Annihilator: 4 UAC/10++ or 3 UAC/20++

[foamyesque]

I agree that 12-14 alphas is probably too many, but it’s a little peace of mind going into 4+ skull missions where the opfors are mostly Heavy and Assault Classes that sometimes come in waves. If I lose a mech to a lucky shot, then the Anni can still provide knockout punches until the opfor is whittled down to a more even basis.

The max frontal armor is probably overkill, but it’s a comfort zone from running lights in the early missions. More armor = more pilot survival = fewer structural repairs. Since armor repairs are free, this is a cost savings at a critical time during the career/campaign, in my mind. I generally don’t have to worry about ammo explosions either, even in the Assault units. I’ve used JJs in Assaults before, an earlier play through had them on all my Assault lance. But in the heaviest class, they don’t give you much more mobility and exact a significant weight and heat penalty. I do keep them in the HGNs though. Seems like the right thing todo for some reason.

Money's a concern after you've put together an Annihilator loaded to the gills with LosTech weaponry? Not sure I see how, unless you're regularly losing LosTech components and need to replace them.

And yeah while the assault class JJs are very heavy (the heat penalty is based on hexes moved, not JJ tonnage or count, so it's pretty trivial with just three) the mobility they grant you is absolutely worth the tonnage. Even if you don't carry the maximum, at least two will give you the ability to hop up or down cliffs and move to arbitrary facings when positioning, both of which are quite useful. I usually run three, though, because I hate how slow the slow assaults are, and with three JJs they can reposition so much more quickly and easily than without. It's absolutely worth the alpha reduction, because guns that don't shoot because you're not in position are doing no damage.

The way I look at ammo is 'how many kills can I get out of this much ammo'. For an Annihilator and the kind of guns it can tote, pretty much any reasonable configuration is going to average pretty close to a kill a round (particularly if you're taking advantage of called shots). Building in some buffer, you could call it six kills on eight rounds. If the other 'mechs in your lance can approach that you could very easily be packing the ability to kill eighteen opfor 'mechs before running out of ammo and still have room for a light or medium spotter!

And since most 'mechs also carry backup energy batteries -- heck, if you chop down the ammo load, so can the Anni, though I'd favour JJs --, you can in fact continue even beyond that. How many missions throw that much metal at you? Attack and Defends, I guess? But in most missions you're looking at a max of three opposition lances.

I generally agree, but considering that once this mech runs out of ammo, it becomes significantly less useful, I can understand why someone would want 10 or 12 rounds worth of ammo.

By the time an Annihilator runs out of ammo any opposition that isn't a smoking crater is going to be far too shot up to do anything serious

 

[Doctor Machete]

I agree that 12-14 alphas is probably too many, but it’s a little peace of mind going into 4+ skull missions where the opfors are mostly Heavy and Assault Classes that sometimes come in waves. If I lose a mech to a lucky shot, then the Anni can still provide knockout punches until the opfor is whittled down to a more even basis.

Having 66 alpha heat doesn't give me peace of mind, and max armor also doesn't when you can't fire twice in a row without a shutdown and you can't keep firing while you maintain your distance to the foes (or at the very least delay them).

IMO if you have long range weapons higher mobility plus damage sustainability >>>>> higher armor in regards to survivability.

That said I do agree in the very early game max or nearly max armor is usually preferable, because you still don't have all the pieces for a well planned loadout (including a pilot with Called Shot Mastery), but a 4xUAC10 ANH is not early game.

The missions where opfor come in waves are the easiest ones. Four foes at a time when you do have four high tier mechs?. The hardest ones are when there is a time limit or all the foes are already in the map, like some assa missions and particularly ambush missions, where there is one wave near the end of the mission but as you start there are the armed convoy you have to eliminate plus a escort, and if the convoy has PPCs then it's going to be harder than if they're demos.

I’ve used JJs in Assaults before, an earlier play through had them on all my Assault lance. But in the heaviest class, they don’t give you much more mobility and exact a significant weight and heat penalty. I do keep them in the HGNs though. Seems like the right thing todo for some reason.

