26 replies to this topic

[Walks_In_Circles]

Hello Everyone,

I have been playing Battletech since I was nine, and it has taken me till now to have discovered the glory of the auto cannon. I've always been an energy weapons fanatic, but I cannot refuse the new auto cannon in MWO. I am not new to the auto cannon, however it seems so much more powerful in this iteration; perhaps it's only the recoil, the sound, or the impact effect it has on other mechs.

I'm currently piloting a K2-Cat with four med lasers and dual Ultra AC/5's. The mech is an absolute beast, but a bit of a glass cannon. The only fault in the loadout besides the gigantic CT all Cats have, is the potential for my Ultra AC/5's to jam. I've swapped them out for normal AC/5's to see if it is any better, and I cannot make up my mind. Which is more efficient? Should I go with the higher DPS and learn to tame my happy trigger finger, or swap it out for the other and not worry about it?

I understand it's a question of preference, but I am curious what the community thinks of the two weapons. So I pose the question:

Which is better, AC/5 or Ultra AC/5

EDIT:
I think it's worth noting that statistically, the UAC/5 has double the rate of fire as the normal AC/5 despite a dps that would hint otherwise. Looking back, I realized I never pointed this out and was simply on the asumption it would be known.

Edited by Hrothmar, 21 September 2013 - 09:03 AM.

[Levi Porphyrogenitus]

It depends on what you want.

More dps, more burst, or a touch of RNG Fever? Go UAC5.

More ammo per ton (which means more total damage), more space, more free weight, more reliability, or more range? Go AC5.

It's actually a relevant choice now, after the recent UAC5 change. It also makes macros largely redundant.

[Shadey99]

I don't really do ballistics on my K2... Probably because I have my Jagers for that and the ballistics mount so low on a Cat... However... If you go UAC5s you need solid secondary weapons on par or close to the output of the UAC5s. For example probably the build I do best in in my Firebrand is a 2xUAC5+2xLPL... Yes everyone says the LPLs are horrible, but 10 damage with a lower duration than the LLs I find them a solid pairing. I only really fire the LPLs when either the UAC5s are jammed (all to frequent) or when I absolutely positively must kill something this moment or die.... If I'm firing them both it's an instant 30 damage and each arm at least will hit the same area.

Btw the AC5 was always a choice... I have 2xAC5+PPC builds I did well in... And even 2xAC2s+2xPPCs can work well (though runs hot either way).

[Walks_In_Circles]

Levi - The ultra sound more appealing all around, but I have always had rotten luck and RNG requires more than I have. Here lies my problem.

Shadey - You pose a very good point, the secondary weapon is crucial during a jam. The four med lasers I use seem to do well enough. Two med lasers have 10 damage, 8 heat, a cooldown of 3, and range of 540. Compared to a single large laser; which has 9 damage, 7 heat, a cooldown of 3.25, but a range of 900. The large pulse laser does 10.6 damage, 8.5 heat, same cooldown and 600 range. Overall I have to give an edge to the med lasers, partly due to less heat and partly because I have to shed more armor to fit the LL and the LPL.

Thanks for the good insight. I will have to play around with it more.

[Royalewithcheese]

I like UACs for peeking, personally, and have had a lot of luck with the 2xUAC/4xMLas on a Jager. But it is a lot closer now than it was pre-nerf haha.

The new math basically boils down to this: before 5 seconds, UAC > AC, after 5 seconds, AC > UAC.

[Walks_In_Circles]

That... is very helpful.

[Jin Ma]

i'm going to do some test runs on trial map

Edit: So shooting an atlas in the front armor.

took 44s to kill with AC5
took 38s to kill with UAC5 (average of 10 trials)

AC5 DPS is 3.33
UAC5 DPS is 3.87

AC5 average cooldown is 1.50s
UAC5 average cooldown is 1.23s

which means UAC5 does about 16% more DPS then AC5.

seems fairly balanced to me. at least relative to the AC5
(check my math)

Edited by Jin Ma, 20 September 2013 - 07:55 PM.

