122 replies to this topic

[Nightshade24]

Wintersdark, on 01 January 2015 - 10:48 PM, said:

Small detail. The CAC is not actually obsolete; there are reasons to use them instead of the CUAC's. Generally speaking, you want to use the slightly smaller CUAC's.

However, there ARE differences in stats. This is because the CAC's use CLBX-AC stats, not CUAC stats.

So, the AC's vs UAC's:

AC2: 900m vs. 810m, the rest of the stats are the same. Note that this means while you lose doubletap (not a disadvantage, doubletapping a UAC2 is a great way to trigger ghost heat) you gain a substantial max range increase (1800 vs. 1620) and as such higher damage from 810-1800m. Edge:AC
AC5: Cooldown 1.8 vs 1.66, range 720 vs. 630. So, longer range, but lower DPS and HPS. Lower heat IMHO isn't worthwhile here, because the UAC5 is already quite cool. Edge: UAC
AC10: Heat 2 vs. 3, Cooldown 2.9 vs 2.5. While the AC is only 3.45 DPS vs. 4, this nets you 5.0DPH vs. 3.33 DPH: It's FAR cooler. And while doubletapping will push up DPS, it doesn't affect DPH. Edge: AC
AC20: Heat 6 vs. 7, Cooldown 4.9 vs 4.0. Like above, the AC20 has a lower 4.26DPS vs 5.0DPS, and a heat advantage of 3.3DPH vs 2.86DPH. It's a much smaller advantage than the AC10 vs. UAC10, however, for a comparable DPS difference. Edge: UAC

So, they're not at all the same. Generally speaking, the UAC's doubletap ability makes it clearly superior (as you don't risk jamming unless you're deliberately doubletapping, so they are equally reliable when you want reliability). Also, UAC's even single fired are equal or higher DPS.

However, regular AC's are at the high end cooler, and at the low end longer ranged. The key elements are the AC2 and AC10 - the AC2 for it's range, and the AC10 for being only 2/3rds the heat of the UAC10.

Anyways, the above applies strictly to Clan autocannons, which are very different from IS autocannons. The Clan (U)AC's, being burst fire, have less of a huge lead over Clan LB-X AC's than IS PPFLD AC's have over IS LB-X AC's.


Gah! See: My posts above. The LBX is not better for close quarters combat. It's one ton lighter, and it's only marginally superior to the AC10 at extremely close range and after armor is gone. That's key; as the AC10 is so much better before then that you'll always kill faster and destroy internal items faster with an AC10. Further, "crit seeker" is meaningless; if you want to claim an advantage there say exactly what you want to acheive: more crit damage is not the same thing as more items being destroyed.

The LBX has a higher optimal range than the AC10, but that's of very little use. The max range on the AC10 is still 900m. While the LBX has a longer optimal range which in theory is good, it's not actually useful because outside of 100m, you're always missing with a bunch of pellets due to spread vs. mech geometry. Being able to "tag" a mech for an assist at extreme range isn't worth discussing for a range of reasons.

Less heat is good. No ghost heat is irrelevant, as no IS mechs can load AC10's to the point of generating ghost heat. Less heat, while always a good thing, is nowhere near covering for the LBX's other weaknesses.


In short, IS LBX's are fun weapons, but they are never the optimal weapon to take on a mech.

The ghost heat part only applies to Clans AC's/ LB-X AC's/ UAC's, as the AC/10 for IS has no ghost heat. (Happy triple AC 10 boatin' cataphracts)

A direwolf can alpha 4 LBX 10's or 6 LBX 5's with no ghost heat. While a direwolf can't alpha 4 UAC 10's or 6 UAC 5's without ghost heat. Or 4 UAC 20's.



The IS LBX's do have a place as the pallets still hit quite well within 300 meters and does additional damage to unarmored areas while being colder and 1 ton less and 1 crit less.

you can do 2 LBX 10's on an atlas. But not 2 AC 10's.