I fully disagree. Try to not just move in the direction you're facing right now but walk sideways while also firing, or backwards + firing. If you have JJs the difference is enormous, and you can jump over LoS features and impassable terrain. I think they're particularly useful for assaults, because you do actually gain a lot more mobility compared to walking and it is way way easier to take advantage from cover, LoS blocking terrain, and you'd walk at sluggish pace in slowing terrain otherwise. I don't think I'd be able to pull this off without them:

Spoiler

(the last one is without using PS/Vig)

With 3xJJS you have a much easier time getting in & out from medium range, you have a lot more control of LoS, extremely useful both for offensive and defensive purposes. And that helps both medium and long range assaults. And in addition to LoS manipulation, for long range mechs you can (if you have Ace Pilot) fire -> jump away, fire -> jump away, ... so even in plain terrain they're still very useful, even if it is at the cost of a bit of firepower, which is not always the case.


So if you use them as mere QoL tools then sure, they probably don't worth the weight. But if used as an integral part of your offensive and defensive tactics they're OP, greatly due to the opfor not having them but in very few mechs, even with those the AI doesn't use them aggressively.

 

[foamyesque]

As far as armour goes, I usually build to proof against certain particular weapons in a given bracket. If at all possible on the front, I want at least 50 in each location so a lucky PPC or AC/5 hit doesn't do unfortunate things; 60 is even better, for proof against anything the opfor carries short of an AC/20. After that, the next big breakpoints are 75, for surviving 3 medium laser hits instead of 2, and 100, to be proof against AC/20 hits. Then add an extra 5-10 points to cover followup scratch damage. Anything beyond that is insurance and usually means I'm in a slow assault that is a lot more likely to take hits. I armoured a King Crab up to full once for the achievement, but I don't think I've ever done it since. Closest I've gotten are my CQC Atlas II builds, which knowingly put themselves into AC/20 range and so are built to take multiple AC/20 hits to any location (excepting the head, which is why they're always piloted by Bulwark pilots).

 

[LongRange]

I see your point. For most scenarios, my style is Max Front Armor+Bulwark+Cover+High Damage Weaponry. And kill anything with an AC20 before it gets in range. But you still get that one Quickdraw spotter that just won’t die and you end up taking extra damage regardless. L

My worst experience was a 5 skull TA mission where all 12 heavy opfors were on the field and in range from the start. Obviously, cover and bulwark were useless here because you had to move to cover the points. Opfor Focused fire on my 732b (which started with 1500+ armor) until it was down and out. Could have played it a little smarter and kept all 4 alive (and saved 500 cbills), but the point is you can get a lot of cumulative damage in some of these scenarios and sometimes you don’t know until you get on the field what you are about to face. So extra armor is my safety blanket.

 

[Corraidhin]

I agree that 12-14 alphas is probably too many, but it’s a little peace of mind going into 4+ skull missions where the opfors are mostly Heavy and Assault Classes that sometimes come in waves. If I lose a mech to a lucky shot, then the Anni can still provide knockout punches until the opfor is whittled down to a more even basis

Personally I over-spec my ammo to allow flexibilty. I can use my Anni to kill a mech per round in straight up fights. I can also use multi-target to ping three targets with respectable damage for many rounds if required. Very useful on defence/convoy missions.

 

[foamyesque]

Personally I over-spec my ammo to allow flexibilty. I can use my Anni to kill a mech per round in straight up fights. I can also use multi-target to ping three targets with respectable damage for many rounds if required. Very useful on defence/convoy missions.

I can see a round or two, for drawing aggro, but why beyond?

 

[Doctor Machete]

Personally I over-spec my ammo to allow flexibilty. I can use my Anni to kill a mech per round in straight up fights. I can also use multi-target to ping three targets with respectable damage for many rounds if required. Very useful on defence/convoy missions.

By having init 1 instead of 2 you also lose flexibility. By not having AP you also lose flexibility, because instead of just fire or move + fire, you can fire and depending on the results jump into one direction (f.e. for keeping your evasion up against the same target you attacked before) or (if you killed it) jump in the direction of the next target.

But even then, 12-14 salvos seem excessive to me for a very powerful assault. Because if this is the mech you're using for the aggro then your other mechs should be doing the killing.

 

[foamyesque]

By having init 1 instead of 2 you also lose flexibility. By not having AP you also lose flexibility, because instead of just fire or move + fire, you can fire and depending on the results jump into one direction (f.e. for keeping your evasion up against the same target you attacked before) or (if you killed it) jump in the direction of the next target.

