2 replies to this topic

[MechWarrior Black Knight]

Dont know if good place on forum but i ask there: what is purpose of regular AutoCanons in clan tech where ultra auto canons can fire faster and take less space, i know by lore that Clan Canons and LBX are same just clan canons have alternate fire and shoot lbx with alternate fire.
So why PGI decide to put useles? Regular clan canons? where if they cant do alternate weapon fire just add 2 ultra and lbx canons?

[Vxheous]

It is because "lore" clan LBX cannons can shoot both cluster shells and single shells by an ammo toggle, but PGI could not program ammo switching. So they created Clan AC's to be placeholder for people to use if they did not want the jamming UAC mechanic. Problem is, the CAC weighs more, has longer cooldown than the CUAC counterpart, but both of them shoot shell streams, unlike IS AC's single shot. This makes the CAC completely useless. Had the tradeoff of the CAC weighing more and having longer cooldown was to shoot a single shell (like they are supposed to), then it would be a good choice. I would go as far as to say that almost no one would use the CUAC versions.

Edited by Vxheous Kerensky, 29 December 2015 - 03:51 PM.

[martian]

MechWarriorBK, on 29 December 2015 - 02:23 PM, said:

Dont know if good place on forum but i ask there: what is purpose of regular AutoCanons in clan tech where ultra auto canons can fire faster and take less space, i know by lore that Clan Canons and LBX are same just clan canons have alternate fire and shoot lbx with alternate fire.
So why PGI decide to put useles? Regular clan canons? where if they cant do alternate weapon fire just add 2 ultra and lbx canons?

1) In actual BattleTech, the Clans do not use regular ACs on their 'Mechs. They use either Ultra ACs (that pack twice the firepower of standard ACs) or LBX ACs (that can switch between solid slugs or cluster shots). So in BattleTech universe those MWO Clan regular ACs simply do not exist.

2) As for MWO, PGI was too lazy to program working LBX ACs that would use both types of ammo available to them. So MWO LBX Autocannons fire only cluster rounds. Have you noticed that in MWO Clan LBX-10 and Clan Regular AC-10 have identical weight and number of slots? Identical price? Identical range and heat?

That's because one method of programming switchable ammo is that you program not a switchable ammo, but switchable "ghost" weapon with no weight. And when you press the button to switch the ammo feed, you are actually telling the computer (the game engine) to fire the "other" weapon placed in the same slot, but firing the other kind of ammo. Those Clan regular ACs are just abandoned remnant of such programming effort, if you know what I mean.

As Russ Bullock said himself, the only programmer, who knew how to program working LBX ACs in that mess of modified MWO CryEngine, no longer works for PGI.