That's the reason the LBX 10 is better to the AC 10 at closer range. It has the possibility of doing extra damage. At closer range it is far more accurate then at longer range so the main solid HEAP projectile of the AC 10 isn't as effective versus the LBX 10. the LBX 10 is colder so you can fire it more often which is important for a brawler as you are trying to out damage your opponent and stay colder then them at the same time and the extra ton could be spent on ammo, armour, etc.

For instance

The weight of the LBX will also be a savior when it comes to the Urban mech, out of the 3 variants released one has an LBX 10 stock, meaning it can possibly have an LBX 10 quirk as well... it'll be more popular then the AC10 urbie I can assume due to the extra vital ton.


I'm still taking LBX's over autocannons any day

[Sanlucif3r]

LBX10 does 10 dmg and reloads in 2.5 seconds, the range and spread is similar to SRM short range missiles.


the SRM4 does 8.40 dmg and reloads in 3 sec

the srm6 does 12 dmg and reloads in 4 sec


LBX has higher dps than both of them. - however it is also a lot more heavy.


you cannot compare it to AC10, it is more fair to compare it to SRM launchers.


as for it's weight, it is too much of a commitment for what it does and not good enough if you put 1lbx10 in your ride.


if you can put 2 lbx10 or even 3 lbx10 then it stops being so bad and starts getting actually good, but you have to mind the range anyhow.

take a look at the metal salad build for cataphract. it is not bad at all it can do some serious damage at close range.

other than that? a single lbx10 is and always will be garbage, based on the tonnage alone

[Wintersdark]

Sanlucif3r, on 04 January 2015 - 07:01 PM, said:

LBX10 does 10 dmg and reloads in 2.5 seconds, the range and spread is similar to SRM short range missiles.


the SRM4 does 8.40 dmg and reloads in 3 sec

the srm6 does 12 dmg and reloads in 4 sec


LBX has higher dps than both of them. - however it is also a lot more heavy.


you cannot compare it to AC10, it is more fair to compare it to SRM launchers.


as for it's weight, it is too much of a commitment for what it does and not good enough if you put 1lbx10 in your ride.


if you can put 2 lbx10 or even 3 lbx10 then it stops being so bad and starts getting actually good, but you have to mind the range anyhow.

take a look at the metal salad build for cataphract. it is not bad at all it can do some serious damage at close range.

other than that? a single lbx10 is and always will be garbage, based on the tonnage alone

you absolutely can and should compare an ac10 and LBX ac10. They're comparably sized, and take the same hard point. If you can take one, you can take the other, generally speaking. (yeah, 1s 1t difference).

You do not compare them to SRM's, that's completely ridiculous, as you're never making that choice.

Multiple LBX's isn't good,even on an Atlas (though that specific situation is unique, as your options are very different.

I liked a video above. 300m, firing dual LBX's at a stock cicada (12 st 22 CT armour). It took twenty rounds at 300m to destroy the side torso. An AC10 would have done it in three.

[Wintersdark]

Nightshade24, on 04 January 2015 - 06:26 PM, said:

The IS LBX's do have a place as the pallets still hit quite well within 300 meters and does additional damage to unarmored areas while being colder and 1 ton less and 1 crit less.

you can do 2 LBX 10's on an atlas. But not 2 AC 10's.

That's the reason the LBX 10 is better to the AC 10 at closer range. It has the possibility of doing extra damage. At closer range it is far more accurate then at longer range so the main solid HEAP projectile of the AC 10 isn't as effective versus the LBX 10. the LBX 10 is colder so you can fire it more often which is important for a brawler as you are trying to out damage your opponent and stay colder then them at the same time and the extra ton could be spent on ammo, armour, etc.

For instance

The weight of the LBX will also be a savior when it comes to the Urban mech, out of the 3 variants released one has an LBX 10 stock, meaning it can possibly have an LBX 10 quirk as well... it'll be more popular then the AC10 urbie I can assume due to the extra vital ton.