You can have multishot and master tact or multishot and AP. I prefer MT, since getting to fire ahead of the opposition of the same weight class is a hugely useful way to reduce incoming damage (and guarantees you can fire ahead of turrets, which reduces their annoyance factor dramatically), but AP has its uses too. You don't have to take breaching shot if you take multishot, and I often don't. You lose Bulwark, which is annoying, but can be worked around.

 

[Doctor Machete]

You can have multishot and master tact or multishot and AP. I prefer MT, since getting to fire ahead of the opposition of the same weight class is a hugely useful way to reduce incoming damage (and guarantees you can fire ahead of turrets, which reduces their annoyance factor dramatically), but AP has its uses too. You don't have to take breaching shot if you take multishot, and I often don't. You lose Bulwark, which is annoying, but can be worked around.

Yep, that's true, but why using this type of mech for aggroing when many other setups are going to be much much better (particularly but not exclusively LRM boats)?. You're using a potentially good PS mech for something a more non-PS focused one would be much better. And now, because you don't have Bullwark you'll often need to be more careful and not so aggressive when going for the kill, because you don't have JJs it's going to have worse survivability and worse offensive potential with PS, and damage sustainability is terrible with 66 heat alpha. Sure you can work around it, but does it offer a net improvement over lots and lots of other ANH setups? is that what flexibility looks like? I don't think so.

And let's say you actually do use it exclusively (or mostly) for aggroing. What are your other mechs doing in their turns that you actually need to deal 12-14 alphas with this when you have 576 alpha damage, why is taking them so long?. Escort missions are fairly easy with a single decent heavy/assault mech, and defend base are not a problem for a full lance even without a multi aggro mech.

 

[foamyesque]

@Doctor Machete: I'm not the one suggesting it :v But if I were to use it to draw aggro, what I imagine I'd do would be a single multishot at the beginning of a given wave to pull the attention of three enemy 'mechs, and then called shots (hell, or even standard fire; an Annihilator puts out enough damage that even w/o called shots you're going to blow people up pretty quick) from there on out. Also worth noting that I think you're mistaking @Corraidhin's spec; they described it here:

I loaded my Anni with as many AC5s and UAC5S as I had, along with ammo for 15 volleys and TTS+++. It lived up to it's name. I prefer a Master tactician on board to fire in phase 2 initiative and give best PS performance on CT.

It's running more ammo than I'd carry, but its using /5s instead of /10s, so that's much less of a weight penalty.

Note also the specific mention of a MT pilot and CT core called shots.

Concerning heat and tonnage: Five AC/5 or UAC/5 is somewhere between 35t and 45t depending on the exact mix and bonuses, and 15 rounds of ammo is between 5t and 10t depending on the AC/5 v. UAC/5 balances. Depending on exactly how the weapons balance out and the bonuses on the UACs, you could easily fit that into an Annihilator's 70+t of spare space and still have room for both substantial armour and lots of cooling.

For example, a 2x AC/5++ + 3x UAC/5++ build would be 37t in gun and 8t in ammo (45t) and generate 64 heat, of which 30 is sunk by the engine. That gives you almost three full alphas before shutdown without the addition of any cooling, and you've still got 31.5t to work with. Five DHS (or even 10 SHS) and you're up to to 60 cooling on 64 generation, which in a heat neutral biome means that even a Guts 1 pilot (overheat threshold of 60) can fire precisely the full 15 round warload without overheating, and you still have over twenty tons of free space for armour or JJs or TTS or whatever else takes your fancy.

You don't get quite the huge alpha of a UAC/10 or /20 build, but if you're doing called shot cores, the 456 damage output of two 55dmg AC/5s + 3x UAC/5s times the Anni quirk is not going to be pleasant for the target. Good headcap chances too if you wanted to try for one.

 

[Doctor Machete]

@foamyesque

Yep, my mistake. I was thinking about the 12-14 salvos with 4xUAC10 and max armor, which doesn't leave much room for cooling or JJs.

With lower damage, less heat, more range and more shots per ammo-ton now that's a LOT different. I still wouldn't use it for aggroing though, because I think an LRM boat is way better for that. And also because I don't think Multi is really necessary, but if you want to use it then an UAC5 based mech wouldn't be bad.

 

[foamyesque]

I still wouldn't use it for aggroing though, because I think an LRM boat is way better for that. And also because I don't think Multi is really necessary, but if you want to use it then an UAC5 based mech wouldn't be bad.

