Funny Stortebeker guide for Lancer

You can count this as kinda a stort guide I might be assed to make a better version of this in a google doc.
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Systems:
NOTE: There are way too many systems to list all the good ones, so I'm going to go over the most notable ones.

>Roland Chamber
Mandatory, free damage + save or prone. Note that roland does not have a limit, only that it's the first hit after each reload.

>Uncle Comp/con
can be decent for crit fishing, requires some investment to counteract the difficulty

>Synthetic Muscle Netting
Great for builds that are going to be ramming a lot, like with duelist. Also get chain axe at the same level, which is nice.

>Siege Ram
Great on ramming builds like with duelist. Free damage.

>Supermassive mod
Free overkill on a weapon is nice to bring the damage up. Mostly used on the cannibal because same license.

>Ferrous Lash, Accelerate
All around extremely useful.

>Nanocomposite Adaptation
Good mod, smart and seeking always good.
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Core Bonuses:

>Auto-Stab
Great for crit-fishing, very great for the cannibal in offsetting innaccuracy.

>OP-Cal
More damage is always good, albeit situational. I would generall advise against OP-cal unless you have core bonuses to spare. There is such a thing as too MUCH damage after all, as NPCs can only have so much HP.

>Integrated Weapon
Basically mandatory for gunslinger builds. Free damage, free gunslinger die procs.

>Mount retrofitting
Situational, up to personal preference. Personally I think the stort has good enough mounts.

>Gyges Frame
Always good. +1 threat on melee is very good. Hull check accuracy is icing on the cake.

>Reinforced Frame
+5 HP is just great in general

>Titanomachy Mesh
best with duelist builds, more rams and knockback are always good

>Heatfall Coolant System
Less value on the stort. You're not gonna be OC looping often, but if you are, you take this.

>Integrated Ammo feeds
Great if using lots of limited weapons, such as engineer weapon, daisy cutter.

>Superior by Design
Great to have in general if you're running high-heat builds. Useless otherwise.
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Talents:

>Combined Arms 1-3
Must-have, synergizes so well with stort, especially storm of violence, gives a ton of value out of 1-2 with soft cover while engaged and most importantly ignoring engagement penalty. Also reminder that rams and grapples count as melee hits for storm of violence.

>Duelist 1-3
Very good if running main mount melees. More accuracy is always good, parry and deflect are great (trip is situational). Unstoppable for free grapple/ram is very good, usually you're ramming prone for more accuracy. Synergizes well with pankrati.

>Juggernaut 1-3
Good if you're taking Duelist. Otherwise don't bother.

>Executioner 1-3
Amazing if running heavy melee. Can potentially get upwards of 3 attacks out of a single heavy skirmish for potential crit fishing. Great shenanigans with reliable melees (nanocarbon, DD288 if you're insane). Bonus aoe damage on crit is nice.

>Gunslinger 1-3
THE premier talent if you are using aux weapons as your main damage. 4 hand cannons + integrated mount hand cannon and you are proccing I kill with my heart almost every turn. Line up roland chamber with your I kill with my heart proc for silly amounts of AP damage. Spend a truesilver charge to really make sure they can't resist it.

>Pankrati 1-2
Insanely good for using melee in general. Arguably a must-have unless you're doing some form of artillery build. 1 is free accuracy in many situations, and 2 is great movement that feeds into 1 and synergizes with CA

>Engineer 1-3
Integrated accurate burst 1 melee for insane crit fishing that frees up a mount for other shenanigans. Aoe accurate ranged weapon also great for cat hammer/loading melee builds. Only downside is swingy limited count.

>Hunter 1-3
Good for running storm of violence aux builds with knives and hand cannons/missile racks. Situational though, kinda meme. Aux melees are kinda wasted otherwise as they cant proc your dynamic reload.

>Nuke Cav 1-3
Good if running heat generating weapons

>Skirmisher 1-2
Situationally good. Down to personal preference. Soft cover at start of turn is alright, lockbreaker is very good. Generally outclassed by CA at what you want it to do.

