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[Flying Dice]

I'll be on starting ~7-7:30PM EST.

[Wiles]

I played around with the Adder some more with 2 UAC2 and 2 ER smalls and also with the 2 PPC build. They were a lot better than the LRM build I was fooling around with. I'm not sure which of the two is superior though as they both had their own drawbacks. The autocannons needed a lot of face time and the PPCs were pretty toasty so it was hard to keep firing them when I wanted to.

That is 1 am here. Tomorrow is a public holiday, but I probably won't be long then.

But hey, we started early anyway.

Ah sorry about that. If we plan on dropping together as a group again after tonight's drops maybe we can plan for midday EST instead so it's not too early in North America and not too late in Europe.

I'll be on and off today though if anyone feels like playing together. I really want to grind some C-bills so I can pick up a mech from the clan sale.

[Flying Dice]

Are the cUAC/2s really usable? I've heard tons of shit about them because they spread the already sparse AC/2 damage.

[Wiles]

This is the first time I've used the clan uac 2 weapon system so I can't say I have a lot of experience with it. I didn't notice a whole lot of spread that couldn't be accounted for by my shaky aim

I didn't realise they had the reputation of spreading damage. What makes it different than its inner sphere counterpart (outside it being an ultra ac that can double tap and jam) that would make it spread damage though? It's not like the other clan autocannons, it only fires one pellet per trigger pull.

[Rince Wind]

Next try with the MAD 5M: AC20 and 2 ERLL.

[Flying Dice]

This is the first time I've used the clan uac 2 weapon system so I can't say I have a lot of experience with it. I didn't notice a whole lot of spread that couldn't be accounted for by my shaky aim

I didn't realise they had the reputation of spreading damage. What makes it different than its inner sphere counterpart (outside it being an ultra ac that can double tap and jam) that would make it spread damage though? It's not like the other clan autocannons, it only fires one pellet per trigger pull.

The IS UAC/5 is basically a normal AC that can double-tap. You fire one shell, that's five damage. You double-tap, that's ten, and so on and so forth. The Clan UACs spread their damage out across multiple shells. Take, for example, the cUAC/20, which fires four shells every time you pull the trigger. Each of those shells does five damage. What that means, obviously, is that you almost never get all the damage on a single point.

Worse still, the ammo count per ton is per shell, not per trigger pull, so you go through ammo anywhere from 2x to 4x faster than with standard cACs, depending on what size you're using.

In that respect, the cUACs are actually pretty shit compared to the IS UAC/5 (barring the fact that they can get UAC/10 and 20s), and only really good compared to cACs because they take fewer critical slots, do more cockpit shake, and can still double-tap in a sense. You get way less mileage out of each ton of ammo, spread your damage a lot more, and have to deal with jam chance. They're mainly viable for Clan dakka builds because of the lower cooldown and better blindness/shake working well for brawling, you can cram more into slot-limited omnimechs, and because (IIRC) each shell has independent crit chance.

[Kanil]

The C-UAC/2 only fires one pellet, just like the IS-UAC/5. Wiles mentioned this, and I just tested it myself.

It's mechanically identical, other than the reduced damage/increased RoF/other obvious things like that.

It's a lot of tonnage for not a lot of damage, but it fires absurdly fast (and chews through it's ammo with abysmal damage-per-ton stats...)

I believe the C-UACs fire one pellet for the 2, two pellets for the 5, three pellets for the 10, and four pellets for the 20, but I've only tested the 2 and 20.

Edit: Unless you're saying the AC/2 spreads damage because it does so little, and fires so quickly? In which case, it absolutely does spread damage like crazy -- but no more so than the IS AC/2.

[Flying Dice]

No, no, I just coulda sworn I remember it being a two-pellet split on the cUAC/2. I guess I was wrong.

Definitely not saying that about single-shell AC/2 fire of any sort, not with how I love my BJ-1. It's a great support weapon and racks up a shitload of damage if you stay alive, and turns into a great brawling weapon late when everyone is damaged. It's mostly not in meta because meta is still all about the big pinpoint alphas, with a side dose of splat/dakka in PUG play.

And hey, thanks for dropping all, that was fun!

[Kanil]

No, no, I just coulda sworn I remember it being a two-pellet split on the cUAC/2. I guess I was wrong.

