Minotaur is both Overpowered and Weak at the same time.

[maestro]

So, I never really used the Minotaur much, because I always found it cumbersome and awkward to actually use, both as travel and in combat, but since this expedition features it so prominently and since one of its milestones requires you to use it, I figured "meh I'll try it more"...

First off, holy crap I never realized just how hilariously OP the cannon is, esp. with S-rank upgrades, sp. if you put at least the base tech in a SC slot. It just melts sentinels like nobody's business, and now anytime I wanna make lots of nanites, well there you go.

Aggressive Sentinel Planet, grab a gravitino ball to instantly go to Wanted 3 and then blow up a walker. Takes less than 5 minutes, and is hilariously easy to do, and you get all kinds of salvaged glass, and 5-8k nanites after a few times of doing that. Hop in ship, hop out, reload, repeat.

But, I also found the Minotaur to be hilariously bad at doing the very thing that this Expedition is showcasing it for, and that is actually fighting the vile brood.

It moves so slow unless you're jumping, that the biological horrors will have your shields down in <5 seconds because they all swarm it and jump at it and if you're not constantly jumping around to avoid them, you're going to die fast. I'd walk up towards an area where they spawn, and within 5 seconds I go from full shield down to 30% left, and three seconds later it's "CRITICAL DAMAGE TAKEN!" and I have to hurry and jet out of there.

Also, why is the cannon mounted on its head when it has two arms? This makes it really hard to hit anything close to you but yet at the same time, you move so slow and trying to keep enemies at range is rather hard to do.

But hey at least the cannon is hilariously awesome at farming ferrite dust... like I killed 3 walkers using the above method and I had like 3,000 ferrite dust in my minotaur's inventory after the battle lol.

[Naii Starwing]

I always just use it with the AI module. Except it keeps crossing my line of fire and seems to insist on standing in front of me...

[MaximumEffort]

The AI module is completely OP against vile brood and monstrosities. Just blow up an egg and let the minotaur do the work.

[maestro]

I hate using the AI mode, because last time I did that, at least against Sentinels, it blew its engine like 10-20 seconds and I had to fix the stupid thing after the battle.

EDIT: Or was it the AI tech that got damaged? One of the techs got damaged, I remember that much.

It doesn't seem to take technology damage while you pilot it (damage seems to go straight to your exosuit strangely enough).

[Chirico Cuvie]

I think the main weaknes is its sluggish walk/turning manouverability vs the insane fly boost that makes no sense.

[Del-Dredd]

The Horrors are dead easy, do not get close, just hit from range, they all spawn in same place so wait for a bunch and just wipe them out in one salvo. You may have to pot the odd one who tries to flank but they still all seem to spawn at one spot so just use that as main point of aim. That milestone was the only one I used it for, everything else done on foot with fully upgraded Neutron Cannon and Scatter Blaster (the Mother goes down quick with that)

[Zerschmetterling]

At least it can turn on the spot now, instead of having to walk that big ass circle just to change directions.

[lordoftheapes79]

You seem to be forgetting we're getting a new set of parts for it. In particular, the flame thrower is going to be significantly better than the cannon at short range.

[Daedrius]

Yeah, for me the mech is worthless for fighting, my health disintegrates rapidly when I try to fight in it which makes zero sense considering it's a walking tank. I have a much easier time on foot. I can fight waves of sentinels on foot and recharge once or twice but the mech get destroyed really quick.

[maestro]

Originally posted by lordoftheapes79:

You seem to be forgetting we're getting a new set of parts for it. In particular, the flame thrower is going to be significantly better than the cannon at short range.

Kinda weird they don't give you these new toys in the one place where you'd want it the most lol

[Ridcully]

Originally posted by Daedrius:

Yeah, for me the mech is worthless for fighting, my health disintegrates rapidly when I try to fight in it which makes zero sense considering it's a walking tank. I have a much easier time on foot. I can fight waves of sentinels on foot and recharge once or twice but the mech get destroyed really quick.

Believe me, it is much, much worse in VR.
Your FOV is ridiculously small, and the turn rate is so low that you're essentially naked to anything that is not directly in front of you. And the controls, I find them to be horrible.

To get the milestone I had to get out of VR and play in pancake mode. It was the only way to not die within 5 seconds of spawning a vile brood.

[yaerav]

I love the minotaur and I also hate it. For the exact reasons OP listed. The damage it can do is very impressive, and with AI active it is a great extra body to have on the field. Until the cannon gets damaged (it's always the cannon) and you wonder why it is shooting at that that walker with a mining laser. And having a minotaur follow you like a puppy is downright annoying, I hate puppies.

I do love using it because of its inherent environmental hazard protection and the ability to pick up stuff without having to leave it, though.

[Shadow Strider]

Minotaur is definitely better as an AI companion, it's too clunky in its movement for piloting it to be much of an option.
And I definitely prefer having to repair its AI module during a fight over taking exosuit dmg while piloting the thing...

My preferred method for dealing with horrors in the expo:
Use the Neutron Canon to blast the spawn point continuously (this is usually the save point outside the building when you approach it the first time), you'll kill them faster than they can climb out of the dirt, and any that manage to escape from my hellfire get cleaned up by the minotaur AI and sent back to the spawn point... can get 50-70 kills a wave like this (total horror kills is visible in mercenary guilds milestone data)

[[SB] Snuffa]

The rover used to be my go-to exocraft for a long time but now I prefer the minotaur. With the AI it can get annoying and tends to destroy items I was hoping to harvest as I usually run around on foot with it following me like a big playful puppy. Once upgraded with the scanner and all the drills, it is handy to quickly mine items and lets you walk around in storms so is good for grabbing storm crystals without having to constantly refill environment shields. I found against the bugs in the expedition it rarely took damage but against sentinels, at one stage every module was damaged on the Minotaur and needed to be repaired.

[maestro]

Originally posted by Ridcully:

Believe me, it is much, much worse in VR.
Your FOV is ridiculously small, and the turn rate is so low that you're essentially naked to anything that is not directly in front of you. And the controls, I find them to be horrible.

To get the milestone I had to get out of VR and play in pancake mode. It was the only way to not die within 5 seconds of spawning a vile brood.

I'm a player who plays non-VR on a PC, but I prefer first person perspective/cockpit view.

And yeah, I tried like 5 seconds of Minotaur in FPP and I was like "nope". The controls are hilariously bad even on PC non-VR.

But then most of the exocraft are like this, ESPECIALLY the Nautilon.

Here's a question for you: In VR mode, does the Nautilon insist on diving every 2 seconds if you're not currently giving it control inputs? Because that's what it does in non-VR cockpit mode. If you're moving the mouse it will go straight. Let go of the mouse and 2 seconds later it wants to pitch down about 40-50 degrees and it will not stop doing that. Doesn't matter if you're on the surface or underwater or even skimming the seabed, it pitches down sharply if you stop moving the mouse. So the whole time you're piloting it, you have to wiggle the mouse back and forth to keep it from diving down at the seabed.

Like literally, how they can they get Starship movement so right, and fail so hard at the Nautilon? They are both moving in a 3D plane and disregard gravity. Why didn't they just copy the starship controls to the Nautilon (minus the speed and boost mechanics maybe)?

EDIT: I think the people at HG should go play Mechwarrior 4 if they want to know how to do the Minotaur controls right. In that game, WASD controlled the legs, and the mouse controlled the torso and your view was fixed (you didn't turn your head side to side in the cockpit). It worked absolutely perfectly (it also helped that one of the gauges helped you understand the relation between the torso and the legs IIRC). If the Minotaur worked like that, I would pilot it in FPP all the time.