The thing about an LRM boat though is that it has real trouble with actually efficiently killing people. Even given the ++ damage variant on a Bull Shark you're looking at 480 damage tops, which, okay, is a substantial amount but is all pure sandblast. And any other configuration on any other 'mech is worse for raw damage; only the Archer can get reasonable focus, but it really struggles to get above 50 LRMs. The kind of Anni setup described can do both and with reasonable efficiency.

I've found multishot reasonably useful, surprisingly enough on 'mechs you wouldn't necessarily expect it to be. For example, my scout 'mech is usually given to a MS / MT or MS / AP pilot -- it doesn't need to actually kill anything because it lacks the firepower, but it can de-evasion, de-cover, debilitate, and draw the attention of three 'mechs at the same time, which can be quite useful. Likewise on really high firepower 'mechs it's handy for poking, e.g., multiple turrets or vehicles at once, or clearing out assorted trash you don't need to waste called shots on.

 

[Corraidhin]

The thing about an LRM boat though is that it has real trouble with actually efficiently killing people. Even given the ++ damage variant on a Bull Shark you're looking at 480 damage tops, which, okay, is a substantial amount but is all pure sandblast. And any other configuration on any other 'mech is worse for raw damage; only the Archer can get reasonable focus, but it really struggles to get above 50 LRMs. The kind of Anni setup described can do both and with reasonable efficiency.

I've found multishot reasonably useful, surprisingly enough on 'mechs you wouldn't necessarily expect it to be. For example, my scout 'mech is usually given to a MS / MT or MS / AP pilot -- it doesn't need to actually kill anything because it lacks the firepower, but it can de-evasion, de-cover, debilitate, and draw the attention of three 'mechs at the same time, which can be quite useful. Likewise on really high firepower 'mechs it's handy for poking, e.g., multiple turrets or vehicles at once, or clearing out assorted trash you don't need to waste called shots on.

I should point out I only use the Anni with multishot on defend, attack/defend, and escort missions. Any other time it has a Master Tactician, and that lance also has a cyclops.

The Anni fires in init 3, which really helps with removing heavy/assault threats quickly. The spare ammo is a nice to have as I don't need the weight for anything else. I will take massed UAC5s over UAC10s any time I have the choice.

 

[Doctor Machete]

The thing about an LRM boat though is that it has real trouble with actually efficiently killing people. Even given the ++ damage variant on a Bull Shark you're looking at 480 damage tops, which, okay, is a substantial amount but is all pure sandblast. And any other configuration on any other 'mech is worse for raw damage; only the Archer can get reasonable focus, but it really struggles to get above 50 LRMs. The kind of Anni setup described can do both and with reasonable efficiency.


I've found multishot reasonably useful, surprisingly enough on 'mechs you wouldn't necessarily expect it to be. For example, my scout 'mech is usually given to a MS / MT or MS / AP pilot -- it doesn't need to actually kill anything because it lacks the firepower, but it can de-evasion, de-cover, debilitate, and draw the attention of three 'mechs at the same time, which can be quite useful. Likewise on really high firepower 'mechs it's handy for poking, e.g., multiple turrets or vehicles at once, or clearing out assorted trash you don't need to waste called shots on.

Yes, they have trouble killing hard targets BUT but if you look at LRMs they have very good efficiency for a >=450m range weapon without Precision Shot, plus they have much more range than that and most of all they have Indirect Fire, so they're super dependable and reliable. They might not have enough damage to kill a target, but if they do you can count of them, you're not going to have difficulties or lose time getting into range, acquiring LoS or searching for a good position from where to fire. And a Stalker/Highlander can have enough tubes to reliably one-shot any vehicle without PS within cover from the front, and because Indirect Fire they can fire over and over and over.... If you don't rush the combat they easily can outdamage much higher alpha loadouts.

Also they're not pure sandblast, without Precision Shot they actually spread less than most other weapons due to clustering, with a bias towards damaging the CT due to it being the highest base chance location plus being adjacent to the 2? and 3?. With large LRM weapons damage is actually more focused than with many multiple hits weapons.

