Heavy machine gun is worthless

[Roy]

So i like using machineguns, especially the stalwart.

The heavy machine gun doesn't shine in ANY situation, it's ridiculously bad in every scenario.

• Small enemies? kill about 5~10 max before your mag is empty and you won't get the chance to reload until the next wave
  
• Medium/heavy enemies? HA! Bots with chainsaws just ignore your shots and heavy bugs don't give much of a damn either
  
• Heavy elites? Yeah nice if you get behind a hulk, but not better than any other weapon with enough penetration to take it down

Seriously i took the thing with an ammo pack but it's still absolutely worthless, the magazine is empty within seconds even on the lowest firerate and the fire"power" doesn't compensate whatsoever.
This is a meme weapon.

[Pimpin Pippin]

supposedly it can shoot through bot shields or something like that, i have tried it vs bugs only.

if you use it like a burst fire headshot gun it will wreck all the mediums and the weakpoints of heavies but overall i do agree its not living up to its downsides.

perhaps it could be given the "explosive" damage tag (like dum-dum ammo or something) so that shooting weakpoints is not penalized.

[dyra55]

Originally posted by Roy:

• Heavy elites? Yeah nice if you get behind a hulk, but not better than any other weapon with enough penetration to take it down

If you can hit it in an eye you can kill it in front

[Erei]

IIRC it's medium pen, which is the same than the base LMG (not stalwart, that one is light pen).

The HMG is trash tho. Poor magazine size (seriously, 75magazine for a HMG), terrible recoil, longest reload time, poor overall pool of ammo...

Just use a LMG instead. To think they released it with the quasar lol...

If they want to make it useful, add a backpack that feed ammo for a crazy amount of bullet. Then maybe, and I say maybe, it will be interesting at higher level. Still, due to how the game increase difficulty by making more "heavies" that can't be shot by this weapon, it's a big maybe. An AC will still close fabricator and nest at a distance, snipe the shroom tower, destroy medium and heavies to (especially on the bot front).


I really, really want to like the LMG/HMG, but they make it difficult to like them.

[Resist]

If that's any consolation, LMGs were awful in the first game as well.

[Roy]

Originally posted by Pimpin Pippin:

supposedly it can shoot through bot shields or something like that, i have tried it vs bugs only.

if you use it like a burst fire headshot gun it will wreck all the mediums and the weakpoints of heavies but overall i do agree its not living up to its downsides.

perhaps it could be given the "explosive" damage tag (like dum-dum ammo or something) so that shooting weakpoints is not penalized.

I tried that but they just bounced.
Maybe i got the angle wrong, but it doesn't even penetrate the eye slit of a hulk when i tried it.

[Roy]

Originally posted by dyra55:

Originally posted by Roy:

• Heavy elites? Yeah nice if you get behind a hulk, but not better than any other weapon with enough penetration to take it down

If you can hit it in an eye you can kill it in front

Wait you can actually do this?
I laid down with recoil reducing armor, firing straight bursts into it's eye slit and it just bounced off, i quickly stopped trying it as all bullets would ricochet towards my teammates.

[Dealman]

It can kill Hulks with a few bullets if you hit them in the noggin, but easier said than done.

IMO they missed a huge opportunity to have it come with a backpack a teammate can use to belt-feed your HMG.

[Roy]

Originally posted by Dealman:

I can kill Hulks with a few bullets if you hit them in the noggin, but easier said than done.

IMO they missed a huge opportunity to have it come with a backpack a teammate can use to belt-feed your HMG.

Yeah or even just a backpack to solo-carry it.
With how hard it is to use it wouldn't even make it OP if you could get a minigun-like ammo pack that's belt fed to your gun.

[Erei]

Originally posted by Roy:

Originally posted by Dealman:

I can kill Hulks with a few bullets if you hit them in the noggin, but easier said than done.

IMO they missed a huge opportunity to have it come with a backpack a teammate can use to belt-feed your HMG.

