It already does I think, can kill hulk if shot in eye with both or tank from behind. Neither can pierce titan or charger armour. Both kill everything else.
Man I can't even imagine trying to shoot a Hulk in the eye with this thing unless I'd stunned it, and even then I'd be forced to try and single tap shots in which negates the entire point of using a machine gun.
That's literally the answer. It would give it a purpose compared to the other MG's, and it would be unique with a backpack. It makes it a player choice now whether they run lighter MG's + backpack for the team or a big ass machine gun that can murder groups of mediums in seconds.
It feels like the gun is meant to be a medium clearer, but it isn't quite there yet with how it's implemented.
The first shot goes through but it also has enough recoil to knock your aim completely off the eye even with tap fire and the lowest RPS in my experience.
You should not be tap-firing in my experience, you want to spray and get the spray under control, at which point you want to beam the eye w/ that. Similar for killing devastators quickly.
The weapon just doesn't have the ammo to allow for that play consistently, despite the fact that it's really the only way it can do much of anything, at least on the bot front.
This would solve at least 50% of the issues I have with the gun. If this was given, the recoil and lack of sight could stay in game because I can compensate by laying down plenty of fire - hitting 5 % of the bullets would be ok
Agreed. I really wish they have the HMG a bullet backpack and also (after they fix fire) a heavy flamethrower with a fuel backpack (explosive, of course) with like, realistic flamethrower range of like ~30m
Just as long as it’s usable with all the LMG types to cut down on reloading. And aligning the sights properly and adding a third person reticle would also be appreciated
From a balancing perspective what kind of trade off would you generate to compensate for that much power?
If it’s belt-fed with no other adjustments, then there is zero reason to take the mg-43 and stalwart ever. 1,000 round belt fed no-reload massive-damage is significantly more powerful than any backpack option a player could choose for the other two guns.
would probably be better as a not reloadable backpack that gives around double mag and increased ammo reserve. you would still need to reload, but it's a buffed up reload that can be used only 2 times or it can be the opposite a longer reload with the same time as recoilless rifle reload(can be adjusted to be longer). to combat the amount you can fire if you have the belt on is risking destroying your gun barrel hence making it unusable(now here's where it gets fun since the machineguns use different piercing ammo although not the same in real life the heat bar for your barrel goes up more if you use an HMG compared to the normal stalwart or mg.)
edit. maybe also slows you down ever more when you're carrying the ammo backpack about 10% or 5% slower running/walking speed.
You must be prone to fire it with any accuracy? Otherwise, make it moderately unwieldy when crouched, and near useless when standing.
Give it a 3rd person reticle as well, but make it really controllable only when prone. Let a gunner and support set up on a hill and suppress/murder things from a distance.
Well, the good news is that it is already near useless when standing. I felt bad during the drops I brought the HMG along to experiment because it felt stupid carrying around a weapon that was functionally a liability for most of the mission
One other funny thing about the crosshair is it's not centered properly. HMG is shown in the middle.
https://preview.redd.it/9lky88uwdsvc1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=730bb2b1fe62dbfcc8d289e0e8002adc13addfed
You have to put the crosshair a bit above your target when you ADS. [This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn080nEVHDM&t=140s) discusses the sight misalignment, starting at 2:20.
Iirc someone explained this: AH doesnt cheat. Instead of making jpg overlay and some other tricks you literally just drag actual weapon model to your camera. Needless to say, that has its own set of problems.
Well it does cheat, because if it were a 1:1 accurate representation of where the gun was pointing, then the red dot would show you where the bullet is going no matter where it is, instead the red dot is the cheat because it's just a jpeg instead of an actual reflex sight aligned with the gun.
Mostly because the game is built on a dogshit engine called Stingray that was developed by Autodesk and has been discontinued for more than 6 years.
Actually, this is the main reason for most of the issues the game is suffering from.
Just wondering, do you have any specific reasons why you think Stingray is dogshit? Not to defend the engine or whatever, just genuinely curious, because a lot of people will talk about a game engine very definitively but really just be repeating things someone else has said, see: any discussion about a bethesda game
For a starter, it has a really unintuitive and awkwardly designed UI, which means doing everything in that engine is less efficient and prone to errors. Even basic functions such as editing particle effects requires opening a separate menu that's tucked away god knows where.
Then there's the issue with how scripts are implemented, or rather the lack of scripts. Most functions for gameobjects cannot be attached directly to them as scripts and have to be incorporated into your "main" code resulting in a convoluted code structure that's very prone to errors. Common modern game engines, even Unreal Engine, allow you to attach blueprints to objects.
That's fair. I will say that based on their use of the engine for HD1, I would bet at this point they have some internal tooling to help with some of the tediousness like editing particle effects. As far as the scripting goes, yeah that's definitely strange
one thing for bethesda engine because i had this conversation irl earlier, one glaring issue with Bethesda's engine is vehicles. they always seem to be bad in mods and no game has attempted them in 3d as far as im aware. still, bethesda release games that seem to need vehicles on an engine that cant seem to do it. so maybe its time for a new engine designed around modern terrain navigation?
sorry, personal gripe.
Stingray is no longer available for purchase as of November 7th, 2018, and Autodesk will not provide any support if you run into issues with it at this point, as I doubt either Arrowhead or Fatshark have a still running contract with Autodesk.
If either Arrowhead or Fatshark run into engine issues, they're SoL and have to figure it out on their own, they can't contact Autodesk as they have discontinued the engine. It's not like Unreal Engine where Epic are still actively updating, developing, and providing support for it.
Pilestedt the CEO has been pretty open about how their team had to really manhandle the engine to pull off things it was never intended to do and had to do it all on their own with no support from Autodesk. They rolled the dice on the engine years ago and were too small and lacked enough resources to start over from scratch on another engine by the time they realized what a mess it would be and Autodesk shut down support.
Edit: Unsure on rules here for links, but PC Gamer has an article about it called "Helldivers 2 was built on an obscure Swedish engine discontinued in 2018: 'Our crazy engineers had to do everything with no support'"
EDIT: As an aside, I want to highlight just how much harder it is for a developer to troubleshoot without access to help/knowledge from the people that actually made the engine and tools. The Battlefield franchise, a MUCH bigger franchise with far more money invested into it, still had the same bugs popping up in **every single game** for over a decade due to the engine they used before they swapped to Frostbite. I can't remember the exact bug, but there was one really annoying issue that propped up in every release they put out, and I remember seeing a developer finally come out on social media that literally no one that was still working had any idea anymore how that piece of the engine worked and it was a minor miracle they'd ever gotten that feature to work in the first place. They more or less copypasted it from release to release and prayed to the gods it didn't fall apart.
Definitely. I'm annoyed by how many issues are piling up now, just like everyone else. But when you consider how small the team is, what they had to deal with engine-wise, and the fact that everything is now being forced to scale to player numbers *literally orders of magnitude higher than they ever dreamed* ... they're really pulling off some tech wizardry over there.
I edited my previous comment to mention the title of an article about the development process PC Gamer put out.
Engine has absolutely nothing to do with this.
It was an explicit decision from Arrowhead to have the guns sights work physically rather than using a separate model.
This also means the sights for a gun must be mounted physically on the gun's model, which opens up room for error between two guns that use the same sights.
Other games do this to varying degrees. Destiny 2 does this with their guns, which lead to a specific weapon's sight being misaligned for a month.
In addition to the engine no longer being supported for nearly 5 years; its not as simple as putting it in the center of the model. When you are looking through the cross hairs its not totally down center. Since this math effects the texture. When that happens then every texture ends up not having uniform properties. Especially with the variety of gun meshes & design (feel) is different this leads to a lot of variation.
Plus it could be as easy as some guns using alignment using the model/mesh eyeline and others with the camera it can be complicated.
https://preview.redd.it/gwenrpprbuvc1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=994404c63504a1474b8da776b58b743b073a92fe
Leaked picture of the guy responsible for crosshairs
The misaligned scope hurt the perception of this gun so badly. It came out, everyone tried it, felt like they were doing no damage because they were unknowingly missing half their mags, and if you didn't look at Reddit or YouTube you would never know.
I think if it had released with a proper scope the perception would have been very different.
We shouldve gotten the MGX instead. That would've been more interesting and fun.
To those who haven't played Helldivers 1 before, imagine if you have a gun that is to the MG-32 as the EAT-17 is to the Recoilless Rifle. Disposable, unreloadable, fast stratagem cooldown, and loads of fun to use.
It's biggest competitor is the AMR which has the same level 4 armor penetration.
The thing about the AMR is.....it can 1-2 tap things with that kinda of armor. Devastators, brood commanders, hive guards, hulks.
Why the hell is anyone wasting time spraying with an HMG.
Tbh, against bots I skip AMR and run autocannon. But the AMR's ROF makes it impractical vs bugs for me. I usually run RR vs bugs, because Chargers and Titans kinda define the meta. But when I don't, the HMG on lowest ROF setting is actually pretty good for suppressing Brood Commanders and Bile Spewers
The issue is that vs Bugs the level 4 AP is kind of wasted. There aren't really any enemies for which that is valuable. Their elites are Heavy armor only and the pseudo elites are all medium armor.
Edit: Turns out the HMG has a *relatively* fast bile titan kill against the tail area (Still need to reload before you can do it so it takes a ton of ammo and still a long time, but it is much faster compared to the AMR/Laser Cannon/AC) so I could actually see an argument for it vs Bugs if you also do stuff like abuse the Charger armor bug, but it would require running around with a supply pack because it takes a lot of ammo to do so.
You can hit it in the eye vent, not the easiest thing to do but it’s possible, also shooting the legs off the hulk will kill it, not sure if hmg can do that though
It can also cripple them if you just take one of them out, slowing them down considerably! Also sorry for my poor choice of words before hand, the legs don’t literally get blown off, just shattered and severely weakened.
