Can we finally level NC to TR and VS standards?

You say it sucks at range? Pfft. You're using it wrong. The Gladius is the only SMG capable of indirect fire!!!

Seriously try it. Go for a range of about 150m. Start behind a hill have a spotter position near the target. At that range the bullets will have this nice ballistic arc. The target will feel like it's being showered by green peas.

Literally what pnkdth said, and what adamts has also been pointing out.

Also, recoil does matter. Since bloom is an area that the shot can go that is determined by current point of aim, recoil automatically amplifies bloom by moving the actual aim point away from your intended aim point. A high bloom low recoil gun will eventually become ineffective with distance, as the bloom begins to have a serious impact, but until that distance is reached, it will remain an accurate weapon.

Heck, let me put it this way. From the bit of personal testing I have done, I have noticed that the Gladius is much more accurate then numerous SMG's with much lower per shot recoil and bloom. A prime example is the Armistice. A Gladius can still hit a target with a fairly high degree of reliability at 40 meters. Try doing that with an armistice, and you'll likely struggle to hit the broad side of a barn. Armistice has better bloom per shot, kick per shot, and starting bloom, but with it's firerate being what it is, it's bloom and recoil rapidly increase to a point where it's far less accurate then a Gladius.

As for suppressors... not quite. The changes have made suppressors more viable, but not perfectly so. The max damage range reduction is sufficient to make most weapons be unable to deal maximum damage still, and there is still a velocity penalty of 15%. The hybrid suppressor has no damage drop off penalty, but raises the velocity loss to 20%. SPRW increases the velocity enough to more then negate the velocity penalty ( you still get a 5% bonus). The price is 4 rounds per mag, but with the fire rate and damage on the Gladius, it's arguably a much smaller price then to take the velocity penalty.

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Am I going to have to put this in my signature? Fine if you don't agree, but my point has been made multiple times with multiple examples each of which points to the exact same conclusion: Age does not directly correlate to usage. And these are just NC-only examples.

I'l do it again: Reaper, A-Tross, Rebel, Bandit, burst rifles, any S-variant the list goes on. Only the best guns on the best classes see extensive use, not just because the weapon is old.

The Gladius has been out for almost a year. On top of that, the SMGs were a hot-button topic both being new ES weapons, a growing rarity, and that their models were designed by someone directly outside of Daybreak Games. Their addition was big news and players were all trying them out, making YouTube videos, forum and Reddit posts both before and after their release. They all got loads of publicity and usage grew very quickly following their immediate release.

Yet the growth has stopped.

Ah, OK, there is a bit of a misunderstanding. I don't factor recoil into weapon accuracy and certainly not precision, which the both of you seem to do. I define accuracy in this sense as the weapon's ability to strike the same spot repeatedly without failure assuming no user error. In this regard, the Gladius is unacceptable.

Also let me just stick this here again:

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Within the ranges where the Gladius can reliably hit most shots given no user error while still dealing enough damage per shot to win any fight, recoil is not relevant. At 40 meters the Gladius is well outside it's range of usefulness. It will have no sustained fire accuracy and be about a 7-8 shot kill at 522 RPM. You should not be firing this weapon at this range, period. No one with anything other than a shotgun is going to lose if they are at all even half competent shots. Also consider what the effect of the large CoF is on a moving target; You're crosshairs and the cone around them are not going to be locked perfectly on the exact center of the opponent's body, it'll be slightly off to the side at pretty much any point in the entire engagement. Like recoil, the cone is going to be half off the target.

As for the specifics of the Armistice, refer to the above CoF bloom over X shots. At any point where the Armistice has fired enough shots to kill the Gladius will be just as inaccurate yet will rely on those hits far more to kill.

High RoF weapons aren't punished nearly as much for requiring a single extra shot, of which entails the majority of shot-ranged weapons. But that doesn't matter at all, because the max damage range reduction was removed in its entirety. There is no maximum damage range penalty to using any suppressor. If a pathetic 15% velocity reduction is enough to create difficulty when aiming, git gud son.