Yeah or even just a backpack to solo-carry it.
With how hard it is to use it wouldn't even make it OP if you could get a minigun-like ammo pack that's belt fed to your gun.

2stratagem, a backpack and stratagem weapon slot just to make it "passable" against some enemies. You still have better option around like the auto cannon, who can 2-3shot a hulk the same way, from further away, for 1less stratagem. Or the quasar, freeing the backpack slot.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by dyra55:

If you can hit it in an eye you can kill it in front

Yeah, but that's a pretty big "if". The HMG is so hilariously inaccurate and the sights so bad that hitting a Hulk's eye beyond an arm's reach is unreliable. Granted, Hulk eyes have an unreasonably small hitbox, but still.

Originally posted by Erei:

IIRC it's medium pen, which is the same than the base LMG (not stalwart, that one is light pen).

Developers claim there are 10 levels of armour penetration. Someone on Youtube described them as Light 1, 2, 3, Medium 1, 2, 3, Heavy 1, 2, 3. In other words, there are different types of Medium armour penetration. The MG can match most medium armour, indicated by the white hit marker. That means it's dealing half damage. The HMG can overmatch most medium armour, meaning it's doing full damage. It can also match some medium armour that the MG can't touch, such as the front armour on Scout Striders.

In short, the HMG is generally better at killing larger medium armour targets. The reason this doesn't matter is that the MG is already good enough at killing those as it is. Taking a weapon that's hobbled in every other aspect but that one single role isn't really worth it.

[Erei]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

Developers claim there are 10 levels of armour penetration. Someone on Youtube described them as Light 1, 2, 3, Medium 1, 2, 3, Heavy 1, 2, 3. In other words, there are different types of Medium armour penetration. The MG can match most medium armour, indicated by the white hit marker. That means it's dealing half damage. The HMG can overmatch most medium armour, meaning it's doing full damage. It can also match some medium armour that the MG can't touch, such as the front armour on Scout Striders.

In short, the HMG is generally better at killing larger medium armour targets. The reason this doesn't matter is that the MG is already good enough at killing those as it is. Taking a weapon that's hobbled in every other aspect but that one single role isn't really worth it.

It seems so ? The thermite grenade have a "7" pen on what look like a 10scale.

The game suffer massively by his shear lack of proper tooltip. You literally don't have the stat for stratagem weapon anywhere. And pen is only described as "light-medium" for non stratagem weapon.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by Erei:

The game suffer massively by his shear lack of proper tooltip. You literally don't have the stat for stratagem weapon anywhere. And pen is only described as "light-medium" for non stratagem weapon.

I believe it was Arrowhead's CEO (really need to figure out how to spell his name) who said that weapons have over 50 stats, yet players are judging them on the 5 shown in the game. Apparently, they deliberately give us limited information to keep us from min/maxing, and instead using guns we like. Some of that may be my inference - I don't recall all the details.

Thing is, that doesn't work. Over the last 20 years, I've seen numerous developers try this approach (including Arrowhead 10 years ago), and the results have never been good. Players eventually either datamaine or brute-force their way to the stats and min/max anyway, creating a divide between those with knowledge and those without.

Show players the stats. If the stats are so complex that players wouldn't know what to do with them, that should tell you that your system is more complicated than it needs to be.

[Rad]

the HMG in its current state is baffling, if you bring it you are basically trolling and wasting a slot.

[JuX]

They are not useless, just use them for their intended role.

It appears you do not even know their capabilities. The new machine for example can frontally take out a hulk. You can make this process incredibly easy with stun grenades and crouch perk armor.

[Erei]

Originally posted by JuX:

They are not useless, just use them for their intended role.

It appears you do not even know their capabilities. The new machine for example can frontally take out a hulk. You can make this process incredibly easy with stun grenades and crouch perk armor.

You can do the same with an AC, no nades, no special armor, at a longer range.

The issue with the HMG is not that it ca'nt do it. It's just that everyone bring backpacks, armor, nade in the equation, when other gun can do it on their own.

If you need a support loadout to make something usable, then it's not.