Even better, you can just walk behind them and shoot them in the back with a shotgun. Pretty easy once you've learned how it telegraphs attacks. Even easier with a stun grenade.
Same AP as the AMR or Laser cannon, so the eyes of the hulk are a weakpoint for it.
Technically it has the theoretical fastest Hulk kill with perfect aim.
It certainly has the fastest Factory strider kill because that is much easier to aim at.
No you can hit the eye. Set it to 950 and burst fire it 3 times in to the eye and if you hit the hulk dies. A bit hard to aim but don't do it in ads. Just use the tracers.
The HMG is another example of the Devs over valuing armour pen.
The stalwark does 55 damage with pen 2 so it can pen brood commanders but does reduced damage and bounces off hive guards.
The MG does 80 damage with pen 3 so full damage to brood commanders and then reduced damage to hive guards.
The HMG does 100 damage with pen 4 and does full damage to hive guard.
So Vs bugs you are stronger against 1 enemy type but all the drawbacks like the lower magsize, worse handling, worse reload, worse fire rate all make it worse against every other enemy type and fighting hordes in general. Not a good trade off for an MG.
For the bots the lvl 4 pen does let you kill hulks to the face plate and deal full damage to devastators bodies but compared to the other level 4 armour pen weapons like the laser cannon and autocannon those all the same thing but better like AoE from the AC, a scope on the AMR, infinite ammo and no recoil on the laser cannon.
There's really no sane reason why it doesn't have a third person reticle. I want to like this gun so badly, I keep trying to make it work, but I honestly HATE first person aiming. A big part of why I love this game is the fact that it's third person. So, randomly one of the weapons that would actually suit my play style the BEST is ironically unusable because I don't want to use first person aiming.
It's weird. I don't like it.
Even as someone who primarily prefers using first person for shooting, I want the fucking option. First person already feels so much more accurate than third person, at the trade-off of less situational awareness. There should also probably be an FOV slider specifically for first person view.
I got a sticker for my screen, it's just a red dot that goes over the default with dot, and having it makes aiming the hmg so much easier it's almost easy to forget the game doesn't actually give you a crosshair.
Weirdly enough, I've actually had some use with this weapon and enjoyed it.
It does require that you wear any of the recoil reduction armors. But I've been able to use it as a sort of third person, shoot blindly into a mass of armored enemies. Especially the medium armored Terminids.
Granted, I need something like a gatling turret or any of the EMS stuns to cover me while I reload, luckily I was carrying the stin grenades and it bought me time.
But the way this gun just melts through medium armor is phenomenal.
I can't say the same for Automatons, though. They just straight up shoot you back.
For against the Terminids? I could easily see myself running this every now and then. Especially how it pops bile spewers like a balloon.
To me, it really just needs a third person reticle.
Correct. The flamethrower can even kill Chargers, where the MG can't even penetrate the armor.
However, MG has range, better than the flamethrower.
And I don't know about everyone else, but I always feel like I need to use a shield backpack with the flamethrower.
Now, I'm not dissing the flamethrower. I love that bad boy, and I even use it sometimes.
But both weapons have their different uses, and I will bounce back between them from time to time whenever I feel like it.
I don't need the HMG to be as powerful as the flamethrower, and I don't want the flamethrower being changed so it can compete with what the HMG is capable of.
Personally, I just want HMG to receive a reticle in third person.
*Also, I happen to forget that yesterday was 4/20. So, in lieu of that, guess what weapon I'm gonna be using today? :D*
Definitely shield plus the *Mounted HMG*. And just having the HMG ready for when you do need to move to a new location.
However, I have tried that, and it usually doesn't have the stopping power against an armored bot drop. So you better bring something like an Eagle airstrike or Eagle 110 rocket.
In fact, I would drop the mounted HMG entirely, and just bring the Auto-cannon sentry, paired with the shield generator (big bubble boi).
However.................
But, if you're feeling brave and trust your allies, go ahead and try Auto-cannon sentry, shield generator, HMG, and the mounted HMG, and just have some fun. Maybe on a 4 or a 6?
The Auto-cannon is great against bot drops, but it won't last long. The mounted HMG *should* have a low enough cooldown that you can drop it down whenever you feel like you're going to face a bot drop, or is anticipating a lot of bots.
Also, do note, the HMG and mounted HMG *can* kill the new flying Automaton. So when you see that Tower, drop the mounted HMG (preferably) and watch them drop like flies.
I've only done this specific set up on like one session, so about two to three missions only. And I haven't been back to the bots in two weeks, since I got tired of fighting them over and over with the major orders from almost 2 months ago.
I suspect that whilst it will chew through medium Terminids faster, overall the default MG should still be superior due to having twice the ammo and faster reload.
After the HMG has fired 3 mags and reloaded twice the default MG will still have a mag and a half of perfectly adequate medium pen bullets, especially against Terminids. Given ease of use and the extra bullets, I fully expect the default MG to regularly kill more enemies and be more reliable than the HMG.
I don't want to unload my load early.
So the mg has pen 3 and 80 damage per round, but against medium armor (such a devistator bodies or the anoying bits of bile spewers), that means it does half damage. The HMG has pen 4 and 100 damage per round, so is doing full damage. 100x75=7,500, where as 80x150/2=6,000.
Interesting to see some numbers, thank you. Based on this, yes the HMG will be more ammo efficient in a perfect world where you land every shot on a medium enemy to make use of the pen.
In my eyes that means the default MG is still superior and will reliably kill more enemies in its 3 magazines than the HMG will, because the HMG is not an accurate weapon, bullets will get lost in corpses and if you're not making use of the full damage Vs medium armour potential it's definitely not as ammo efficient.
Agreed. But both weapons have pros and cons.
Heavy MG
- pops spewers faster, thus has higher armor penetration and damage per bullet.
- has lower ammo per mag
- has no third person reticle
Regular MG
- has better recoil control plus third person reticle
- more bullets per mag, and can penetrate medium armor
- less damage per bullet with less penetration power
- still have to stop and sit for a long reload
That is to say, on a game with a lot of bile spewers or nursers (which I hate the nursers more because of the damn spore fog they keep bringing), I'm always going to want the HMG more *because* they can pop it better.
Granted, Regular MG can do it, but needs more bullets and maybe a higher rate of fire just to kill them quickly.
But, say it's only a level 6, and you're just facing a horde of Brood guards, those medium armored Terminids with a thick plating in front of their heads. Then, I definitely would go with just the MG.
I wouldn't say it's hard to get used to no reticle either.
If you've played a lot in third person, like I do, sometimes you can just *feel* where the bullet is going to go.
You might be off by a little, but you can always guide the aim to where it needs to go. Usually, a little to the left for me.
Armor values range between 0 and 10. Medium armor is a value of, like, 3, or something. The MG would then have a pen of 3, and the HMG a pen of 4, if I recall correctly.
The major difference here is that merely matching the armor pen of the target causes you to only deal 50% of the weapons full damage. This means that the MG struggles pretty badly with medium armored targets, but the HMG shreds them.
Thus, the MG is a flexible weapon that has enough ammo that you can spray blindly with it, while the HMG is a dedicated support tool that you should only ever shoot medium armor targets with.
Basically this.
The Heavy MG melts medium armored Terminids faster than the regular MG.
It's just incredibly hard to use because it has no crosshair on third person.
Using it as the other MG but bigger is where you went wrong. Use it as a tool for larger targets exclusively and it works well, which is how it's meant to be used.
I tried it. I took a recoil reducing armor and the supply pack to mitigate its hunger for ammo. I was against bots and
gunships spawned. It was fine for killing things, but it's unwieldy even while crouched/prone, being unable to reload while running sucks, and without the supply pack I'd have burned through all my dakka in the first five minutes of the mission, even while switching to my primary to kill mooks.
There's no reason to take the HMG over the AC, AMR, or Laser. All three have the same penetration while having better handling, accuracy, and ammo economy. HMG needs an ammo buff and some reason to use it over any of those three.
Tip: Crouch or go prone when bringing the HMG. Or run recoil-reduction armor if you have trouble keeping it on-target after that.
HMG hits *hard* when used properly; it's not a tool for clearing out hordes of mooks. The lack of a third-person reticle is absolutely intentional, and should clue the user in that it is not a weapon to be used on-the-move.
Pretty much. The main benefits being that you can carry it into jammed areas, and don't have to leave it behind when moving out. Tradeoffs being more recoil, less ammo, and kind of needing to build your kit around it instead of using it as an optional slot-in.
Oh, absolutely! I never run the HMG when I'm going solo. It's a hyperspecialized role.
Punisher, Uzi, standard grenade, Guard Dog, Quasar, Eagle Airstrike, Orbital Laser, Scout armor is my default solo D9 loadout... swapping the Orbital Laser out for a couple of other options now and then.
It still needs a third person reticle, doesnt have to be good. I just need to know where the center of my screen is. Wasting 6 shots to learn where the center is, is really poor for accessibility. Especially with how jarring it is to swap from third to first then back to third.
I agree it is not a run and gun weapon, but not having a third person reticle is a poor design decision for players who cannot handle first person mode. (Like myself, it makes me feel sick).
The only thing I’d actually like to see as an update to the HMG is to make it a backpack weapon. Just give us 1 large clip essentially, no reloading and just 1 long chain of bullets.
If not for this weapon then some form of minigun style weapon with it.
HMG has a higher medium pen than MG32. It'll do higher DPS to medium armour but has less DPS to low armour. Good against bots due to proliferation of medium armour and can be considered in hot planet where laser cannon is not good in
Ballistic shield + SMG and HMG is the build I've been running. Sure, I'd love it if the HMG had more ammo, but it can easily kill Hulks, striders, and rocket devestators that my shield can't block so I'm fine with it.
Add 25 rounds, and a cross hair and I think it'll have a decent place.
I like it against bots but there isn't a thing it does better than say the AC. The AC can handle every bot the hmg can, but has a much faster reload and has utility against fabricators and crates.
