Bad Company 2

Discuss Falls' AEK-971 Master Guide here!

It would have been a run on sentence, so here are a few quotes from the guide:

"The AEK-971 is a great all around assault rifle. It is the jack of all trades, master of none. You can confidently engage targets at almost all ranges with a good chance of success"

"You will excel in moving with your team, providing medium to close range fires"

"try to avoid extreme long range engagements, and brutal close quarters engagements"

"You should avoid:
•Long range engagements
•Extreme close quarters engagements"

I'm not trying to criticize you, but I am confused. You say it's a well-rounded gun, yet you then tell me to avoid short range and long range firefights.
Do you mean it's good at long and short ranges if the enemy doesn't know I'm there (I get the head start)?

This post has been edited by MicroSpike: Jul 2 2010, 09:08 AM

Well, because a game cannot have a gun that excels in all fronts, a weapon that works well at all ranges is usually something that becomes a medium range weapon.
It is sort of like saying, "on average, you want to engage at medium range."

Against long range weapons you want to get closer, against close range weapons you want to get further.

Thank you. I think that last line summed it up pretty well .

*cough* Carl G *cough*

VelocityGirl, you (or whoever is supposed to) kinda forgot to put the customary "discuss this article here" link at the bottom this time. Just to let you know.

I'd like to add (no pun intended) that the "Add" time for the AEK is 2.4 seconds, which is pretty bad for an assault rifle, but pretty good for anything else. In fact, the statement "pretty bad for an assault rifle, but pretty good for anything else" basically defines the weapon. It has good accuracy and decent recoil control along with a fast fire rate, but its damage is pretty sad... for an assault rifle. I actually recommend medium to long range for it. It has the same minimum damage as most other assault rifles, but whereas others go up in damage at close range, the AEK stays the same. That is the real way to think about its flat damage; not as "my damage does not decrease as I get farther", but as "my damage does not increase as I get closer". Essentially, you'll get plastered by other assault rifles, SMGs, and shotguns at close range. The only time I recommend close range is against snipers and LMGs. It'll beat most SMGs and LMGs at long range though, and the performance gap against other assault rifles shrinks as their damage starts creeping towards yours.

The problem with the gun is that it's quite clearly described as a close range gun, but it gets creamed there by almost everything else. This forces it to long range, where it's just mediocre... for an assault rifle. Compare to the XM8 or HK416 which are good at close range and about as good at long range (the HK416 is better, but the AEK is actually arguably better than the XM8 at long range while being worse at close range, which is the penultimate irony).

On the real life side is the ultimate irony: in game the AN94 is unquestionably, unspeakably superior to the AEK; in real life, it's more or less the other way around, though less in degree. The AEK is not only cheaper and easier to make, it's just better. The AN94 "sneaks" a second shot into the firing cycle, ie it delays recoil until the second shot comes out. The AEK vastly reduces it for every shot. The principle is there's 4 mechanical actions in a gun that cause recoil: the actual bullet flying out the barrel is only one of them, and is the only one that can't be compensated for. The AEK eliminates the other 3 by using counterweights: as object x moves one way, object y of equal mass moves and equal distance the opposite direction, thus canceling each other out. Quite frankly though, that is such a simple theory I'm surprised no one's though of it until now... That said, the AN94 is still pretty damn awesome (better than the AEK) in its 2 shot burst mode. It's said that a trained user (aka Spetsnaz) can put both bullets in the same hole, which would essentially make body armor useless.

Anybody can put two bullets in the same hole in two burst mode with the AN-94. You don't feel the recoil of the first bullet until after the second bullet is fired. It's a perk of the weapon.

Anyways, An-94 is beast in burst mode in real life, in full auto mode it's ROF is lower and thus you do feel the recoil of the first bullet before you fire the second bullet. From what I've heard, in Russian testing the AN-94 blew away all competitors by a mile. The only problem is that it's slow to produce (complicated) and expensive, thus while it is officially the assault rifle of the Russian Army, only few troops (IE, the spec ops troops, spetsnaz) really have it in service while everybody else is using the Ak-74.

Even more impressive than the AN-94 in burst mode is the G11 caseless assault rifle. It could fire 3 rounds at IIRC 2200rpm so that you don't feel the recoil of the first two bullets until the third bullet is fired. Unfortunately, technology was not advanced enough to produce a viable caseless round which was safe to use and reliable, and the G11 was just far too expensive. Thus, the G36 was adopted instead.


Anyways.... I pretty much agree, the AEK-971 is the jack of all trades master of none. The M416 is actually pretty much better in general. It has higher damage at close range (16.7 vs 14.3), and at long range it does the same damage (albeit firing 100rpm slower) but has less recoil. However, I'd much prefer the AEK for med-long range combat to the XM8, AUG, or F2000.