I've been playing PS2 for a while now have been wondering why I always do better when playing VS or TR alts than I do playing my NC main. I have every single NC LMG with all attachments and still could not find a setup where I would perform as well as my noob alts. So I looked into that weapons data chart and started compiling some stats for fun. Premises: 1000hp per kill Kill is from single burst No attachments Every shot hits Findings: I calculated some stats for each weapon. Here are my averaged findings by faction: Average seconds per kill @ 0m (bullets per kill / ROF): TR: 0.605 (Best: T9 CARV & MSW-R @ 0.56, Worst: T16 & T32 Bull @ 0.644) VS: 0.614 (Best: Orion @ 0.56, Worst: Ursa @ 0.655) NC: 0.615 (Best: NC6, EM6 & Anchor @ 0.6, Worst: EM1 @ 0.644) Average seconds per kill @ 125m (bullets per kill / ROF): TR: 0.695 (Best: T9 CARV & MSW-R @ 0.64 Worst: T16 & T32 Bull @ 0.736) NC: 0.719 (Best: EM6 & Anchor @ 0.7, Worst: EM1 @ 0.736) VS: 0.800 (Best: Orion @ 0.72, Worst: Ursa @ 0.873) Average first shot recoil (recoil x first shot multiplier): VS:0.743 (Best: VX29 Polaris & Ursa @ 0.6, Worst: Flare @ 0.9) TR: 0.762 (Best: T32 Bull @ 0.6, Worst: T16 @ 0.9) NC: 0.803 (Best: GD-22S @ 0.6, Worst: EM1 @ 0.91) Average recoil per kill @ 0m (first shot recoil + (bullets per kill - 1) * recoil): VS: 2.90 (Best: VX29 Polaris @ 2.4, Worst: SVA-88 @ 3.375) TR: 2.93 (Best: T32 Bull @ 2.4, Worst: T9 CARV-S @ 3.42) NC: 2.98 (Best: GD-22s @ 2.6, Worst: Gauss SAW S @ 3.325) Average bullet velocity: VS: 621 (Best: Ursa @ 640, Worst: Flare @ 600) TR: 605 (Best: T16 @ 640, Worst: MSW-R @ 580) NC: 592 (Best: Gauss SAW S @ 615, Worst: EM6 @ 570) Average damage per mag: NC: 13,370 (Best: NC6 @ 20,000, Worst: GD-22S & Anchor @ 8,350) TR: 11,859 (Best: T9 CARV (-S) &T16 @ 14,300 Worst: MWS-R @ 7,150) VS: 11,325 (Best: VX29 Polaris @ 14,300 Worst: Orion @ 7,150) Discussion and Observations: TR has highest DPS, average accuracy. VS has highest accuracy due to lowest recoil, no bullet drop and highest bullet velocity, average dps but has lowest damage over 65m. NC has highest damage per magazine (highest damage per bullet), highest damage over 65m but lowest DPS and lowest accuracy due to recoil and bullet velocity. NC supposedly gets penalized for having best damage per bullet by having worst recoil when most will agree that, DPS being equal, higher ROF is better since it is more forgiving when missing shots and will make enemy flinch more. Having higher damage per magazine is not as useful as having more killing potential as long as you can kill in one magazine(non issue for most LMGs). You have an infinite amount of time to reload when your enemy is dead NC is most penalized on accuracy even if it doesn't have the highest DPS! Some would argue that NC is best at long range since their bullets hit the hardest and everyone has to burst fire at that range therefore negating any ROF advantage. I would partially agree. However NC's low velocity makes it harder to hit moving targets and it's high recoil makes it harder to actually land all shots of the burst. Regardless, most LMG kills occur at less than 65m so this is a moot point. NC's best bullet velocity is almost VS's worst. NC is the only faction that does not have a 0.75x ADS move speed multiplier LMG. The EM1 is a confused weapon: it has all the drawbacks of a CQB weapon (shorter min damage, high first shot recoil, low velocity, high ADS COF) and yet has highest time to kill of any NC or TR weapon and majority of VS weapon. Suggestions: NC's higher bullet damage should be compensated by either higher recoil or lower bullet velocity but not both. Double nerfing NC's accuracy would only make sense if they had best raw dps which they don't. EM1 needs higher ROF to be competitive in the niche it's intended for. NC CQB weapons should at the very least match other factions' CQB weapons' dps. Even then, other factions would still have an advantage due to ROF benefits over high bullet damage. NC (and arguably TR) 's reflex sites needs to have their dots shrunk to be similar to VS'. Not really related but this bugs the hell out of me Redesign jackhammer to either have higher magazine capacity or faster reload. Also, redesign model since it's ugly and boring. (again not related ) NC needs a 0.75x ADS move multiplier weapon. Anchor, EM1 or EM6 seem like logical choices. Thoughts? (Constructive please!)
