When Silver Bullet Gauss came out in Maximum Tech I think the very First application I did was an Air/Space field gun emplacement. 5 gunnery for Automated and 4 for crewed . -2 for Flack and -2 for Anti Air Fire Control . That is a net 1 or 0 gunnery for it . When aircraft attack they have to make a pilot roll if they take damage to avoid becoming a lawn dart . LB-X get the same bonus . Both LBX cluster and SB Gauss does no damage to an air unit with FL Armor. No damage taken no pilot roll needed . This is why the Armor was invented in the first place . HAG has the Flack bonus too but it does 5 point clusters of damage . This was the Niche that the SB Excelled in until the Clans made a counter for it . By 3095 Mixed tech becomes Advanced not experimental and not a poor investment to purchase HAG to replace SB Gauss on boarders that are shared by the clans then by ilKhan Age had use the 40 + years to gradually replace them everywhere.
Same Application. Same Function.
When it came out it was FANTASTIC in it's niche even over value added BV wise. But by 3152 I only expect to see it toward Cappellen Space towards the Periphery. Great weapon in it's time .
LB-X has slug munitions and a better range than most autocannon type weapons . It is capable of using Slug Damage to put holes in Armor and Cluster to exploit them . If the SB Gauss could use Slug and Cluster even with adding 1 ton and Crit to the weapon it would Never be largely Obsolete.
This is a direct comparison / competition
between SB Gauss , HAG and LBX . IN The Niche in which FL Armor was invented for . FL armor on mechs vs Air Assets is rare true but it wasn't ment for mechs and combat vehicles they took advantage of FL Armor existence as an after thought .
I hope this gives more context than my previous posts . I tend to avoid being comprehensive as it may come close to violating rules of the forum. Apparently the other people responding to the post use very different optimum applications than I did for this apparently (to me )niche weapon .
My experience in ground combat it is a lackluster weapon until the 3rd combat turn against mechs . Nice at immobilizing combat vehicles and maybe early proto mechs . You tend to Hammer / Anvil paired tactics with it. Fielding an LB 10 X might not get you the same range but the Slug option makes the weapons effective in the first 3 turns against mechs .
How different is other people's experience???