I'm still taking LBX's over autocannons any day

then you don't understand what you're talking about, because quite frankly Math says you're wrong.

As I just mentioned, at 300m and LBX ac10 spreads so much it hits the entirety of a cicada. 20 rounds to pop a side torso, with 12 armor. That'd absurdly bad, those 20 rounds on an ac10 could have CT cored an Atlas and a cicada.

The "extra damage" part I'm willing to be you don't u destiny at all. All the math is posted earlier in this thread, so I won't bother repeating it, but in short the LBX just isn't better unless you're inside 100m and firing at a huge target. Any other time, it's not just worse, it's substantially worse.

[RazorbeastFXK3]

It's not really a case of which is better than the other since they both have their uses. It depends on the situations you find yourself in and what your goal is when you're going against the opposition.

A lot of players will go for the AC10 because it's pinpoint damage to whatever they're engaged with but you also run the chance of missing your target too. AC10 has a punch where it will jostle your opponent upon a successful hit which is disorienting to them if they're trying to focus.

Some players will prefer the LB10X because it has a less chance of missing your target completely at long ranges than the AC10. If your target is missing armor anywhere you have a better chance of dealing critical damage to internal components. It is not recommended to rely on the LB10X as your main weapon as someone mentioned earlier where you may strip armor from a number of bodyparts of your opponent but since it's not focused damage it will take longer to destroy anything.

I've had a situation where there was a light/medium 'mech sniping from the top of a volcano in Terra Therma and me in my Victor I literally tickled him to death using my LB10X because he was within range and kept playing peekaboo with me. If I had an AC10 equipped I wouldn't have been as successful because he had cover and I'm not a very good shot though I'm working on it.

But yeah.. it all depends on your goal. If you want fast and quick kills with the AC10 or if you want to prolong the death of your opponents using the LB10X and have a better chance at getting more XP/GXP/C-Bills through destroying multiple components. Either way it's good practice to see what you're most comfortable with.

Void2258, on 31 December 2014 - 04:46 PM, said:

Which is better?

[Sanlucif3r]

Wintersdark, on 05 January 2015 - 10:20 AM, said:

you absolutely can and should compare an ac10 and LBX ac10. They're comparably sized, and take the same hard point. If you can take one, you can take the other, generally speaking. (yeah, 1s 1t difference).

You do not compare them to SRM's, that's completely ridiculous, as you're never making that choice.

Multiple LBX's isn't good,even on an Atlas (though that specific situation is unique, as your options are very different.

I liked a video above. 300m, firing dual LBX's at a stock cicada (12 st 22 CT armour). It took twenty rounds at 300m to destroy the side torso. An AC10 would have done it in three.

i disagree they don't have the same function at all, and the triple lbx10 is good.

you're wrong, case closed.

[terrycloth]

LBX10s are vaguely useful. Yeah, they sandblast which is annoying, but if you're using SRMs with them then most of your damage is sandblasting anyway, and they're lighter and cooler. And if you need to plink at someone out of SRM range, the LBX10 will actually hit because of high projectile speed.

Brawling, sandblasting tends to beat pinpoint. Except AC20s. AC20s wreck stuff.

AC10s are utter crap and you should always use AC5s instead.

[Punk Oblivion]

I actually think the AC10's are good. The problem is the AC5 runs super cool and can be stacked due to low slot usage. The AC20 has so much more damage-per-ton and DPS. So the middle ground, the AC10 just doesn't feel right since it gets beat in most comparisons to AC5's and AC20's.

I think a bit more range on the AC10 with 1 less slot used would be a huge buff to the weapon.
The LBX10 needs to be scraped and re-worked to be a GOOD and fun weapon to use.

Also I think the AC20 needs to weigh 2 tons more. That would make all the AC's look better in comparison haha.

