The last LOK-1 overclock I haven't talked about (not counting Eraser which is just a nothingburger) is SmΡt Trigger OSβ’. What it does is it boosts the speed of target acquisition to an insane degree and allows the gun to automatically fire at full locks and immediately start acquiring new targets, making it effectively fully automatic. The only listed downside is much fewer locks which isn't even a meaningful downside with how fast it fires. It gives you some of Engineer's highest possible DPS. Since there's little reason not to take Unstable Lock Mechanism in tier 5, and your tier 4 options let you choose between 2 or 4 locks, that means you'll either do 65 or 130 damage per burst. If those numbers sound familiar, you've probably used the M1000 Classic before. Which means you probably already recognize the problem.
Dealing 65 damage with the M1000 means you didn't take the ammo upgrade and your ammo economy is going to suffer for it. And the LOK-1 doesn't get to take its own ammo upgrade and still cross that important 55 damage breakpoint that makes the M1000 so effective. So while STOS does perform very similarly to an M1000 with aim assist, it's not a direct upgrade thanks to more precarious ammo economy. And it doesn't help that the unlisted downside of the overclock is that you're given little to no time to correct your aim or curve bullets to your advantage, making it very very easy to waste shots on terrain, armor, or low priority targets.
The base Smart Rifle appears at first to be a braindead spam weapon but heavily rewards careful aim and timing, and STOS magnifies both of those aspects.
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