So LRM boats are IMO the best support type of loadout. A mech like the Archer is much closer to a single hit weapon than to a LRM boat, although still is very bad at headcapping (not as bad as other LRM boats though). And because of that I wouldn't want to use it as a support mech. They make for good heavy damage dealers, with PS a 50 tube Archer is more efficient (the margin is not insignificant but it is small) than a 80 tube BSK-M3, but without PS is a lot worse.


The issue is that many think of it as focused damage = good and spread = bad. For me that's the wrong way to look at it. It should be, well, "it depends". Because the more focused is the damage the more likely you'll do maximum damage where you want but also the more likely you'll do very low or no damage where you want. Then LBX2 are way more efficient than both UAC2/LRMs without PS (and they have excellent range too), but they lack Indirect Fire, so they aren't as dependable as LRMs.

 

[foamyesque]

Also they're not pure sandblast, without Precision Shot they actually spread less than most other weapons due to clustering, with a bias towards damaging the CT due to it being the highest base chance location plus being adjacent to the 2? and 3?. With large LRM weapons damage is actually more focused than with many multiple hits weapons.

I was under the impression that only the Archer has clustering and that, for other 'mechs, each LRM was, functionally, an independent roll on the hit table (excepting heads). Was that not correct?

And TBH damage works better in big packets. You're far, far more likely to break something if you tag someone with an AC/20 than with four medium lasers, or with an LRM25. That directly removes combat capability even if it doesn't kill. S'why a lot of good CBT designs are centered around 'one big gun to open a hole, lots of little guns to try hitting that location again for crits', because called shots in CBT are way less frequent and can't be made to the head, so you have to try and degrade combat capability by breaking internals. It works in HBSTech too, though it's obviously less efficient compared to Marauders popping heads or coring :v

 

[Doctor Machete]

I was under the impression that only the Archer has clustering and that, for other 'mechs, each LRM was, functionally, an independent roll on the hit table (excepting heads). Was that not correct?

With LRMs after first missile lands the following missiles get a x8 multiplier for the center cluster and a x4 for adjacent locations. What the Archer quirk does is applying an extra x16 on top of the center cluster (so x128), almost (but not quite) making it a single hit weapon, but still each missile gets its independent roll, just more or less weighted to the center and adjacent locations of the cluster.

And TBH damage works better in big packets. You're far, far more likely to break something if you tag someone with an AC/20 than with four medium lasers, or with an LRM25. That directly removes combat capability even if it doesn't kill. S'why a lot of good CBT designs are centered around 'one big gun to open a hole, lots of little guns to try hitting that location again for crits', because called shots in CBT are way less frequent and can't be made to the head, so you have to try and degrade combat capability by breaking internals. It works in HBSTech too, though it's obviously less efficient compared to Marauders popping heads or coring :v

Let's say you need 50 damage to finish a failed CT core attempt. What do you think is going to have better chances to finish the job (without Precision Shot), a dual AC20++ or a LRM70++, and if you include a 4xGauss ANH?


That for support roles. For a main damage dealer use (no LRMs) more but smaller hits is always better IF (and a big if) you have enough damage (equivalent for both), and that's truer for a wider spectrum if the smaller hit weapons are also more damage/weight/heat efficient. That threshold where small hits become better depends on how much you do need, how damage do you have and how many hits, even sometimes exactly how much damage each hit has, it can happen that a very small difference on the damage per hit to have a big impact. And that's also the reason why massed small hitters tend to scale much better in performance with two alphas in a row.

Not a small hitter but let's take a Gauss. Those 5 extra (structural) damage after 1.8 make a huge difference for headcapping at 20% DR, because now instead of requiring two hits now it is enough with one. The same can happen with smaller hits and how they can combine to the highest number of potential successful combinations possible.

 

[foamyesque]

Let's say you need 50 damage to finish a failed CT core attempt. What do you think is going to have better chances to finish the job (without Precision Shot), a dual AC20++ or a LRM70++, and if you include a 4xGauss ANH?

An LRM70++ is, if you're assuming damage and not stability, 420 damage. The correct comparison there would be quad AC/20s, which would be 400 - 440 depending on which variety. And I'd take the ACs, because they're way better at actually popping a torso or limb clean off than LRMs ever will be.