Sanlucif3r, on 05 January 2015 - 11:11 AM, said:

i disagree they don't have the same function at all, and the triple lbx10 is good.

you're wrong, case closed.

I am a fan of my triple LBX10 Ilya as stated earlier. It is a fun mech to play in PUG ques and I have some good matches in it. Having said that, I would not say it is a great build. It is not consistent. Things have to go just right to have a great match in it.

Mainly you have to not take damage while the other team has to get their armor pretty shredded up. Then you have to make your push into the enemy while not being noticed right away. Only then can you tear up a match.

3-UAC5's can core an atlas before 3-LBX10's can even strip the armor off one.

[Punk Oblivion]

Also, I was just thinking. a flat increase in damage to internals could be a fun fix to the LBX10.

So each pellet does 1 damage to armor, but a flat 1.3-1.5 damage to internals.

[AllOuttaBubbleGum]

I'm not sure which one is better on paper but lbx's have been more successful for me. They are especially nice late in the game when mechs are beat up. I've not had a lot of success with ac10's.

[William Slayer]

this may have been said earlier in the thread, but I have not had a chance to read all of the entries. For my atlas Ddc I go with the shotgun for the simple fact that it takes up only six critical slots as opposed to the seven needed for the regular autocannon 10. In the Atlas, you can fit 2 of the LBX rather than one ac 10 in the right torso. in this atlas, I am regularly engaging targets at 400 meters or more. And this makes the shotgun a complimentary weapon to my large lasers at that range. Emphasis on complementary.

Edited by William Slayer, 07 January 2015 - 01:11 AM.

[Mad Cow Jenkins]

Its really annoying that certain weapons have been given up (Flamer, LBX10 and SRM random performance) when most weapons have found their place. They could easily dump the cooldown of the LBX 10 without overpowering it in any sort of way, or if they had some extra programming hours reduced the area it hits, i´d expect the pattern to made with some kind of function from a center i mean come on. "Light killer" when the only target you can reliable hit is an awesome.
Just give the LBX a little sugar and we have another one off the list.
For the record i love the gun but have gone tired of picking the "loosing" seup.

[Voivode]

LB10X crits matter a lot more than people give them credit for. Each pellet does damage individually while the AC10 is all in one item. This is 10 chances for critical hits vs 1 chance. Against simple structure that's not really meaningful enough for the limited range, but ammo is 100% guaranteed to explode with a critical hit, regardless of the damage. Against a mech with no leg armor that likely has ammo in that leg (many mechs will) your LB10X has 10 chances to cause an ammo explosion and your AC10 has 1. That's a significant difference.

Beyond that, some mechs get an LB10X buff (Centurion 9D, Orion 1M) and some get an AC10 buff (Hunchback 4H, one of the Dragon heroes) so that's something to consider as well. I use both weapons on different mechs. AC10s work better for mid range combat and Lb10Xs work better for close up work.

[Punk Oblivion]

Mad Cow Jenkins, on 08 January 2015 - 02:08 PM, said:

Just give the LBX a little sugar and we have another one off the list.
For the record i love the gun but have gone tired of picking the "loosing" seup.

I hear you! I was a huge fan of using LPL's. I always used them even though they "sucked". It only took like two years to get a fix for those! Now they are pretty awesome. Maybe by the end of the year the LBX will get buffed up too!

[Nightshade24]

I find it funny how people say LBX is inferrior to the AC conterpart.

I will still use LBX over the AC or UAC counterpart anyday.

[jaxjace]

I notice its good for when light mechs are really close as the spread tends to hit THEM only in one componet, coupled with their already low armor makes for a deadly weapon to crit with.

one more thing to note, ROF of lbx is better.

