I've been saving up my certs to get the Solstice SF, mostly to get the underbarrel attachments, and I wanted to know if you guys thought it was any good.
if you want to be certain about it fitting your playstyle i recommend you to test it with its attachments in the VR. anyways, i own the trac5s which is the TR counterpart and i really love the ubgl. the loss of killing power is barely noticeable for me, but the ubgl gives you so much more under certain conditions. my personal recommendation is to get it
I've only had it a couple of days but a couple of things are apparant already. It's not as good as the base Solstice if you're just using the gun to kill people. But the attachments you can get for it are useful to say the least. I personally didn't pick it up for the actual rifle, I got it for the UBGL to kill sunderers with a couple of nades and 2 C4. The actual gun fires at about the same RoF as the Pulsar, but without the damage of it. So I'd say, get it for the versatility and attachments (the GL goes hand and hand with an engineer since you can reliably restock your nades now) not the rifle itself, but it's by no means bad, just not your ideal CQB weapon due to the lower RoF.
On it's own, it performs about the same as the default Soltice and is fairly adaptable to any situation. It has several different firing modes (single, burst, full auto) and access to soft point and HV ammo. A truely jack of all trads, master of none. The underbarrell attachments make the gun, though. The grenade launcher can rack up a decent amount of kills once you get the feel of the projectile speed and drop. It's always hilarious to spam grenades from the top of the crown as infantry suicide rush up the hill, for instance. The smoke grenade launcher is more situational but in places like Biolabs, you can create a constant smoke cover for your allies. Those that don't have IRNV scopes may hate you for it, though. As I said, the gun itself handles about like the Soltice. It's decent for mid range, but I found it less than ideal in CqC. The SF witht he UBGL is the only weapon that will allow your LA to solo kill a sunderer, though.
(source: http://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/...5-s-comprehensive-review-with-loadouts.59847/ ) exchange the smoke with the nade launcher and you have pretty much the perfect everyday build
Don't like it, imo underbarrel attachments are not worth it. TR and NC S carbines still have good damage output, solstice doesn't. UGL is great for soloing sundies and when you have height advantage. If you play in a platoon there's usually someone else with you to finish off a sundy. It used to have a small 1 hit splash now it's pretty much direct hit only, and minimum arming distance limits it's use at close range. Smoke is not that great, minimum arming distance + everyone is using NV scopes in bases. You can use it for cover outside but imo an engie is better for than. Shotgun can one hit at very close range or finish off someone when you run out of bullets, but if you were using a better weapon you wouldn't need it. SPA feels mandatory. Any extra damage at medium range helps, and it's not good enough at long range to bother with HVA.
Sitting on an ammo pack with a UBGL launching grenades into a room full of MAXes, Engies, and medics is a good way to soften it up prior to breaching the room. Your aim is to takeout the Medics and Engies while doing some damage to the MAXes. The SF is pretty bad in CQC, so don't try to use it for that, but with the 2x reflex it's pretty good out to about 100m.
It's my favourite carbine. All the underbarrel attachments are great. UBGL is fantastic at clearing out large groups and can be good if you're always running low on resources. The smoke launcher combined with an IR sight is hilariously fun, well smoke in general is pretty good. The shotgun is fairly situational, but the 1 shot kill is useful when you've got the drop on someone. The gun itself isn't the best, but you won't notice a difference over the stock solstice really, I only really notice a difference between it and the CQC carbines (VX6-7 and Serpent). Personally I use it on my engineer more than LA (shotgun for the LA ). Resupplying grenades is great for farming up the kills, and with the smoke launcher you can cover most of the crown.