And as for the Gladius, I aurax'd it with a hybrid suppressor and SPRW ammo for a velocity of only 400m/s, and it had no issues with leading at all. Call me when they undo the velocity buff to the directive sidearms, that was an issue.

Source on suppressor changes here: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps...6-fanning-the-fire-teams.250101/#post-3511810

I think I've probably been struck by hail that did more damage than a bullet from a Gladius would after 150 meters.

I agree. Which is why every time you mention it I am talking about age + users as an indication of popularity/adoption rate. I made that point twice over in my first reply mentioning it. Some weapons go the SPR way, some become filler/specialized weapons, and others the Cyclone way.

We can, however, correlate things to how contemporary weapons have faired. When it comes to this batch (SMG, LMG, BR) it isn't even a contest. Gladius clearly pulls well ahead, the Canis trying to make its bark sound scary but whimpers off. Unless something different happens the next round of weapons it is safe to assume that the will to buy new weapons have dampened a fair bit these days.

This is why I call the Gladius a popular weapon because it is up there. Got both time and users on its side + good stats and rep among many of its users.

Well that would require the net batch of guns to be useful for once.

The Gladius is definitely the most popular Doku-made weapon thus far, but I just can't call it "popular" with only a fairly normal 4200 users, again especially given the surprising popularity of the other two NC SMGs. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on what defines popularity in this setting.

But good stats, it does not have. Low RoF, short maximum damage range with rapid multi-tier damage degradation, small magazine with fairly long reloads, poor hipfire for a short-ranged gun, terrible accuracy and bloom, and flat out expensive to fully cert. It does have great damage within six meters and 0.75x ADS but that's really it. Oh, and the really smooth easy recoil. Most other guns have more than that going for them at least.

About that bloom? Bloom per shot is not actually that useful of a piece of data on its own. I say that because unless it's kept in context of damage per shot and rate of fire, bloom per shot is a very miss leading value. So, how about we calculate bloom relative to firerate, aka, bloom per second?

Obviously, we also need a few comparison weapons, so I'll run the numbers for the Armistice, Hailstorm, Jackal, Cyclone, Blitz, Sirius, Eridani, and Canis for references.

Gladius: (522/60)X0.07= 0.609
Cyclone: (652/60)X0.06= 0.652
Blitz: (845/60)X0.05= 0.704
Armistice: (896/60)X0.05= 0.747
Hailstorm: (800/60)X0.05= 0.666
Jackal: (600/60)X0.06= 0.600
Eridani: (750/60)X0.05= 0.625
Sirius: (845/60)X0.05= 0.704
Canis (spun up): (667/60)X0.06= 0.667
Canis ( average initial spin up): (573.4/60)X0.06= 0.573

According to the data, only two SMG's can even hope to beat the bloom per second of the Gladius. These are the jackal, and the Canis's average fire rate during the first second of firing.

Even if you add in the starting ADS spread values ( which is 0.05 higher then normal for the Gladius), it still compares favorably.
Math for bloom after one second based on averages:
Gladius: (522/60)X0.07= 0.609+0.35= 0.959
Cyclone: (652/60)X0.06= 0.652+0.30= 0.952
Blitz: (845/60)X0.05= 0.704+0.30= 1.004
Armistice: (896/60)X0.05= 0.747+0.30= 1.047
Hailstorm: (800/60)X0.05= 0.666+0.30= 0.966
Jackal: (600/60)X0.06= 0.600+0.30= 0.900
Eridani: (750/60)X0.05= 0.625+0.30= 0.925
Sirius: (845/60)X0.05= 0.704+0.30= 1.004
Canis (spun up): (667/60)X0.06= 0.667+0.30= 0.967
Canis ( average initial spin up): (573.4/60)X0.06= 0.573+0.30= 0.873

According to the data, the only faction SMG's with superior total aimed spread after 1 second of firing are the Cyclone, Jackal, Eridani, and the 1 second spin up Canis.