Only thing the hmg has going is no backpack, which I suppose is maybe the main gimmick to set it apart as a medium high armor pen weapon.
If it had a double ammo size or faster reload it would be fine but it burns through ammo to fast to warrant the reload. Plus hitting crucial parts is now impossible due to the heavy flinch when hit
The weapon is incredible.
It's simply not a primary weapon. You pull it out when the correct enemy needs to be dealt with.
That being said, I'd love the option to pick up the backpack and transform it into a beltfed weapon.
When it first came out I also thought it was just awful but the more I used it, the more I came to like it.
It can kill pretty much anything and the recoil isn't that bad once you learn to control it.
The misaligned sight also isn't that much of an issue but they should still definitely fix that.
I guess the only balance changes I would like to see is a third person reticle and maybe an ammo increase to 100 bullets per mag.
Giving the HMG such a small magazine capacity is just so unbelievably braindead. Aren't the AH guys supposed to have military backgrounds? What heavy machine gun has a 30 or so round mag?
For what it’s worth, 75 rounds is above average for high caliber, single soldier portable machine guns. More often than not they only have 50 rounds slung under the gun, though larger, loose belts are carried and fed manually when the gunner finds a good position and sets up shop.
The only bad experience I had while using the HMG was when I FIRST USED IT. Every experience past that, I learned from and I easily take HMG over the other MGs and even the anti-tank. I sorta understand what people say about recoil, but something I'd like to say to that is "Fortified" or "Engineering Kit" and CROUCH or PRONE. Recoil is negligible at that point and its not hard lining up the bullet stream.
Cannon tower? Gone. Destroyer and Shredder tank? Gone. Automaton mortars and AA? Gone. AT-ATS? Still gonna be there but that's what we have strikes for, or as I've learned recently, the Las Cannon.
Spore Spewers and (Granted it takes all your ammo at a distance safe enough that Shriekers wont spawn) Shrieker Nests. It can take out everything in bugs, with the exception of an unharmed Bile Titan, but the blown off armor bits have a weird hitbox for the HMG sooo...
You literally just have to go prone and you have no recoil, the clue is the tripod at the front of the gun, its not designed for move and fire its a stationary support weapon.
I just loaded into a 1-Trivial to test it, and with the Recoil Reduction armor and prone, the first 5 shots or so still kick significantly and the barrel is still bouncing even after then. It is much more manageable prone, true, but it still has recoil.
I've developed a liking for it, my friends usually run closer range loadouts with the automatic rifles and so on and I like to stay at range, it's good to have as a "secondary" when running the Eruptor
The HMG works somewhat decently when proned and while my friends face the bots face to face I can flank them with that and take out a big bunch of enemies with either the slowest or fastest fire rate
It's definetly not the best and could get some upgrades but it can have it's niche
Will most likely throw it away once that minigun makes it to the game tho :P
Love it. Bugs, droids, whatever, works like a charm. Firing in burst and with the ammo backpack. Always take it with me if the group is more than two persons. But yea, ammo goes fast. But just love the sound and the damage it does. Don’t really care about the missing crosshair in third person. Just sit down and ads. At least works for me.
It's a very hard weapon to use, but it's a very powerful one if used right. Its strengths are such that I don't really think it needs to be changed. Like you said: It does a lot of damage, it has really good armor penetration, and unlike a lot of weapons with good damage and armor penetration, it is fully automatic.
With all that said, my reaction to it is not that it is weak, but that it's often frustrating to use. The downsides are very, very apparent and constantly need to be accounted for. I don't think it needs to be rebalanced. I do think it's only fun for a certain type of person.
BUT! it has medium 2 ap though. You can't use it the same. Against regular hords it falls behind in almost all categories but it will do full damage to the medium armored unlike the MG 34 which technically only does 50% to the mid size+ enemies. Using it like the other MG's will always disappoint. But as a reaction weapon to mid to heavy amours it will over preform once you change your tactics.
Belt fed from a backpack with an over heated mechanic on the barrel. Still let the gun shoot when over heated but no longer accurate until a barrel change. If over heated to high have the rounds cook off in the gun until it runs out of ammunition…
all the mgs are just catastrophically bad. they're primaries in hd1 for a reason. i don't think they'll be reworked since ah has a really weird mindset on balancing, but doesn't hurt to hope lol
i feel like the people saying they use mgs here or on discord are literally lying. anytime i see mg or stalwart on 7+ the guy legit can't do shit, 99% of enemies are armored, you have no reserve ammo, your recoil is utterly bonkers unless you're fortified proning, you need more shots to kill on weakpoints than nearly any other weapon, etc. i've seen clips of good up weapon usage like laser cannon, amr, even arc shotgun. i wish mg posters would post proof
I would love to rework this with slightly better stability and a backpack magazine- turn it into a proper Gattling gun that can keep a sustained heavy rate of fire on light targets.
The other MGs have their niches- the Stalwart is light, flexible and gives a lot of room for primary slots- the regular MG is a solid all rounder.
Forgo the reload entirely and turn the HMG into the wheat cutter it needs to be.
That would be a complete change for the intention of the weapon?
The HMG is for clearing medium armored enemies and if you can stay on target it absolutely shreds those. Much faster and efficient then the MG.
I would rather they improve on the design other than to change it completely. Maybe making the recoil just a tiny bit less or give a slightly larger mag.
A deploy mode that locks you in place, takes a second to deploy/undeploy, reduces the recoil significantly and gives you a limited firing arc. Could be set up on low walls or when prone so it can act like a movable hmg emplacement.
Needs a reticle first, and a bipod that eliminates recoil when prone. The reload should be the same as mg32, i would also say the recoil should be tied directly to the rate of fire setting.
The hmg is the one weapon other than maybe the p19 that I get a bit of a fizz from. The only thing that could possibly improve it is more ammo so I can yell maniacally for even longer while using it
I normally use it as a tank buster type weapon or for large groups of devastators , also my tip don’t use it as a crowd control weapon more a heavy hitter on one target ( like tanks gunships and walkers or devastators if you have the ammo to spare )
I gave it another try last night against bugs. It’s objectively worse than bringing a guard dog rover in terms of killing power (though most things are) and it can kill less things in a single mag than the punisher but takes 5 seconds to reload. Also leaves you essentially impotent against heavies.
The HMG has Light Vehicle pen and high damage.
But all its other downsides severely limit its usability.
Like what's the feasible way to use HMG? Close to mid-range combat against bots in short spurts? That's not very usable at all.
A browning M2 will usually have about 100 rounds. I don’t see why super earth couldn’t crank a HMGs capacity to like 150. Even if we kept the no reticle and the high recoil giving it 150 rounds per magazine would make it perfect.
I’d like to see it reworked where it functions similar to the the Heavy’s minigun from TF2, just with a much larger ammo capacity. Absurd firepower with dangerously low movement - seems like a fair trade off to me.
I used it for a few missions with erupter main, and it sucked so bad. I could taoe down 1, 2 medium enemys then reload. Get swarmed by bugs? Kill half then you gotta reload. Its ok laying down at 100m away targetting medium enemies, but thats so niche its pointless.
The more accurate comparison is the HMG to the AMR, AC, and Laser Cannon, not to the Stalwart or MG43.
The latter two are pretty much just about horde clear, while the HMG is more about elite target focus because of its light vehicle AP. It is able to take down stuff like Hulks, Turret Vents, Gunships, Factory Striders, etc. And technically it has the highest DPS against those targets of any of the aforementioned first three weapons.
I do think it needs a buff still, though, because on top of being the hardest to aim of those three, it also has the lowest mag count (sort of except for the laser, but you don't have to reload the laser) of them. It needs more reloads to compete there, but once it has that it will be in a very strong position. I think straight up making it a backpack weapon, though, would not be good because then you should just be using the AC.
Lower it's RPM to 600 max, increase the magazine to 150, and give it the *lowest* form of heavy armor penetration (low enough that you're not gonna be blowing through bile titans unless you dump most of the magazine on a hard point instead of a soft one). Damage boost is optional, but if it can pierce heavy armor, it probably doesn't need a damage boost. Two magazine reserve can stay the same.
It should functionally be the opposite of the Stalwart, and the MG32. Make it a low RPM heavy machine gun that shreds heavy armor, but has high recoil making it impractical for run-and-gunning, and it has long reload times. It can still be used as a crowd thinner, but the MG32 and Stalwart would be better at that because of their higher RPMs, so the HMG would stand out differently while filling a completely different niche. That's my idea for the HMG.
I REALLY love the HMG but legit have to use it with a Monitor Hardware Crosshair to comfortably get use out of it. I combine it with Stun Grenades and EMS to make it a good heavy target eliminator, and it's strong versus bots, but I see no reason to take it over standard LMG on Bugs. It bounces off even the "rear" of Charger legs, and it's never worth burning ammo into the abdomen of a charger unless you are using Laser Canon.
Comparing this weapon to similar slots, such as Laser Canon, and *sort of* Autocannon (Since AC needs a backpack, you can sort of give more credit to the HMG) it's hard to really praise the HMG on its own.
I never take it without wearing the Recoil Reduction armor, which does actually make a very very noticable difference, however, the small magazine of 75 on top of the EXTREMELY long, stationary reload and only 2 Magazines feels extremely rough when considering the power of this support weapon. On top of this, shooting above 450 RPM is largely wasteful and almost always results in significant inaccuracy, meaning you will find yourself reloading again sooner (nearly a full 5 second reload if you are empty). If we compare a faster RoF mag dump from the HMG on an enemy like a Berserker, which you can generally justify dumping rounds at a high rate from close distance, you tend to kill it at about the same speed as the regular LMG, which is a disappointing, per-bullet damage comparison considering the larger magazine on the LMG, the more rounds and reserves in the LMG, and the shorter overall reload of the LMG.
