24 replies to this topic

[Ceesa]

I took my Ilya into the testing grounds with 250 rounds of UAC/5 ammo and three UAC/5s.

First test: chain fire the three UACs by holding down the left mouse button. There were no jams and no double fires.

DPS: 6.00

Second test: put all three UACs in a single group and hold down the left mouse button. All fired as quickly as they could, double firing each time except when jammed.

DPS: 14.7

Therefore, heed this lesson: Despite the jams, you're better off always double firing because you do higher DPS. It's not even close, you do more than double damage.

[Ryebear]

Chain firing 3 weapons has a longer cycle time to reach the first weapon again then the cool down of a UAC 5.

Chain firing has a 0.5 second delay before the next gun fires, and will take 1.5 seconds before the first gun fires again.

Whereas the UAC 5s cool down is 1.1 seconds, not counting 'double firing' which is shooting again within that 1.1 seconds.

Either way chain firing is a joke, it's more weight, less ammo per tonne, fewer DPS and more tonnage than three AC 5s.

[Ceesa]

Rye, thanks for the input. I posted this because of two things. First, a lot of people do chain fire. Second, there was a change in the UAC jam rate with the last patch. I wanted to give everyone some actual numbers for two common techniques of using the weapon in game. While you can certainly debate the merits of these methods versus ideal situations or other firing techniques (like macros), all I wanted to do was compare the two.

[Nexus Omega]

http://www.autohotkey.com/
Download it and Macro a mouse button,
perfect re-fire every time, no jams.

[Ryebear]

What change happened to the jam rate? Do you have a source with exact numbers. I use the UAC on a lot of my mechs so this would affect me.

[pencilboom]

Nexus Omega, on 18 April 2013 - 07:40 PM, said:

http://www.autohotkey.com/
Download it and Macro a mouse button,
perfect re-fire every time, no jams.

how exactly are you doing this? group fire the 3 uac/5s? or assign each uac/5 to weapon group 1, 2 and 3 separately?
I'm using the latter method to rapid fire 5 ac/2s on my jagermech ( im using macro ).

[Ceesa]

Ryebear, on 18 April 2013 - 07:57 PM, said:

What change happened to the jam rate? Do you have a source with exact numbers. I use the UAC on a lot of my mechs so this would affect me.

All I have is anecdotal evidence. The change from last patch to this one is pretty night and day. Things were so bad last patch that after a couple days I took the UACs off my Ilya and replaced them with gauss. Now I've put them back on, and they're working much better than they ever have (since I started using them in the first place, at any rate).

[TheArcher]

I tried a similar test. When firing 100 rounds from one UAC 5 and waiting for the recycle indicator to completely clear, I fired at a rate of one round every 1.2s. I could probably improve that by trying to anticipate when the indicator will be clear, but in real match it would be tough to aim and watch the recycle indicator simultaneously.

Then I fired 200 rounds from one UAC 5, just holding the trigger down. I did this 5 times.

Edit: ERROR! The Jam Time in Testing Grounds is 3 seconds. In a match it is 5 seconds. The results in the chart below are inaccurate!

Set	  Jams	 Time (s)	Time per Jam	Avg Recycle
1	 21	   175		   3.12		   0.879
2	 31	   206		   3.11		   1.035
3	 25	   187		   3.10		   0.940
4	 33	   212		   3.11		   1.065
5	 26	   193		   3.21		   0.970

Time per Jam: (Time - 199 * 0.55 ) / Jams
Why 199? I stopped the timer when I fired the 200th round, so it's recycle time isn't included.

Edit (continued): Adjusting the Time above to have a 5 second Jam Time yields the following estimates:

Set	  Jams	 Time (s)	Time per Jam	Avg Recycle
1	 21	   217 		  5.12		   1.090
2	 31	   268 		  5.11		   1.347
3	 25	   237 		  5.10		   1.191
4	 33	   278 		  5.11		   1.397
5	 26	   245 		  5.21		   1.231

With a 5 second jam time, the average is 1.25 seconds. So, you may be better off using a macro or firing manually. Up to you.

Edited by TheArcher, 16 June 2013 - 06:27 PM.

