The Chaos isn't bad. It's the Thanatos with the shot spread of the Baron / Jackhammer. The Darkstar... take the Pulsar VS1. Now remove 5 rounds from the magazine and the ability to put any attachments on it but give it infinite ammo and a heat mechanic... so sucks. The Skorpios isn't a bad option for an auraxium medic weapon alternative since the HVA and Ex. Mag baked into it makes it virtually a 143/750 RPM carbine with 5 more rounds than you're use to that's usable on all classes including medic. The only down side is auraxing the NS SMG's, but you only need a total of 4640 kills for that gun instead of the 5800 for most auraxium guns.
The Darkstar has lower recoil, both horzontal and vertical, than the Pulsar even if you put a foregrip on the latter. It's hipfire COF is worse though, even more so if you put a laser on the Pulsar. It trades cqc qualities for better long range capability, where the reduced full auto mag is less of a problem, because you are bursting anyway.
Nope, the Baron, Jackhammer, and Auraxium shotguns all have a 2.5 spread. Nope. Those were the old stats with the baked in attachments before the heat mechanic was introduced. Heat mechanic reverted the Eclipse, Darkstar, and Betelgeuse to the stock Solstice, Pulsar, and Orion stats. It's why if you want to farm you use the Betelgeuse, if you want to kill everyone you come up against you still use the Orion since you can make it even more accurate with a grip. Test it out, the auraxium VS guns with heat mechanic equip faster than the guns their based off of if those guns have a grip equipped. Other empire auraxium guns that have grips baked into them equip in the same amount of time as the guns they're based off of with grips equipped.
Are you sure about that? Your reply shattered my hopes (800kills to Darkstar, working on it hard as i like the Pulsar VS1), so i checked the notes about it on the patch that introduced the heat mechanic which i quote for that gun and it doesn't mention anything about the forward grip. Only the Betelgeuse seems concerned from the patch notes: I disagree with you on the Skorpios by the way. In my opinion the SMGs are the weakest of the auraxium weapons due to the lack of SPA which i deem essential in this category. Also, having the ext.mag on a Cyclone/Eridani base pretty much negates their dps advantage over the Blitz/Sirius (Sirius with ALS is just superior to a Eridani with ext.mag, and i suppose the same goes for Cyclone and Blitz.
It's possible that I miss remembered that patch and thought they nerfed all the VS weapon attachments instead of just the Betelgeuse. I have no plans to get the Darkstar and I'm only about 2k kills away from the Eclipse to test it so it will be a while before I can test it for myself. It gets HVA instead of SPA, and like carbines HVA is actually ridiculously good on SMG's were that an option they normally get. It's absolutely the next auraxium weapon I'm going for after I get the Eclipse since I love the Eridani with ex. mags on my LA to begin with and I actually un equipped SPA for the last 700 kills and it was a dream, so HVA should make it even better for me. Too bad it doesn't get the heat mechanic instead of ex mags, but holy crap that would be the most OP thing in the world as a infil/LA with a first gen SMG that never has to worry about ammo.
I'm pretty sure the all of the VS Auraxium weapons, EXCEPT the Shotgun and possibly the Sniper Rifle.
I realized afterwards the Eclipse and other aurax carbines have a UB shotgun for rail attachment: the Equinox and Solstice SF are so useful i forgot about that. So it's going to be underwhelming, considering the only good point with the Solstice is being reasonably accurate with slightly better dps than the Pulsar C. It's an inferior choice for the engineer: the heat mechanic brings only inconvenience(lower mag) when you have infinite ammo already. A LA weapon, nothing else. No it's only the carbine, AR and LMG. If you look up the patch note from the 29th of august and search for "heat" you'll find 3 occurrences.
The Equinox and Solstice SF sacrifice an ROF tier and longer reload times to get the underbarrel attachments, the auraxiumed carbines don't so it's actually really nice since the only 652 guns I like are the CME, Polaris, and NS-11a. It's not actually underwhelming from the outfit mates that have it since unlimited ammo is the key feature about the heat mechanic on the Eclipse where the heat mechanic on the Orion is more about not being caught reloading.