Damage is always better in the largest packet you can get, because you hit breakpoints -- the headcap most notably, but there are others for individual 'mechs and their armour layouts -- and are more likely to clear the armour of any given location you hit. It's a question of whether you think the price to get that damage, in heat/tonnage/range/overall damage, is worth it. The ready access to called shots in HBSTech dramatically strengthens massed small weapons, but I'll tell you right now that if I see a 4G and a 4P Hunchback on the field at the same time I will always shoot the 4G first. The 4P will do more damage; the 4G will kill.

This is particularly so once you drop into 'mechs that can't mount enough armour for a high-damage weapon to not go internal and doubly so when they start doing things like tear off limbs or torsos in a single hit.

 

[Doctor Machete]

An LRM70++ is, if you're assuming damage and not stability, 420 damage. The correct comparison there would be quad AC/20s, which would be 400 - 440 depending on which variety. And I'd take the ACs, because they're way better at actually popping a torso or limb clean off than LRMs ever will be.

Well, the LRM70 is much better for that job than a 4xAC20 too (assuming +dmg variants for all cases), in fact the 4xAC20 would have exactly the same chance to finish that CT as the 4xGauss. On top of that the LRM70 can do it at a lot more range and with Indirect Fire, which makes it a LOT more dependable, you can finish that mech and the following turn attack a different mech on the opposing side of the map to one-shot kill a vehicle attacking a building of the base you're defending.

Damage is always better in the largest packet you can get, because you hit breakpoints -- the headcap most notably, but there are others for individual 'mechs and their armour layouts -- and are more likely to clear the armour of any given location you hit. It's a question of whether you think the price to get that damage, in heat/tonnage/range/overall damage, is worth it. The ready access to called shots in HBSTech dramatically strengthens massed small weapons, but I'll tell you right now that if I see a 4G and a 4P Hunchback on the field at the same time I will always shoot the 4G first. The 4P will do more damage; the 4G will kill.

I think that's demonstrably wrong, like in the example above. And that's precisely (not exclusively but in a big way) due to breakpoints, that's what I tried to explain before. If you need 61 damage to headcap having 59 extra damage won't do anything for you. You're wasting damage, heat and tonnage on damage which won't help you to headcap at that threshold, where having lots of 35 dmg hits would.

If you need 102 now it is quite different, having 120 damage per hit becomes more efficient because there's less wasted damage, less overkill. And that is (40% DR headcap) where a weapon like AC20 tend to do much better than usual, but not at lower or higher thresholds.

About your Hunchback example, let's say you're very beaten down, you have some evasion (you're playing with a light mech), and you have at most 25 struct left in any location and no damage reduction at the moment. Against which of both Hunchback would you rather take your chances, the 4G or the 4P?.

 

[foamyesque]

About your Hunchback example, let's say you're very beaten down, you have some evasion (you're playing with a light mech), and you have at most 25 struct left in any location and no damage reduction at the moment. Against which of both Hunchback would you rather take your chances, the 4G or the 4P?.

Any hit the 4G lands with the /20 is an immediate kill, up to and including if I had been at fresh armour in that scenario. You wouldn't be 'a bit beat up', you'd be dead, and therefore unable to fire back in the first place.

That's the thing I've said at least twice now: You want the big gun for holepoking. If you've already cleared armour or severely damaged somebody small weapons can do the job, sure, which is why SRMs and LBX guns can be very powerful (again, particularly in tabletop).

Without the crutch of at-will called shots the situation in which you want sandblast over holepunch is strictly limited to finishing up what a holepunch already started. If I could have a weapon that concentrated all my 'mech's alpha into one gun I'd absolutely take it; consider a Marauder, which functionally achieves this with called shots. Is there any location on a 'mech where having a full alpha strike it will not break something? Nope! You could shoot an empty arm and still be further ahead than a blindfire distribution.

Your point about wasted damage I disagree with. On any target other than a CT or head, damage above that needed to destroy the component transfers inwards towards the CT and therefore still contributes to the kill; you can pop a Locust with a hit in the arm with a sufficiently powerful strike, like a punch or /20 or turbocharged PPC. If you've popped the head or CT the fact that you've burned heat/ammo that you might not've had to if you'd had a perfect gun-to-HP ratio is a really minor point as compared to the huge differential in terms of combat efficiency between 'blew up a component' and 'component has 1 HP left'.

 

[BARBOSA (Aries)]

No love for the LBX2++? I think 12x6 is better than 35x2 and you deal with less weight and recoil than the UAC2++ too. Although i actually prefer the UAC5++ for my Annihilators.