[Jay Z]

TheArcher, on 11 May 2013 - 05:17 AM, said:

I tried a similar test. When firing 100 rounds from one UAC 5 and waiting for the recycle indicator to completely clear, I fired at a rate of one round every 1.2s. I could probably improve that by trying to anticipate when the indicator will be clear, but in real match it would be tough to aim and watch the recycle indicator simultaneously.

Then I fired 200 rounds from one UAC 5, just holding the trigger down. I did this 5 times.

Set	  Jams	 Time (s)	Time per Jam	Avg Recycle
1	 21	   175		   3.12		   0.879
2	 31	   206		   3.11		   1.035
3	 25	   187		   3.10		   0.940
4	 33	   212		   3.11		   1.065
5	 26	   193		   3.21		   0.970

Time per Jam: (Time - 199 * 0.55 ) / Jams
Why 199? I stopped the timer when I fired the 200th round, so it's recycle time isn't included.

Based on those numbers, it looks like going full auto yields a 10% faster rate of fire compared to the theoretical single-fire rate, and up to 20% better than manual single-fire mode.

^ Thanks for the data.

This confirms my "click and hold" method. Despite jams, it delivers more DPS. Furthermore, it is better to deal damage in bursts so you can turn away during jams and then swing back on unjam. If you just single shot it, you would have to keep your reticle on them the whole time.

[Nexus Omega]

pencilboom, on 18 April 2013 - 08:04 PM, said:

how exactly are you doing this? group fire the 3 uac/5s? or assign each uac/5 to weapon group 1, 2 and 3 separately?
I'm using the latter method to rapid fire 5 ac/2s on my jagermech ( im using macro ).

I have a button for both!


#InstallMouseHook
#InstallKeyBDHook

XButton1::
while GetKeyState("xButton1","P")
{
send {1 down}
send {2 down}
send {3 down}
sleep 65
send {1 up}
send {2 up}
send {3 up}
sleep 300
sleep 65
sleep 300
sleep 65
sleep 300
}

XButton2::
while GetKeyState("xButton2","P")
{
send {1 down}
sleep 65
send {1 up}
sleep 300
send {2 down}
sleep 65
send {2 up}
sleep 300
send {3 down}
sleep 65
send {3 up}
sleep 300

}

PS I have a 5 button mouse, hence xbutton1/2

[oldradagast]

Very interesting data here - this is the type of stuff a newer player would have no hope of figuring out on their own unless they even understood the questions to ask. Thanks for the work on this!

[Ryebear]

Nexus Omega, on 12 May 2013 - 01:18 AM, said:

A script

Is this an auto-hotkey script and if so, can you explain what each of them do so I can potentially mod them for my personal use

[Nexus Omega]

Ryebear, on 12 May 2013 - 09:29 AM, said:

Is this an auto-hotkey script and if so, can you explain what each of them do so I can potentially mod them for my personal use

Yes its an Autohotkey script

//Break down:


#InstallMouseHook -These are required, don't touch!
#InstallKeyBDHook

//This script fire the 3 UAC's together

XButton1:: <- this is what button is being used to trigger,
while GetKeyState("xButton1","P") <-- this is is this button pressed
{
send {1 down} <- this presses button 1
send {2 down} <- this presses button 2
send {3 down} <- this presses button 3
sleep 65 <- this sleeps for 65 ms, so the UAC5 don't Jam
send {1 up} <- this un-presses button 1
send {2 up} <- this un-presses button 2
send {3 up} <- this un-presses button 3
sleep 1035 <-- cleaned this up, this sleeps for the rest of the cooldown period. (1100 total)
}


//This Script fires them 1 after another, for maximum dakka

XButton2::
while GetKeyState("xButton2","P")
{
send {1 down} <- this presses button 1
sleep 65 <- this sleeps for 65 ms, so the UAC5 don't Jam
send {1 up} <- this un-presses button 1
sleep 300 <-- This sleeps for 1/3 of the cooldown period. (1100 total)
send {2 down} <- this presses button 2
sleep 65 <- this sleeps for 65 ms, so the UAC5 don't Jam
send {2 up} <- this un-presses button 2
sleep 300 <-- This sleeps for 1/3 of the cooldown period.
send {3 down} <- this presses button 3
sleep 65 <- this sleeps for 65 ms, so the UAC5 don't Jam
send {3 up} <- this un-presses button 3
sleep 300 <-- This sleeps for 1/3 of the cooldown period.
}

The Documentiation can be found here:
http://www.autohotkey.com/docs/

Other mouse buttons are:

LButton - the left mouse button
RButton - the right mouse button
MButton - the middle or wheel mouse button


WheelDown - this is equivalent to rotating the mouse wheel down (toward you)
WheelUp - the opposite of the above

Hope That helps!

