Take off Forward Grip from your Pulsar C (thx Wrel!)

As Wrel has found it, Advanced Forward Grip *sort of* increases horizontal recoil of the Pulsar C, making it a downgrade.

Heavily technical explanation incoming, if you don't want to get into details, just remove forward grip from your Pulsar C and be better for it. You can use laser sight instead as a free upgrade.

Here are nitty gritty details:

• Pulsar C has vertical recoil of 0.4, horizontal recoil of 0.175 / 0.175 and horizontal recoil tolerance (HRT) of 0.3.
• Advanced forward grip (AFG) reduces horizontal recoil by 33% and HRT by 0.05.
• So with AFG Pulsar C has 0.117 / 0.117 horizontal recoil and 0.25 HRT.

Here's how it works:

1. You start firing. Game remembers that starting point of your first shot.
   • Its coordinates are x = 0 and y = 0.
2. Vertical recoil kicks your aim upwards, and horizontal recoil kicks it randomly to the left or right. For the sake of example, let's say horizontal recoil kicked right.
   • So your current crosshair position relative to the starting point is x = 0.175 and y = 0.4
3. Then the second shot happens. Again, for the sake of example, let's imagine that horizontal recoil randomly chose to kick right.
   • This is where HRT enters the scene. If crosshair is kicked right, the crosshair position (accumulated horizontal recoil) would be x = 0.35, and 0.35 > HRT of 0.3.
   • Accumulated horizontal recoil cannot exceed HRT, so horizontal recoil will not be allowed to kick right, and will be forced to kick left.
   • Basically, HRT determines how far can horizontal recoil take you from the starting point.

And here's the kicker: without forward grip, Pulsar C can only kick 2 times in the same direction, and with forward grip - 4 times.


The pictures are not accurately scaled, but they relay the general idea. Source of these pictures are these videos (one, two) of me shooting the Pulsar C with and without forward grip, and watching them frame by frame, documenting the direction of each kick.

With AFG, Pulsar C's horizontal recoil pattern is wider at 0.117 * 4 = 0.468,
while without AFG it is 0.175 * 2 = 0.35.

Advanced Forward Grip will reduce the individual horizontal recoil kicks, which is technically better as long as you fire in short bursts of 2-3 rounds, but it's not an optimal way to use Pulsar, unless the target is really far away, in which case Pulsar C is gonna fall short either way due to carbine damage and low velocity.

Pulsar C's high vertical recoil interferes with short bursts, but in the long run, its recoil pattern is very predictable and straightforward. It does fully automatic fire well, and with fully automatic fire you want to keep horizontal recoil pattern as narrow as possible. Forward Grip should be reducing it, but increases it instead, making it a pointless downgrade.

My suggested fix to this issue is to increase Pulsar C's stock HRT to 0.35, which would technically be a nerf. The suggested counter buff would be to increase stock velocity to 550 m/s, and velocity with HVA to 577 (5% increase)

That actually quite interesting, I wonder how many more weapons this is the case for?

Likely not few, but I wonder that as well. I'll try to come up with some sort of automated solution to check this.

Well that's another 200 certs down the drain. I'm not taking it off believe it or not because I primarily buy for style on my VS and I'm addicted to foregrips.

Also could you check the T5 AMC? I use it with a compensator/laser combo to negate the downsides of the compensator and would like to know the ADV foregrip stats.

! UPDATE !

I've compiled a list of automatic non-shotgun non-SMG weapons where Forward Grips also increases the amount of kicks:

Here are preliminary results on another weapons. This are result of the theoricrafting and are not directly confirmed by in-game testing, like I did with Pulsar C.
Weapons where Forward Grip increases the amount of kicks:

Assault Rifles:

• NS-11A
• Cycler TRV
• TAR
• H-V45
• Equinox
• Pulsar VS1
• Corvus
• NC-9 A-Tross
• CME

Carbines:

• Pulsar C
• AF-4A Bandit
• AF-19 Mercenary
• NS-11C
• VX6-7

LMGs:

• EM1
• Gauss SAW S
• NS-15M
• T9 CARV
• Orion
• SVA-88
• VX29 Polaris
• Flare
• Ursa
• NC6 Gauss Saw
• T16

Full Auto Scouts:

• Stalker / SOAS / Artemis

Also, for these weapons with different min/max horizontal recoil values, forward grip changes either the minimum or the maximum amount of kicks:

• GR-22 (+ max)
• Carnage BR (+ max)
• GD-7F (+ min)
• Gauss Compact S (+ min)

I haven't yet checked if changing the number of kicks negatively affects the overall width of the horizontal recoil pattern. I'll check it now.

