I'm mostly a IS missles player (LRM, MRM, SRM, Streaks), but I'm trying to get a better understanding of how the various ballistic weapons work. I couldn't find a guide, so I have to settle for a discussion. There's some overlap here between IS and Clan, but to simplify the discussion we're going to only talk about Clan weapons, and exclude machine guns and gauss rifles. That gives us 12 weapons remaining: C-AC/2, C-AC/5, C-AC/10, C-AC/20 C-LB2-X AC, C-LB5-X AC, C-LB10-X AC, C-LB20-X AC C-ULTRA AC/2, C-ULTRA AC/5, C-ULTRA AC/10, C-ULTRA AC/20 In a lot of ways, the weapons are interchangable. AC 2 has the same size and weight as LBX 2, which has the same weight as C-Ultra AC/2, although the Ultra takes one spot less. As for heat, Ultra is always the hottest, with LBX and AC at a tie (except for size 5, where LBX is significantly cooler for some reason). Ultra can fire subsequent shots (but risks jamming), LBX fires a spread, and AC is the default. If the data on Smurfy is accurate, then weapon type has no impact on weapon velocity except for the LB20-X, which is faster than its counterparts for some reason. As for ammunition, I see that for example the AC/5 and the Ultra AC/5 both give us 60 ammo/ton, but the LB5-X only gives us 30 ammo/ton. Does that mean I have to bring twice as much ammo for a LBX weapon as I would for one of the others? I'm guessing the smaller weapons need less tons of ammo than the large ones. Without trying each weapon, is there a methodology I can use to predict how much ammo I need? Perhaps enough for the fire for X number of seconds, or X tons of ammo for every Y tons of weapons? So that's the general theory. I've heard people say that you always want to go Ultra instead of regular for the extra damage potential. I've heard that LBX is good at close range, rubbish at long range. But I figured I'd put together some mechs to fascilitate the discussion. For all of these, I'm using a dire wolf because it can fit the most ballistic weapons (which allows us to consider ghost heat). Armor and omni-components are the same throughout the examples. Boating C-Ultra AC/2. There's no ghost heat on this weapon, and the direwolf can carry 8. I've got 9.5 tons of ammunition, I'm not sure if that's enough. It's a pretty hot mech, and that's going to reduce the amount of time you can shoot at your enemy. Alpha strike is a measly 16, but when you're hitting them up to 3 times a second, then it's going to add up. Double tapping will heat up your mech very fast though - at least, until your weapons jam. I'm not sure if it's really worth the Ultra on this. Does the .72 sec cd mean that my finger's gonna fall off trying to double tap? On the plus side, this weapon configuration may make it really hard for the opponent I'm shooting to aim at me. Replace the C-Ultra AC/2 with AC/2. We can afford the space. Still 9.5 tons of ammunition, but this weapon probably can't spit out rounds as quickly. Heat management is definitely better, which boosts our max sustained dps. Now we've moved up to C-AC/5. But the AC/5 has a limit of 3 before we get ghost heat, so we put in LB5-X on the other side. What we get is a mech that can alpha strike every 1.66 seconds for 30 damage. It runs very cool and can put out a maximum dps of 9.76. But I'm curious as to whether these two weapons together are synergistic. Will the AC let me blow away the armor, and the LBX let me crit his structure? Or am I just making a mech that's bad at sniping and bad at brawling? I don't think I want to put AC/5 into both sides of the mech, however, if I were to do that, I'd only get 1.62 ghost heat for firing all 6 at once. Swapping out Ultra AC/5 is very viable as well, as the heat profiles at the 5 size are nearly identical. Note, 5 is the one size where LBX outproduces significantly less heat than even the AC. Up to the 10 size. Again, we have one side as AC/10 and the other side as LBX 10, for ghost heat reasons. However, with a 2.5 sec cd, we're starting to get into the area where boating AC/10 may be doable - put each side of your mech in a seperate weapons group and wait .5 seconds before firing. If you mess up and fire them at the same time, it's only .96 ghost heat anyway. Note - if you switch to Ultra, the ghost heat for firing 4 C-Ultra AC/10 simotaneously is a whopping 25.20! With double tapping, I'm guessing this would be pretty easy to mess up. Switching to the 10 size gave us so much extra tonnage and heat that I put in some lasers. Alternatively, you could go with another 2.5 tons of ammo. For this one, I brought in the size 20. I can't fit them in the torso slots, so I'm putting one in each arm. If I put a size 10 in each chest I'll only have 6.5 tons of ammo, so I put in size 5 and lasers. I have 10 tons of ammo, more than any other variant. I could of course switch the torso weapons to be the same, or even to be C-Ultra AC/5 if I wanted to. In summary, here are my questions: How do you determine how much ammo do you need for the 12 different weapons? When do you go Ultra vs regular AC? It seems the heat