Valder, on 07 November 2012 - 10:26 PM, said:
Not exactly. Max fire is achieved simply by using group fire or using 3 triggers held down at the same time to simulate group fire. It has nothing to do if the fire simultaneously or not, as long as you're using group fire, because you can stagger the recycle times and they'll still fire at max speed individually.
No. It is exactly the maximum rate of fire.
Pull the trigger once and hold it down. With that trigger pull you fire 3 rounds. The exact instant the weapon gets off cooldown, the three weapons will fire again. There is no downtime, no delay. You are literally emptying your ammo bins at the maximum possible rate.
If you look at the big picture, you also fire your ac2's at the maximum rate of fire, except you jump through some hoops to offset the start times of weapon 2 and weapon 3. For a short period every cycle, you are most certainly lagging behind the alpha strike. But that delay is mostly negligible. Over time, you are also throwing rounds down range at the maximum rate. Your technique matches the rate of fire of holding down alpha strike, but never exceeds it. No, DPS isn't the problem you have to worry about. Staggering your fire has a much different problem.
You need to accurately place 3x as many shots on target. With an alpha, your shots are pretty much guaranteed to all strike the same location. Comparatively, it takes significantly more effort to place each of the three shots in your burst into the same section. This is why headcapper 6x PPC awesomes alpha strike rather than chain fire. If you want to hit a section with 6 ppcs, it is MUCH easier to throw them all into one basket and make one good shot than to make the same shot six times in a row.
There are some reasons to stagger fire.
1: If an alpha would overkill a target (this is the only time you would stagger fire in some old xwing games. Tie fighters folded easy). 1 really doesn't apply here in MWO because mechs are far more resilient than tie-fighters.
2: To "shake up the enemy" with screenshake by placing the weapon fire times equidistant on the cycle. Minimizing the time between screenshakes.
3: To level out your heat generation.
So yeah, your burst looks visually impressive. Which is cool. Great for vids. But it does nothing to increase your damage output rate. If anything, it improves enemy survivability by reducing your capability to place all three rounds on a single section.
Edited by GeneralArmchair, 07 November 2012 - 10:57 PM.
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