First and foremost: The basics.

When you click the Armors button in your profile's main menu, you'll be taken to the hangar bays where you'll build your first MASS unit. This guide will cover what can be done in the Assembly tab of the Hangar. Painting is pretty simple and I'll go over it briefly, along with Decals. The Presets tab is for when you're finished with a section (or the whole unit) and want to be able to share it or make copies of it into one of your other hangar bays - that's what Export does. It saves into a directory located in your Documents folder. Importing is obviously the reverse of exporting. Use it to copy a previous build into a new hangar bay (or use it to bring in a unit you downloaded).

The game will offer a small selection of prefabricated armors, and one of those sets (Vanguard) will be equipped by default. The rest of the armor sets must be built by collecting the blueprints and spending some credits once all the required blueprints for a part have been obtained. There's no order in which you have to equip parts - I often start at the upper legs or upper torso. Whether you use a prefab armor on a body section or not, you'll notice eight accessory slots labeled "A" through "H." Underneath that is a list of options, and I'll briefly cover what each of those do.

"Model" will open a selection window showing all the accessory parts available. The parts are sorted into four tabs and the parts in each tab will generally fit the tab's label (Primitives are mostly just shapes, Armors are mostly additional pieces of armor that can be added to the frame, etc.) In this window, you'll choose a part for the accessory slot that's highlighted. Once you've selected a part, it will be placed within the body section you're working on, and will need to be adjusted and put in a place of your choosing. Nearly all of the accessory parts will have to be built at first, and the cost of doing so is only about 500 to 1000 credits per part. Early on, this is somewhat expensive, but once you get into it or don't mind grinding missions for credits, spending those credits gets a little easier.

"Adjust" will open a window with three groups of sliders that affect the highlighted part in various ways. The top group deals with the part's position in space, the middle group handles the part's rotation on its X, Y, and Z axes, and the bottom group is to adjust the size of the part on each axis.


The axes are more easily remembered by color than by their letter designation, and the various adjustments you make to the sliders can be seen in the build window.

"Align" opens a window that allows three functions - Copy, Mirror, and Socket. Copy allows you to apply the sizing, position, and rotation of one accessory part to another accessory part. Mirror will allow you to place a part in a position, rotation, and size that's symmetrical to another accessory part along the three axes - very useful when you're trying to keep things neat and don't want to be adjusting sliders for the next three business days. Socket allows you to attach (or piggyback, as I call it) to another accessory part. This will automatically make the part's default spatial orientation the same as the part that it gets socketed to - the rotation and position sliders will reset, but sliders that affect size will remain the same as before it was socketed. If you decide to change your mind about socketing to an accessory part, you can click the arrows near the top to set it back to the base part as long as there is a base part (prefab armor) equipped in that section. Due to the behavior of socketing, you're able to position a part further away than was allowed when it was in its default position.

"Copy" is self-explanatory. You can copy an accessory in one slot to another one. You'll have to adjust it to see it in the build window, as the copied part will be perfectly clipped into the original part.

"Clear All" will remove all accessory parts that have been attached to the section you're working on.

================= SOME THINGS TO REMEMBER ==================

- When adding accessories, remember that no matter where you place the part, it will behave as if it's attached to the body section where its accessory slot is located. That means, if you use an arm accessory slot but move the part to the torso, when your unit is moving or posing, the part will move away from or clip into the unit, and that just looks weird.

- (This one is important) When rotating a part, you may notice that after adjusting one of the sliders (the Y, or Green axis by default) to 90 degrees either way, the other two sliders seem to perform the same function. This is called Gimbal Lock. The reason the other two sliders seem to do the same thing when this occurs is because rotating on the Y (Green) axis aligns the X and Z (Red and Blue) axes. The best way to avoid this is to use the X and Z axes first. Only use the Y (Green) axis if you need to, because a part normally just needs partially pitched and spun and rolling it isn't always necessary. Assuming the link below works, you can click it to go to a page with a tool that demonstrates how Gimbal Rotation works.

An Educational Tool to learn how gimbal rotation works...[compsci290-s2016.github.io]

- There are certain body sections on the frame that can be hidden, specifically the ankle armors and the armor skirts that are on the waist of the MASS's frame. If you choose to Hide those parts, accessories can't be equipped there. Also note that if you hide all of the armor skirts on the sides, the "hips" they attach to will disappear entirely. To get them back, just equip an armor to a slot, or click "Unequip" and it will bring them back.