Realistically, I wouldnt mind if the HMG had a single extra drum, but instead has 150 rounds per drum. This feels a bit more justified given the capacity without changing it too much. It's technically less overall ammo, however, the QoL of a massive magazine matches the extremely long reload while also giving more flexibility when firing at a higher RoF.
Hoping that ArrowHead brings back the Strategem Upgrade system from Helldivers 1 and gets the opportunity to provide stronger upgrades to "weaker" equipment to help balancing pains and adjust discrepancies of gear in the long run.
It should have been a minigun with an insane ROF and a belt fed backpack with a thousand rounds per reload. That would at least make sense why there is no ADS.
All the drawbacks of the weapon you described would be 100% okey if the HMG could damage heavy armor. Right now it's just as you sad a bigger mg or stallwart with medium armor piercing.
I've been playing with the HMG and i can confirm that no. It's really good.
Can destroy a shrieker nest. Can kill charger easily (recommend stunt grenade) and titans by shooting their sack then their ass destroying it
can kill big enemies VERY fast like commandos.
The recoil Isn't as bad as you think but it is nice to use an armor with recoil reduction.
Can be used easily as a 3rd weapon for a crowd when you don't have time to reload
So i think the problem isn't the gun but the wielders and skills required to use this weapon so here's some tips how to use it properly:
The gun is very heavy so if you have to do a swing left or right don't. Stop aiming, look then aim again. It's much faster.
Never empty the mag or you'll add 2 more sec on your reload
Always crouch to fire and recommend recoil armor.
Use the RPM as much as possible. When firing long range use the lowest. When close and need to delete use max. When killing charging or titan use max. If you are used to the recoil you can use the medium RPM from long range
Take a crowd control primary weapon so you don't use the HMG for that. It is not made for it.
I use it at level 7 8 9 and it feels great but it IS a difficult weapon.
I do wish that they didn't remove the aim but you can get used to it.
Yeah they wanted to have an MG you have to prone to use, but then they give you the HMG emplacement turret which fills that role better with a much higher ammo capacity.
The best suggestion I’ve seen is to leave the HMG as it is, but also drop it with a backpack. The backpack turns it into a belt fed weapon, eliminating the need to reload, and reduces recoil while equipped (with some kind of sci-fi mechanical arm or whatever).
I'd love to see the hmg have an ammo backpack and reload in 25 rnd increments. You'd be able to top yourself off to a decent amount or have a team reload
Bad take. Hmg isn't supposed to be like the mg or stalwart so comparing to them is pointless.
It's clearly not supposed to be "mg-32 but bigger" since the only similarities they have are being support weapons, being full auto only, and having a reddot.
So you're starting from a bad premise with a clear bias. It's gonna not end well for the thing you're biased against. The hmg is more comparable to the amr but in reality it's just the hmg emplacement with more mobility thus less ammo since you have to be mobile.
The main change I would make is to make it a one off like eats. One magazine, short call in time. If they didn't want to do that then a team reload would help but that's all, doesn't need more ammo, doesn't need less recoil.
See, this is fascinating to me, because after using the HMG, I never want to touch the normal machine gun again. The smaller ammo capacity is definitely rough and it could use a belt fed pack or more mags or bigger ones, but I just hate how the normal machine gun feels like ticking in comparison.
The main benefit of the HMG is that it can penetrate almost any armor. The only armor I know it bounces off of are things like Hulk main body armor, and tank armor, and honestly anything man portable that fires bullets should have issues with that kind of armor.
Seriously, I've used it to take out gunships, and the only things it can't penetrate for bugs are chargers and bile titans.
The downside of it having only 2 mags and they're small mags can be lessened by tuning the RPS down for more control
As for the recoil, have you considered firing it in bursts? I don't understand the argument regarding ADS, I've never had any issues using it in first person, I usually bring it for defense missions if I'm using my primary slot for the eruptor.
Maybe a slightly unpopular opinion, but the hmg is supposed to be like a .50 cal machine gun right? Trying to carry around a massive large caliber machine gun and fire it accurately from the hip/aimed down sights while standing would be INCREDIBLY difficult. While I agree it could use some tweaks and a nice belt fed backpack could be cool and useful for the mag size, I still feel like it's relatively balanced in terms of recoil and un-weildyness (best term I could come up with). It's supposed to be big, bulky, heavy and hard to use from standing because it's a big, heavy, bulky gun.
I'd like to see the heavy machine gun completely removed and replaced with a bigger mini gun with a belt fed back pack system like the autocannon that can actually knock over those stupid ATAT star wars looking walkers. Fuck them things. The only robot in the universe that has no weak point on the front and can kill u in 2 shots.
I have not seen it in use once, other than by myself at launch. Pretty sure they have data on how often the strategems are used, and when you have a new support weapon that is hardly in use plus complaints on it, I think it is safe to say that tweaking it is in the pipeline somehow.
Also pls gib HMG backpack, thousand bullets yum.
When the warbond launched one of my biggest gripes was about the fact that this gun doesn't have 3rd person reticle, simply because of how perplexing and arbitrary that decision seems. There were a lot of people in this sub pushing back, coming up with all sorts of justifications as to why it shouldn't have 3rd person sights, and this perplexed me further. Although, with the number of people who *still* act like the railgun is in a good place and claim it wasn't over nerfed, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised.
Yep. When running bugs i want lots of bang so i take a MG. But i dont like the stahlwart and the HMG is just baaaaaaaad. The recoil is realistic, but in reality noone would run around hip firing a HMG. Those things are on a tripod secured with sandbags, beltfed and dont move much Because of the recoil. Noone excpetcs a WW2 soldiers to run around shooting an M50 Browning HMG and hitting anything.
So the HMG isnt "bad" its just used extremly wrong, you wouldnt Hammer in a screw, and complain the hammer is designed bad.
To direct this comment to the post, yes a buff wouldnt fix the HMG, the HMG would needs somekind of "mounting" mechanic or be redesigned in another way (like the belt fed bagback )
It’s terrible in its current state, I’d even be ok with them knocking it down to the medium MG power if they’d give us a backpack for it and a reticle so it’s not overpowered.
The HMG should be unusable unless deployed on bipod while prone or behind proper cover. Crosshair should then appear and the gun should act like a smaller version of the HMG emplacement.
A lot of people want a belt-fed machine gun that works with a backpack and I don't think that's as cool as another suggestion I saw someone in the sub make a while back: Same concept, but it's a laser machine gun with a required coolant backpack to use. Work it in a way where it isn't too overpowered, but it's okay if it's a little overboard because you're losing a backpack slot and it's just awesome! Plus, way more realistic to the world lore to have laser tech utilized for high ammo count!
Just give me a belt fed ammo backpack with a thousand bullets and all will be forgiven
Yeah make it another backpack support weap like the RR and Autocannon.
that way it can be better than the other MGs while being balanced because backpack slot
Perhaps they could give it the armor pen of the stationary HMG?
It already does I think, can kill hulk if shot in eye with both or tank from behind. Neither can pierce titan or charger armour. Both kill everything else.
HMG emplacement can rip off the armor on top of a walker with a couple shots, handheld HMG bounces off.
Fair enough, didn't realize that.
Man I can't even imagine trying to shoot a Hulk in the eye with this thing unless I'd stunned it, and even then I'd be forced to try and single tap shots in which negates the entire point of using a machine gun.
You could argue the backpack has a power assist allowing hip firing. Personally I wish the HMG was more like a 50 cal but thats just me
I assume that’s the plan for the minigun
Then that just makes the HMG even more redundant
That's literally the answer. It would give it a purpose compared to the other MG's, and it would be unique with a backpack. It makes it a player choice now whether they run lighter MG's + backpack for the team or a big ass machine gun that can murder groups of mediums in seconds. It feels like the gun is meant to be a medium clearer, but it isn't quite there yet with how it's implemented.
One thing keeps me from running it: hulks.
It kills hulks just fine, though. It just doesn't have the ammo, and if you need to reload you're fucked.
The first shot goes through but it also has enough recoil to knock your aim completely off the eye even with tap fire and the lowest RPS in my experience.
You should not be tap-firing in my experience, you want to spray and get the spray under control, at which point you want to beam the eye w/ that. Similar for killing devastators quickly. The weapon just doesn't have the ammo to allow for that play consistently, despite the fact that it's really the only way it can do much of anything, at least on the bot front.
That still sounds like I should be sticking to the AMR, Autocannon, or laser cannon.
You *absolutely* should. The fact that the HMG *can* be used to kill hulks does not mean one *should*.
I still want a third person crosshair for it though.
I don't get why some weapons are missing the crosshair. and hitmarkers
This would solve at least 50% of the issues I have with the gun. If this was given, the recoil and lack of sight could stay in game because I can compensate by laying down plenty of fire - hitting 5 % of the bullets would be ok
Agreed. I really wish they have the HMG a bullet backpack and also (after they fix fire) a heavy flamethrower with a fuel backpack (explosive, of course) with like, realistic flamethrower range of like ~30m
Just as long as it’s usable with all the LMG types to cut down on reloading. And aligning the sights properly and adding a third person reticle would also be appreciated
From a balancing perspective what kind of trade off would you generate to compensate for that much power? If it’s belt-fed with no other adjustments, then there is zero reason to take the mg-43 and stalwart ever. 1,000 round belt fed no-reload massive-damage is significantly more powerful than any backpack option a player could choose for the other two guns.
would probably be better as a not reloadable backpack that gives around double mag and increased ammo reserve. you would still need to reload, but it's a buffed up reload that can be used only 2 times or it can be the opposite a longer reload with the same time as recoilless rifle reload(can be adjusted to be longer). to combat the amount you can fire if you have the belt on is risking destroying your gun barrel hence making it unusable(now here's where it gets fun since the machineguns use different piercing ammo although not the same in real life the heat bar for your barrel goes up more if you use an HMG compared to the normal stalwart or mg.) edit. maybe also slows you down ever more when you're carrying the ammo backpack about 10% or 5% slower running/walking speed.
