All the advantages of the IS UAC5 on a chassis that can boat 5 of them with zero ghost heat. Nothing stands in front of this monster and lasts long.
I went for an Ammo+ route as well, though I opted to lose another 1.6 kph for an extra ton. It may be over the top once I have magazine skills, in which case I would probably pick up an extra DHS or two instead. For now, though, this works quite nicely.
Be mindful that ghost heat has been changed: UAC5 will scale if you use a 5th UAC5, while AC5 will scale when firing 6 of them.
Yeah, but it's a ghost heat of 0.6, which is barely a third of the overall heat of a single UAC5 (at 1.66 heat). I haven't noticed that running all 5 is particularly hot; I mean, double-tapping them at maximum cooldown already produces enough heat to overheat you in ~8 seconds (w/o jamming). The added 0.6 heat per volley isn't a big deal in my mind, especially when you consider that at least one of them is likely to be jammed, and thus not firing, at any given moment. That said, I do keep a weapon-group with just 4. Because when things are getting hot, you gotta do what you can to not overheat.
I started with the 5x UAC5 build on the 2A as well, but simply don't know why I should do it again after 'discovering' the beauty of 2x UAC10 + 2x UAC5. Definitely still one of the better builds here, though. Looking at the build a second time, this is a very beefy target for a small wolf pack or even a single Piranha. 2 tons of ammo per leg with a mere 48 armor on each. Yummy. Edited my rating at the moment, as this simply is a no-go in my view.
This is a good point. That said, I do think there's a tendency nowadays to just drop armor from wherever when posting a build, on account of a mentality of not wanting to show people what components may or may not be weak, in case you run into them on the battlefield. As such I question whether the OP actually intended the armor values to be static. Can also keep in mind that these things get a +15 armor quirk in each leg, and 8 in each arm. So if he adjusted the armor values to have 52 in each arm, and 65 in each leg --- which comes to 60 in each arm, and 80 in each leg, after quirks --- would that affect the rating in your mind? (These numbers are also all pre-skills.) As an aside, my builds always reflect the real arm and leg armor values. But I don't change the torso front/back ratios, b/c I'm lazy.
4/5, Not quite how I'd do it, but the 5xUAC/5 1A has held out a lot better against PGI's nerfs than the 2A.