profiles favor the Ultra at the size 5 and 20, but favor the C-AC at sizes 2 and 10. Is there any trick to avoid jamming the UAC, or is it purely random? When taking jamming into account, how much damage does the UAC really do? Is the dps gain for going from AC to UAC greater at the larger sizes, or consistent for each size? What about for IS, where the UAC is a ton heaver than the AC? When do you go LBX? Is it feasable to mix AC and LBX, or is it better to be a pure boater? I kinda feel like, in terms of killability, LBX's spread makes it much weaker, and for the same heat I'd be better off using C-AC. Is the spread of the LB2-X different than the spread of the LB20-X? With the LBX 20 firing twenty shots and the LBX 2 firing just 2, does that mean that the LBX 20 is vastly better than the AC 20 for destroying structure, but the LBX 2 is only slightly better than the AC 2 at structure? Can I get ghost heat from double tapping UAC weapons, if my second tap is within .50 seconds of the first? Some of the weapons (Ultra AC/5, AC/5, AC/10) have very little ghost heat. Should I just ignore the ghost heat and boat them? Are there less obvious differences between the weapons? Do some make explosions that make it hard for my opponent to see? How does the knockback compare? Are some of these builds more likely to make my opponent curse as his cockpit bounces around like a slinky? And how does that relate to face time (time I'm forced to spend facing the enemy, with my ct exposed. What about getting into my opponents head and intimidating him? Which weapons are more likely to make an opponent notice me and decide to attack me, instead of who he was attacking earlier? Being noticed may be fine in a dire wolf, but if I'm playing a light, I may want to be more subtle (right now, the only clan mech I have is a cougar, but I'm looking to change that).
1. It's tough to determine ammo because ACs and Ultra ACs use multiple rounds per shot. 5s shoot 2, 10s shoot 3 and 20s shoot 4. Personally, I think they should count the ammo in shots not rounds because it's misleading to say a UAC20 has 84 rounds when that's really only 21 shots. 2. I'm pretty sure regular ACs are always cooler. Ultra ACs can fire twice in their cooldown instead of once but risk jamming. They shouldn't jam on the first shot but I'm not sure that's 100% reliable. 3. DPS going from AC to UAC should theoretically be the same percentage no matter the size. But it's hard to gauge when you factor in jam chance and jam duration. 4. LBX is cooler and only useful for brawling when you look at the large sizes. 2s and 5s have smaller enough spread that you can use them at longer ranges but they're generally unimpressive except when fired en masse. 5. Large LBX ACs have larger spread. The reason the LBX ACs are better at destroying structure is because they get a crit damage bonus and they have multiple chances per shot to get a crit boost. 6. There used to be a bug that let double-tap cause ghost heat but its not supposed to. Only firing multiple weapons should trigger ghost heat. 7. That's a case by case basis and personal preference. 8. Clan ACs force more face time and they're less precise because of the multiple rounds per shot. Bigger rounds make bigger explosions and are better for suppression and screen shake. One thing that the multiple rounds does help with is suppression. More rounds gives the appearance of a higher volume of fire even if the damage per round is lower.
Hey Anamiac! I see Shock has already answered your questions very well, so I don't think I can add more on that. HOWEVER, I really appreciate that you mention the need for such a guide. I have been thinking about writing about drop decks in factionplay, but general building strategies as you've mentioned in your post are of slightly higher priority on a mech building site. I'll look into writing and releasing guides that explain the differences between weapons and building for them in the future! Cheers, Excalibaard
Be my guest, Verge! I'm plenty busy with other things/guides too ;p (would still like co-author tho )
Small note for the guide. Clan U/ACs don't start their cooldown until the last shot is fired. So if you are strictly firing on cooldown, an LBX will out dps a similar AC.
I suggest working with Anamiac, as I have been out of the game for a bit, and can't get enough time to get back in.
Sorry, I was out all weekend. Thank you very much for the answers. I'm going to try to do some playtesting of the various weapons, will report my findings here. I'm thinking I'll take some time and run some tests... like at range 700, 350, and 50 meters at an atlas on the testing grounds, and catelog how long it takes to kill and how many rounds / how much ammo, for each weapon. But first, I need to grind some c-bills, and buy a clan mech that's bigger than a cougar (the cougar can't fit a AC 20). I also want to skill up the mech some, as it's going to be more realistic to test with ballistic weapon skills. I'm thinking a direwolf is too costly, I'll try an EBJ-B instead.
