Install Steam
login
|
language
简体中文 (Simplified Chinese)
繁體中文 (Traditional Chinese)
日本語 (Japanese)
한국어 (Korean)
ไทย (Thai)
Български (Bulgarian)
Čeština (Czech)
Dansk (Danish)
Deutsch (German)
Español - España (Spanish - Spain)
Español - Latinoamérica (Spanish - Latin America)
Ελληνικά (Greek)
Français (French)
Italiano (Italian)
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)
Magyar (Hungarian)
Nederlands (Dutch)
Norsk (Norwegian)
Polski (Polish)
Português (Portuguese - Portugal)
Português - Brasil (Portuguese - Brazil)
Română (Romanian)
Русский (Russian)
Suomi (Finnish)
Svenska (Swedish)
Türkçe (Turkish)
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
Українська (Ukrainian)
Report a translation problem
Discussions Rules and Guidelines
Report this post
UAC is for getting more damage into those windows at shorter intervals, with less precision and some risk of jamming. Handy on mobile brawlers.
LBX is for sandblasting. Good late in a match if you want to spread damage over a stripped mech and get components. I don't use these a lot, but I will slap a LBX10 or 20 on an assault for a good shotgun blast against any lights trying to outmaneuver me. You'll land some of a LBX blast on a fast light you'd never hit with a normal AC round.
RAC is for extended face time. Good on face time brawlers or fire support mechs. I run RACs on my Urbie K9 and my Hunchback.
Black Hammer covered some already, but allow me to expand...
First of all difference between Clan ACs and IS ACs... Clan ACs are lighter and require less space but gain this trait by firing more Shells than their IS counter part. The Listed damage of an AC is "per click" and then it fires however many shells, each shell being a proportionate fraction of that ACs listed damage. So if you have an LBx10 and you click, it shoots a shotgun blast of 10 projectiles then each projectile does 1 damage. Each projectile that misses the target does no damage, each projectile that doesn't go into the "hitbox" (aka compartment) you were aiming at, doesn't contribute to that damage to that compartment.
The listed number behind the AC defines the damage. So an AC2 does 2 damage per click, AC5 does 5 damage, AC10 does 10... and AC20 does 20 damage.
Clan Tech generally is lighter and requires less space, but gains that trait by firing more shells.
Regular AC: Fewest shells fired of all AC types. Clan AC does still fire multi shells, but IS AC does fire only a single Shell. Regular AC are reliable damage and DPS. They do not jam, they do not spray (as much, in terms of Clan AC) and generate less heat. (MWO is a bit special in this compared to the Tabletop) Unlike Black Hammer's opinion this is by no means a "medium" weapon. Ultra ACs work much better with medium mechs. Regular ACs are for reliable damage output and heat hungry peakaboo play style.
rACs: This is an IS (Inner Sphere) only technology and gives you basically a rotary cannon. It requires spin up and face time... but when its going it has the highest DPS. It also is a lot lighter. rAC5 for example generates 10,9 DPS, in comparison an AC10 only does have 4,4DPS. It's also lighter and requires fewer slots than the AC10, but it can jam and as i said it requires spin up. What is it good for? Mechs that can do face time and "long range" conflicts. Generally its a DPS weapon and you do not want to be the focus of the attack to use it. This is best used on a fire support mech that doesn't draw to much attention. You can let your big buddy go ahead and when they engage you spin up as you step out and hose them down. Downside is... hold down the fire button to long (and that includes keeping the spin up going) and the weapon will jam.
uACs: Many players see these as direct upgrade to the regular AC. Its a dual barrel version of the regular AC, so it fires twice the number of rounds in comparison to the regular AC and it gives you the ability to fire a 2nd time during the cooldown at the risk of jamming the weapon. Statistically uACs are the highest damaging weapons in the game, their DPS even exceeds that of the rACs of comparable size. (So an uAC5 does technically have more DPS than an rAC5).. or at least it used to be. I don't remember any tests having been done lately to compare it. The problem is... that is statistically.. meaning the aggregate of dozens of instances using this weapon.. and the average says its the highest DPS. In actual play that is poor comfort when you step out of cover, fire and get a jam, rendering the weapon system inoperable after the very first shot.
LBxs: In the tabletop this is a straight upgrade to the regular AC as you can decide to fire slugs or pellets. Its basically a mech sized shotgun. In MWO they removed the ability to fire slugs and thus all you get is a shotgun. LBx have some of the longest range in the game. Their damage fall off is much longer than that of regular ACs. They also do not Jam and they are smaller and lighter than the regular AC equivalent. They are generally the Meta choice, most of the time, because the spread of the damage is negligible if you are closer than a certain distance (which varies by type), and for long range applications like Lbx2, you can actually outrange regular ACs. But the downside is they spread damage and even though its negligible its still spread.
So when should you use which? Lots of people would tell you that you shouldn't ever use regular ACs, but not everyone has the trigger discipline to wait for the cooldown to pass on an uAC or wants to deal with the spread... they are reliable damage when you want reliable damage. You can trust on them doing their listed DPS.. its great when you really want to hammer someone.
