Front Mission 3

• Load up your Wanzers with 1 slot battle skills so they can combo endlessly. I use ROF1up since Ryogo can learn it with his default Wanzer. Then watch as he combos 2 or 3 hit about 60-70% of the time.

• Also if you get the P beam gun, put it on someone with the AP 30% battle skill with a computer with a high activation rate and watch as it activates every turn allowing you to fire it every turn provided you don't move too much.

• Upgrade whenever you can. This will be the key thing that separates you from the enemy. They may outnumber you, but you will get access to the upgrades levels before the computer will.

• Go after units with grenade launchers first, you don't want them messing up your squad. Thankfully there are relatively few in the whole game.

• Choosing whether you go with Ryogo or don't go with Ryogo at the beginning of the game will completely change the storyline (it's where the scenarios split off).

• Don't mess with Hover legs. For the most part, they're worthless.

• Equip a shield on everyone. Its a godsend against highly damaging attacks like melee and missiles.

• Every character has a specialty weapon type that they do more damage with: melee, burst (machineguns, flamethrowers, shotguns), rifle/laser, and launchers (grenade launcher, missile launcher).
  • Melee specialists are
    Kazuki, Marcus, and Pham
  • Burst specialists are
    Ryogo, Lan, Li, and Yun
  • Rifle/laser specialists are
    Dennis, Jose, Liu, and Miho
  • Launcher specialists are
    Alisa, Emma, Linny, and Mayer

• Arm Smash is probably one of the most valuable skills in the whole game. When it activates, it will ALWAYS destroy the left arm of the enemy and as long as the enemy only has one weapon, it will be in their left arm, leaving your enemy without a valid offense other than a crappy hardblow.

• Its not a hard game, but it does have its tough areas. Chaining battle skills will probably be your most valuable asset.

• Try and get a hold of Tiadong arms (Tiadong anything is pretty sweet early on). Slap them together with spare parts (or on a mech of your choice) and train with them until everyone has learned Eject Punch. Now you can eject enemy pilots with one character and have another character move and eject into the newly empty mech. This works because the enemy won't try to steal your empty mechs until much later in the game. Now you can kill the pilot with their own wanzers and keep or sell the parts after battle. This skill works even if you don't have anything equipped in the arm (Hardblow), so learn/equip it more than once or just make sure activation is high (certain backpacks become available that help with this). The sky's the limit! No really, the only thing you can't get into are helicopters.

• Lots of good advice has been given, but I'd like to add that you shouldn't be afraid to dump AP into accuracy and evasion upgrades. Let your missile unit be a slug and only bother with accuracy. The Salvo skill is also hilariously fun, if only to watch it pick some poor bastard apart. Your gunners will end up gaining a lot of experience due to all the arms and legs they'll be destroying.

• I didn't find the Anti-P/F/I upgrades very useful without knowing what I was going up against beforehand. Mix parts too! You may want to choose high durability on shields over damage reduction. Equip the shield on a beefy arm with full HP upgrades. Put missiles and rifles on arms with high accuracy bonuses and pump AP into the accuracy upgrades you buy for it. Doing this with other weapon types is a personal choice. High accuracy arms tend to have little else going for them and your front line is obviously going to take more fire.

• Finally, remember that you still have a chance to activate skills from wanzer parts as well as any that are set in the CPU. Others have already mentioned the glorious carnage of a long skill chain.