D20 Future chatacter design.

[norms29]

In a about a month I'm going to be starting in a d20 Future game and would like some advice on my build.

First what I know of the setting: the game will start on a planet currently at the high end of Progress Level 6 which is about to be attacked by a PL7 enemy.

our characters are all either citizens of the planet or members of a mercenary force hired to help repel the invasion.

It will be a military campaign but our choice of occupations isn't limited, characters with non-military occupations are assumed to be reservists or some such.

The combat will be primarily Mecha. the damn things received a whole chapter in D20 Future which I am now trying to memorize. Incidentally, those of us in the group who aren't anime fans still have passing familiarity with the genre although the DM is specifically trying to avoid being "too anime" not sure what he means though(I do know he's not going to limit player options, see below).

There are very clear avenues of non-Mech-combat encounters, those the Dm has explicitly mentioned are internal political wrangling, diplomatic negotiations, and covert specOps missions. but the party will need to manage several Mecha-combat encounters first.

then there's what I know about the party:
There are three other party members, one is building toward an engineer archetype with an eye toward the Technician advanced class, but is planing to start as combat class, most likely Strong Hero, he was considering Tough Hero but most of the class abilities center around HP totals, which are rendered almost irrelevant by the mecha rules

The other two are both taking the Fast Hero class, one is starting with the Extra Speed talent, and the other... isn't?
One of the Fast Heros is starting with the student occupation and following the well-tread anime format of 'Teenager who is inexplicably an expert pilot'.

I had initially thought to build a character on the Smart Hero class to be the techno genius (the DM said that as the campaign progressed our side would be transitioning from PL6 to PL7, which such a character could play a personal role in) using the equipment modification rules to get an edge in combat.

As an alternative the DM suggested that the group could use someone leaderish, and because I was the player with the strongest rules knowlege (and thus most qualified to give OOC tactical advice) I should consider building toward a field officer role, which can be accomplished by the Smart Hero class, but to take that as a primary role would probably require the chrismatic hero.

any advice on either build, The avilable books are D20 Modern, D20 Future, and we technically have access to D20 Apocolypse and D20 past for what ever that's worth.

[shirak]

Read this and this. They deal with d20 Modern and not Future specifically but they should give you a start.