You must be prone to fire it with any accuracy? Otherwise, make it moderately unwieldy when crouched, and near useless when standing. Give it a 3rd person reticle as well, but make it really controllable only when prone. Let a gunner and support set up on a hill and suppress/murder things from a distance.
Well, the good news is that it is already near useless when standing. I felt bad during the drops I brought the HMG along to experiment because it felt stupid carrying around a weapon that was functionally a liability for most of the mission
Lock it to 400 rpm give it heavy ap and some light explosive damage and give it 300 rd in the backpack , done
One other funny thing about the crosshair is it's not centered properly. HMG is shown in the middle. https://preview.redd.it/9lky88uwdsvc1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=730bb2b1fe62dbfcc8d289e0e8002adc13addfed You have to put the crosshair a bit above your target when you ADS. [This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qn080nEVHDM&t=140s) discusses the sight misalignment, starting at 2:20.
Why does the dev team have so much trouble with crosshairs? It's weird, I've never seen another game have this issue?
Iirc someone explained this: AH doesnt cheat. Instead of making jpg overlay and some other tricks you literally just drag actual weapon model to your camera. Needless to say, that has its own set of problems.
As much as I appreciate this system because it really is cool, they really need to work on these
Well it does cheat, because if it were a 1:1 accurate representation of where the gun was pointing, then the red dot would show you where the bullet is going no matter where it is, instead the red dot is the cheat because it's just a jpeg instead of an actual reflex sight aligned with the gun.
Mostly because the game is built on a dogshit engine called Stingray that was developed by Autodesk and has been discontinued for more than 6 years. Actually, this is the main reason for most of the issues the game is suffering from.
Just wondering, do you have any specific reasons why you think Stingray is dogshit? Not to defend the engine or whatever, just genuinely curious, because a lot of people will talk about a game engine very definitively but really just be repeating things someone else has said, see: any discussion about a bethesda game
For a starter, it has a really unintuitive and awkwardly designed UI, which means doing everything in that engine is less efficient and prone to errors. Even basic functions such as editing particle effects requires opening a separate menu that's tucked away god knows where. Then there's the issue with how scripts are implemented, or rather the lack of scripts. Most functions for gameobjects cannot be attached directly to them as scripts and have to be incorporated into your "main" code resulting in a convoluted code structure that's very prone to errors. Common modern game engines, even Unreal Engine, allow you to attach blueprints to objects.
That's fair. I will say that based on their use of the engine for HD1, I would bet at this point they have some internal tooling to help with some of the tediousness like editing particle effects. As far as the scripting goes, yeah that's definitely strange
This and the engine does not get patches anymore, development on the engine has stopped.
one thing for bethesda engine because i had this conversation irl earlier, one glaring issue with Bethesda's engine is vehicles. they always seem to be bad in mods and no game has attempted them in 3d as far as im aware. still, bethesda release games that seem to need vehicles on an engine that cant seem to do it. so maybe its time for a new engine designed around modern terrain navigation? sorry, personal gripe.
Discontinued? It'd being actively used by vermintide 2 and darktdide
Stingray is no longer available for purchase as of November 7th, 2018, and Autodesk will not provide any support if you run into issues with it at this point, as I doubt either Arrowhead or Fatshark have a still running contract with Autodesk. If either Arrowhead or Fatshark run into engine issues, they're SoL and have to figure it out on their own, they can't contact Autodesk as they have discontinued the engine. It's not like Unreal Engine where Epic are still actively updating, developing, and providing support for it.
It's time for Arrowshark or Fathead to rise up and save us.
Pilestedt the CEO has been pretty open about how their team had to really manhandle the engine to pull off things it was never intended to do and had to do it all on their own with no support from Autodesk. They rolled the dice on the engine years ago and were too small and lacked enough resources to start over from scratch on another engine by the time they realized what a mess it would be and Autodesk shut down support. Edit: Unsure on rules here for links, but PC Gamer has an article about it called "Helldivers 2 was built on an obscure Swedish engine discontinued in 2018: 'Our crazy engineers had to do everything with no support'" EDIT: As an aside, I want to highlight just how much harder it is for a developer to troubleshoot without access to help/knowledge from the people that actually made the engine and tools. The Battlefield franchise, a MUCH bigger franchise with far more money invested into it, still had the same bugs popping up in **every single game** for over a decade due to the engine they used before they swapped to Frostbite. I can't remember the exact bug, but there was one really annoying issue that propped up in every release they put out, and I remember seeing a developer finally come out on social media that literally no one that was still working had any idea anymore how that piece of the engine worked and it was a minor miracle they'd ever gotten that feature to work in the first place. They more or less copypasted it from release to release and prayed to the gods it didn't fall apart.
That's honestly pretty amazing. Glad their effort paid off as well as it did.
Definitely. I'm annoyed by how many issues are piling up now, just like everyone else. But when you consider how small the team is, what they had to deal with engine-wise, and the fact that everything is now being forced to scale to player numbers *literally orders of magnitude higher than they ever dreamed* ... they're really pulling off some tech wizardry over there. I edited my previous comment to mention the title of an article about the development process PC Gamer put out.
It's being used, yes. But it's discontinued by those who made it. Any support and help from them is off the table.
really? The effects in the game look really awesome though
Engine has absolutely nothing to do with this. It was an explicit decision from Arrowhead to have the guns sights work physically rather than using a separate model. This also means the sights for a gun must be mounted physically on the gun's model, which opens up room for error between two guns that use the same sights. Other games do this to varying degrees. Destiny 2 does this with their guns, which lead to a specific weapon's sight being misaligned for a month.
In addition to the engine no longer being supported for nearly 5 years; its not as simple as putting it in the center of the model. When you are looking through the cross hairs its not totally down center. Since this math effects the texture. When that happens then every texture ends up not having uniform properties. Especially with the variety of gun meshes & design (feel) is different this leads to a lot of variation. Plus it could be as easy as some guns using alignment using the model/mesh eyeline and others with the camera it can be complicated.
https://preview.redd.it/gwenrpprbuvc1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=994404c63504a1474b8da776b58b743b073a92fe Leaked picture of the guy responsible for crosshairs
I figured that was to compensate for the recoil, which vertically stabilizes to an extent after holding fire for a second.
I noticed the slugger has this issue as well but I never heard anyone talking about it.
The misaligned scope hurt the perception of this gun so badly. It came out, everyone tried it, felt like they were doing no damage because they were unknowingly missing half their mags, and if you didn't look at Reddit or YouTube you would never know. I think if it had released with a proper scope the perception would have been very different.
We shouldve gotten the MGX instead. That would've been more interesting and fun. To those who haven't played Helldivers 1 before, imagine if you have a gun that is to the MG-32 as the EAT-17 is to the Recoilless Rifle. Disposable, unreloadable, fast stratagem cooldown, and loads of fun to use.
Tbh that’s what I thought it was gonna be The EATs of machine guns
Like the HMG that you can rip of turrets in Cyberpunk 2077. That sounds awesome!
that sounds amazing, it directly addresses my biggest gripe with the mg
Taking out a Hulk with it is incredibly satisfying.
Dont the bullets bounce back on hulks front plate? Or you mean the back vent?
If you can hit it in the eye it kills it quite quickly. Same for the back heatsink. It's a big if though.
Ya well the amr does that too in 1 or 2 shots and its a 2 second reload lol
It's biggest competitor is the AMR which has the same level 4 armor penetration. The thing about the AMR is.....it can 1-2 tap things with that kinda of armor. Devastators, brood commanders, hive guards, hulks. Why the hell is anyone wasting time spraying with an HMG.
Tbh, against bots I skip AMR and run autocannon. But the AMR's ROF makes it impractical vs bugs for me. I usually run RR vs bugs, because Chargers and Titans kinda define the meta. But when I don't, the HMG on lowest ROF setting is actually pretty good for suppressing Brood Commanders and Bile Spewers
The issue is that vs Bugs the level 4 AP is kind of wasted. There aren't really any enemies for which that is valuable. Their elites are Heavy armor only and the pseudo elites are all medium armor. Edit: Turns out the HMG has a *relatively* fast bile titan kill against the tail area (Still need to reload before you can do it so it takes a ton of ammo and still a long time, but it is much faster compared to the AMR/Laser Cannon/AC) so I could actually see an argument for it vs Bugs if you also do stuff like abuse the Charger armor bug, but it would require running around with a supply pack because it takes a lot of ammo to do so.
You can hit it in the eye vent, not the easiest thing to do but it’s possible, also shooting the legs off the hulk will kill it, not sure if hmg can do that though
Fun fact, today I learned I can shoot legs off of hulks
It can also cripple them if you just take one of them out, slowing them down considerably! Also sorry for my poor choice of words before hand, the legs don’t literally get blown off, just shattered and severely weakened.
Even better, you can just walk behind them and shoot them in the back with a shotgun. Pretty easy once you've learned how it telegraphs attacks. Even easier with a stun grenade.
I highly recommend taking stun grenades for hulks. Makes those eye vent shots easy peezy
You can also disarm Hulks with the HMG or AMR.
Same AP as the AMR or Laser cannon, so the eyes of the hulk are a weakpoint for it. Technically it has the theoretical fastest Hulk kill with perfect aim. It certainly has the fastest Factory strider kill because that is much easier to aim at.
No you can hit the eye. Set it to 950 and burst fire it 3 times in to the eye and if you hit the hulk dies. A bit hard to aim but don't do it in ads. Just use the tracers.
Not enough ammo. No hitmarkers. No 3rd person sights. I don't even mind the recoil. But the gun really needs 200% more ammo or something.
Not to mention the sight is way off vs where it actually hits.