Advanced Forward Grip has same effects for all weapons.

T5 AMC stock: 0.2 / 0.2. HRT: 0,45
With Grip: 0.134 / 0.134. HRT: 0,4

This is 2 kicks maximum, both with and without grip. So T5 AMC is fine.

Well that would explain why I've always thought the Terminus was the only decent VS AR.

so the saw is better without grip? lol

! UPDATE 2 !

Okay, and now here's the actual list of weapons for which Forward Grip increases the total width of horizontal recoil pattern:
Once again, these are NOT confirmed by in-game testing, which is required to be absolutely sure.
Assault Rifles:

• NS-11A
• Cycler TRV
• TAR
• H-V45
• Equinox
• Pulsar VS1
• Corvus
• NC-9 A-Tross
• CME

Carbines:

• AF-4A Bandit
• AF-19 Mercenary
• NS-11C
• VX6-7
• Pulsar C

LMGs:

• EM1
• Gauss SAW S
• NS-15M
• VX29 Polaris
• Flare
• Ursa

Full Auto Scouts:

• Stalker / Artemis / SOAS

Increasing this width negatively affects the accuracy of sustained fire, and should be avoided. It effectively increases the distance the horizontal recoil can travel into one direction, increasing the chance that aim will veer off the target and make the recoil harder to compensate / less predictable.

No, it's not. In case of the SAW, increasing the number of kicks does not increase the total width of the horizontal recoil pattern.

This is kinda broken, like warrants a bug fix kinda broken.

10 VS weapons, 5 NC weapons, 3 NS weapons, 2 TR weapons.

Yup, this really does need to be fixed and I would say that if the VS and TR/NC was swapped.

Keep in mind that my calculations assume worst case scenario. Due to the system being heavily influenced by RNG, your chances of actually being negatively affected are slim, and on average the grip will still make the weapon recoil smoother.

If we would remove cone of fire and vertical recoil and would fire 1000 rounds from each weapon into a target, weapons from the Update 2 list above would have fewer hits with forward grip than without, but the game doesn't really play that way.

Pulsar C is actually the border case where forward grip may actually be harmful, and that's only because its horizontal recoil and tolerance are so small to begin with. On other weapons forward grip is still likely to be beneficial.

I also don't take into account the recoil angle reductions, which make weapons with angle recoil more comfortable with the grip.

And keep in mind that all of this is pure theorycrafting, Pulsar C is the only weapon I have actually tested and confirmed.

On a sidenote, interesting I haven't noticed in the attachment spreadsheet before is that Lynx is the only weapon to receive different benefits from the forward grip. Instead of usual -25% recoil and -0.05 HRT it gets -16.5% recoil and - 0.08 HRT.

I almost thought this was a troll thread when you posted that first update. The Gauss Saw definitely feels better with a forward grip.

I guess they better get to work on fixing this, or give me my damn certs back.

Finally, something the TR excels at.

in b4 this stuff gives free laser sights/ex mags to NC and VS (like it did with pulsar-c) :V

No, I don't do those.

And here's when the actual game testing comes in. I've used the same algorithm for the NS-15M. With recoil of 0.2 / 0.2 and HRT of 0.6, it's supposed to kick the maximum of 3 times to one direction relative to the starting point.

In my in-game tests, I was only able to make NS-15M make 2 kicks in one direction, both with and without forward grip.

In fact, as I vaguely recall from my previous tests, getting any weapon to recoil more than 2 times in one direction relative to the starting point was hard. Or even impossible.

So right now we only know one thing for certain - forward grip is bad for Pulsar C. All other weapons need to be tested to know for sure.

for me gauss saw feels much better without grip

Exceptional. Friendly bump and props for working to make the game better.

Sweet, all of the Burst variants for the Carbines are excluded from this issue. Now, if only I could get a compensator on my Gauss Compact Burst...