>Vanguard 1-3
Very good if using CQB weapons like hand cannons or cannibal. Extra accuracy is ALWAYS good on your crit fish frame. Ignoring cover in range 3 is great, and vanguard 3 is always insanely good. More about vanguard 3 below when I talk about the cannibal.

>Spaceborn 1-3
Don't discount spaceborn! Sea legs is ALWAYS good, and Scrapper is sitatuationally VERY good.

>Field Analyst and Leader
Bundling these two together because they give similar-ish things. Always good. If you have spare talent points, 1 point at least into field analyst (no more than 1 for stort) and however many in Leader you want to provide extra value to your team for free.

>House guard 1
Good if using combined arms because it gives soft cover to allies within 2 spaces of you as long as you're engaged. But it's another one of those "only put points in this if you have points to spare"

>Prospector 1-3
Funny alternative to pankrati tbh. Great flavor, potential prone, extra movement and support capabilities. Synergizes well with pankrati 1 though. If you take this, you don't really need pankrati 2.

>Tactician 1
Extra accuracy is nice, if you have another melee striker in your squad, investing one point into this for accuracy can be very good.
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Stort builds tend to fall into one of two categories, based on what I like to call your "main damage weapons" that is, your biggest damage and/or utility weapons, and then your crit-fishing weapons.

>>Main/aux mount damage

>ranged weapons
These use ranged weapons, typically alongside a heavy melee in the heavy mount. Nanocarbon or kinetic hammer are good options. Nanobot whip also potentially very funny due to range + pull on crit.

-missile racks/hand cannons
simple as, you go gunslinger and stack all those auxes for big I kill with my heart procs. Vanguard 1 at least is very nice to take on hand cannons for more accuracy

-RPG/displacer/warp rifle
very niche use cases due to rpg being ordnance and displacer being 10 whole self-heat. 3 levels into an HA frame for displacer at least will get you superior by design. Warp rifle is also less of a damage weapon but potentially very funny

>melee weapons
generally for these you either want good crit fishing weapons, like heavies with an aoe such as the krakatoa (very good crit fisher) or the daisy cutter (limited, but very good). Considering the only loading main mount weapons currently are cat hammers, which are kinda low damage, you might end up with a damaging ranged weapon too anyway.

-catalytic hammers
great weapons all around. Take duelist 3 and maybe gyges + titanomachy on these babies and you're doing a truckload of controller stuff on top of striker things. Fishing for those stuns + rams and grapples can make for some insane controller value.
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>>Heavy Mount Damage

>ranged weapons
Most common. Lots of heavy loading ranged weapons. So generally you want a good critfishing main melee. You have a few good options here.

-Variable sword is the only innate accurate main melee in the game, threat 2, low base damage but gets +1d6 on crits. Requires 3 LLs into mourning cloak which does not give you much else of value in the license aside from say singularity motivator.

-Chain Axe is very good. Not innate accurate, but it also wants to crit often to apply shred. Shred is, of course, very good. Blackbeard license also gives Synthetic muscle netting, which is great for rams, and you're gonna be ramming a lot with duelist 3 and/or titanomachy for that extra accuracy anyway.

-War Pike/Impact lance are also good, mostly for range. War pike moreso. Both vlad and nelson give good things from their licenses as well.

-Tiger-Hunter Combat Sheathe is one of my favorites, very underrated as a crit fishing weapon. Two enemies in range and that's two free attacks per skirmish. More attacks = more chances to crit. You also get a funny rock throwing system at the same time, very neat!

Into the ranged weapons themselves:

-Howitzer/AMR: Kinda meh honestly, both ordnance which is restrictive, but at least they have good range. No flat damage runs the risk of rolling snake eyes on damage though. Even with roland chamber. I've seen it work, but I'd avoid these.