Correcting bloom at one second based on shots confirmed fired at one second mark ( rounding down to nearest whole number):
Gladius: (522/60)X0.07= 0.56+0.35= 0.91
Cyclone: (652/60)X0.06= 0.60+0.30= 0.90
Blitz: (845/60)X0.05= 0.70+0.30= 1.00
Armistice: (896/60)X0.05= 0.70+0.30= 1.00
Hailstorm: (800/60)X0.05= 0.65+0.30= 0.95
Jackal: (600/60)X0.06= 0.60+0.30= 0.90
Eridani: (750/60)X0.05= 0.60+0.30= 0.90
Sirius: (845/60)X0.05= 0.70+0.30= 1.00
Canis (spun up): (667/60)X0.06= 0.66+0.30= 0.96
Canis ( average initial spin up): (573.4/60)X0.06= 0.54+0.30= 0.84

Running by this method of calculation, the only weapons that can beat the Gladius are the Cyclone, Jackal and Eridani, all by a difference of 0.01, and the Canis in it's initial second of spin up by 0.07.

Across all data, the Blitz, Armistice, Hailstorm, Sirius, and Canis post spin up are always less accurate.
The Jackal and Canis at one second of spin up are the only weapons that compare favorably to the Gladius in all tests.
The Cyclone and Eridani are more accurate then the Gladius within the first second of firing, but become inferior by the two second mark.

Based on this, it is fair to say that of all faction SMG's, the Gladius is one of the most accurate, only reliably bested by the Jackal, and only just barely. This is despite it's bloom per shot of 0.07, and it's abnormally high aimed spread of 0.35

It's tied for second longest max damage range of any SMG ( along with the Canis and Eridani), only being bested by the NS-7 and the MKV.

Every SMG has the same damage drop tier issue, except for the NS-7 and MKV. Gladius is not special in this regard.

The Gladius's short reload is fast for an SMG at 2 seconds flat. Only the Eridani, Cyclone, and Tengu are superior in this regard. Long reload is bested by the Armistice, Jackal, Hailstorm, MKV, NS-7, Tengu, Canis, and Eridani, putting it in the lower half for long reloads.

Bloom directly states CoF growth per each shot fired. It matters about as much as anything else does on it's own, what's your point? Damage on it's own is meaningless without RoF, it's assumed the information is given.

You don't think that is misleading? Sure the values are different in degrees per second, but each weapon fires for a different amount of time before they can kill. The equation also makes the false assumption that bloom is increasing constantly, which is untrue as bloom only increases once a shot is fired. Thus, bloom per shot is more accurate and more meaningful. It also gives final values.

Bloom per shot isn't misleading though. You look at the numbers, see a 167 gun needs six shots with a bloom of 0.06 and come out knowing the bloom with max damage bodyshots will be at a minimum of 0.66 unless bursting is employed. 0.90 bloom per second is misleading because the weapon doesn't need a full second to kill. This number is for the Cyclone, which also kills the same or faster than a Gladius can under any situation.

As demonstrated with the formula I created, the Gladius will always have a larger CoF for the same amount of damage dealt. If a Gladius needs ten shots to kill it will be less accurate than a Cyclone needing twelve.

It's also a 112/522 gun with the worse accuracy of any primary in the game. Sure all ES SMGs drop four damage tiers but every other ES SMG has a much higher RoF to compensate, allowing for a shorter TTK over longer ranges. That's even weaker and slower than an Emissary but without accuracy.

Gladius also has the second smallest magazine by a single bullet, and while both the Cyclone and Eridani have the option of an extended magazine to become 35 rounds instead, the Gladius only has the option to lower it's magazine to 22. Additionally, the Armistice, PWD and MKV have the option of extended mags to go up to 40 rounds while the Canis has a 40-round magazine by default, the Sirius and Blitz have 50-round magazines by default, and the Hailstorm has a 60-round magazine by default. The Gladius has a long reload given how few bullets are actually being added.

On average the Gladius has the smallest magazine and once again we accidentally demonstrate just how awful the Tengu is, somehow almost always the worst in every metric. NSX weapons don't have to be terrible or overpowered, DBG.

You really are cherry picking this and that out of context.

