What’s up guys, Rogue-9 here and only just over a week into the test server for Operation
Steel Wave and the rework of the ACS12 has already been buffed twice because it turns
out that the initial proposal for this gun fell just a little short of the mark . I have
no clue what went wrong here but the rework of the ACS has been a complete mess so far.
First it’s so weak that anyone who touched the gun immediately knew how unplayably bad
it was and just as I finish my analysis of the gun, ready to start scripting a video,
the damage gets buffed.
I re-test, re-analyse, script and start editing the video and boom another buff comes in and
I have to start over for a second time.
So, hopefully it’s third time lucky and this video can actually finally come out!
There are still a few little problems with the gun but all in all, it looks to be in
a decent state now.
But let me start at the beginning and give you an intro to what is changing and why!
The ACS12 full-auto shotgun is being switched from 00 Buckshot to 12 gauge slug rounds and
according to the devs the reasoning for this is twofold.
Firstly, there was a recurring bug in the system that increased the destruction capability
of the gun to a level that it was never intended to have.
If you ask me, deleting entire walls in about 1 second flat was the most fun thing about
this gun but if you’ve been playing Siege for a while now, you will full well know that
Siege is a serious business and there is strictly no fun allowed!
The second reason for the coming change is the abysmally low pick rate of the gun.
The ACS12 only gets played around 1% of the time and that is no real surprise.
Even after all of the nerfs the ALDA is still possibly THE best gun on defence and the Mx4
isn’t too bad either.
Who in their right mind would ever pick the ACS12 when playing serious matches?!
No one, that’s who!
So, the question now is: how does this new full-auto slug shotgun perform in terms of
breaching and combat?
Let’s check out all of the hidden stats, crunch the numbers and draw some conclusions!
First up let’s go over a few fundamental facts about the new version of the ACS.
It’s a slug shotgun so, just like its cousins the TCSG12 and the BOSG.12.2 (great names
by the way, they still roll off the tongue like an absolute dream) just like those guns
the ACS12 falls into the full penetration damage category . This means that if you hit
the arms of your opponent, while these are in front of their body or head, the slug will
“over-penetrate” and do full body/head damage, instead of just limb damage.
And furthermore, the slugs will even go straight through one operator and continue on to be
able to hit more targets in behind with a 30% damage reduction for every person or soft
surface the slug passes through.
The ACS will be the first fully automatic weapon that has the capability of hitting
multiple targets with each shot, so that’s definitely an update that will give the gun
something unique that can be useful in the right situations but won’t really make the
gun OP or annoying to play against.
Besides this, the overall ammo reserve is being reduced from 121 shots to 91 shots and
both of these changes make sense and are in line with what you would expect from any gun
in the slug shotgun or DMR class.
But there is also some inconsistency.
Both the TCSG and BOSG have an infinite range in Rainbow Six Siege (see the long range demonstrations
in the background now) but interestingly, the ACS is still only able to hit targets up to 40m away.
Any further than that and the shots will simply disappear into thin air, just like in real life !
Why is this a thing with the new ACS?
I don’t know!
If I had to guess, my money would be on the fact that this is simply an oversight.
Normal buckshot guns in Siege have this arbitrary 40m range limit and it appears that during
the rework, the devs simply forgot to delete that line of code on the ACS and so these
brand new slugs still have the same range limitation.
And yes, before anyone asks, I did report this on R6fix.com and it has already been
confirmed, so we will hopefully be seeing this fixed before Steel Wave goes live.
Another apparent oversight that has already been addressed was the Aim Down Sight time.
During the first week of the test server, the ACS still had the incredibly fast baseline
ADS time of only 250ms, which could be sped up to only 150ms with the angled grip attached!
Just for reference, that’s 25% faster than any of the pistols in the game!
But, as mentioned, this has already been nerfed and the gun now handles more appropriately
with an aiming time of 400ms, just like most of the other long guns.
Back in the good old days this full-auto shotgun used to have a fire rate of 300 RPM but and
for the longest time, this was also the official stat listed in the in-game menu even though
this gun had received a stealth nerf in the background to bring it down to 220 RPM instead.
This nerf was never officially announced and there was a discrepancy between the in-game
stats and the actual fire rate for quite a long time but eventually the in-game stat
was brought down to 220 RPM to reflect the actual behaviour of the gun.
To me, this change never made any sense because for pretty much all guns in the game, the
fire rate always reflects the fire rate of the gun in real life.
For the AA-12 (the real life counterpart to the ACS) the fire rate is 300 RPM, so lowering
the fire rate of the ACS broke away from the established convention of making the guns
in Siege handle similarly to the real world.
Honestly, what I think happened here is that the original nerf down to 220 RPM was an accident
but it ran on unchallenged for so long that when the discrepancy between the fire rate
and in-game stats was eventually discovered, they simply changed the stat to match the
behaviour, rather than bring the gun back up to its intended performance.
But that’s just a theory; it is of course also possible that the nerf was intentional
and they just forgot to announce it in the patch notes and forgot to adjust the in-game stat.
220 RPM wasn’t really a big deal when the gun still fired buckshot but now that it will
fire individual slugs, this appallingly low fire rate was definitely going to be an issue
and for the first one and a half weeks on the test server it was a major limiting factor
to the ACS but good news everyone, in a second buff in only a matter of days, Ubisoft announced
that the fire rate is being pushed back up to where it was always supposed to be: 300 RPM!