[Pendraco]

I must be unlucky, post patch they jam WAY to often. Usually on the 2nd shot...I pulled the uac's off my Mudermets and now run 3 ac 5's and 2 large lasers. It is far more effective with luck out of the picture.

[Jin Ma]

i feel like UAC5s jam way more often when used in more than 1 at a time

[Walks_In_Circles]

Quote

i feel like UAC5s jam way more often when used in more than 1 at a time

hmmm... Lets do some math.

I fired a single Ultra AC/5, without pause, until it jammed 7 times, and then again with dual Ultra AC/5's and took the mean of each.

Here's a table:

Single | Dual
23 | 6
1 | 2
7 | 7
7 | 15
9 | 7
15 | 5
5 | 9

With these numbers, a single Ultra had a mean of 9.5 shots before jamming when fired without pause. However, Dual Ultras had only a mean of 7.5 shots. Therefore, You are correct Jin Ma, however, with 5 dmg per shot, a single ultra will do a mean of 47.5 dmg before it jams while dual Ultras will do 73 dmg at twice the punch.

So in conclusion, Duals will jam more often than a single, however dealing more damage before they do.

Edited by Hrothmar, 20 September 2013 - 07:33 PM.

[Jin Ma]

Hrothmar, on 20 September 2013 - 07:09 PM, said:

So in conclusion, yes a single jams less often, however Duals will do more damage.

Though according to that math the average damage for the dual UAC5 is 11 less than for the single UAC5

can anybody confirm ghost jamming penalty?

Edited by Jin Ma, 20 September 2013 - 07:17 PM.

[Koniving]

If you love ACs now... You might like this old attempt at introducing variants. Since the video I've learned some new things (the gun that can't be used in an Atlas in one of the books is the Cauldron Born's Devastator UAC/20 not a single shot AC/20), Chemjet Gun actually fires 4 rounds from the lore it's introduced in. Few other things.



I gotta update those annotations. (The general consensus in the comments is keep the single shot AC/20 and instead change its DPS from 5 to 4, meaning 5 second reload while the multi-shot ones keep the 5 DPS [always 4 seconds between trigger pulls]).

Edited by Koniving, 20 September 2013 - 07:25 PM.

[Walks_In_Circles]

Jin Ma, on 20 September 2013 - 06:19 PM, said:

i'm going to do some test runs on trial map

Edit: So shooting an atlas in the front armor.

took 44s to kill with AC5
took 38s to kill with UAC5 (average of 10 trials)

AC5 DPS is 3.33
UAC5 DPS is 3.87

AC5 average cooldown is 1.50s
UAC5 average cooldown is 1.23s

which means UAC5 does about 16% more DPS then AC5.

seems fairly balanced to me. at least relative to the AC5
(check my math)

Seems all and well, however without knowing the number of shots, I cannot check your DPS. I can deduce that each weapon fires 29 times with the data you have provided. As both weapons deal the same damage, the UAC/5 would have a higher DPS of 16.72%.

Jin Ma, on 20 September 2013 - 07:16 PM, said:

Though according to that math the average damage for the dual UAC5 is 11 less than for the single UAC5

can anybody confirm ghost jamming penalty?

This is true, UAC/5 looses an average of 12.6% of it's damage before it jams when dual wielded.

And what exactly is this ghost jamming penalty?

Koniving, on 20 September 2013 - 07:17 PM, said:

If you love ACs now... You might like this old attempt at introducing variants. Since the video I've learned some new things (the gun that can't be used in an Atlas in one of the books is the Cauldron Born's Devastator UAC/20 not a single shot AC/20), Chemjet Gun actually fires 4 rounds from the lore it's introduced in. Few other things.

I gotta update those annotations. (The general consensus in the comments is keep the single shot AC/20 and instead change its DPS from 5 to 4, meaning 5 second reload while the multi-shot ones keep the 5 DPS [always 4 seconds between trigger pulls]).