Just look at the Gladius and the MKV for example, both suppressed with 24 and 40 rounds.

The Gladius has 24 bullets which deal 4,800 damage and the MKV has 40 bullets which deal 5,000 damage. Not a big difference, especially considering the Gladius then gets to pick a forward grip for insanely better ADS accuracy. The Gladius has a MUCH shorter short reload, and a slightly longer long reload.

The MKV deals 1,623 max dps, while the Gladius deals 1,740. The MKV deals 1,181 min dps, but good luck hitting anything with it thanks to that absurd horizontal recoil without a forward grip, while the Gladius deals an extremely manageable 974. Add to that a 10% faster bullet velocity for the Gladius, and on SMGs, every little bit helps.

The gun is balanced fairly well against that weapon.

When the end of your time on earth is approaching you will wish you had all these hours back. They were not hours of your life spent in pursuit of important matters.

Not in the least. If anything reload times was cheery picked from my point as for some reason we're not going to mention the entire rest of the list. I described the stats as they are listed and a two-second reload for 1-25 rounds maximum isn't great, and three seconds to load 22/26 rounds is worse. The point being made in the quoted paragraph is that other SMGs with longer reload times are loading more bullets each time.

The Gladius has a MUCH smaller (potential) magazine.

The DPS assumes perfect accuracy, which at 50 meters is just not practically possible, even less so against a real target. If you count a meager 10% higher velocity as a reassurance of the Gladius' DPS but not the accuracy difference (again, accuracy in the sense of CoF, not recoil just to be clear) between the two as a detriment you are not looking equally at all possible outcomes. If all a player wanted out of his SMG was DPS at range, an extended magazine wouldn't be the best option.

Even if the Gladius and MKV were perfectly balanced against each other, the other SMGs and other weapons wouldn't suddenly be balanced as well. However both of the two SMGs are very weak at range given the low damage and low RoFs. (Cherry-picking the MKV, eh? )

Personally of all the regrets and lamentations I may have as my final hours draws near, having fun on a videogame forum likely won't be high up on the list.

Time you enjoy wasting isn't wasted time, after all.

How? It has greater bloom per shot, yes, but per equivalent range, it's leagues ahead in damage per shot over every SMG. In DPS, the Gladius is fairly competitive out to 20 meters, and it's accuracy under automatic fire is competitive at any distance.

Take, for example, the Cyclone. It's a good old fashioned 167 max damage gun. Shots to drop a target is 6, or 8 if the target has nanoweave ( which should always be the assumption). So, 8 shots at point blank deals out 1336 damage. More then enough. Bloom per shot is 0.06. 8X0.06=0.48

Gladius needs 6 shots within it's max damage range to drop a target with nanoweave. 6X0.07=0.42. For sake of argument, let's assume they have nano, and the 50 bonus from the personal shield. 7X0.07=0.49. That's a difference of 0.01, and you have dealt more damage with less ammo. By your method of basing off of damage and using a per shot basis, the Gladius should be one of the most powerful SMG's in game.

Quick note about linear versus stair case increases. The general nature of a stair case style data graph creates a linear pattern. My data showed the resulting line of best fit that would be created from graphed data showing accuracy over time. Thus, it remains a valid measure.

Look, I get it. You hate the Gladius. You look at it's stats and see it as being statistically a very poor weapon. You know what? Fine.

Just realize that there are others, including many NC mains, who look at the Gladius and see it as a solid option in game because of those same stats.

You're all bickering about SMGs. That's dumb.

The real question is:

WHAT FACTION UNITS ARE BETTER AT THEIR INTENDED ROLES?

Full stop.

The NC tank is a TANK. It sucks up damage. Technically, they can be killed while using it, but in most fights, it is EFFECTIVE invincibility. Every AV point of damage that a tank takes, is an AV point of damage that is not hitting something else.

The NC max is the best inside a room or near doorways. Pop quiz: how many control points on the ENTIRE MAP are not in, or at least near doorways or rooms? Is that number higher than you can count on one hand? NC complain about C4 because that IS THE ONLY THING THAT KILLS THEIR MAX UNITS.