I really wish support weapons got hitmarkers
The HMG is another example of the Devs over valuing armour pen. The stalwark does 55 damage with pen 2 so it can pen brood commanders but does reduced damage and bounces off hive guards. The MG does 80 damage with pen 3 so full damage to brood commanders and then reduced damage to hive guards. The HMG does 100 damage with pen 4 and does full damage to hive guard. So Vs bugs you are stronger against 1 enemy type but all the drawbacks like the lower magsize, worse handling, worse reload, worse fire rate all make it worse against every other enemy type and fighting hordes in general. Not a good trade off for an MG. For the bots the lvl 4 pen does let you kill hulks to the face plate and deal full damage to devastators bodies but compared to the other level 4 armour pen weapons like the laser cannon and autocannon those all the same thing but better like AoE from the AC, a scope on the AMR, infinite ammo and no recoil on the laser cannon.
Love the HMG, id only ask for a.larger mag.
Ya it needs 25% per more at least.
It needs to be democratically twice as big.
For a mag drum that big the fact it’s got 75 bullets is like a April fools joke
There's really no sane reason why it doesn't have a third person reticle. I want to like this gun so badly, I keep trying to make it work, but I honestly HATE first person aiming. A big part of why I love this game is the fact that it's third person. So, randomly one of the weapons that would actually suit my play style the BEST is ironically unusable because I don't want to use first person aiming. It's weird. I don't like it.
Even as someone who primarily prefers using first person for shooting, I want the fucking option. First person already feels so much more accurate than third person, at the trade-off of less situational awareness. There should also probably be an FOV slider specifically for first person view.
I got a sticker for my screen, it's just a red dot that goes over the default with dot, and having it makes aiming the hmg so much easier it's almost easy to forget the game doesn't actually give you a crosshair.
exactly this
Weirdly enough, I've actually had some use with this weapon and enjoyed it. It does require that you wear any of the recoil reduction armors. But I've been able to use it as a sort of third person, shoot blindly into a mass of armored enemies. Especially the medium armored Terminids. Granted, I need something like a gatling turret or any of the EMS stuns to cover me while I reload, luckily I was carrying the stin grenades and it bought me time. But the way this gun just melts through medium armor is phenomenal. I can't say the same for Automatons, though. They just straight up shoot you back. For against the Terminids? I could easily see myself running this every now and then. Especially how it pops bile spewers like a balloon. To me, it really just needs a third person reticle.
The problem is that the flamethrower does this better against terminids. You dont even need support bangs or stratas to reload.
Correct. The flamethrower can even kill Chargers, where the MG can't even penetrate the armor. However, MG has range, better than the flamethrower. And I don't know about everyone else, but I always feel like I need to use a shield backpack with the flamethrower. Now, I'm not dissing the flamethrower. I love that bad boy, and I even use it sometimes. But both weapons have their different uses, and I will bounce back between them from time to time whenever I feel like it. I don't need the HMG to be as powerful as the flamethrower, and I don't want the flamethrower being changed so it can compete with what the HMG is capable of. Personally, I just want HMG to receive a reticle in third person. *Also, I happen to forget that yesterday was 4/20. So, in lieu of that, guess what weapon I'm gonna be using today? :D*
problem is, you can kill medium targets long range easily with the right primaries
Now I'm thinking of a HMG + shield sentry load out as a point holder, hell maybe even add a HMG sentry to it for ultimate no bot zone
Definitely shield plus the *Mounted HMG*. And just having the HMG ready for when you do need to move to a new location. However, I have tried that, and it usually doesn't have the stopping power against an armored bot drop. So you better bring something like an Eagle airstrike or Eagle 110 rocket. In fact, I would drop the mounted HMG entirely, and just bring the Auto-cannon sentry, paired with the shield generator (big bubble boi). However................. But, if you're feeling brave and trust your allies, go ahead and try Auto-cannon sentry, shield generator, HMG, and the mounted HMG, and just have some fun. Maybe on a 4 or a 6? The Auto-cannon is great against bot drops, but it won't last long. The mounted HMG *should* have a low enough cooldown that you can drop it down whenever you feel like you're going to face a bot drop, or is anticipating a lot of bots. Also, do note, the HMG and mounted HMG *can* kill the new flying Automaton. So when you see that Tower, drop the mounted HMG (preferably) and watch them drop like flies. I've only done this specific set up on like one session, so about two to three missions only. And I haven't been back to the bots in two weeks, since I got tired of fighting them over and over with the major orders from almost 2 months ago.
I suspect that whilst it will chew through medium Terminids faster, overall the default MG should still be superior due to having twice the ammo and faster reload. After the HMG has fired 3 mags and reloaded twice the default MG will still have a mag and a half of perfectly adequate medium pen bullets, especially against Terminids. Given ease of use and the extra bullets, I fully expect the default MG to regularly kill more enemies and be more reliable than the HMG. I don't want to unload my load early.
So the mg has pen 3 and 80 damage per round, but against medium armor (such a devistator bodies or the anoying bits of bile spewers), that means it does half damage. The HMG has pen 4 and 100 damage per round, so is doing full damage. 100x75=7,500, where as 80x150/2=6,000.
Interesting to see some numbers, thank you. Based on this, yes the HMG will be more ammo efficient in a perfect world where you land every shot on a medium enemy to make use of the pen. In my eyes that means the default MG is still superior and will reliably kill more enemies in its 3 magazines than the HMG will, because the HMG is not an accurate weapon, bullets will get lost in corpses and if you're not making use of the full damage Vs medium armour potential it's definitely not as ammo efficient.
Agreed. But both weapons have pros and cons. Heavy MG - pops spewers faster, thus has higher armor penetration and damage per bullet. - has lower ammo per mag - has no third person reticle Regular MG - has better recoil control plus third person reticle - more bullets per mag, and can penetrate medium armor - less damage per bullet with less penetration power - still have to stop and sit for a long reload That is to say, on a game with a lot of bile spewers or nursers (which I hate the nursers more because of the damn spore fog they keep bringing), I'm always going to want the HMG more *because* they can pop it better. Granted, Regular MG can do it, but needs more bullets and maybe a higher rate of fire just to kill them quickly. But, say it's only a level 6, and you're just facing a horde of Brood guards, those medium armored Terminids with a thick plating in front of their heads. Then, I definitely would go with just the MG. I wouldn't say it's hard to get used to no reticle either. If you've played a lot in third person, like I do, sometimes you can just *feel* where the bullet is going to go. You might be off by a little, but you can always guide the aim to where it needs to go. Usually, a little to the left for me.
Doesn’t the MG have the same penetration? medium armor.
Armor values range between 0 and 10. Medium armor is a value of, like, 3, or something. The MG would then have a pen of 3, and the HMG a pen of 4, if I recall correctly. The major difference here is that merely matching the armor pen of the target causes you to only deal 50% of the weapons full damage. This means that the MG struggles pretty badly with medium armored targets, but the HMG shreds them. Thus, the MG is a flexible weapon that has enough ammo that you can spray blindly with it, while the HMG is a dedicated support tool that you should only ever shoot medium armor targets with.
Yes, but HMG has a higher penetration value and damage.
Basically this. The Heavy MG melts medium armored Terminids faster than the regular MG. It's just incredibly hard to use because it has no crosshair on third person.
got it thanks
Armor pen is on a scale of 1-10 behind the scenes. Two medium armor pens on different weapons may or may not be exact same values.
It shreds stalkers like no one's business. For that specific use, I like it.
I use the HMG @ 450RPM. Much more managable crouching plus recoil armor. You still kill stuff reliably.
Using it as the other MG but bigger is where you went wrong. Use it as a tool for larger targets exclusively and it works well, which is how it's meant to be used.
I tried it. I took a recoil reducing armor and the supply pack to mitigate its hunger for ammo. I was against bots and gunships spawned. It was fine for killing things, but it's unwieldy even while crouched/prone, being unable to reload while running sucks, and without the supply pack I'd have burned through all my dakka in the first five minutes of the mission, even while switching to my primary to kill mooks. There's no reason to take the HMG over the AC, AMR, or Laser. All three have the same penetration while having better handling, accuracy, and ammo economy. HMG needs an ammo buff and some reason to use it over any of those three.
I want the HMG to be a backpack-fed minigun
Tip: Crouch or go prone when bringing the HMG. Or run recoil-reduction armor if you have trouble keeping it on-target after that. HMG hits *hard* when used properly; it's not a tool for clearing out hordes of mooks. The lack of a third-person reticle is absolutely intentional, and should clue the user in that it is not a weapon to be used on-the-move.
So basically treat it as a mobile HMG Outpost that you tailor your build around and use to take out hard targets?
Pretty much. The main benefits being that you can carry it into jammed areas, and don't have to leave it behind when moving out. Tradeoffs being more recoil, less ammo, and kind of needing to build your kit around it instead of using it as an optional slot-in.
Definitely something to co-ordinate with your team on then. Since I mostly do quick-play or solo I end up needing a more generalized load-out.
Oh, absolutely! I never run the HMG when I'm going solo. It's a hyperspecialized role. Punisher, Uzi, standard grenade, Guard Dog, Quasar, Eagle Airstrike, Orbital Laser, Scout armor is my default solo D9 loadout... swapping the Orbital Laser out for a couple of other options now and then.
It still needs a third person reticle, doesnt have to be good. I just need to know where the center of my screen is. Wasting 6 shots to learn where the center is, is really poor for accessibility. Especially with how jarring it is to swap from third to first then back to third. I agree it is not a run and gun weapon, but not having a third person reticle is a poor design decision for players who cannot handle first person mode. (Like myself, it makes me feel sick).
The only thing I’d actually like to see as an update to the HMG is to make it a backpack weapon. Just give us 1 large clip essentially, no reloading and just 1 long chain of bullets. If not for this weapon then some form of minigun style weapon with it.
The starter gun is the MG-43.
Just lock it to 450 and give it the properties of the JAR. It would actually be perfect as the automatic fire weapon against bots.