That 10 shot variant would be top! It makes a lot of sense and adds a huge balancing mechanic (pun not intended) to have mechs fall over, both when firing and taking hits. Sure a medium or heavy mech could use an AC/20 but it would topple over each time. The same mech could run a different variant without the tumble OR upgrade it's gyro to compensate! clever.

Edited by Hrothmar, 20 September 2013 - 09:22 PM.

[Jin Ma]

Hrothmar, on 20 September 2013 - 09:10 PM, said:

Seems all and well, however without knowing the number of shots, I cannot check your DPS. I can deduce that each weapon fires 29 times with the data you have provided. As both weapons deal the same damage, the UAC/5 would have a higher DPS of 16.72%.

yup fired around 30 rounds into an atlas' front to core. of course these numbers are rounded

[Jin Ma]

Hrothmar, on 20 September 2013 - 09:10 PM, said:

This is true, UAC/5 looses an average of 12.6% of it's damage before it jams when dual wielded.

And what exactly is this ghost jamming penalty?

I actually did some numbers firing insequence 22 shots with 1 UAC5. and 22 shots with 2UAC5. This was tested because it took 22 shots to core awesome from front. so i didn't have to count the shots out.

the number of jams came out to be about the same over 22 consecutive shots.

[80sGlamRockSensation David Bowie]

¿Porque no los dos?

[Walks_In_Circles]

As Jin Ma presented, the UAC/5 has a dps of 3.87 and a single UAC/5 will deal 110 dmg over 22 shots, therefore it will take approximately 28 secs of continuous fire to core an awesome. A normal AC/5 has a dps of 3.33 and therefore will core an Awesome in 33 secs. When dealing strictly with averages, the UAC/5 will still come out on top, jamming included.

Lets test:

I timed how long it takes to core an Awesome, four times, first with the AC/5 and then did the same with the UAC/5.

Here's a table: (in secs)

AC/5 | UAC/5
32.3s | 21.3s (jams 2 times)
31.9s | 27.2s (jams 3 times)
32.5s | 31.8s (jams 4 times)
31.6s | 26.2s (jams 3 times)

As you can see, the mean of the AC/5 (32s) is as one could expect since there are no variables in it's rate of fire as reflected in my calculation above. The mean of the UAC/5, however is lower by 1.4s with 26.6s. Looking at these numbers the UAC/5 cored the Awesome both faster and slower than the AC/5, but even the longest time on the UAC/5 only was slower than the AC/5's fastest by .2 seconds. On average, the UAC/5 beat the AC/5 by 4.4 seconds. Additionally these numbers give the UAC/5 a dps of 4.1 and the AC/5 a dps of 3.4. These values are comparable to those of Jin Ma and discrepancies between the two can be bridged with a larger number pool to average.

Conclusion: Despite the inherent risk of jamming, the UAC/5 can fire 22 shots faster than the AC/5. We know this already, right? wrong. I will run more numbers to get more accurate averages, but this tells us that even with the risk of jamming, the UAC/5 still out performs it's predecessor considerably.

Now lets compare stat trade offs:

Value | AC/5 | UAC/5
tons | 8 | 9
dmg | 5 | 5
heat | 1 | 1
range | 620 | 600
max range | 1700 | 1800
ammo | 30 | 25
dps (my calculation) | 3.4 | 4.1

The UAC/5 weighs 1 ton more, has 100m additional range and 5 less ammo per ton compared to the AC/5. That coupled with the additional dps makes for a fair yet still more powerful trade off.



So I am fairly confident that we can say the UAC/5 is better than the AC/5.

What are your thoughts?

Edited by Hrothmar, 21 September 2013 - 06:43 AM.

[Bishop Steiner]

Hrothmar, on 20 September 2013 - 11:24 PM, said:

As Jin Ma presented, the UAC/5 has a dps of 3.87 and a single UAC/5 will deal 110 dmg over 22 shots, therefore it will take approximately 28 secs of continuous fire to core an awesome. A normal AC/5 has a dps of 3.33 and therefore will core an Awesome in 33 secs. When dealing strictly with averages, the UAC/5 will still come out on top, jamming included.