Ultra's are the "life fast, die hard" sort of weapon. When they work they feel great... but you will have enough situations in which you step out and realize your main gun(s) just deserted you and you are basically without weapons in front of the enemy. They are great on mobile mechs that can get in and out of cover quickly. to unload and retreat when their weapons jam.
Rotaries are good fire support choices. They are big DPS for their size and thus pack a punch if you have the time. But they are poor at reacting to changes (because you can't keep them spun up), which will result in quick trades not going in your favor, because by the time you spun that weapon up the enemy is gone. But if you know where the enemy is and can get a bead the moment its spun up... its great to hose people down with. And if you are extra unfair and aim near their cockpit you will be able to blind people with the explosions.
Lbx are the weapon of choice for many people. They are comparable light weight and compact and thus you can boat them. They also do not Jam and thus fill a niche between regular ACs and Ultras. They are great to boat multiples of... or if you want to go into super long range battles (which usually is only a thing in Faction Warfare).. for Quickplay only Alpine comes to mind where it would make a difference.
ACs are for consistent high DPS pinpoint damage. Use this if you can put shot after shot into the same place.
UACs are for high bursts of DPS. Use this as your generalist ballistic weapon.
RACs are suppression weapons to get the enemy to back off or focus on rolling damage instead of shooting. Use this when you can comfortably rely on other weapons to support your ballistic mount.
LBs are a mixed bag of "Finisher" weapons designed to kill damaged mechs quicker than ACs at longer ranges, but in return isn't as good at dealing pinpoint damage to claim a specific component. Use this if you know what you're doing because they're deceptively difficult to master.
IMHO:
For IS the top 5 is; UAC/20, RAC/5, UAC/5, LB-10, AC/20.
For clan the top 5 is; UAC/10, UAC/20, LB-20, LB-5, UAC/5.
Of course that doesn't include Gauss weapons, which are highly specialized ballistic weapons that can't accurately be linked to the others directly.
The spin up time of the RAC isn't a problem if you are attacking, and the arm mount allows to put the firepower in already damaged locations.
RACs are horrible on skirmishers; they simply don't have the armor to win prolonged trades in which RACboats typically are going to have to simply (hopefully) out-trade whatever is coming their way
that might fly in tier 4 where nobody knows how to focus-fire, but at tier 1 - low a hurdle that is to clear - a RACboat is a gigantic, glowing neon 'kick me' sign, and even the most prodigious RACboat player with good map awareness is still going to take more incoming damage than most other builds by virtue of the insane amount of facetime RACs require
this statement would make sense from the perspective of a proper RACboat who typically won't stop firing for heaven or earth unless they're repositioning, but a skirmisher's role is to disengage and engage in weird and wacky, disruptive places
skirmishers are not built for DPS; DPS is antithetical to their role
that's why most skirmishers are usually high-alpha builds or SRM-bombers
tonneage is also a major concern
using an urbanmech as an example, there is no scenario in which you would pick a RAC5 over 5MPL and expect to do better; at close range you will get eaten alive by other MPL builds and brawlers, and a single RAC-5 is worthless in mid-long range trades where people can poke you for higher damage than you can output by staring at them
If you only in for the kills playing a skirmisher with RAC is crap, playing a SRM skirmisher is better.
On my secondary accout I only play SRM skirmishers. I just have 2 Mechs with identical loadout on this account, an my K/D is much better than my old account were i tried different build.
But it's also boring to play MWO that way, so i stopped it.
You should try skirmishing in a Cicada 2A, it's a fantastic mech now with a large XL engine & 5-6 medium pulse lasers. Not necessarily a durable brawler, but absolutely great at outflanking the enemy and taking down weakened/isolated targets and then disengaging & flanking again.
Can you fit more than one RAC on the K9, or "RACs" is just a typo?
It seems like things have been rebalanced greatly since I played the game much, as I'm just now coming back to the game after a break for many years. Back in my day, though, not many people used the LBX autocannons as their spread of damage was seen to be undesireable, now it looks like they're pretty commonly placed on mechs intended for close-quarters brawling, which is always nice to see. Nothing says "♥♥♥♥ you and everything you stand for" like a double-blast from giant shotguns.
For my part, I used to be a bigtime UAC brawler, but I've been tending toward the rotary autocannons as a staple for my builds since I've been back, exactly for reasons that have already been mentioned. The jamming mechanics on the UACs makes their damage output feel extremely unreliable and I feel like it's fairly often that I'm trying to get rounds on target and jam within just one or two squeezes of the trigger, it's even happened that I've had ALL of my UACs jam simultaneously and more or less knock me out of the fight for a bit aside from some backup lasers amounting to a fraction of my total possible damage output.
RACs may have less damage per second, but their ability to sustain their output makes them preferable for me, at least. Though, to be fair, when I'm rocking the RACs, I'm no longer a frontline fighter, I try to stay back a bit and focus fire on enemies that are already engaged with friendlies and help apply the hurt-over-time to take them down.
LB10s are also pretty strong at mid ranges. A number of builds run 3-4 with good effect. With skill nodes their rof and spread is completely fine. 40 damage sandblasting every 2 seconds at 500 meters will suppress or destroy all but the tankiest mechs. It's also efficient at crit farming.