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Glad that you're getting some insight on my suggestion, dev!
The idea of the top 2D perspective of a mecha reminded me of the same mech genre but quite different on it's own style, i'm not not really promoting any game except there's a game called "Mech Engineer". You might can take some reference from it since there's an artillery mechanics and more, it's also an indie game that's created by only one person too (!). There's too much mechanics there or this comment can be a long ride from top to bottom trying to explain them, but my only hope is quite straight; That this game can improve so much more, and there's lot of room there already

In the meantime i've been reading through your progress report and honestly quite surprised that this game have existed for a while, i'm quite upset with myself that i can't try the game way more earlier. And looking at your own struggle with the pathfinding is quite amusing (Even though i'm not a developer, yet), however you might need to check the latest progress report (pathfinding) since some picture from A* pathfinding onward is well...simply gone (Firefox and opera is alright, but not on chrome, i think either the site or the hosting hated the pic or gif?). But aside from that, the APS looked quite solid. The progress log you've mentioned also have a quite promising overall

However there's something quite strange with the enemy that moves very fast at a desert terrain, i can't quite put it. a Hover-like tank or is it BTR equivalent of enemy. Maybe a hybrid from both? for something as agile as that and tanked around 100 rounds of a vulcan with depleted uranium round and still not guarantee a kill is quite...something. With the same weapon, i can kill a tank with around 30 rounds of vulcan's depleted uranium. It might be quite a task to balance things not to be fragile while at the same time, not too spongy that absorb numerous of bullets (or shells). However for now i'll take these enemies as challenge on how not to deplete my ammo mid-fight

Keep it up dev, you don't have to promise everything. But your delivery on what we could have in the future assured us that it could be better in the future. Cheers!

A game that's this light yet feel rewarding is quite rare of itself, even more in 2025 where there's so much AAA games that's bland. I'd say that the game is quite optimized (i'm not sure how much optimized it is with my own rig),honestly i'm surprised that there's a lot of gun that i can choose from. That Glorious A-10's GAU 8A 30mm knockoff is shredding everything like butter with it's blazing fast fire rate (Although you'll find it'll drain ammo faster than anything else), the enemy posed no threat as long you're moving in the right dimension.

The enemy LOSAT carrier does spook me a few times with it's amount of damage it can deal, imagine you're focusing on a halo when suddenly it ambushed you. However from the gameplay wise, you're not really punished standing still in the game for a couple seconds. Which makes the stacked munition launcher (Practically the Metal Storm no?) is hilariously easy to clear the game, was thinking about how a certain mechanic like enemy artillery can hit you (With at least 3 layers of armor, but then, up to the dev) so you're forced to constantly move on a certain mission

With how the powerplant and armor kit absent and the dev are considering to remove this mechanic, i do have suggestion on filling the role. Albeit not very specific

Powerplant
- Overdrive! i am pretty sure you'll spam that sprint button the moment you see you're surrounded or even saw some far-off enemy, but have you ever thought that you wanted your cruiser to be "I wanted to tradeoff Overdrive for faster cruise speed so i can dodge the enemy" or, if a certain mission reward you with better coolant so you can overdrive far longer than what you're used to?

-Cruise speed, it's your main speed whenever you didn't overdrive it. I really think that it should be a focus on certain mission especially in the solid open field so you can avoid halo and LOSAT launcher that's definitely will see an increase of it's usage (Or is it?)

- Acceleration, of course the acceleration helped the mecha to get into your cruise and overdrive speed. but do think about it, what if there's an option to actually see a use of low cruise speed and high acceleration like swamp?

- With how weight worked, i do expect that the heavier you are on a certain terrain. You'll get either a buff or a nerf, let's take a look at the cruiser's legs. You see, something weird happened if you put a stick on a sand with that much weight on a cruiser. You get stuck easily and mud can slow you down, and or. heavier powerplant can take down a building more easily because of how much mass you slam on a building. 

But how about Armor Kit? it seems like it can be used on the cruiser in a different way, if it shrug smaller arm and still receiving no damage that would be boring. 

- Angled armor
Basically used to focus on deflection, however i see no stats on enemies that suggest if it have certain penetration rather than certain damage dealt, could this mean that the bullet itself have fixed stats in the future? we'll see it in the future

- Armor w/ CRAM
CRAM is practically used when every defense (In this case, your 20mm Minigun) failed to intercept a missile if you're surrounded or this could be your only defense to missile especially LOSAT, plenty of ammo and decent fire rate but lower than average accuracy seems to be viable

- Armor w/ APS
Lovely APS have been used for atleast a few decades to hard kill anything big and fast (Such as missiles), they can react fast but it should only cover a fair bit of angle and limited ammo because you can only carry so much APS even with the Cruiser. LOSAT doesn't have to be nerfed though, it's practically APFSDS disguised as missile. Still perfectly balanced so you can be surprised sometimes, although i see no reason (yet) to actually consider light or heavy armor since it will require another tweak

But even as i'm writing this, all of this is merely a suggestion and i could be wrong on a certain part as i'm not really an expert to this kind of technical jargon

lastly, the art feels quite neat i can stare it all day and still not bored of it. I admit that i'm not really good with spotting art but i can see how much hours did you put into the game you really loved with, thanks for getting us some good stuff for our time to play. Now if you'll excuse me from this holy long text that feels like even my own eyes sort of suffered a bit, i'll see this page on a bit