- When working on the limbs and extremeties (arms and legs, hands and feet), or anything that displays a LEFT and RIGHT button with a MIRROR button underneath them at the top of the menu: using the MIRROR button is very convenient, but can also mess up anything you're doing that's not intended to be the same on one side as on the other (decals, accessories, and paint). Make sure you do anything asymmetrical last, or you'll click mirror and, poof - everything's symmetrical/mirrored.

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I'm assuming by now you've seen screenshots of the builds that some of the other players have shared on the Community Hub page here, or the subreddit, or maybe even the two Discord servers. If you haven't, you'll see a couple of mine here in this guide, and I like to think I'm somewhat decent at customization. Oh! There's one right now.


You might be wondering if it's possible to re-create some of the mechs you've seen in other games, anime, or movies. That only depends on you and how you place the parts. I've seen some quite faithful reproductions of various Gundam units from several of the various series. So go into it knowing that the possibilities are almost unlimited. Unfortunately, there aren't any animated accessory parts, and all of those neat wires and tubes you see in the Connectors tab don't bend and flex - they're basically best-suited for getting cool shots in Photo Mode. Despite the limitations, there's still so much you can do, and more good things are on the way (as of the time of this writing, the game status went from Early Access to Full Release about a month ago). Check out the WIP posts the Devs release approximately monthly to see what's still in the works.

All that said, this part of the guide is to show little tricks to make placement and adjustment easier. As I wrote in the last section, the Align menu in the Assembly tab is indispensable for good placement, especially when adding things like toes or claws to the front section of the feet, or trying to make big, impressive wings.

For the purpose of demonstration, I'll be tinkering with this frame equipped with all Assault Mk-III armors. It looks a little... scrawny and basic.



I feel like the upper torso needs a little bulk added, so I chose a part I think fits the edges and angles of the base armor pretty well...


1. I use the Mirror function in Align anytime I'm working in a central body section and want to place a part mirrored at the same angle and position on the other side of the section.


That's a bit better, but I can do more.



Uhhh... maybe I got a bit carried away.

ANYWAY

The Mirror function makes life so much easier. The wings I placed on the head of this unit were done using it.

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2. I use clipping to my advantage, but I always find a way to cover up ugly transitions between parts.


If you look here, under part G, that bunch of parts all coming together right there doesn't look so great...


The entire reason I used this part is to cover that mess and make the unit look more intentionally-built. It may take accessory slots to do it, but the end result is a cleaner-looking MASS.

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3. Bullet Launchers are just as much a part of the MASS as everything else.

There are just over 200 accessory slots available on a frame. That's 8 slots on every section. What normally takes a lot of people a while to figure out is: Bullet Launchers in Weapons Assembly also have 16 slots. (actually, half of them are for the projectiles, and any parts you attach to the projectiles will stay attached to them even when they're flying towards a target). You can have 4 bullet launchers, and the weapon mounting system allows them all to be displayed as equipped simultaneously. This means you can make them look like whatever you want.



I'll use this build as an example.


May not look like it, but under all that awesome hides a very simple-looking Nuke bullet launcher.


Yup. Just a box with a missile warhead poking out of it (Launcher is Base Nuke Pod). But... after attaching and adjusting the scale, position, and rotation of the launchers in the Armors Assembly area (Weapon/Launcher attachment is the very last section, all the way to the right at the top of the screen when you're in the hangar) you can get something that looks like this:



...and if you're feeling particularly inclined, this:


It looks a bit silly on this one though...


Just like any part, launchers can be clipped into one another when attaching them. One thing I like to do is make the base of the wings and copy it to multiple launcher slots before I start placing the wing components. Then, I'll place the components how I like them on the first, then place them differently and further out on the second pair, to get a result like this:



I normally make more than one set of wings for each unit I design because with some clever placement, you can make two sets of wings look like one. In other instances, separating the wing sets also looks good, sometimes better. Here's an example of that:

This is an older build that's gone through two repaints and renamed since it was built, but you can clearly see that I made two pairs of maneuvering packs for it.

