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This evening I took my Annihilator out to HPG manifold and tested 12 IS ballistic weapons on an awesome. I took notes of how long they took to kill the Atlas, how much ammo they required, and some other facts:
I made an error on the Ultra AC/20 heat required for kill, it should be 56 and 58.3 respectively.
Sorry, if it's a little hard to read, I had trouble figuring out how to post a table on the forum.
Theory heat required for the kill = the amount of heat you'd expect to generate firing enough shots for a kill.
Tons for 10 second kill = A measurement of weight efficiency. If you brought enough of that single weapon type to kill the Awesome in 10 seconds, how many tons of weapons + ammo would that be?
Structure for 10 second kill = a measurement of weapon size efficiency. If you brought enough of that single weapon type to kill the Awesome in 10 seconds, how many slots would the weapons and ammo take up?
Some takeaways:
LBX does perhaps 10% more damage than the corresponding AC, but the pellets aren't going to hit the same component unless you're very close. LB 2-x is probably as efficient as the AC/2 at 400 meters, LB 5-x is probably as efficient as the AC/5 at around 300m, the LB 10-x is about 175m, and the LB 20-x is efficient within 150m or so. If you're outside those ranges, you're better off using an Autocannon or Ultra Autocannon, which are good for vastly longer ranges.
AC/2 > UAC/2, but AC20 < UAC20. The bigger you get, the better the Ultra upgrade was. One reason is because Ultras cost one ton more than their AC counterpart... in the 2 size it's a 17% difference between 6 tons and 7, but in the 20 size it's only a 7% difference between 14 tons and 15. Also, the Ultra AC/2 in particular seemed to be difficult to get the dual fire going reliably - Maybe I'm just not good at clicking that fast. Lastly, when your weapon does Jam, the UAC jams for long enough to be worth ducking into cover and then re-engaging. If one of your Ultra AC/2 jams, you're not going to want to do that.
There's a lot of RNG with the Ultras. When they don't jam, they lead to some very fast kills. But when your UAC 10 jams 4 times, you're going to be cursing them.
I don't think there's any size of the LBX where the 10% dps increase at point blank range is worth the 40% dps decrease at midrange (and probably 80% dps decrease at long range!). The damage drop off is just too extreme. I don't see much point in running Ultra AC/2 when you can run AC/2. AC 5 and UAC 5 are close to the same both in heat and damage, so that's a wash. The UAC 10 jammed too much to be economical, might just be rng... but I would probably go with the AC/10 over the UAC 10 anyway because the heat difference is pretty big. I would definitely take the Ultra AC/20 over the AC/20 though, the difference in damage is just so good! I wouldn't want to put two Ultra AC/20 on the same mech though, because of ghost heat.
Winners: AC/2, UAC/20
Decent: AC/5, UAC/5, AC/10, UAC/10, AC/20.
Do not want: LBX-anything, UAC/2.
Edited by Hank Chapel, 16 March 2018 - 06:48 AM.
