My friend (Lokipiece) said that he ran his 3 AC/2 Dragon last night and experienced ridiculous amounts of heat. Three to five alpha strikes shut him down where before it would take about 18 secs of constant alpha striking to shut down. I plan on trying them out tonight but am very disappointed since they are one of my favorite weapons. The only change to the AC2 was a cooldown from 0.5 sec to 0.52 sec. This does not make sense. PGI Please fix this soon as AC2s are currently BROKEN. Anyone else experiencing this?
I haven't used any AC2 builds yet so I don't know. Anyone else experiencing this with their dakka dakka?
Does your friend use a macro or stagger his shots? There is a bug in AC/2's heat that consider all your shots as one (HUGE) alpha if you don't fire all your guns together, dealing a huge heat penalty, even if AC/2 is not suppose to be affected by the change they made few weeks ago. In a word, ghost heat (see my post here). I though the timing change they made was supposed to fix that, but it didn't. But I didn't noticed any unusual heat when firing all the guns together (I played my 3xAC/2 dragon last night, no problem).
Good thing I didn't spend the CBills on a Jager for an AC2 build. I've been using a Macro'd Ilya Chainsaw to some good effect.
I'm not a fan of the AC/2 jag anyway, even without the heat bug. It's definitely beasty (massive DPS!), but it seriously lack speed and I personally think AC/2 is best on fast mechs (dragon or centurion) able to quickly reposition themselves, thus constantly bringing support. But we're drifting out of topic here
I stagger my shots manually and after watching your video that is exactly what I was seeing on my 5N dragon. I had switched it to two AC2s seeing if that would help but I didn't think about how I play two AC2s vs three AC2s. When playing three I usually open with one and quickly switch to alpha striking with all three AC2s, I find the panic effect the super rapid fire shooting provides to be quite beneficial and great for intimidation. Whereas when playing with two AC2s I always alpha strike with them from the get go unless I am trying to cool down and then I will shoot one so I can keep outputting damage while cooling down. In short what this means is my play style falls right into the new ghost heat trap. However, with the information provided I think I can easily adjust my play style slightly and go back to previous heat levels. Thanks for the post and the info.
Well at least we can alpha strike still without the ghost heat. Thanks epikt for the response and link. That video was very informative and it blew me away how fast the heat went up when using the macro.
It's one of the many beautiful properties of the exponential function The case with 2xAC/2 is really impressive, it's almost as if you don't build any heat firing both canons simultaneously, but with macro you overheat in 5 seconds!
I tested 4 AC2's in chain fire, and tried to have an auto cannon firing every .25 seconds. I overheated in about 10 second on Frozen city. So the issue is still there, but chain firing 2 makes no extra heat.
Achtung Vergere! Chain-firing AC/2s is not optimal at all! The chain-fire option the game provides is absolutely not compatible with AC/2's rate of fire, since the chain-fire cooldown is always superior to 0.5s (~the AC/2's cooldown). In chain-fire your first canon has already achieved its cooldown when the second is triggered => independently from the number of gun you have, chain-firing multiple AC/2s gives you the rate of fire and DPS of a single autocanon. In other words, all your guns except one are useless. Also, when you're writing a macro, you have to be sure the looping time of your macro is the same (or smaller) as the AC/2's cooldown. In other words, that you will fire all your canons before the first achieved its cooldown. Example with 4 AC/2s, with fast fire perk unlocked the cooldown of the AC/2 is 485ms, so you must fire your canons every 121ms. Firing every 250ms like you did just makes half of your ACs useless (the first will achieve its cooldown before the third fires). Anyway, the heat you experienced fits with what I explained: - when you fired with a 250ms delay, the "heat cooldown" (approx 0.5s, afaik) is not achieved when you're firing the next gun, neither will it be when you'll fire the next one (since it's reset at every shot). Then all your shot will be count as a single "alpha", hence the exponential heat penalty (even though AC/2 is not supposed to build any); - when you're chain-firing your AC/2s (and you could had chain-fired 6 of them it would not have change the result) the "heat cooldown" is achieved before the following shot, same as for a single AC/2 fire, so no heat penalty.
That's just it. there should be NO heat penalty AT ALL for firing the 4AC2's faster than .25 second. So until they fix that, I will only alpha with my AC2's. Piece of shit.
I tried 4x AC2 in chain fire with a 125ms macro and the heat skyrocketed after about 3 cycles through (45% and higher). I also only have the DD BASIC'd and not Elited yet as I am waiting for the Firebrand to go on sale before I buy my third Jager. I got around this heat issue by doing 2x AC2 and then 2x AC2 with 125ms macro and that made the heat MUCH more manageable. I'm just about to test this on a live PUB match with 600 rounds of ammo.