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4. All techniques and building methods in the hangar are mostly the same in Weapons Assembly.

I realize that's sort of a no-brainer - why would they make a totally different assembly system for weaponry? When designing your weapons, you should keep a couple of things in mind:

- Weapon build slots...
You'll see an array of 7 hexagons in the Weapons Assembly menu. The center hex is always 0 and is the weapon's grip, trigger, bullet pod, or generator, depending on what kind of weapon you're building. The other hexagons are for the business end(s) of your weapons.

- This game favors melee combat despite the inclusion of guns and launchers.
It doesn't mean shooters and launchers aren't viable options for combat. I've got a couple of builds that don't use melee at all and they perform quite well, if a bit slower than my strictly melee units. Hybrid ranged/melee units normally require a lot of tweaking in the Tuning menu before they feel right. Specialized builds are typically easier to tune, but not quite as versatile in missions.

- There's no using guns in both hands (yet).
At this time, it isn't possible, but there are rumblings that allude to that changing in the future, so design all the guns you want, and be patient. The dev team is working hard to bring us more features and improvements.

- Base Models exist to be hidden.
You probably noticed the Base models in the main weapon parts selection window. They're too simple. Use parts from the Components tab for the best results, as there are several kinds of blades in that tab, as well as a lot of parts that can double as weapon handles.

Painting

At some point, either during or after you finish assembly, you're probably going to want it to stand out and look good doing it. For this, there's the Paint and Decal tabs in the hangar menu. There's a whole rainbow of colors provided in normal, metallic, and glossy varieties. BUT, the selection is still somewhat limited, so cue the custom color tool. All you have to do is, instead of selecting one of the game's provided colors for a paint slot, choose Custom Style 1. It might turn some parts on your unit a light gray color, but that'll change. After assigning Custom Style 1 to a paint slot, click Edit Style under Choose Style. In the Style Edit window, there are three main tabs: Color, Pattern, and Options.
Color is obviously used to find a shade/hue that you want to use on your unit. Pattern allows you to choose one of the game's provided paint patterns and apply it to the Style you're editing. There aren't a lot of patterns, but the ones provided so far are pretty decent. I am still awaiting an answer as to whether the devs will be providing more patterns and decals, but I'm optimistic. I've played enough mech games to know that the ones that allow customization typically have a big selection of paints, patterns, and decals. Fingers crossed in hopes we get more. Options allows you to change a couple of things about the style. You can change the paint's metallic and gloss properties, as well as rotate, scale, and offset any pattern chosen for it. Note that adding GLOW to a style will negate any metallic, gloss, or pattern applied to it.
This is a good example of a pattern used on a custom color with high metallic and gloss properties:


ALWAYS MAKE SURE THE COLOR YOU'RE EDITING CORRESPONDS TO THE STYLE NUMBER YOU SELECTED!

So, you've made a couple of custom colors, and are about to make a third. You start editing it and notice that the wrong section is changing color and replacing the first color you made. The game isn't bugged; you just forgot to click the arrow at the top to change which Custom Style you're editing. As long as you don't click SAVE, you can still just change over to the right Custom Style slot.

In the window, you'll notice a row of gray squares. These are slots to globally save a custom color you've made, meaning if you really liked that orange color you made, right-click one of those gray squares. It will replace the gray with the color in the custom style slot you're working on, and you can build another unit later, bring up the custom styles window and click that square to avoid the work of finding the same exact shade/hue.

Each part will have 2 to 4 paint slots, but the good thing is, when painting, you can click to highlight all the slots you want to show the style you're applying - just make sure you de-select any you don't want to be affected by clicking them again. Slot 1 on the base armor part (if one is used) will always be highlighted by default, so remember to de-select it if you don't want the parts affected by that slot to change.

I decided to include this last because it's pretty helpful sometimes both in painting and in building:
When you mouse over a paint slot, you'll see the corresponding part(s) highlighted in orange in the build window. This is especially useful when you have several parts very close together and you can't remember which slot a part is assigned to. Just mouse over it and boom: "Ohhh, right - Slot F is that part..."

