To some it may come as no surprise that M/49 reckless rifle is lacking in damage per projectile. The only way I see this weapon being resurrected in the future is to increase the damage threshold until the level 5 version can one shot any Hunter machine (Prototype thought to FNIX).
Agreed.
I was very disappointed when I used four M/49 round against a tank with seemingly no effect.
The damage gulf weirds me out
If I sneak up on a Tank/Harvester and drop a plain old gastank under their butt (or lure a Hunter onto one) then blow it up, they’re dead. It’s almost cheesy in ease of execution, especially if you shortcut the sneaking by just hiffing an EMP grenade at them.
However, if I sneak up on a Tank/Harvester/Hunter and shoot them in the back, in a vulnerable spot, with an 84mm anti-tank projectile designed to penetrate 150mm of RH armour and then explode inside them giving them very very bad day, it apparently just makes them a bit angry and a lot shooty.
These aren’t AT / AP rounds we’re using. They’re HE. In real life, HE wouldn’t penetrate armour either, but simply explode on the surface causing minimal damage to an armoured target.
That said, I also find rockets to be pretty much useless against anything but runners. Even prototype hunters will take multiple hits with minimal effect. That’s just not right. Then you consider the gas canister or just shooting and blowing up a car and taking out a tank or harvester. That’s basically the same thing - just an explosion - yet it will destroy them. That’s just not right.
For the time being, I tend to really only use the rocket launcher for EMP rounds when playing solo. I can EMP the big guys, drop the compressed gas canister by their feet, and then blow it up with a gun - the tried and true way.
We have AP rounds for rifles so maybe there should be the same for M/49?
The only HEDP round for the Gustav is the FFV502
Its dual purposes are (a) surface fragmentation/explosion and (b) anti-tank. The HE part is a leveraged side effect of the shaped charge for the AT function where its charge and warhead casing are frangible casings to provide improved point of impact lethality to personnel , while the AT part is the regular function of forcing a hypersonic jet of copper and melted armour through to the insides.
[Edit for being constructive]
Point well taken then and I stand corrected. That explains the Dual Purpose part.
Then yes, the round in the game as it stands is just an HE round and truly not HEDP and should really receive a buff or be renames appropriately, because it most definitely does NOT penetrate armour…
Then again, considering the .50 BMG does only marginally more damage than a .270 round, it’s not a surprise to see the the HEDP round performing so poorly.
That would probably be the easiest
Add an AT rocket (so the m/49 has HE/EMP/AT options), you’d have to be a lot more accurate with straight AT (vs HE or EMP where splash is effective) but direct hits should really hurt.
Do something with the PVG, at the moment it’s more like a… big assault rifle rather than a sniper weapon, honestly if you could get an equivalent sized ammo stack (18 with 5* ExMag) in the .270Alg I’d be using that given the current balance (damage/ammo-stacks etc). The advantage of a .50BMG is dropping 20000J on something a kilometer away and putting a fist size hole though it, not having a big big magazine so you can volley fire.
Agree.
We just employ some HEAT shells and everything will be fine: high explosive damage to smaller bots and armor penetration for those giants. The current HEDP shells don’t have much penetration against armor and the damage seems to be a bit too low.
The dual purpose shells are more like a mixture of HEAT and HE, so it can penetrate armor and do serious damage to the bots… But the in-game damage is too low.
this is all great and fantastic , but the weapons still do have to conform within the game limits.
Personal I also think that the stack capacity of grenade launcher rounds should be increased from 4 to 5. What do you think?
Agreed, @jakel. There has to be balance for the game play. It wouldn’t be much of a challenge and rather boring if you could 1-2 shot anything with rockets or a .50 BMG.
The rockets, while misleading in name, I’m not too concerned about. They’re very effective against the runners and tick swarms. It would be nice to see them do a little more damage to the big boys, but the only issue I have with them now that I know what they’re supposed to be considering their name. If they were strictly called HE rockets (which I thought they were), then I wouldn’t mind it so much. But now knowing they’re supposed to be armour penetrating as well, that name doesn’t sit well with me as they don’t do jack to armour in their current form.
The .50 cal is what bugs me to no end though. Other than having a higher mag capacity, there’s really little difference between it and the .270. That just isn’t right on any level, even in game play. We should be able to 1-shot kill a scanner at any range without having to hit vital components. Ditto for runners. And they should mess up prototype grade hunters in a couple of shots too. Right now, that isn’t the case.
i cant agree more with your post