-CPR: Don't discount the CPR on the stort, while you can't dynamic reload skirmish with it, you can still fire it every other turn, while keeping damage up. the CPR shotgun stort is a force to be reckoned with, especially since the CPR lacks ordnance making it very versatile. Plus naturally accurate so potentially a good crit-fishing weapon for cat hammers (crit with cpr > overcharge skirmish with cat hammers)
You can also perform a very risky overcharge > skirmish with melee, praying for crit > if crit, barrage with reloaded CPR for potential very huge 2 turn alpha strike damage.

-Bolt Thrower: Tried and true, big damage, but no flat so risk of snake eyes. Reliable though which is nice. With siege specialist 3 you get some nice bonus on a crit.

-Cannibal: This now brings us to one of my favorite weapons for stort. The cannibal is insanely good for a multitude of reasons. Big damage and reliability. You may be asking though, which is better: firing both barrels, or firing each barrel once? Well let's take a look at some math:

Assuming you're hitting every time, assuming you're using roland chamber

variant 1: assuming you're critting with your melee weapon every time you attack with it, not counting the damage from the melee itself

single barrel: 15 average on first shot, 11 average on second shot, 5 from reload, 31 average damage every two rounds

both barrels: 18 average on shot, 5 from reload, 23 total. 46 every 2 rounds.

variant 2: assuming you're not critting with melee or using truesilver to force a crit

single barrel, same as above, 31 average damage every 2-3 rounds (this is two if your second shot is from a reaction, like overwatch, or if you're overcharging, 3 is if neither)

double barrel, same as above, 23 average damage every 2 rounds, 46 every 3 rounds.

So, conclusion, on average if you think you're gonna be overwatching consistently, from some form of talent combination etc, it is more consistent to fire twice, otherwise it's better to fire once. This is, of course, assuming you are always hitting. Both barrels is at +2 total difficulty, which can potentially be offset with talents, but single barrel might still at least crit more often for potentially more damage this is also not taking into account using overkill on the gun via supermassive mod (which you get from the caliban license on the way to stort anyway.

If, you want to overwatch consistently, there are a few talent options:

Vanguard 3 - Self-explanatory. Your standard overwatch just becomes better
Bonded 3 - Cover Me! Is very good for this. But I would only REALLY take bonded if you have at least one person also with minimum Bonded 1.
Exemplar 2 - Very good in general, Exemplar as a whole is great to have, and extra options of proccing overwatch through punishment is very good.
Heavy Gunner - It's okay. Half damage though, so less value. But the value from heavy gunner inducing impaired, and potentially immobilized from hitting is very good.
Tactician 3 - Flank is very good, and Tactician 1 is great if you have another melee ally on your team. Tactician 2 will see less use.

>Melee Weapons
The only heavy loading melee is the plasma maul, which is an exotic weapon. 3d6 overkill is nothing to sneeze at, only consuming loading if you miss. That's minimum 6 damage, 8 with roland chamber. Downside is threat 1.
You're going to want some decent critfishing main ranged weapons if you DO manage to convince (read: beg or bully) your GM to give you one.

Outside of the engineer weapon:

Burst Rifle, Veil Rifle, Vulture DMR, and the Smartgun are all accurate main weapons great for critfishing. Veil probably being the best due to being aoe line 10, meaning more attacks = more opportunity to crit. Minus the burst launcher, all of these are rifles which can benefit from crack shot for more accuracy, albeit at the cost of immobilizing as a protocol, which can be restricting. Burst launcher impairs on crit though, and can synergize well with stormbringer for proning or other controller shenanigans.
Other aoe weapons can be very good as well. Mag cannon (also gets ferrous lash at the same level, which is a great system) rail rifle all solid line weapons. Brief mention to displacer, RPG, and mortar but those come with greater downsides.
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>>Double loading builds
You can of course, say fuck it we ball and go all loading weapons. Potentially risky, but even if you don't crit, with 3 mounts you can always at least have something to skirmish with.
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That's it. Hope this post has helped some people looking to get into the stort!