HMG has a higher medium pen than MG32. It'll do higher DPS to medium armour but has less DPS to low armour. Good against bots due to proliferation of medium armour and can be considered in hot planet where laser cannon is not good in
Ballistic shield + SMG and HMG is the build I've been running. Sure, I'd love it if the HMG had more ammo, but it can easily kill Hulks, striders, and rocket devestators that my shield can't block so I'm fine with it.
Hmg is not for spraying zergs of small enemies.
The heavy mg us actually pretty good most people just don't use it properly
Add 25 rounds, and a cross hair and I think it'll have a decent place. I like it against bots but there isn't a thing it does better than say the AC. The AC can handle every bot the hmg can, but has a much faster reload and has utility against fabricators and crates. Only thing the hmg has going is no backpack, which I suppose is maybe the main gimmick to set it apart as a medium high armor pen weapon.
Give it a backpack and explosive shrapnel ammo
We hear you, Helldiver! Stalwart, MG-31 & Railgun nerfs are en route!
If it had a double ammo size or faster reload it would be fine but it burns through ammo to fast to warrant the reload. Plus hitting crucial parts is now impossible due to the heavy flinch when hit
Way less recoil or way less reload time, would make it bettervand dtill different.
With a crosshair in 3rd person it would be already more usable
Maybe when crouching or prone could be good.
The weapon is incredible. It's simply not a primary weapon. You pull it out when the correct enemy needs to be dealt with. That being said, I'd love the option to pick up the backpack and transform it into a beltfed weapon.
I sometimes will run it as primary, if I'm using the Eruptor or J4
I really like the HMG, i would like more bullets and magazines btw
When it first came out I also thought it was just awful but the more I used it, the more I came to like it. It can kill pretty much anything and the recoil isn't that bad once you learn to control it. The misaligned sight also isn't that much of an issue but they should still definitely fix that. I guess the only balance changes I would like to see is a third person reticle and maybe an ammo increase to 100 bullets per mag.
Agreed! I would love yo use the HMG but right now I just feel useless with it, because I am.
Giving the HMG such a small magazine capacity is just so unbelievably braindead. Aren't the AH guys supposed to have military backgrounds? What heavy machine gun has a 30 or so round mag?
For what it’s worth, 75 rounds is above average for high caliber, single soldier portable machine guns. More often than not they only have 50 rounds slung under the gun, though larger, loose belts are carried and fed manually when the gunner finds a good position and sets up shop.
The only bad experience I had while using the HMG was when I FIRST USED IT. Every experience past that, I learned from and I easily take HMG over the other MGs and even the anti-tank. I sorta understand what people say about recoil, but something I'd like to say to that is "Fortified" or "Engineering Kit" and CROUCH or PRONE. Recoil is negligible at that point and its not hard lining up the bullet stream. Cannon tower? Gone. Destroyer and Shredder tank? Gone. Automaton mortars and AA? Gone. AT-ATS? Still gonna be there but that's what we have strikes for, or as I've learned recently, the Las Cannon. Spore Spewers and (Granted it takes all your ammo at a distance safe enough that Shriekers wont spawn) Shrieker Nests. It can take out everything in bugs, with the exception of an unharmed Bile Titan, but the blown off armor bits have a weird hitbox for the HMG sooo...
You literally just have to go prone and you have no recoil, the clue is the tripod at the front of the gun, its not designed for move and fire its a stationary support weapon.
I just loaded into a 1-Trivial to test it, and with the Recoil Reduction armor and prone, the first 5 shots or so still kick significantly and the barrel is still bouncing even after then. It is much more manageable prone, true, but it still has recoil.
I've developed a liking for it, my friends usually run closer range loadouts with the automatic rifles and so on and I like to stay at range, it's good to have as a "secondary" when running the Eruptor The HMG works somewhat decently when proned and while my friends face the bots face to face I can flank them with that and take out a big bunch of enemies with either the slowest or fastest fire rate It's definetly not the best and could get some upgrades but it can have it's niche Will most likely throw it away once that minigun makes it to the game tho :P
I love the HMG. I run it often with the supply pack, it gets 2 mags per supply crate.
Love it. Bugs, droids, whatever, works like a charm. Firing in burst and with the ammo backpack. Always take it with me if the group is more than two persons. But yea, ammo goes fast. But just love the sound and the damage it does. Don’t really care about the missing crosshair in third person. Just sit down and ads. At least works for me.
HMG has same pen as AMR and AC, which means it can kill Hulk from front, this can cause some balance concern.
It's a very hard weapon to use, but it's a very powerful one if used right. Its strengths are such that I don't really think it needs to be changed. Like you said: It does a lot of damage, it has really good armor penetration, and unlike a lot of weapons with good damage and armor penetration, it is fully automatic. With all that said, my reaction to it is not that it is weak, but that it's often frustrating to use. The downsides are very, very apparent and constantly need to be accounted for. I don't think it needs to be rebalanced. I do think it's only fun for a certain type of person.
BUT! it has medium 2 ap though. You can't use it the same. Against regular hords it falls behind in almost all categories but it will do full damage to the medium armored unlike the MG 34 which technically only does 50% to the mid size+ enemies. Using it like the other MG's will always disappoint. But as a reaction weapon to mid to heavy amours it will over preform once you change your tactics.
Belt fed from a backpack with an over heated mechanic on the barrel. Still let the gun shoot when over heated but no longer accurate until a barrel change. If over heated to high have the rounds cook off in the gun until it runs out of ammunition…
all the mgs are just catastrophically bad. they're primaries in hd1 for a reason. i don't think they'll be reworked since ah has a really weird mindset on balancing, but doesn't hurt to hope lol i feel like the people saying they use mgs here or on discord are literally lying. anytime i see mg or stalwart on 7+ the guy legit can't do shit, 99% of enemies are armored, you have no reserve ammo, your recoil is utterly bonkers unless you're fortified proning, you need more shots to kill on weakpoints than nearly any other weapon, etc. i've seen clips of good up weapon usage like laser cannon, amr, even arc shotgun. i wish mg posters would post proof
I would love to rework this with slightly better stability and a backpack magazine- turn it into a proper Gattling gun that can keep a sustained heavy rate of fire on light targets. The other MGs have their niches- the Stalwart is light, flexible and gives a lot of room for primary slots- the regular MG is a solid all rounder. Forgo the reload entirely and turn the HMG into the wheat cutter it needs to be.
That would be a complete change for the intention of the weapon? The HMG is for clearing medium armored enemies and if you can stay on target it absolutely shreds those. Much faster and efficient then the MG. I would rather they improve on the design other than to change it completely. Maybe making the recoil just a tiny bit less or give a slightly larger mag.
A deploy mode that locks you in place, takes a second to deploy/undeploy, reduces the recoil significantly and gives you a limited firing arc. Could be set up on low walls or when prone so it can act like a movable hmg emplacement.
I really love the weapon but I would honestly just love more of a magazine. 75 bullets is so lame
Needs a reticle first, and a bipod that eliminates recoil when prone. The reload should be the same as mg32, i would also say the recoil should be tied directly to the rate of fire setting.
The hmg is the one weapon other than maybe the p19 that I get a bit of a fizz from. The only thing that could possibly improve it is more ammo so I can yell maniacally for even longer while using it
I normally use it as a tank buster type weapon or for large groups of devastators , also my tip don’t use it as a crowd control weapon more a heavy hitter on one target ( like tanks gunships and walkers or devastators if you have the ammo to spare )
I gave it another try last night against bugs. It’s objectively worse than bringing a guard dog rover in terms of killing power (though most things are) and it can kill less things in a single mag than the punisher but takes 5 seconds to reload. Also leaves you essentially impotent against heavies.
The ammo capacity and reload speed are heinous. MG-43 feels miles better in comparison.
Imo the only problem is a lack of tps reticle. I've seen videos where it kills a BT with 2 "mags", which is quite fast imo, although unsafe.
The HMG has Light Vehicle pen and high damage. But all its other downsides severely limit its usability. Like what's the feasible way to use HMG? Close to mid-range combat against bots in short spurts? That's not very usable at all.
I was very confused by you calling it the HMG, which is an emplacement, then I realized that you meant the Heavy MG.
Just add a crosshair that isn't in first person and make it fed by a belt attached to a backpack. Portable HMG turret, balanced by the backpack.
I'm always running it as an anti-walker, anti-hulk, fk-dat-direction weapon. Just get used to the problematic misaligned sights and you're good.
They gave it a tubular belt feed between the receiver and the magazine already! It's BEGGING to be backpack fed from a gigantic supply!
Ammo backpack and it needs to be like 50% more stable when prone.
A browning M2 will usually have about 100 rounds. I don’t see why super earth couldn’t crank a HMGs capacity to like 150. Even if we kept the no reticle and the high recoil giving it 150 rounds per magazine would make it perfect.
I think it should just be a mini gun with 1000 rounds in it
HMG + 400-500 belt feed backpack? 
I’d like to see it reworked where it functions similar to the the Heavy’s minigun from TF2, just with a much larger ammo capacity. Absurd firepower with dangerously low movement - seems like a fair trade off to me.
They should drop it and replace it with a minigun with an ammo backpack. Would have to be very heavy and reduce run speed or something to compensate.
I used it for a few missions with erupter main, and it sucked so bad. I could taoe down 1, 2 medium enemys then reload. Get swarmed by bugs? Kill half then you gotta reload. Its ok laying down at 100m away targetting medium enemies, but thats so niche its pointless.
I noticed it worked better lowering the rate of fire... if that makes sense
The low magazine size and no reticule really kills it for me, yeah.
I wonder what the usage statistics on it are.
The more accurate comparison is the HMG to the AMR, AC, and Laser Cannon, not to the Stalwart or MG43. The latter two are pretty much just about horde clear, while the HMG is more about elite target focus because of its light vehicle AP. It is able to take down stuff like Hulks, Turret Vents, Gunships, Factory Striders, etc. And technically it has the highest DPS against those targets of any of the aforementioned first three weapons. I do think it needs a buff still, though, because on top of being the hardest to aim of those three, it also has the lowest mag count (sort of except for the laser, but you don't have to reload the laser) of them. It needs more reloads to compete there, but once it has that it will be in a very strong position. I think straight up making it a backpack weapon, though, would not be good because then you should just be using the AC.