If you are doing calculations for all bullets hitting then obviously the VS and TR 750rpm 143dmg weapons will be superior due to higher dps. The stuff you left out is generally where the NC shine. Read this topic, particularly post 27 by Kyutaru (I like his posts, they are very informative!) http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/gauss-saw-ninja-nerfed.92617/page-2
I wouldn't call all NC LMGs inferior. NC is by far my favorite faction to play an alt on and most of that time is spent as either a heavy or a medic (because sometimes I just feel like being a support class). The main reason I love the NC as a faction IS their LMGs. I have played TR heavy for hundreds of hours, it's the only thing I am good at in this game, (I am a sucky pilot and a sucky infiltrator but I still love playing them every now and then) and I have used the T9, the MSW-R, the TMG-50 the minigun, the T16 and the Armistice on my heavy. I always find I have more fun and get more kills with a regular old N6 Gauss Saw which can be absolutely devastating beyond belief if you use it correctly. A gun's potential is determined more on play style than stats in my honest opinion and for people like me the NC guns are very far from inferior. For you, the TR and VS guns are very likely more suited, so for you they would be.
Interesting, I was under the impression the number from spreadsheet indicated raw recoil and that this recoil was modified by an angle. Guess that's yet another reason why I can't wait for SOE to release actual numbers for weapons stats in game. That being said, I still find VS weapons to be so wonderfully painless to use compared to NC's high recoil low velocity LMGs. At close range NC doesn't have anything to even compete with other faction's LMGs. EM6 comes close but is still outdps'ed and it's lower ROF makes missing a shot so much less forgivable. That's the niche the EM1 is supposed to fill but that thing is the little LMG that wants to be a T9 CARV but is so inferior.
Indeed, not all NC LMG's are inferior to every other LMG's, I'm just saying overall there seems to be a trend(and by all means I don't mean grossly inferior, just a tad). That being said there are some NC LMGs that are effective. The NC6 does have a nice niche for long range and can be used effectively at close range if you don't miss. I also manage to do decently outdoors using the Anchor but I do even better with Pulsar LSW day after day.
I would hesitate in saying that the NC LMGs have lower L/R recoil until we actually have real data on it rather than hearsay. Out of the starting LMGs, the SAW is the only one not meant for close quarters as the others can't have the 2x scope, which I think is the SOE way of indication a CQC main weapon (not including SMGs, Shotguns and Snipers which are special cases) The EM1 is a LMG with an identity crisis. It has stats like an LMG NS-11 but it's attachments are short range focused rather than long range. If it swaps them for Compensator and HVA, it may fill a role similar to the NS-11. If the Anchor (for example) were made into 625 RPM weapon, it would have the same close range TTK as the Carv and Orion, but still have less DPS.
The number seem so very small. I mean we're talking a few hundredth of a second here. As for the LMGs, I don't even look past the NC6 SAW. I don't care what the stats tell me, this weapon is a beast. Every time I try something else I'm worse off for it. VS and, especially, TR are forgiving when it comes to spray and pray. NC rewards powerful precision strikes and the NC6 SAW is the prime example of this(as is the Reaper and AC-X11). Maybe it is in my head but while the numbers say the SAW has high recoil and thus harder to controll, it is still easy to handle, and is very accurate. Since SOE wants us to ADS a lot with NC I've upped my scope sens a lot. This way you can give the middle finger to bunny hoppers and light assaults thinking they caught you off guard by suddenly go up in the air. Keep on jumpin', keep on flyin', you'll still end up dyin'.