Edited by Nexus Omega, 12 May 2013 - 11:25 PM.

[Ryebear]

Nexus Omega, on 12 May 2013 - 11:25 PM, said:

#InstallMouseHook -These are required, don't touch!
#InstallKeyBDHook

//This script fire the 3 UAC's together

XButton1:: <- this is what button is being used to trigger,
while GetKeyState("xButton1","P") <-- this is is this button pressed
{
send {1 down} <- this presses button 1
sleep 65 <- this sleeps for 65 ms, so the UAC5 don't Jam
send {1 up} <- this un-presses button 1
sleep 1035 <-- cleaned this up, this sleeps for the rest of the cooldown period. (1100 total)
}

So your script is assuming 1 UAC per fire group bound to the 1, 2 and 3 keys? If I had them all in firegroup 1 for instance I could change it to:


XButton1::
while GetKeyState("xButton1","P") <-- This needs a little more explaining for me, is XButton1 mouse button one? Or is 'P' the button used to trigger the 'xButton1' script?
{
send {1 down}
sleep 65
send {1 up}
sleep 1035
}


And #InstallMouseHook and #InstallKeyBDHook; are they AHK plugins that need downloading or including in the AHK install and just used to give AHK access to keyboard and mouse commands?

Lastly, is their a key combo to turn on/off the AHK scripts in case I hope into another mech? *edit* I just looked at my AHK install, looks like the Pause button temporarily disables the scripts.

And mucho gracias for the help. AHK has a lot of width and breadth so it makes finding specific info in their tutorials kind of a mess even if it is just simple key scripts.

Edited by Ryebear, 13 May 2013 - 09:44 AM.

[Nexus Omega]

Ryebear, on 13 May 2013 - 09:39 AM, said:

So your script is assuming 1 UAC per fire group bound to the 1, 2 and 3 keys? If I had them all in firegroup 1 for instance I could change it to:

This is correct 1 2 and 3 are my UAC5's

Ryebear, on 13 May 2013 - 09:39 AM, said:

XButton1::
while GetKeyState("xButton1","P") <-- This needs a little more explaining for me, is XButton1 mouse button one? Or is 'P' the button used to trigger the 'xButton1' script?
{
send {1 down}
sleep 65
send {1 up}
sleep 1035
}

Xbutton1 is mouse 4, yours could use Lbutton for Left mouse, be sure to unbind it Left mouse in mech warrior.
P means button is pressed down.

Ryebear, on 13 May 2013 - 09:39 AM, said:

And #InstallMouseHook and #InstallKeyBDHook; are they AHK plugins that need downloading or including in the AHK install and just used to give AHK access to keyboard and mouse commands?

Lastly, is their a key combo to turn on/off the AHK scripts in case I hope into another mech? *edit* I just looked at my AHK install, looks like the Pause button temporarily disables the scripts.

And mucho gracias for the help. AHK has a lot of width and breadth so it makes finding specific info in their tutorials kind of a mess even if it is just simple key scripts.

I'm not sure if there is a way to toggle the script on and off, you could bind it to a keyboard button, I never looked into as I have 5 buttons.


#InstallMouseHook
#InstallKeyBDHook

These need to be are the start of the file, They hook into the Keyboard and mouse.

Your file could look like this:

#InstallMouseHook
#InstallKeyBDHook

LButton::
while GetKeyState("LButton","P")
{
send {1 down}
sleep 65
send {1 up}
sleep 1035
}

And Done!