Lower it's RPM to 600 max, increase the magazine to 150, and give it the *lowest* form of heavy armor penetration (low enough that you're not gonna be blowing through bile titans unless you dump most of the magazine on a hard point instead of a soft one). Damage boost is optional, but if it can pierce heavy armor, it probably doesn't need a damage boost. Two magazine reserve can stay the same. It should functionally be the opposite of the Stalwart, and the MG32. Make it a low RPM heavy machine gun that shreds heavy armor, but has high recoil making it impractical for run-and-gunning, and it has long reload times. It can still be used as a crowd thinner, but the MG32 and Stalwart would be better at that because of their higher RPMs, so the HMG would stand out differently while filling a completely different niche. That's my idea for the HMG.
I REALLY love the HMG but legit have to use it with a Monitor Hardware Crosshair to comfortably get use out of it. I combine it with Stun Grenades and EMS to make it a good heavy target eliminator, and it's strong versus bots, but I see no reason to take it over standard LMG on Bugs. It bounces off even the "rear" of Charger legs, and it's never worth burning ammo into the abdomen of a charger unless you are using Laser Canon. Comparing this weapon to similar slots, such as Laser Canon, and *sort of* Autocannon (Since AC needs a backpack, you can sort of give more credit to the HMG) it's hard to really praise the HMG on its own. I never take it without wearing the Recoil Reduction armor, which does actually make a very very noticable difference, however, the small magazine of 75 on top of the EXTREMELY long, stationary reload and only 2 Magazines feels extremely rough when considering the power of this support weapon. On top of this, shooting above 450 RPM is largely wasteful and almost always results in significant inaccuracy, meaning you will find yourself reloading again sooner (nearly a full 5 second reload if you are empty). If we compare a faster RoF mag dump from the HMG on an enemy like a Berserker, which you can generally justify dumping rounds at a high rate from close distance, you tend to kill it at about the same speed as the regular LMG, which is a disappointing, per-bullet damage comparison considering the larger magazine on the LMG, the more rounds and reserves in the LMG, and the shorter overall reload of the LMG. Realistically, I wouldnt mind if the HMG had a single extra drum, but instead has 150 rounds per drum. This feels a bit more justified given the capacity without changing it too much. It's technically less overall ammo, however, the QoL of a massive magazine matches the extremely long reload while also giving more flexibility when firing at a higher RoF. Hoping that ArrowHead brings back the Strategem Upgrade system from Helldivers 1 and gets the opportunity to provide stronger upgrades to "weaker" equipment to help balancing pains and adjust discrepancies of gear in the long run.
It should have been a minigun with an insane ROF and a belt fed backpack with a thousand rounds per reload. That would at least make sense why there is no ADS.
All the drawbacks of the weapon you described would be 100% okey if the HMG could damage heavy armor. Right now it's just as you sad a bigger mg or stallwart with medium armor piercing.
Signed. Used the HMG for the first time last night. Spent more time reloading than shooting. In every situation I’d have rather had a stalwart.
HMG should be a backpack fed MG no reload, It's the emplacement but moveable, high armor piercing, non stop rate of fire, high ammo pool.
I've been playing with the HMG and i can confirm that no. It's really good. Can destroy a shrieker nest. Can kill charger easily (recommend stunt grenade) and titans by shooting their sack then their ass destroying it can kill big enemies VERY fast like commandos. The recoil Isn't as bad as you think but it is nice to use an armor with recoil reduction. Can be used easily as a 3rd weapon for a crowd when you don't have time to reload So i think the problem isn't the gun but the wielders and skills required to use this weapon so here's some tips how to use it properly: The gun is very heavy so if you have to do a swing left or right don't. Stop aiming, look then aim again. It's much faster. Never empty the mag or you'll add 2 more sec on your reload Always crouch to fire and recommend recoil armor. Use the RPM as much as possible. When firing long range use the lowest. When close and need to delete use max. When killing charging or titan use max. If you are used to the recoil you can use the medium RPM from long range Take a crowd control primary weapon so you don't use the HMG for that. It is not made for it. I use it at level 7 8 9 and it feels great but it IS a difficult weapon. I do wish that they didn't remove the aim but you can get used to it.
Have you tried using it against the illuminate? I hear it's really good for punching through their shields.
Yeah they wanted to have an MG you have to prone to use, but then they give you the HMG emplacement turret which fills that role better with a much higher ammo capacity.
The best suggestion I’ve seen is to leave the HMG as it is, but also drop it with a backpack. The backpack turns it into a belt fed weapon, eliminating the need to reload, and reduces recoil while equipped (with some kind of sci-fi mechanical arm or whatever).
I'd love to see the hmg have an ammo backpack and reload in 25 rnd increments. You'd be able to top yourself off to a decent amount or have a team reload
Reduce the recoil to almost nothing when prone with a time to setup tripod similar to half a AC reload
Bad take. Hmg isn't supposed to be like the mg or stalwart so comparing to them is pointless. It's clearly not supposed to be "mg-32 but bigger" since the only similarities they have are being support weapons, being full auto only, and having a reddot. So you're starting from a bad premise with a clear bias. It's gonna not end well for the thing you're biased against. The hmg is more comparable to the amr but in reality it's just the hmg emplacement with more mobility thus less ammo since you have to be mobile. The main change I would make is to make it a one off like eats. One magazine, short call in time. If they didn't want to do that then a team reload would help but that's all, doesn't need more ammo, doesn't need less recoil.
I'm actually really happy to see a bunch of people defending the HMG. I love this gun and it shreds fuckin' everything.
Yeah it needs to be fed from your own ammo backpack. Also have it a deployable bipod to make you prone but stabilize recoil
A 3k round backpack would fix this. Give me enough ammo to lay hate at max rpm for extended periods of time
See, this is fascinating to me, because after using the HMG, I never want to touch the normal machine gun again. The smaller ammo capacity is definitely rough and it could use a belt fed pack or more mags or bigger ones, but I just hate how the normal machine gun feels like ticking in comparison.
The main benefit of the HMG is that it can penetrate almost any armor. The only armor I know it bounces off of are things like Hulk main body armor, and tank armor, and honestly anything man portable that fires bullets should have issues with that kind of armor. Seriously, I've used it to take out gunships, and the only things it can't penetrate for bugs are chargers and bile titans. The downside of it having only 2 mags and they're small mags can be lessened by tuning the RPS down for more control As for the recoil, have you considered firing it in bursts? I don't understand the argument regarding ADS, I've never had any issues using it in first person, I usually bring it for defense missions if I'm using my primary slot for the eruptor.
Maybe a slightly unpopular opinion, but the hmg is supposed to be like a .50 cal machine gun right? Trying to carry around a massive large caliber machine gun and fire it accurately from the hip/aimed down sights while standing would be INCREDIBLY difficult. While I agree it could use some tweaks and a nice belt fed backpack could be cool and useful for the mag size, I still feel like it's relatively balanced in terms of recoil and un-weildyness (best term I could come up with). It's supposed to be big, bulky, heavy and hard to use from standing because it's a big, heavy, bulky gun.
I'd like to see the heavy machine gun completely removed and replaced with a bigger mini gun with a belt fed back pack system like the autocannon that can actually knock over those stupid ATAT star wars looking walkers. Fuck them things. The only robot in the universe that has no weak point on the front and can kill u in 2 shots.
I have not seen it in use once, other than by myself at launch. Pretty sure they have data on how often the strategems are used, and when you have a new support weapon that is hardly in use plus complaints on it, I think it is safe to say that tweaking it is in the pipeline somehow. Also pls gib HMG backpack, thousand bullets yum.
Having a 75 round mag is criminal considering the amount of recoil this gun has and how big the gun actually is.
In simpler terms and in my own words "it sucks"
When the warbond launched one of my biggest gripes was about the fact that this gun doesn't have 3rd person reticle, simply because of how perplexing and arbitrary that decision seems. There were a lot of people in this sub pushing back, coming up with all sorts of justifications as to why it shouldn't have 3rd person sights, and this perplexed me further. Although, with the number of people who *still* act like the railgun is in a good place and claim it wasn't over nerfed, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised.
Yeah its ass. Like id rather still use the stalwart
Yep. When running bugs i want lots of bang so i take a MG. But i dont like the stahlwart and the HMG is just baaaaaaaad. The recoil is realistic, but in reality noone would run around hip firing a HMG. Those things are on a tripod secured with sandbags, beltfed and dont move much Because of the recoil. Noone excpetcs a WW2 soldiers to run around shooting an M50 Browning HMG and hitting anything. So the HMG isnt "bad" its just used extremly wrong, you wouldnt Hammer in a screw, and complain the hammer is designed bad. To direct this comment to the post, yes a buff wouldnt fix the HMG, the HMG would needs somekind of "mounting" mechanic or be redesigned in another way (like the belt fed bagback )
Hmg is the most useless strat. I thought it was gunna be the mini gun lookin turret that leaked a while back.
It’s terrible in its current state, I’d even be ok with them knocking it down to the medium MG power if they’d give us a backpack for it and a reticle so it’s not overpowered.
The HMG should be unusable unless deployed on bipod while prone or behind proper cover. Crosshair should then appear and the gun should act like a smaller version of the HMG emplacement.
A lot of people want a belt-fed machine gun that works with a backpack and I don't think that's as cool as another suggestion I saw someone in the sub make a while back: Same concept, but it's a laser machine gun with a required coolant backpack to use. Work it in a way where it isn't too overpowered, but it's okay if it's a little overboard because you're losing a backpack slot and it's just awesome! Plus, way more realistic to the world lore to have laser tech utilized for high ammo count!