My god, the Trac-5 is fantastic!

Now you can fly too! (without getting shafted from a hillside by a lock-down prowler or hearing constant beep-beep-beep-booom)

trac5 is a good gun .

That mag size is indeed great, and the Trac-5 is a great gun, but you will eventually realize its real fault, the reload time. Solstice and Mercenary's reload times are almost instantaneous, comparatively of course.

Your typical TR soldier

Guess it comes down to style, in the end. The faster reloading types win in peek-a-boo style, while the other is better when doing push'n'withdraw. Having played all factions I'm at odds as to which I actually like more. Sure, people will whine forever about factures, strikers, ZOE, vanny shield, "the god saw", and so on, but in reality it is just "grass is always greener" rearing its ugly head.

When someone complains about infantry weapons it usually comes down to the faction he or she chose not matching his or her playstyle. That's not to say everything is perfect but if you'd believe the forums you'd think everything is in complete chaos.

40+ round mag with 750+ rpm is a top tier characteristic and why people narrowly rate TAR and Jaguar above the VS and NC equivalents.

But Trac-5 also lacks things like .75 ads movement speed and advanced laser sight and doesn't have other features like low jitter, equal pull to left and right and high velocity to make it a great ads gun.

So as it stands its just a good performing general purpose gun.

BURN THE HERETIC!

Yep, jack of all trades, master of none. But still a pretty solid weapon that anyone can do pretty good with, personally I prefer the merc, but the I think the TRAC-5 is my second favorite starter overall.

I agree. I think the Trac 5 is great and probably the best starter carbine, since it works best in close encounters.
The Jaguar is even better.

Er.... the Jag is effective (good even) well outside Hipfire range (Lynx too, just not as controllable).

Indeed the AC-X11 sucks.

The Jag yeah maybe, it's CoF nerf has toned it down a little too much though. The only choice you have to make is, extra range (and that negligible) or extra RoF. I've Aurax'd all of the carbines barring the Burst and Non-Faction specific ones.

Jag and Lynx are great but their roles overlap too much imho.

Wow, it seems everyone is really praising the Jag here in this thread
My worry is range mostly, as I do what I need to do in CQC with the Trac-5
I already have problems hitting people past 40m with the Trac-5, wouldn't the faster RPM of the Jag make it even harder? Or does the grip help that much?

The T5 AMC is better.

They actually have the same RPM. Trac 5 is easier to use at range than Jaguar, since Jaguar has worse recoil.
But Jaguar has 0.75x ADS move speed, better hipfire and can equip an adv. laser sight, so it's basically a Trac 5 that's better geared for CQC and slightly worse at range.

I think the T5 AMC is the best TR carbine for encounters at mid-long range, but I don't really have any experience with it, since I use other classes for ranged encounters on my TR.

This! Other than the stupid looking scope placement, this gun is absolutely amazing. I didn't think I'd ever like a gun as much as the Jaguar, but the T5 AMC is so damn accurate.

TRAC-5 is a great default gun to get you started.

Get the Jaguar next and you'll be like OMG

Jaguar is the god of TR carbines (and I'm not saying god of ALL carbines only for political reasons).

Jag with forward grip is the most versatile carbine in the game, has good hip-fire out of the box. Very accurate, very controllable. I HAD to try all other TR carbines before getting Jaguar, now I'm sorry I didn't do it sooner.
Sure, Lynx has higher DPS, but this serves no purpose other than spray bullets all around your target. With Jaguar you can cut grass.
Jaguar is basically TRAC 5 with better recoil pattern, better hip-fire, 0.75x ADS multiplier. Disadvantages are really not important - a tad longer reload here, slightly slower bullet speed there... nothing major.

Jag is not a sidegrade, it's a straight upgrade.
I used to shy away from Jaguar, cuz it was mainstream and all. Now I regret that. Jaguar is that good.

Well your faction trait applies to all weapon types that are not faction specific NS weapons. Our faction's trait only applies to 3 categories while the NC's trait is almost always in effect. Vanu's trait is in effect 90% of the time.

Equal left and right recoil is bad for accurate weapons.

How so? You can't compensate for jitter with equal or angled pull so all angled pull does is give you something else to manage.