Alright, so, life's been busy, and I haven't managed to buy myself a suitable clan mech for this yet. However, last night I got my Annihilator out to HPG Manifold and spent an evening testing the Inner Sphere weapons on an Awesome. I took notes of how long they took to kill the Awesome, how much ammo they required, and some other facts: note: I made an error on the Ultra AC/20 heat required for kill, it should be 56 and 58.3 respectively. Sorry, if it's a little hard to read, I had trouble figuring out how to post a table on the forum. Theory heat required for the kill = the amount of heat you'd expect to generate firing enough shots for a kill. Tons for 10 second kill = A measurement of weight efficiency. If you brought enough of that single weapon type to kill the Awesome in 10 seconds, how many tons of weapons + ammo would that be? Structure for 10 second kill = a measurement of weapon size efficiency. If you brought enough of that single weapon type to kill the Awesome in 10 seconds, how many slots would the weapons and ammo take up? Some takeaways: LBX does perhaps 10% more damage than the corresponding AC, but the pellets aren't going to hit the same component unless you're very close. My best guess: LB 2-x is probably as efficient as the AC/2 at 400 meters, LB 5-x is probably as efficient as the AC/5 at around 300m, the LB 10-x is about 175m, and the LB 20-x is efficient within 150m or so. If you're outside those ranges, you're better off using an Autocannon or Ultra Autocannon, which are good for vastly longer ranges. AC/2 > UAC/2, but AC20 < UAC20. The bigger you get, the better the Ultra upgrade was. One reason is because Ultras cost one ton more than their AC counterpart... in the 2 size it's a 17% difference between 6 tons and 7, but in the 20 size it's only a 7% difference between 14 tons and 15. Also, the Ultra AC/2 in particular seemed to be difficult to get the dual fire going reliably - Maybe I'm just not good at clicking that fast. When your weapon does Jam, the UAC 20 jams for long enough to be worth ducking into cover and then re-engaging. But if you're boating 4-6 Ultra AC/2, you're not going to retreat if one or two of them jams. Essentially, the double firing and jamming is great for bursty play, but the smaller weapon sizes with short cooldowns don't support bursty play. There's a lot of RNG with the Ultras. When they don't jam, they lead to some very fast kills. But when your UAC 10 jams 4 times, you're going to be cursing them. I don't think there's any size of the LBX where the 10% dps increase at point blank range is worth the 40% dps decrease at midrange (and probably 80% dps decrease at long range!). The damage drop off is just too extreme. I don't see much point in running Ultra AC/2 when you can run AC/2. AC 5 and UAC 5 are close to the same both in heat and damage, so that's a wash. The heat difference at the 10 level is much bigger. I wasn't impressed with how much the UAC 10 jammed in my 3 tests, but it might just be rng. I would definitely take the Ultra AC/20 over the AC/20 though, the difference in damage is just so good! I wouldn't want to put two Ultra AC/20 on the same mech though, because of ghost heat. Winners: AC/2, UAC/20 Decent: AC/5, UAC/5, AC/10, UAC/10, AC/20. Do not want: LBX-anything, UAC/2. note: My Annihilator had all relevant ballistic skills. For the sake of the test I felt that this was more useful than an unskilled check. In the spreadsheet above, tons for 10 second kill and structure for 10 second kill do not take into account the ballistic skills that increase ammo capacity.
That must've taken quite a bit of time, thanks for your efforts! I think while LBX weapons do not seem all that great when you compare pin-point accuracy, their value lies in less weight and the ability to crit out weapons more reliably, and the fact that they don't 'need' pinpoint accuracy to deal their damage. If you are in a fight and shoot where a regular AC10 would hit the arm instead of the ST for example, the LBX10 will still have a major amount of pellets going into the ST. I might also be biased because I love getting close with my mechs so I'm very often within LBX optimal range.
There's some truth to that. In one of my experiments (I think it was the 480m expiriment with the LBX-10, where it took a whopping 80 seconds to kill), I think I actually blew away a side torso and a leg before the ct went down. But this is an awesome with big hitboxes. If I were shooting at a light mech, chances are half the pellets would have missed, even if I'd aimed CT. That's certainly a damage loss. And even against a big target like an awesome, pinpoint damage is vastly superior to splash. Pinpoint doesn't prevent me from dismantling my opponent... if his left torso is low and I want to take it out I can still do that faster with an AC than I can with an LBX, and without spreading damage to his arm which is going to be lost when the LT dies anyway. There's also the factor of pilot skill. AC requires more pilot skill with aiming than a LBX shotgun approach. Doesn't this mean that if you use the LBX, your skills will stagnate, whereas, to hone your skills, the AC is the weapon of choice? The LBX weigh the same as the AC weapons, but they do provide less heat - slightly less in some sizes, significantly less in others. There's also the issue of ghost heat. I could see running an Ultra AC/20 alongside a LBX-20 instead of two Ultra AC/20... because then you can click madly and not overheat. Although, the LBX-20 seems really handicapped by taking up 11 slots, as this means it cannot be slotted in an arm, nor can it utilize a light engine.
The cAC was basically an afterthought because PGI wanted to represent LBXes using slug ammo. Haven't done much testing personally but they're widely considered objectively worse than clan ultras, being bigger with no real upside.