Lets test:

I timed how long it takes to core an Awesome, four times, first with the AC/5 and then did the same with the UAC/5.

Here's a table: (in secs)

AC/5 | UAC/5
32.3s | 21.3s
31.9s | 27.2s
32.5s | 31.8s
31.6s | 26.2s

As you can see, the mean of the AC/5 (32s) is as one could expect since there are no variables in it's rate of fire and as reflected in my calculation above. The mean of the UAC/5 is 26.6s, which is lower than my previous calculation. looking at these numbers the UAC/5 cored the Awesome both faster and slower than the AC/5, but even the longest time on the UAC/5 only was slower than the AC/5s fastest by .2 seconds. On average, the UAC/5 beat the AC/5 by 4.4 seconds. Additionally these numbers give the UAC/5 a dps of 4.1 and the AC/5 a dps of 3.4. These numbers are close to those of Jin Ma and discrepancies between the two can be bridged with a larger number base to average.

Conclusion: Despite the risk of jamming, the UAC/5 does in fact core an Awesome faster than an AC/5.

Now lets compare stat trade offs:

Value | AC/5 | UAC/5
tons | 8 | 9
dmg | 5 | 5
heat | 1 | 1
cd| 1.5s | 1.5s
range | 1700 | 1800
ammo | 30 | 25
dps (my calculation) | 3.4 | 4.1

The UAC/5 weighs 1 ton more, has 100m additional range and 5 less ammo per ton compared to the AC/5. That coupled with the additional dps makes for a fair yet still more powerful trade off.



So I am fairly confident that we can say the UAC/5 is better than the AC/5.

What are your thoughts?

I need to do an extreme range AC5 test, as I find it odd that in Smurfy the AC5 has a 20 meter better optimal range, but a 100 meter worse extreme range. Otherwise your numbers fall in line with my eye test and gut feeling. Glad to see my instincts are still pretty good. Be back with the range test later.


*Edit* Well finding a spot, even on Alpine to shoot something at 1800 meters is a pain in the testing ground. FInally found a spot on the back ridge where I could still see the Catapult. Didn't give it empirical testing, but NEITHER weapon scored hits at 1800 meters. I could not find many places to test in between, but the AC5 did indeed start registering at 1700, the UAC I know did at 1730. But could not fins a spot to test in between.

Edited by Bishop Steiner, 21 September 2013 - 06:17 AM.

[Walks_In_Circles]

I ran four more runs with the UAC/5 and added them to the pool of averages.

UAC/5 (seconds) | # of Jams
21.3s | 2
27.2s | 3
31.8s | 4
26.2s | 3
16.8s | 0
22.3s | 2
27.2s | 3
32.6s | 3

When adding these four new times, the averages is actually lowered to 23 seconds. However this now poses another question. If you look at the table above, there are four values that all jam a total of three times, all of them all take about 27 secs to fire 22 shots; that is. all but one. "user error" is never a valid excuse for discrepancies in data. Though that last value looks a bit off, I assure you that it is correct. Therefore, does the time it takes to unjam a weapon also vary?

Edited by Hrothmar, 21 September 2013 - 06:47 AM.

[Walks_In_Circles]

Bishop Steiner, on 21 September 2013 - 05:47 AM, said:

I need to do an extreme range AC5 test, as I find it odd that in Smurfy the AC5 has a 20 meter better optimal range, but a 100 meter worse extreme range... Didn't give it empirical testing, but NEITHER weapon scored hits at 1800 meters. I could not find many places to test in between, but the AC5 did indeed start registering at 1700, the UAC I know did at 1730. But could not fins a spot to test in between.

I haven't looked into extreme rang before. Does dmg decrease over range as the stats would suggest? Looks like something that we can test.