Late Third Generation Armored Core

Late Third Generation Armored Core

The Late Third Generation of Armored Cores stood in stark contrast compared to all other generations; where every other generation improved largely on the previous generation, the Late Third Generation took several leaps backwards in terms of ability for the Armored Core.

The other significant changes that occurred dealt with the AC radiator and heat management system. Firstly, it was decided that when an AC overheated, it would need to use large amounts of energy to power the radiator to cool down. Secondly, it was decided to raise the heat caused by all weapons dramatically (energy weapons specifically received increased heat output, as well as some high fire-rate weapons, like machine guns), making the energy drain relevant. Lastly, boosters were altered so that they use generated heat. Thus, it became incredibly difficult to create a long-term flight-capable AC, as it would constantly run out of energy and be grounded.

One notable thing about the Late Third Generation is that it saw the addition of many "legacy" parts. That is to say, many popular and well-known parts from the previous generations were re-added in this generation, with appropriate balancing changes to fit with the other parts.

Despite being generally handicapped during this generation, it was still the highest evolution of the "Normal" AC, having access to the widest variety of weapons and equipment.

The Late Third Generation provided the following changes:

   -Hanger Cores: Likely the most important change to the Late Third Generation Armored Core, hanger cores added the ability to bring additional arm weapons into battle. Included in the weapons available are small, handheld pistols, machine guns, pulse rifles, plasma cannons, and other basic armaments. The hanger core could overlap with an overboost core, giving both abilities at once, but never with an exceed orbit core.
   -Radiators: The radiator, as noted above, was made significantly more important to the player in the Late Third Generation. A good radiator was absolutely necessary to an AC's general movement, for without one the player would constantly be grounded due to lack of energy. This meant that there was much less room for weaponry on the player's AC, due to that weight being taken up by the improved radiator.
   -Tuning: The Late Third Generation saw the addition of tuning. Almost every category of part, besides FCS and weapons, was given 10 points to spend on tuning and several categories to improve. One could choose to dedicate some points to each category, or all of them to one. In this way, a player could slightly improve his base parts without actually switching them out.
   -Weapon Magazines: Late Third Generation weaponry received the interesting and less drastic change of magazines. Previous Armored Core games had weapons which kept firing until they completely emptied of ammo, a form of "bottomless magazine." From this point forward, Armored Cores reload some kinds of solid round weapons magazine-by-magazine; a machine gun, instead of firing 700 rounds straight, might now fire 70 before reloading. Many types of weapons were affected by this change, though usually they were high ammo weapons, and always solid round.

Regardless, the Late Third Generation, despite many weaknesses, was easily the strongest Normal generation. In that regard, the Late Third Generation Armored Core was almost monstrously powerful, and several Late Third Generation Armored Cores might even be enough to give an early Fourth Generation Armored Core pause in battle.

Weaknesses

There were few drawbacks of the Third Generation; weapon types were plentiful, there were two types of cores to choose from, and the combinations of parts that could be made were shockingly numerous. A minor weakness can be noted in the left arm weapon; although it now provided an extra weapon beside the blade, it was difficult to use. This is mostly attributed to the fact that the left arm was always in the default standby position, thus in order to use it, it required a moment to lift the arm up to ready it in firing position before firing. This meant that there was a delay from the time the weapon was triggered and when it was fired. The left-arm weapon also had no targeting of its own, meaning that if the right-arm weapon was exhausted of ammo before the left-arm weapon and discarded, the left-arm weapon would simply have to be fired blindly.

However, despite these problems, the Early Third is still considered the Golden Age of the Armored Core technology.