I hate to say "Learn 2 Play", but you do need to learn to play to your factions strengths. Go watch the two videos LevelCap has made of the GD-22s in CQC. It really comes down to the skill of the user. He's primarily a Vanu player but he makes the GD-22s sing. Cert out the SAW (without HV) and you'll do just fine. The SAW is an amazing weapon. I'd give a slight edge to the TMG-50 in their similar roles, but the SAW is a gift from God (Higby). For anything else up-close that you cant deal with, go with the instant I-win CQC option the Devs have graced your faction with: Scat/Hack Max. I know you want your solution to be a Heavy, but if you cant deal with CQC as HA, just go Max. TR and especially VS would kill for your Max.
Oh, oh, please let me kill for your maxes! Shoot them to death and then hop in myself, that would be heaven!
I play NC almost exclusively Ingame they don't feel insuperior I do think our Higher Damage should be more apperent. It seems now our Faction specific things are really changing anything.
There are a lot of methodological issues here that make this a not-so-good comparison. You've calculated your TTKs incorrectly. The correct calculation is (bullets to kill MINUS ONE) / ROF. As it stands, you're implicitly assuming a ROF delay before the first shot is fired. Once you do that, you'll see that the higher front-load of high bullet damage lowers the NC TTKs significantly. It's meaningless to calculate TTK at 125m assuming all shots hit. You show the MSW-R as having the fastest TTK at 125m, which is a GIGANTIC joke. The SAW/EM6/Ursa/Flare/TMG-50 will all outperform the MSW-R by a HUGE margin at that range -- much, much, MUCH more noticeable than the TTK differences between, say, the Anchor and the MSW-R at 0m. You could do something simulation-based instead of assuming 100% accuracy, but good luck choosing parameters for e.g. the relative importance of bullet velocity, horizontal recoil, player skill etc. that people will agree on. It also makes little sense to compute average statistics across all LMGs, because factions with more close-quarters-friendly sidegrades (i.e. not NC) will have their 0m TTKs weighted more heavily downwards. You should try to compare likes versus likes -- i.e. the EM1 is much closer to the T32 Bull and the VX-29 Polaris (high-capacity CQC LMGs with soft point ammo and advanced laser) whereas the Anchor is more like the MSW-R and Orion (low-capacity CQC LMGs, in the Orion's case without the corresponding attachments but the others with). You can say that the former CLASS of weapons generally does poorly at the role it's designed for, but we're not exactly alone in having a LMG in that niche. I definitely agree with that less far-reaching point, as I very rarely get killed by a T32 Bull or VX-29 Polaris. You're also missing that the slower-firing NC weapons -- and slower-firing weapons in general, we just have more of them -- tend to have higher vertical recoil (the type you can compensate for) but lower horizontal recoil (the type you can't). This makes them more accurate at range irrespective of vertical recoil per second, unless your recoil control is poor. And, yes, you can see this difference even at 65m.
You can look it up in the same data (ps2.dynet.com) everyone else is using, so it's at least as real as the data we're using for everything else. You have to dig beyond the "Fun Stuff" tab, though.
Pretty much disagree with everything you have posted, and the way you have analysed faction weapons as a whole rather than individually is biased and broken. Also STOP comparing dps! why do people fail to comprehend the impact bullet damage has on killing a target, what you should be comparing is TTK and if you compare the fabled T9 carv to the NC6 you will find they both have the same TTK!. Which I personally find insane considering how much better the NC6 is at headshots,damage falloff, attachments, accuracy and range. Also I cant imagine how you came to the conclusion that NC weapons have greater recoil unless you are not using attachments for your weapons (mvn I missed the bullet point where you said no attachments), the NC6 for example has an adv grip and compensator (the T9 has nither), both which drastically reduce the weapons horizontal and vertical recoil. I think what makes this thread sad is that currently the best TR LMG is consiered to be the TMG by most (look at the latest BCP videos or levelcaps review) which is a nerfed version of the saw-s.
