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Why can't MG's reaction fire?


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Has reaction fire not been implemented for everything, or are some of the bigger weapons just not going to have it?

I mean it strikes me as odd that the machine guns can't reaction fire. Frankly I've stopped using them, because they're useless unless your enemy survives long enough to bring the MG around to a good firing position, and by then I usually have put it down with the rifles. I can understand this for the rocket launcher, and even the big MG's on the armored car, but MG's are designed for "watch this stretch of road and shoot anything that isn't friendly."

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joebill, some weapons will deliberately not have reaction fire, as Chris is aiming for a toolbox of weapons, instead of a "one size fits all" approach which inevitably leads to a "best fit" weapons loadout, kitting out each squaddie in exactly the same way. RotGtIE wrote an analysis on the various ballistic weapons which covers this point in more detail.

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Man I don't know what build y'all are using. I can put my squaddies on RF and they do it, I think. I don't actually remember, with the AI as static as it is, I don't need RF very often. But I can set every small arm to it, but not the MG or Rocket Launcher.

But seriously the point of an MG is that it weighs a crapton, but gives in proportion. They're too heavy and the ammo is too hard to carry for everybody to have one, but the act of firing it isn't any different from the rifle.

If it's too self sufficient, just up the weight a little and double the size of the ammo boxes (to 2x2) so that they take up a lot of room in the gunner's inventory. Maybe up the weight of the ammo too.

It just feels weird knowing that if I don't leave somebody to babysit him, anything can come around a corner and whack him. That makes perfect sense for the bazooka (it's hard to aim, and you don't want to waste the rounds), but a machine gun is just a really big assault rifle.

Unrelatedly - does the medkit do anything yet?

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You can set them to reserve APs for reaction fire, but I don't think it actually does anything beyond limiting your available APs as of right now. I learned that the hard way when a Sebillian rushed past two of my shotgunners set to reaction fire.

Medkits don't seem to work, at least I can't heal anything with them, all I can do is throw them in the face of people. Kinda counter-productive I'd say.

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Machineguns can reaction fire but they have a lower modifier chance than usual as they are heavy weapons. Although perhaps there's also an issue with burst-fire only weapons not reaction firing too...but they should reaction fire sometimes.

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Unrelatedly - does the medkit do anything yet?

AFAIK you can only heal grey damage. If the health bar has gone black medkits wont heal that damage.

Medkits only try to heal 5HP (at the cost of 5AP) if you don't press the right mouse button to increase the amount of AP spent and amount of HP healed.

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In terms of the original post, in many ways I think the argument could be made that machine guns should ONLY be usable in reaction fire.

The theory of an MG is a denial strategy. You are keeping a hostile force from accessing a specific avenue of approach. In general, that means you aren't firing at a target that is already there (you have riflemen for that), but rather you are waiting for a larger force to enter the kill zone.

Heavy automatic weapons are not intended for single target applications, though they can work for that. The true intention is to saturate an area with a lot of bullets to make the enemy die or take cover. Hence, reaction fire.

Just my thoughts.

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Would that be fun though? To lug around a heavy weapon that you can't use offensively? You can't even use a backup or side arm to shoot on your turn since the AP used to switch weapons (and fire) would most likely leave you without enough to reactionfire with.

I think it would be more fun if the "denial strategy" is represented by something that you choose to do during your turn rather than an RNG event on the opponents turn.

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Would that be fun though? To lug around a heavy weapon that you can't use offensively? You can't even use a backup or side arm to shoot on your turn since the AP used to switch weapons (and fire) would most likely leave you without enough to reactionfire with.

I think it would be more fun if the "denial strategy" is represented by something that you choose to do during your turn rather than an RNG event on the opponents turn.

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Hm, a few thougts concerning realism. I was trained with the MG3, a heavy machine gun.

Aquiring new targets with that weapon is really slow, because you need to use your whole body to stabilize the gun and as a result have to move your whole body to aim at a different target. So reaction fire is quite hard imho. Another thing I want to mention: A 100 round belt gets used up within 5 seconds, though you probably won't hit anything with such a long burst - and you would get overheating problems within a minute.

In general I would call a MG a kill weapon. If you have a target that doesn't have 100% cover, you kill it. The (maximum) spread if properly handled (with bipod, 2-4 round burst) is rather low by the way. No more than ~4cm at 25m distance, translating to 40cm at 250m distance.

Just talking about realism here. What makes the game fun is a completely different question and I have admittedly no experience with light MGs.

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