89 replies to this topic

[Sychodemus]

TT: Ultras do not jam; they burn-out/lock up. Rotaries jam. The difference is that jams can be cleared, burn-outs cannot.

VG: Functionally (jams excluded), Ultra AC/5s are definitely superior overall to AC/10s in any kind of simulator due to greater range, lower weight and better rate of fire. But they do use up much more ammunition comparatively and lack the more powerful single hit of the AC/10.

UACs could be more expensive repair-wise, since even if your 'Mech isn't damaged per se, the weapons could jam more often than expected. But, MWO could do away with Ultras locking-up on the grounds that it never made any sense* (ever) but we will have to wait and see.

* The jam chance has long been considered by many to be an example of balance overkill.

Edited by Sychodemus, 08 July 2012 - 11:57 PM.

[Comguard]

Ultra ACs can jam (or not jam - that's a matter of definition ). Maybe they introduce this feature, but it would be rather annoying if your gun randomly stops shooting.

Edited by Comguard, 09 July 2012 - 12:02 AM.

[Vulpesveritas]

Spheroid, on 08 July 2012 - 10:46 PM, said:

206,000 C-bills vs. 209,000 C-bills is minor noise in the overall cost of a mech. If your aim is true those two shots are going to double tap the same body segment.

Yes, but you're eating through ammo twice as fast, over a few hundred matches that adds up. Over the tens or hundreds of thousands of matches you will likely play over the length of playing MWO, think about the savings in C-bills!

[Iron Harlequin]

If that were the case then why does the former exist?

thats kind of a stupid question, no offense, just why would they have certain weapons if they werent viable?

[Engineering]

OP: The LB10-X will make the AC/10 Obsolete not the UAC5. Same damage longer range lighter and smaller with extra utility if you have more than 1 ton of ammo on your mech. LB10-X is superior to the AC/10 in every way shape and form except for $.

Iron Harlequin, on 09 July 2012 - 12:37 AM, said:

If that were the case then why does the former exist?

thats kind of a stupid question, no offense, just why would they have certain weapons if they werent viable?

You have to remember that level 1 tech was balanced against level 1 tech. When the Level 2 stuff came in it made a whole lot of the level 1 tech less useful.

[PaintedWolf]

LOL hell no. At least not on TT. That Ultra-5s are not as concentrated of damage, meaning they are exponentially inferior against thinner armor. Also, firing at Ultra Rates can Jam. In TT this is bad, in Real-Time this is worse. Anyways 10 damage vs. 5 can make a world of difference when we are talking Mechs with an average of 8 armor per location.

[Moriarte]

There might not be a minimum range for firing autocannons in MWO but that doesn't mean it has 100% effectiveness at short ranges.

Also I wonder how they will implement convergence if you suddenly have to switch targets, it might be possible that aiming for that dot on your peripheral vision and ending up shooting at that cockpit filling shadow in front of you will have diminished damage.

[Strum Wealh]

AC-10
Mass: 12.0 tons
Volume: 7 criticals
Max. Effective Range: 450 meters
Damage per Salvo: 10 units
Heat per Salvo: 3 units
Salvos per Ton of Ammunition: 10 salvos
Cost (weapon): 200,000 c-bills
Cost (ammunition): 6,000 c-bills per ton

Ultra AC-5
Mass: 9.0 tons
Volume: 5 criticals
Max. Effective Range: 600 meters
Damage per Salvo: 5 units (10 units in "ultra mode"?)
Heat per Salvo: 1 unit (2 units in "ultra mode"?)
Salvos per Ton of Ammunition: 20 salvos (10 salvos in "ultra mode"?)
Cost (weapon): 200,000 c-bills
Cost (ammunition): 9,000 c-bills per ton

Depending on how the Devs implement "ultra mode" (personally, I would prefer to see a straight halving of the recycle time (compared to a standard AC-5) rather than the "quarter-second double-tap" style used in MW4), concentrating the UAC-5's damage output to match that of the AC-10 may prove challenging.

Even if that is the case, the UAC-5 would be 50% more costly in terms of c-bills per unit of damage (90 cb/dmg for the UAC-5 versus 60 cb/dmg for the AC-10), as well as slightly more costly to acquire once ammunition is included.

However, the UAC-5 would be less massive (by ~33%), less bulky (by ~29%), longer-ranged (by ~33%), and produce less heat per unit of damage (by ~33%).

While the AC-10 is not without its advantages, the UAC-5 does (IMO) make a rather strong case for itself...

[Thorn Hallis]

Engineering, on 09 July 2012 - 03:31 AM, said:

OP: The LB10-X will make the AC/10 Obsolete not the UAC5. Same damage longer range lighter and smaller with extra utility if you have more than 1 ton of ammo on your mech. LB10-X is superior to the AC/10 in every way shape and form except for $.

I think that depends on if it will be possible to switch between cluster and HEAP rounds for the LBX10 and if the cluster rounds spread as much as in the tabletop.

[Future Perfect]

Thorn Hallis, on 09 July 2012 - 05:08 AM, said:

I think that depends on if it will be possible to switch between cluster and HEAP rounds for the LBX10 and if the cluster rounds spread as much as in the tabletop.

Yeah cluster rounds will be useless at medium and long ranges.

[grimzod]

Spheroid, on 08 July 2012 - 10:40 PM, said:

In TT ultra weapons never do double the damge because they miss more than half the time fired giving them an average damage of 1.454545 * base damage.

However unless random spread is present I can see both rounds easily conecting during a head on merg.