The TR empire launcher is the best close range AA and not bad at close range AV, either.

Don't tell the NC about the Phoenix, please, if they start to use it right, the other factions are screwed. I'm just glad the NC never figured it out. I have no idea how they haven't. Coordinated AV usage is what got the lancer nerfed.


Bonus:
Which vehicles (ignoring air) can be driven under by a Lightning or Harasser? Once a Lightning goes under a Magrider (that's the correct answer, btw), the Magrider has 2 choices:

• Turn on the Lightning, exposing rear armor to the most likely direction of hostile AV fire.
• Ignore the Lightning, and get shot in the rear by it.

Sure, this is most noticeable in group fights, which is one reason why the Mag isn't very great at base fights, aside from sitting on a hill and shelling the base. Which many MANY bases are designed to make hard or completely impossible.
Srsly. There are spikes on many hills.

The formula holds out.

Even with nanoweave thrown into the mix, the Gladius is still worse. The Cyclone drops from 167 damage to 133.6 damage after the 20% reduction from nanoweave, leading to the 8-shot kill. However, the Gladius goes from 200 damage to 160 damage after nanoweave, leading to a 7-shot kill, not six. ((200 x 0.80) x 6) = 960 damage, failure to kill with bodyshots.

Given this, the bloom per shot values are 0.78 and 0.84 for the Cyclone and Gladius respectively.
([y = 0.30 + 8(0.06)] = 0.78, [y = 0.35 + 7(0.07)] = 0.84).

Once again the formula demonstrates the Gladius is still less accurate after a roughly equal amount of damage has been dealt.

A pattern only. Yes the data only increases in a liner pattern, but the data points do not create a solid line. We cannot fire a fraction of a bullet and therefore cannot generate a fraction of the bloom. Creating a graph which implies a portion of a bullet is fired sooner than another portion of a bullet is extremely misleading as these values are not possible in "real-world" observation. It's is no more a valid measure than saying the "average household has 1.6 children."

I do hate the Gladius, it sucks quite a lot. However the raw numbers do not favour the Gladius in any meaningful way. There is no objective way to take the Gladius' stats and call it a solid option when compared to almost anything else in the NC arsenal. It's not even a sidegrade in most aspects.

People are fine to disagree but one's opinion doesn't make it more accurate, doesn't make it kill faster, and doesn't make it a better gun than it is. And I will always be here to remind people of that.

Feelings over facts do tend to make people feel confident about themselves. Should have been evident in the Elusive1 thread how you gave your own experience such high status. So until then, git gud and your purple does not mean anything. Anyone with time enough can achieve that.

Must feel bad to see so many people manage to succeed with a weapon you cannot. Egos are a fragile thing. Especially to vets it seems. For some reason, people seem to mistake high BR with skill. Sorry, you're still bad.

Again, whether or not it sucks is up for debate. Believe me, most players in the TR will say the Jackal sucks, and on paper, they are completely correct, but it remains my go to SMG. At face value, it's stats are universally bad, and yet, after I got over it's initial learning curve ( it took me a long while), I grew to greatly enjoy it. Fun fact, the Jackal was almost universally considered worse then the Gladius at launch.

Same for many NC with the Gladius I guess. All im saying is that, despite what it's stats appear as for some players, it would seem clear that it is seen as viable by many. So the opinion that it is viable and even good should not be discounted, especially given that its used reliably by many in the community. If nothing else, the fact that it got a nerf shortly after it's release ( a minor one to mag size) should tell you that it was doing well.

Some times, one mans trash is another mans treasure.

This is absolutely true. Overshields, Nanoweave, and Aux Shields are MUCH more punishing on 200 and 167 damage model guns. Even so, the Gladius is slightly better than the other 200 guns thanks to a slightly better fire rate, which is why you see HAs running the thing over the Saw. Plus it's got that insanely fast short reload.

This considers a perfect ttk at max damage range. Everyone knows the other SMGs have more burst damage and initial accuracy. It's the sustained accurate fire that lets the Gladius shine mid range. You can use longer bursts yielding more sustained dps, which is ideal in real world scenarios with 50-70% accuracy.

