try to level up every character. Later in the game you will get some characters added to your party that you should just leave completely alone.

- Characters only get XP for inflicting damage. So by the same token, don't use a handful of your best characters to kill everything. There's a point of diminishing returns where giving an already-mighty character more XP is less useful than giving a weaker character that crucial next level that grants them a new skill.

- When you get Aim, go for the arms. An armless mech is helpless no matter how much leg and body HP it has.

- Machine guns will attack multiple body parts. This makes them good for mopping up Wanzers that have taken non-crippling damage to crucial parts.

- The maximum level for skills, is, incidentally, MAX, after level 3. Seriously. Also, skill progression is tied entirely to luck - it has a set chance to increase every time it's activated. I think the chance to increase a skill from 3 to MAX is something like 1/500 or something absurd. Lloyd seems to have a slightly higher chance of leveling his skills (he had Duel MAX, Switch 3, Guide 3, Speed MAX, and First 3 when I finished the game) but he's in every battle so I guess that explains it

- Also, if you're not getting very much exp from Arena duels, fight tougher opponents... you should be able to pick on certain enemies with very weak wanzers and monstrously high skills. I forget exactly which ones you should pick on, but somewhere out there is a person with, for example, shitty Zora-3A parts but a whopping 255 short skill. Outgun him (he'll likely blast off a part or two first) and bam, easy EXP. At least, that's how I remember grinding the Arena. Fight enemies where the odds are against you winning (1:1 at the minimum) and reset if you lose. It's also a good way to earn money for parts, in addition to being a good source of EXP.

- Also, go out of your way to ensure you get a certain rifle that will almost assuredly break the rest of the game in half for you. It makes the Short skill even more broken than it already is.