It fires so fast you could probably spectate someone using it and just assume it's firing two pellets automatically. Looking at UAC Jam quirks, I kinda wonder how a Nova with a bunch of UAC/2s would work... (Edit: *checks Nova podspace* Nevermind.)

And yeah, it was fun. I pretty much just sucked, but I got my Stormcrow basic'd. If I can get one more basic'd before the sale ends, I can end up getting all three on sale and that'll be great.

[Damiac]

I spent this weekend grinding merc rep and buying some new mechs.

I bought the blackjack 1, 3, and... the other ballistic one without jump jets.

I've got them all basic, working my blackjack 1 through the elite stuff next.  Wow what a change from the locust, going from 170 to 80 kph.

My loadouts are:
1 erppc, 4mpl
2 ac2, 2ml, 1mpl
1 ppc, 1 gauss (I don't like this one very much, no jump jets)

Jump jets are so nice on some maps.  And the blackjack can aim it's torso down at some pretty incredibly steep angles, so you can take pretty high sniper spots and be able to hit with your torso mounted weapons.

[Wiles]

It was fun dropping with you guys!

Worse still, the ammo count per ton is per shell, not per trigger pull, so you go through ammo anywhere from 2x to 4x faster than with standard cACs, depending on what size you're using.

The ammo count is adjusted to be on par with its inner sphere counterparts. For example 1 ton of cUAC 10 ammo has 60 shells. the cUAC 10 fires 3 shells at once giving you 20 volleys just like the inner sphere AC10.


I've played around with the cUAC 2 on the Adder some more and I feel that the biggest problem with it is the jam chance. You fire so quickly that you're always rolling to the dice to see if your weapon jams or not. Even with the Adder's 30% jam chance reduction I was jamming a lot. Back to PPCs it is I guess!

[Rince Wind]

Got my kmdds in the first matches for each weight class today. ... But OK, let's just ignore the very first match, that was to get warm...
Now I'm just trying to master my 3rd HBK.

It was fun dropping with you yesterday.

[Damiac]

I have a question about supply caches.  Ok, a couple questions:

1. How are they rewarded? Does it have anything to do with match performance?

2. Are keys rewarded at random, or do you just get 2 for free at the beginning? (At least, I got 2 somehow, I never bought them)

3. Is it even odds (i.e. 1 in to get any given item, or is it weighted toward the more common items?


I ask because I just spent my 75 mcs I got for no apparent reason on keys, and opened three boxes, each containing an MC reward (1000, 500, and a mech bay, essentially 300 mc)

It makes good sense if there are even odds, but each time I got a common (light blue) item.  Was that just bad luck, or are they weighted that way?

[Rince Wind]

The caches are assigned randomly to a player of the winning team after battle. You can die without doing a single useful thing and still be the lucky one.

You only get those keys at the beginning, or sometimes as rewards in challenges.

The rest I cannot answer with any authority, but it seems to be weighted in favour of common things. Hardly ever got anything else and now only open them if I get free keys.

[Flying Dice]

Worse still, the ammo count per ton is per shell, not per trigger pull, so you go through ammo anywhere from 2x to 4x faster than with standard cACs, depending on what size you're using.

The ammo count is adjusted to be on par with its inner sphere counterparts. For example 1 ton of cUAC 10 ammo has 60 shells. the cUAC 10 fires 3 shells at once giving you 20 volleys just like the inner sphere AC10.

Omnimechs don't mount IS ACs, and the cACs have the exact same ammo count as the cUACs per ton. The actual tradeoff is shooting faster (with more damage spread) in exchange for carrying far less ammo per ton. An omnimech mounting cACs has room for a solid energy secondary armament and other nice stuff, one carrying cUACs is basically just the cUACs, their ammo, and maybe a cML or two.

The situation is the same for the UAC/5 and AC/5... except that every UAC/5 shell fired is five damage. So the IS UAC/5 is just flat-out better in every respect save jam chance than the AC/5.

I mean I think that that's a good thing, balance-wise, but the cUAC/AC tradeoff exists. The only reason I can see for almost nobody using cACs is because their cooldown times are shit. Every AC except cACs has the same cooldown, more or less, but they get a big extra chunk slapped on... basically to stop people from only spamming them for dakka. The cAC/20 has what is effectively a flat 14% cooldown penalty, for example. You gotta take both the elite skill and the fully upgraded cooldown module just to overcome that, and then you're still far behind someone using the same with any other AC/20 variant.