In general I don't agree; the SAW is a very powerful weapon in the right circumstances and other factions don't have a true equivalent. The GD-22, Anchor, and EM6 all are solid weapons as well. I'm not a fan of the EM1 personally, due to the low RPM for the bullet damage, but some people like it. My only beef with NC LMGs is indirect, and it's how the flinch mechanic is tied to RoF. No NC LMG has 700 or above RPM, so they get punished in CQC by the flinch mechanic. If flinch was tied to bullet damage as well as RoF, it wouldn't be an issue. I'd rather have them modify the flinch mechanic than give us a high RoF LMG, personally.
The TMG should be compared to the EM6 and Flare -- even though it has the same RoF as the SAW S, the -S weapons are just slightly-nerfed versions of the base weapons with better attachments. The TMG-50 is nearly identical to the Flare -- the Flare has more first shot recoil but reloads slightly faster and is slightly more accurate while ADS and moving, whereas the TMG-50 has slightly better recoil recovery and a higher bullet velocity (by 15 m/s). The EM6 has a slightly longer reload but significantly larger magazine than the other two, has a higher rate of fire (600 vs 577, i.e. about 4% faster) and lower base bullet velocity (30 less than Flare, 45 less than TMG-50). Edit: For all these posts I'm using available attachments to decide which weapons are intended for the same roles. By this logic, the only glaring problem is that the TR and VS have dramatically-crappier versions of the NC6 SAW (the T16 and ...Ursa? don't even come close). This isn't perfect (i.e. the NC's Carnage BR assault rifle can fit an advanced foregrip but isn't good at long range) but it seems to work for LMGs. Some weapons aren't near-clones in the same roles, either -- the SVA-88 seemingly fills the same role as the EM6/Flare/TMG but has a much different flavor. It also happens to be my favorite VS LMG by far.
Stats wise that might be the case, but the Flare feels dramatically different than the TMG-50. I was hoping for a similar experience when I bought and fully certed the Flare, but sadly I think im going to have to buy and cert the Ursa to try it out. The Flare has more muzzle flash as well, so thats distracting unless you Flash Supressor it, then you lose the Compensator. The TMG-50 is the perfect sweet spot between the SAW and the Flare. edit: I stopped using the SVA-88 after using the SAW and TMG-50. Theyre just completely different classes of weapon imho. The SVA-88 seems to do 'well' at most roles, but fails in the role the SAW and TMG-50 shine at.
Actually, you're right. I hadn't looked up the horizontal recoil (because it's kind of a pain in the *** to do and I've only written it down for NC weapons) but now I've done it just for you! The EM6 and TMG-50 have identical recoil patterns (at least the same vertical pull, same horizontal recoil and 'horizontal tolerance' -- which SEEMS to mean how far horizontal recoil can pull to one side before it has to pull the other way instead of choosing left or right randomly). The Flare is slightly less accurate. The EM6 and TMG-50 have horizontal recoil (min and max) of 0.175 and horizontal recoil tolerances of 0.7, whereas the Flare has a horizontal recoil of 0.2 and a tolerance of 0.75 -- about 14% more horizontal recoil per shot, even if the max deviation is just ever-so-slightly bigger. The Ursa has a horizontal recoil per shot of 0.1875 (solidly between the Flare and TMG) but a tolerance of 0.5, meaning in practice it will jump just a tiny bit more to the left or right with every shot but will drift less far off center while bursting. You can also probably reduce that per-shot jitter to or past the levels of the others with an advanced foregrip, but we don't yet know the exact effect of a foregrip and it's probably different for every weapon. The differences in recoil patterns are not what I'd call dramatic, but I definitely notice the difference between my Gauss Rifle and my NS-11 (the latter is less accurate) at range, and the horizontal recoil patterns there are similar to the TMG vs Flare. Good eyes!
The Ursa is the VS take on the high damage low RoF weapon. It has good recoil and 1st shot, excellent projectile velocity but low RoF, in fact lower than all other 167 damage weapons.
Whoah ... didnt think id live to see the day when NC claims their HA guns are inferior and need a buff I was wrong ... live and learn. OP's post was a nice combination of not taking everything into count and using statistics to advance the cause