[Wintersdark]

Voivode, on 08 January 2015 - 02:23 PM, said:

LB10X crits matter a lot more than people give them credit for. Each pellet does damage individually while the AC10 is all in one item. This is 10 chances for critical hits vs 1 chance. Against simple structure that's not really meaningful enough for the limited range, but ammo is 100% guaranteed to explode with a critical hit, regardless of the damage. Against a mech with no leg armor that likely has ammo in that leg (many mechs will) your LB10X has 10 chances to cause an ammo explosion and your AC10 has 1. That's a significant difference.

Beyond that, some mechs get an LB10X buff (Centurion 9D, Orion 1M) and some get an AC10 buff (Hunchback 4H, one of the Dragon heroes) so that's something to consider as well. I use both weapons on different mechs. AC10s work better for mid range combat and Lb10Xs work better for close up work.

Wut? You have absolutely no idea how Critical Hits in MWO work. It's nothing like tabletop.

In a very short nutshell:

Items have health. Critical hits do weapon damage to whatever item they hit (randomly determined). Barring AC20's and Gauss Rifles, items have 10 health (including ammo bins). If an AC10 crits, it does 10 points of damage to one randomly determined item and thus will destroy whatever they crit, barring AC20's, which have more health. Each LBX crit does 2 damage (each pellet would normally do 1 crit damage, but LBX's do double crit damage, so 2). That means you need *FIVE* crits to destroy an item - and that's five crits that actually hit that item.

Ammo only has a 10% chance to explode when destroyed, not 100%. Gauss Rifles have a very high chance (90-95, I forget) and that counts as an ammo destruction but only does 20 damage.

Please.

Learn how crits work (this has all be explained more than once in this thread) before posting nonsense.

A better writeup on crits with more detail is here: http://mwomercs.com/...-a-brief-guide/

It's a bit dated in terms of weapon stats, but the mechanics are completely correct.

[Thorqemada]

The IS AC10 is the first single Slug AC with a killing Punch albeit the AC20 is better but lacks range - AC5/UAC5 are only good if boated.

[Wintersdark]

jaxjace, on 11 January 2015 - 04:19 PM, said:

I notice its good for when light mechs are really close as the spread tends to hit THEM only in one componet, coupled with their already low armor makes for a deadly weapon to crit with.

one more thing to note, ROF of lbx is better.

To land all the LBX pellets on a Light's single hit location is extremely unlikely, requiring <50m range. That's pretty tough at best - in most cases, some pellets will simply miss no matter what you do, and others will splatter all over the place. As I showed earlier, at 300m the spread is so big as to hit every location on a Cicada and miss with some.


If they have armor, the AC10 has a further advantage. 9 points of armor, one 10 point AC10 shell does 1 point of damage to structure. If you do any damage to structure, you get a roll for chances of critical hits. If the AC10 crits, it does 10 point damage crits (each crit then destroying whatever it hits).

In that same case, only 1 LBX pellet would penetrate armor, doing a whopping 2 damage to one internal item.

Both AC10 and LBX-AC10 cycle in 2.5 seconds, so the ROF is not better with the LBX.

[Wintersdark]

Nightshade24, on 11 January 2015 - 04:13 PM, said:

I find it funny how people say LBX is inferrior to the AC conterpart.

I will still use LBX over the AC or UAC counterpart anyday.

There's no IS UAC10, or LBX-AC5. Clan weapons are very different, and should not be confused in this discussion.

In terms of AC10's, the IS AC10 is vastly superior to the LBX in 99% of situations - this is not a subjective opinion but an objective, mathematically provable fact. The LBX is still a 10 damage autocannon and will still hurt things - it's not worthless, it's just not as good. However, comparing Clan AC10, Clan UAC10, and Clan LB-X AC10 is a much different proposition. There's a good argument that the Clan LBX is better than the UAC, though that's more complicated. This, because the Clan (U)AC's fire multiple shells too, so they lose the enormous advantage the IS AC10 has over the IS LB-X AC10.

That you use one doesn't speak to the balance between the two at all. It could be just because you like them (a valid reason to use one, they're awesome fun), because you don't care if they're not as good, or because you don't really understand how they work.