15 replies to this topic

[Hellkyte]

I am trying to write a quick guide abou when you should and when you shouldn't use chain fire, as I see it used improperly a lot (like chain firing a swaybacks 7 small lasers or a dragons 3 AC 2s.). The impression I had was that the cycle time for chain firing was hardcoded, but now that I think about it I'm a bit confused. On my Atlas chain firing 4 LL makes sense because the cool downs time up pretty well with the chain fire. So with LL cool down of 3.25s that means that the cycle time should be ~0.825s. But in a dragon chain firing 2 AC 2s the fire speed does seem to be (slightly) faster than the 0.5 s cool down of a single AC2, which doesn't follow from the LL example.

Is there something wrong with my math here? Or is the cycle time on chain fire not actually static? Any thoughts?

[Namwons]

how chain fire works:
Hold chain fire weapon group= one weapon fired. after that weapon has fired completely, the next weapon in the group is fired if its ready off cool down.
Tapping chain fire group= one group fired. next weapon in group will fire on next tap if its ready even if the first weapon fired is still not completely done firing.

[Hellkyte]

So your saying that with a rapid tap you could chain fire 4AC2s at a ridiculous speed?

I'm not sure it waits for the gun to finish firing. If it did then 4LL would take 4s to cycle through, and I'm pretty sure rs faster than that by a lot. Also I'm pretty sure that I've seen beams overlap while holdin down chain fire, but maybe that's because I let off the mouse and hit it again.

[Namwons]

you still have to wait for recycle times but if there all ready to fire, you can tap them all under half second but still have to wait for recyle to refire. so you can burst it out or have a steady stream.

[Aesaar]

Hellkyte, on 21 November 2012 - 09:32 AM, said:

So your saying that with a rapid tap you could chain fire 4AC2s at a ridiculous speed?

Oh yes. If you played at all post-patch, you've probably seen a CTF-4X doing this.

[Hellkyte]

Is it acceptable to use a macro to do that? I love the idea of firing every 1/8 sec but I don't want to damage my mouse/kb, and to be honest I'm not even sure I can do it that fast.

[MagicHamsta]

Hellkyte, on 21 November 2012 - 10:41 AM, said:

Is it acceptable to use a macro to do that? I love the idea of firing every 1/8 sec but I don't want to damage my mouse/kb, and to be honest I'm not even sure I can do it that fast.

Unless your mouse has been poorly made, it won't really be damaged much by the clicks.
(.-.)

[Hauser]

There is an easier solution.

Set two weapon groups with two AC2's each. Put these on chain fire.

Set a third weapon group with all four AC2's.

Start shooting with the first two weapon groups. Once both groups have shot once, start shooting the third group.

Edited by Hauser, 22 November 2012 - 07:00 AM.

[KerenskyClone]

Please dont kill me for asking a noob question. How do I chain fire weapons within a group???

Is there a key that toggles chain fire?

I havent seen a key bind in game that will allow me to cycle chain fire weapons so Im clueless? Help?

[Tarl Cabot]

Arrow keys to click the weapon group, then backspace key to set chainfire on/off.

[Hauser]

KerenskyClone, on 23 November 2012 - 10:06 AM, said:

I havent seen a key bind in game that will allow me to cycle chain fire weapons so Im clueless? Help?

It's been patched in only a short while ago. Hasn't made it to the options menu yet.

[Raso]

Hauser, on 23 November 2012 - 02:15 PM, said:

It's been patched in only a short while ago. Hasn't made it to the options menu yet.

Yeah I accidentally bound something else to backspace then had to restore default settings to the entire game just to get my chain fire back. Very lame. :/

[Felicitatem Parco]

If you have quad AC (a pair in two different body parts), then put each pair in its own weapons group on one of the mouse buttons and program them both to chain fire, then just left-click-and-hold immediately before right-clicking-and-holding. That'll give you two staggered pairs of AC/2 rapid firing (and you can make the guns on the left arm set to the left mouse button and vice versa to help you when shooting around obstacles and from behind partial cover ;-)

Edited by Prosperity Park, 23 November 2012 - 06:54 PM.

[Lauranis]

There is an oddity with AC/2's and chain fire, that I have identified whilst using a pair on an AS7-D. Trying to articulate the problem has however prevented me from posting on it until now, but I will attempt to:

1) a single AC/2 fires every 0.5 seconds

2) 2 AC/2's in a weapon group, fire simultaneously, fire 2 shots every 0.5 seconds, for 4 shots per second.

3) 2 AC/2's in a weapon group, using chain fire, still only fire a round once every 0.5 seconds, for 2 shots per second

It appears that that the chain fire does not cycle quick enough to take advantage of the AC/2's fire rate, therefore in order to get the full use of the fire rate the AC/2's have to be in separate fire groups, and the fire rate managed manually by staggering the initial shot.

I initially assumed this was a localised problem to the Atlas and its configuration, but the introduction of the Cataphract, testing with quad AC/2 setups, and other user accounts seem to indicate that this is a global "issue". I have certainly noticed that the ROF on the Cataphract using AC/2's suffers a similar problem (to the point I have now bound each of the 4 AC/2's to their own weapons groups to get them all firing at top rate)

Looking at the OP, you are certainly going to have to ascertain what exactly is the cycle rate of chain fire, and to test if that cycle rate is universal. I strongly suspect that chain fire is a flat rate, around half a second.

Edited by Lauranis, 24 November 2012 - 07:04 AM.

[WarfieldSRT]

I just tested this myself, and even with chainfire on an rapid clicking, I couldn't seem to get the AC2s to fire any faster than 0.5 seconds per shot in chain fire mode, efficltively halving my damage output. What I have discovered works best is to put the left and right arms on the left and right buttons respectively, on group fire. For maximum RoF I'll click both together to fire 8 rounds/sec from all AC/2s. I can do a manual chainfire by simply clicking the buttons slightly out of time, and then holding, so one group fires in between the .5 reload of the other. This is slightly lower DPS, but more efficient on heat. Finally, I can choose to fire one arm at a time based on the situation. The arms hang low and are very easily hindered by terrain features, and if I'm behind cover I often find that only one arm can hit my target. Also, in the unfortunate situation where I get stuck in a circle-strafe with a faster mech, I've found that the far arm is much less likely to hit the target, so I wont use it. Keeps me from overheating and conserves ammo.

[ElLocoMarko]

These seems to have wrapped up months ago but I'll throw in anyway.
Thanks for detail on chain fire and plus weapon grouping hints. I was very surprised by the slow damage output of quad AC2 on chain fire.

Rapid clicking is fine, as I'm not worried about mouse damage... hand damage more likely - carpal tunnel/trigger finger.

It has been a long time since I chain fired lasers but it seems to me that chain fire has a built in delay of near 0.5 seconds. It should be easy to spot tonight when I finally take a movie and see if the AC2 are recycled and idle during chain fire. I also wonder if this is simply a hard-coded delay in the first firing sequence where it is then driven by cooldown or just plain hard-coded. That's easy to test... manically click mouse four times and then hold... see what you get.

Perhaps I'll have some results later tonight.