Finally, a minor issue that is a recurring one in many weapons in Rainbow Six Siege,
is that the real world AA-12 fires from an open bolt and that means that it is not possibly
to load a cartridge into the chamber.
So the 30+1 capacity we get in Siege just wouldn’t be possible, it should just be
straight up 30, except that that would also be wrong because the drum magazines available
in the real world are either 20 or 32 round mags, never 30.
At the end of the day, fine details like this have no impact on the actual gameplay, so
as much as they stick out to a nerdy bean counter like me, I’ll admit that addressing
these is maybe nice to have but definitely not a priority.
So there are some initial nuggets of info and now let’s look at the gun’s current
combat and breaching capabilities on the test server.
In terms of breaching, the switch over to slug rounds is a major nerf.
The large capacity, huge spread and full-auto fire rate of the old version of the ACS made
this gun an absolute meme-cannon when it came to demolishing walls.
With the Operation Steel Wave you can wave goodbye to the ludicrous destruction capability
and say hello to a relatively sad new reality.
Just like with the TCSG and BOSG, opening up walls is possible with the ACS but it’s
going to take more time, more care in terms of shot placement and a good deal more ammo
to open up a decent rotation or sightline.
Essentially, the ACS is being fundamentally turned on its head.
It will have much worse destruction but hopefully more viable combat abilities, so let’s jump
straight over to those.
When evaluating the gun’s combat capabilities, it is worth comparing it to its closest competitor
and rival: the TCSG12.
All in all, this is the gun that is the most similar to the ACS and at first glance, the
stat comparison looks kind of promising, right?
Lower max. damage output but great looking support stats in terms of capacity and handling.
When it comes to damage, the weapon has already undergone a significant buff compared to its
first iteration on the test server.
It basically went from utter trash, to bad, to what looks to be just about right now.
Ironically the pre-season designer notes mentioned that the devs were poised and ready to “nerf
the gun should it prove to be too powerful” and let me just quickly put into perspective
for you how ridiculous that statement is.
At 41 points of max. damage per shot (which was the initial proposal) the damage per second
for the ACS would have been 150 and that would not just have been the lowest out of all weapons
in the game but the second lowest (the RG15 pistol) would have been almost twice as strong at 285 DPS.
Half as strong as the weakest pistol in the game… and they actually thought that it
might need a nerf… wow!
But, good news everyone all of this is of course purely theoretical now because the
gun was already buffed to 59 points of damage and this is how the damage drop-off behaves.
Unlike every other gun in the game that has a simple linear damage drop-off, the ACS12
now has a two stage drop-off.
Up until 18m, the gun does full damage, then it quickly drops off to around 41 points at
22m before then declining at a more gentle pace until the damage bottoms out at 26 points, at 35m.
At first glance, all of this is roughly comparable to its closest relative in the game, the TCSG12
… actually a little better shot for shot… but fire rate is of course another important
factor that needs to be considered because as already mentioned there was a second buff
that finally undid the probably unintentional nerf down to 220 RPM and we are finally back
up to 300 RPM now!
And hey, 59 damage means that you only need two body shots against light and medium armoured
opponents at close range, so the time to down/kill should be not too bad, right?
Well at 220 RPM, the answer would have been “WRONG!” but now at 300 RPM, yeah the
TTK is probably exactly where it needs to be.
It takes 200ms or 0.2s to fire off two shots which is almost exactly the average TTK for
the defender SMGs against level 1 armour targets (which is 198ms) and actually a little bit
better than the average SMG TTK against level 2 armours, of 237ms.
So as long as your target is level 1 or 2 armour and no more than 18m away, you’re
going to get a pretty average performance out of the ACS12.
As soon as you are further away, fighting level 3 armours or hitting the arms or legs,
you will need at least three hits and that instantly doubles the TTK to 400ms, which
is much worse than the performance you would get out of any of the normal defender primaries.
So the summary here is that under the best possible circumstances, you are going to get
a just about average combat performance and as soon as you get into medium distance, the
takedown capability of the ACS is going to suffer a bit.
Worst case scenario, hitting limb shots at long range, you could still need either full
second or even up to 1.4s to take down an opponent and no attacker in the world is just
going to sit there and let you shoot them for a second or a second and a half without retaliating.
The gun does still have a few plus points though!
The capacity of 30 + 1 is very good, the recoil is extremely easy to manage, the initial
hip-fire spread is great and the reload times of 2.7s from empty and 2s tactical are absolutely outstanding.
This means that overall, the handling and ease of use will be amongst the best in the entire game.
With the newly buffed combat performance, these soft factors could actually be a bit too good.
We still have over two weeks of test server to go and if the gun proves out to be a little
too easy to use, then I’m sure we will see this addressed before the new operation goes live.
It would be really interesting to revisit the loadout META analyses for Maestro and
Alibi, but I will hold off a little bit on those for now because of how volatile the
state of the ACS12 has been so far.
There are plenty of other changes to test in the meantime, so look out for more Steel
Wave insights coming to the channel soon!
What are your thoughts on the ACS12 turning into a full-auto slug gun?
Good idea to rebalance and revive an underused gun or just a potential disaster waiting to happen?
Vote in the poll on screen now or leave your thoughts in a comment bellow.
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And with that thank you so much for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video and I will see
you in the next episode!