Wow, held off for so long before the personal insults, look how far we've gone. I guess there must not be any more points left to be made now. Except all those rebuttals to all the arguments I've raised which were subsequently ignored, but that's that, ain't it?

Elusive acted like a child in his own defence rather than an honest man interested in the truth. As far as I'm concerned he's not innocent, and because there is literally no iron-clad evidence to provide for either side of the argument I stated I know my stuff as well and that drag-shooting is't the only way nor is the objective best way, so forgive me for having an opinion.

Not really. I've succeeded 1280 times with the Gladius, more times than I ever even wanted to. Probably 1280 times more than you have as well. Game had the final say and as much as you like to pretend otherwise another 20 kills wouldn't stop me for completing my final goal for the gun.

Regardless, your failure to provide any evidence for your claims really speaks for itself. The numbers are laid bare, and they don't surpass anything in any noteworthy ways while often lagging behind. The gun is poor and fails to provide any meaningful advantage to the user over any other SMG nor other 200/~500 gun.

PS: Fite me in the ring 1v1 me bro I'll cut you I swear on me mum

Eh, that's what keeps the discussion fun. Jackal though is actually pretty meh, stats wise. It's an SMG, so already it's not going to have very much range and poor accuracy. Otherwise it's a standardish 167/600, but compared to other 167s it falls short on some important aspects.

Sure, lots of players may like it but if you took the same gun and extended the range and tightened the CoF back down to carbine levels it'd be a much better gun. Same thing applies to the Gladius in my mind, an AC-X11 will always be flat better in the ways that matter, as will a Cyclone or Blitz.

Believe me, I'm not saying opinions on anything should be discounted, just that the numbers are what they are, and that they are just not very complementary with the type of weapon, be it as an SMG or as a 200/~500.

Terrible CoFs and short damage ranges are bad for the long range profile of a 200/~500 gun while the low RoF and poor hipfire are bad for an SMG. Together they don't mesh at all.

I really don't think the 22RPM is even noticeable in actual combat though. It sacrifices a lot of range and versatility for that, which many not even make the difference that damage degradation rates could.

The reload is actually pretty close to standard for other 200 damage guns. Only reload faster is the Reaper at 1.925s, with the A-Tross and AC-X11 at 2.1s and 2.045s respectively. Much faster than one of the SAWs though for the obvious reasons.

But how can the Gladius have an accurate sustained fire when it has the worse accuracy at every point in time? What do you define as mid-range? For an SMG, or just a general range? For SMG range, maybe, though I think a higher RoF gun might still be better.

This goes back to my calculations earlier. It's ROF smooths out that accuracy over time ( note, not accuracy per rounds fired, merely accuracy relative to time spent firing), to a level that bests most other SMG's.

Trust me, I know, but I like to think of both the Gladius and Jackal as being what I like to call " Almost weapons", which is to say, almost every competitor always beats them. The thing is, there is always something to them that makes them viable again against each competitor, and while it's often small and nuanced, it's some stat or trait that comes into play frequently enough to make the weapon feasible for general use. Generally speaking, these weapons are odd balls, failing at normal roles, but excelling against same category opposition when placed outside their comfort zones, often with the goal of bridging performance gaps.

An extreme example would be that of the TRAP-M1 ( I say extreme, since for all intensive purposes, it should be categorized as a scout rifle). It's terrible against semi auto snipers at ranged combat. It simply is. But pit those semi-auto snipers against close range targets ( something outside their comfort zone), and the TRAP-M1 finds itself outperforming everything.

Plus if there is anything I have learned playing this game, it's that sometimes, it's not the stats you frequently look at that matter, but the ones that you don't frequently look at.

Seriously though, we should just come to some mutual agreement and end this before long here ( And I mean to aim this at all parties involved).

That may be the disconnect. Most SMGs fall flat on their *** around 15 meters, and close quarters rifles around 20-25. The Gladius, PDW, and MKV with a grip stay relevant out to 20-30.