[Ryebear]

Thanks for all the help pushing me in the right direction. Here is what I am using now (since any mech of mine that has UACs have them in the first two weapon groups), I added some goodies that Im sure you can all find a use for aswell:


#InstallMouseHook
#InstallKeyBDHook
#UseHook <--I couldnt get autohotkey to actually work in game until I added this, was a huge pain to figure out

Suspend On <--The AHK script is started the script is defaulted to disabled

Pause::

Suspend, Permit
if (A_IsSuspended = 1)
{
SoundPlay, C:\Windows\Media\Windows Hardware Insert.wav <-- Change filepath to whatever sound you want
Suspend
}
else if (A_IsSuspended = 0)
{
SoundPlay, C:\Windows\Media\Windows Hardware Remove.wav <-- Change filepath to whatever sound you want
Suspend
}

^--Binds the 'Pause' key (beside Scroll Lock and Print Screen) to enable/disable the script. Makes the USB device connect/disconnect noise when enabling or disabling.


LButton::
while GetKeyState("LButton","P")
{
send {LButton down}
sleep 65
send {LButton up}
sleep 1035
}

RButton::
while GetKeyState("RButton","P")
{
send {RButton down}
sleep 65
send {RButton up}
sleep 1035
}

And for anyone looking to use a script like this, all the key/mouse buttons can be found here and the script itself works like so: when holding down the button you will fire single shot, if you want to fire in 'Ultra' mode, just double tap the Left/Right Mouse Button/whatever key you bound or press the Pause/Break button to disable the script.

Edited by Ryebear, 14 May 2013 - 05:37 PM.

[Ryebear]

*rabble* *rabble* *rabble* *rabble*

But seriously, if they lowered the AC/5s cooldown to ~1.2 seconds, or changed the UAC firemode to a toggle, scripts like this wouldnt exist.

[Nexus Omega]

Ryebear, on 14 May 2013 - 05:34 PM, said:

Thanks for all the help pushing me in the right direction. Here is what I am using now (since any mech of mine that has UACs have them in the first two weapon groups), I added some goodies that Im sure you can all find a use for aswell:

//
A Script
//

Well Done! the above script is Awesome, me thinks I shall give it a try.
Also I didn't know about the #UseHook command, I always run it as admin, (like MWO is run)


[Redacted]

I find it quite funny, that whenever someone uses something other users don't like (PPC's/Guasscat/Streaks/Splattercat/macos) the insult is "no skill"
This game is very easy, aiming is easy, moving is easy.

Really this game is about tactics and maneuvering,(note different to moving a mech about) not shooting, or pressing a button. and the people that are unable to see that need to open their eyes.

I hope to see you on the battle field,

Ryebear, on 14 May 2013 - 05:45 PM, said:

But seriously, if they lowered the AC/5s cooldown to ~1.2 seconds, or changed the UAC firemode to a toggle, scripts like this wouldn't exist.

^ Also this


Hmm, just realised we got massively off topic...

Edited by Egomane, 15 May 2013 - 09:48 PM.
Removed quote and directed response

[Ryebear]

Nexus Omega, on 15 May 2013 - 01:58 AM, said:

Well Done! the above script is Awesome, me thinks I shall give it a try.
Also I didn't know about the #UseHook command, I always run it as admin, (like MWO is run)

I really dont know what #Usehook is, I ran MWO as admin and AHK as admin and the script would work outside fine outside of MWO but when in game (even just the patcher) or even with the Steam window open the script would not work at all. After some exhaustive google searching to figure out why it wasnt working, this was the only solution I could find short of editing the registry. I found it in some forum as a solution.

Could be that I am running Windows 8 that messes around with how some programs permissions are handled or something.

Also when making my script to use the mouse buttons I kept on getting myself into trouble by messing up the script and disabling both my mouse buttons. I kept having to get into the task manager to End Task AHK without using the mouse hahah.

Edited by Ryebear, 15 May 2013 - 07:18 AM.

[Nexus Omega]

Ryebear, on 15 May 2013 - 07:13 AM, said:

Could be that I am running Windows 8 that messes around with how some programs permissions are handled or something.

Also when making my script to use the mouse buttons I kept on getting myself into trouble by messing up the script and disabling both my mouse buttons. I kept having to get into the task manager to End Task AHK without using the mouse hahah.

Most likely it is different behavior in W8, I am running W7,

Haha, never occurred to me using mouse 1/2 would stuff up things in windows, ah well live and learn.

Good Luck on and off the Battle Field!