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Decals

This is going to be brief (I think). Decals are sometimes frustrating... until you figure out how they work, that is. It's important to keep in mind the coordinate axes because decals are applied to one of three invisible planes that are situated on those axes. This means that when you're applying a decal to a curved surface it can partially clip into it due to its default flat state. Turning on Wrap pretty much fixes this issue, but sometimes it can still fall short, causing the necessity of scaling down the size of a decal. To place a decal, click in the build window, directly on the part of your MASS where you'd like it to be, instead of using the X and Y sliders to position it. From that point, you can change the scale and rotation of the decal, as well as flip it. When coloring a decal, glow and patterns don't work, so don't bother with them. No word as of yet on whether that will change.

(This circles back to Assembly - you can also click in the build window method to place accessory parts, but it can cause more problems than you might feel like dealing with. Points, beveled edges, and curved surfaces can cause weird part orientations. I advise strongly against building this way unless it's absolutely necessary)




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I strongly recommend you join the Discord servers. There's Sekai Project's server and there's a Community Discord server as well. There aren't any expectations outside following the server rules. I check these servers daily, mostly to see the build screenshots people post and share my own, but also to check for any news updates regarding upcoming content that hasn't been posted to the game's Steam page yet. The people in the servers are quite friendly, they answer questions patiently, and a lot of them are very knowledgeable about the game. Many of them appreciate a good screenshot, too - so don't be afraid to post some!

Thanks for reading up to this point. I've pretty much covered everything in customization, and I hope this guide is/has been helpful for you. There's a couple more things I'd like to mention before I finish:

- Exporting your creations is highly recommended

Exporting not only gives you a shortcut for making copies of your builds, it allows you to share your creations in more than just screenshots. I've posted several of my builds for download in the Community Discord, and will upload more in the future. I do it because, as a builder, one of my favorite ways to learn building techniques in great detail is to be able to manipulate the parts to see how they're placed.
Also, I sometimes like to modify builds done by other players, and then post screenshots in tribute to their work. The way I see it, it's a way to show appreciation to the original designer. I think I'd be pretty stoked if someone did that to one of mine. Anyway, this isn't a blog post, so I'll move on...

In the hangar, where you build your MASS, click the Overall tab, which is second one from the left at the top of the screen. Hit the left arrow in the build interface to switch from Assembly to Preset. From here, you just click Export, move your unit around in the frame to get a good thumbnail picture of what you're exporting, then export it. The game will ask you to give it a filename, then it will save in My Documents\MASSBuilder\Assets\AG_All as a .mass file, and the thumbnail pic the game snapped when you exported will be saved as a .jpg file. The filenames are the same, so they'll be right next to each other in the folder.

You can also export individual sections of a unit's body the same way, but you'll need to make sure you click the section you want to export at the top of the hangar window beforehand. After that, the process is the same. You may also notice that there's an option to hide the frame and just show the parts being exported in the thumbnail image. This isn't necessary, but it's an option. Any part associated with the frame itself will be in the directories with an AG_ or AP_ prefix. The weapons you export go into the ones with the WP_ prefixes. BL = Bullet Launcher, BS = Bullet Shooter, EL = Energy Launcher, ES = Energy Shooter, CC = Close Combat/Melee, SH = Shields.
(So, WP_CC is where the sword I just made would go if I export it)



Exporting works the same in Weapons Assembly and I recommend exporting your weapons even more highly than I do your units. This makes it easy to equip a MASS with a weapon you made for another MASS, and just like your frame, you can share your weapon builds with other players.

- Customization is time-consuming.

Customizing a MASS unit is pretty much like assembling a model kit, except the pieces can be modified, and the only instruction manual is whatever you can imagine. Be prepared to lose hours of your day doing this. Doesn't matter if you work on just one, or several units in a day - it's a time-dump. It sometimes takes me multiple sessions over a few days to fully complete a build. Don't hurry. It's not at all a bad thing to be inspired and work relentlessly, but the best builds tend to come together on their own without having to force anything, so if you suddenly feel like you're out of ideas, give yourself a break. Sometimes I get ideas when I'm in the middle of doing something totally unrelated, and I'll come back to it ready to tackle another section.

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I hope you've found this guide helpful and hope even more that it sheds some light on how to customize your units at a higher degree of skill. I would've loved to have a guide like this when I was starting out. Anyway, happy building - good luck.