An AC-10 with one ton of ammo is nearly the same cost as an UAC-5 with one ton. The UAC-5 is lighter, cooler and takes up less crits. We also know that minimum range is going out the window for autocannons. Why should I put an AC-10 in any custom design?

The only way I could see to make both weapons competitive is to play up the jamming risk on the ultras or reduce the firing rate of ultras to match their effective TT damage which would be between the AC-5 and AC-10.


Thoughts?

Solution: don't give Ultras to feces eating monkey pilots with low gunner skills. Only good pilots can really take advantage of them.

Reason for ac5 vs ac10: available weight and space/crits. use what you can in the build. Preferring one over the other is needless.

[627]

sorry for the noob-question but i have to ask. In the novels, one autocannon "shot" was one magazine with 100 rounds (for example in Graysons shadow hawk with the AC/5).

In the videos of mwo, it seems to be only one shot, not a burst of many rounds. Is this based on the size of the AC?
(If i remember it correctly in Mechwarrior 3 the small ACs did have a burst sound, the big ACs were oneshotters)

So for the UAC/5 would one shot trigger 200 rounds/2 magazines?

[Damascas]

They said a long time ago they would be getting rid of min range for ballistic weapons, I believe that the UAC5 will not obsolete the AC10 because it has been tough in almost every mech game up to this point to keep your sights on the same section such as a torso section or leg so the AC10 is likely to be more damage on on area per shot on within a time period since the only real point of the UAC5 is that it fires faster than the AC5 so you will likely be really spraying rounds and there is also the possibility of that UAC5 becoming a dead man's gun.

[Reoh]

Let me introduce you to my little friend.
Rotary AC \ 5 (fires up to 6 times per round)

You think too small OP!

[Sychodemus]

627, on 09 July 2012 - 05:43 AM, said:

sorry for the noob-question but i have to ask. In the novels, one autocannon "shot" was one magazine with 100 rounds (for example in Graysons shadow hawk with the AC/5).

In the videos of mwo, it seems to be only one shot, not a burst of many rounds. Is this based on the size of the AC?
(If i remember it correctly in Mechwarrior 3 the small ACs did have a burst sound, the big ACs were oneshotters)

So for the UAC/5 would one shot trigger 200 rounds/2 magazines?

You're talking about an author's interpretation. Depending on the writer or game, you will find a different description. (The "official rulebooks" use "a rapid-fire stream or burst" as the default description for most ACs without going into any real specific details.)

The MWO version appears to be a single "shot" regardless of AC size. This may change by launch.

[Drenar]

One thing that's slightly confusing me:

I saw mention of UACs using the Cluster Hits table in this thread. I could be mis-remembering (I don't have any rulebooks myself, so I can't check) but I thought the UAC just used two gunnery checks, with the second one being at a penalty (and only being rolled if the first one hit.)

So (to pull numbers out of my ***) if it was a +2 penalty to double-tap, and my standard to-hit on a given Mech with that weapon for a turn was an 8, I'd have to first roll an 8, then if I did, I would have to roll a 10 to hit with the second shot. (which is where the rolling a 2 for a critical failure/jam would come in.)

Am I mistaken?

[DarkendMoon]

I think the AC-10 will go the way of the dinosaur as far as in game goes. But in the Mechwarrior universe I don't think so. There would be organizations that used it such as Pirates or any low budget groups. Terrorists ect who would not have access to the weapon. Also something I was thinking on they inferred with the developer remarks that at some point there would be historical battles. Maybe rebuilt Mechs that you have to select from that were actually in the battle. That would be pretty frigen sweet.

[Murphy7]

Drenar, on 09 July 2012 - 06:30 AM, said:

One thing that's slightly confusing me:

I saw mention of UACs using the Cluster Hits table in this thread. I could be mis-remembering (I don't have any rulebooks myself, so I can't check) but I thought the UAC just used two gunnery checks, with the second one being at a penalty (and only being rolled if the first one hit.)

So (to pull numbers out of my ***) if it was a +2 penalty to double-tap, and my standard to-hit on a given Mech with that weapon for a turn was an 8, I'd have to first roll an 8, then if I did, I would have to roll a 10 to hit with the second shot. (which is where the rolling a 2 for a critical failure/jam would come in.)

Am I mistaken?

I don't know, it has been so long. I know that functionally we used the SRM 2 chart if a ultra autocannon fired in that mode hit, to determine the number of shots that land.

In a way, it was kind of overbalanced - you had a chance to jam, on hitting, you had roughly even chance of missing with the extra projectile anyway, while still chewing through ammo at double the rate and accruing double the heat. But it may have been a bastardization of the rules that was meant to simplify and keep things moving.

[Sundiver]

There should be no minimum range for any type of AC. When that round leaves the barrel it's already travelling at it's maximum velocity everything from there is downhill.

[Sept Wolfke]

responding directly to the topic title, I sense the ultra AC-5 is going to be much like a large laser in that you have to hold your targetting reticle on the target, but it'll be (obviously) a ballistic option for those who have mechs with ballistic hardpoints but want that large laser class weapon to be mounted and have no other way of accomplishing it.

the AC-10 is more like a ballistic version of the PPC, trading the drawback of heat (from the PPC) for limited ammunition (AC10).

I don't see why the ultra AC-5 would replace the AC-10 since they're as different as a large laser and a PPC. one does dispersed damage and one does all it's damage to one location. there are pros and cons to each weapon system and they're different enough that I think there will always remain a desire for both weapons.