Increasing the DMG to that of a submachine gun seems fair.
Increasing the movement speed of heavies seems needed.
Increasing the range seems fair.

But I can see CCP giving the HMG too much range... again

So what you want to do is make the HMG deal equal damage as the AR and have the same range? Why would anyone want an AR then?

On top of that, that makes SMGs even more useless. LR would be less effective because their range is nearly the same as an AR. Scrambler rifles would be screwed. Pretty much every infantry weapon would be useless except sniper rifles.

If you want a buff on HMGs, reduce their range to maybe 30m and bump their damage to ARs. They'll out damage ARs (2k rpm), and when they are defending a point they'll be godly. When being escorted by other mercs, those mercs would be well defended from any close range attacks.

Same range as AR (not TAC obviously)
Current damage
Slightly tighter dispersion

Heavies do not require more base speed but add the above with a slight increase in turn speed would certainly fix the HMG without making it OP in my opinion.

this seems logical. i ididnt think of that if the dispersin where reduced, it would become more effective.

although i still think a slight increase in damage per lvl would be appropriate. perhaps, somewhere between 20-30 base and up to max 32-35.

if the dispersion is reduced then it should be in the 20's up to max 29

if the dispersion is the same it should be in between 25-35, with max 35.



the max range on an HMG should not extend past that of a STD full Auto AR.

Agree regarding the max HMG range. STD AR should be where it is at.

Disagree with that high a damage buff though.
If dispersion is decreased, more bullets hit thus dps is considerably increased.
If damage is buffed by, say 1-1.5HP, dispersion SLIGHTLY decreased and range increased to STD AR, damage output and usability will be massively increased. More than that and it would end up being a Godly weapon... again.

As it stands right now, the HMG is far from useless.

If you go with the Op's suggestion you should have the effect range to 2/3rds(about) of the total range then have a steep fall off to where the HMG is doing less damage.

and have it so that you have to stay in the same spot for a while to be killed, i would say at least 30 seconds.

A HMG should kill any thing other than another heavy in its effective range, when a scout can run up in front of a heavy and kill him something is wrong( have seen it and have it done to me). one way to help stop Over powered weapons would e stacking penalties, i still think it is at zero.

As for the slot restriction for weapons there should bee more variety before that is implemented. My last thing is that the AR is not a AR but a blaster rifle and that the Scrambler Rifle the future Rail Rifle and what ever the Minmatar one is called are Assault Rifles

I'm not sure what you mean by CQC is out of the question. The HMG is perfect for CQC. High rate of fire, which the hmg has, is perfect for close quarters combat.

in this case it should have less range (although i dnt care how much or little range the AR has as long as the HMG and everything else can keep up) because plasma should never have more range than a projectile.
nonetheless, the HMG should definately do mre damage per shot.

the hmg is a minmitar weapon of course is fires projectiles

Dispersion =/= a direct reduction in dmg.

@ Optimal your dmg will be a lot closer to its given dps

for an AR yes, but on an HMG its much much higher

But is it really supposed to counter AR's? only at close range, and they already seem to do that, according to the math I've done.

From a post I did in another HMG thread




also I'm very skeptical of increasing damage from 18 to 31. That's more than 50% more damage. With that much damage, the standard HMG would do 1033 dps, which if you ask me seems insane. Taking any suit out in less than a second seems very overpowered.

Yes...that's what they want.

I would agree that the HMG is underpowered. How depressing is it when an AR guy is tanking your damage and still manages go through your shields and half your armor before he dies with a militia AR?

I would like to see my HMG become relevant again. I've had to shelf my heavy* because the AR can hit me at ranges where it seems like my bullets despawn if I try to return fire (they probably do, but I haven't actually tried to prove it so I can't say that.) The fact that it costs me twice as much to fit my heavy as it does to just make an assault suit means I might as well die twice in assault suits with GEK's than lose my MH-82 fit heavy and still take out the same number of people with those two assault suits.

However, I must point out that a certain argument is invalid. In Dust, the assault rifle and heavy machine gun do NOT fire the same rounds; the AR is a hybrid weapon and the HMG is a projectile weapon. So you can't balance the HMG by basing its stats directly off of the AR.

If you made the HMG do the same damage per round as the AR, it could become a little overpowered (would be fun turning the tables on the CoD playing AR fanatics for a week, though) I would say make it deal roughly 60-80% of basic AR per round damage based on the tech level of your HMG. You would also need to improve its optimal range a bit, as well.


*Part of the reason I wanted to play this game was because of the heavy suits...

hahaha....

i posted this somewhere:

https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=943251#post943251

wether that was sarcasim or not, your actually right, because based on the dispersion of the HMG compared to the AR, and the fact that they do indeed fire similar rounds they should have the same range.


AR vs HMG should be like this:

AR accuracy > HMG accuracy
AR dps < HMG dps (The AR is stampled as a close quarter high damage gun)
AR range = HMG range ( NOOOOOO nononono would make HMG insanely OP)
AR over heat < HMG over heat
AR reload > HMG reload
AR dispesion < HMG dispersion
AR headshots > HMG headshots
AR damage per shot = HMG damage per shot (doesn't the HMG fire a lot faster than the AR and clip size is also much bigger so suddenly you got a small blaster turret in your hands)

I really don't think that HMG's should have the same range as AR's. It's a HIP !! fired weapon. Try to take a gun today and fire it from the hip you'll never get same accuracy as a gun beeing actually aimed with.
I won't be a total moron and reject this totally, because you are right that the HMG just can't hold up against the AR. I would like to see a range increase though not to the point where it's near the same range as the AR. 1.2 is coming up and it looks like we're going to get our falloff in this update so shouldn't we wait with discussing improving HMG range till after that gets deployed.

Also regarding the turning speed and all that speed stuff, look at the other amarr suits they're slow as hell and got a poor poor poor slot layout. The faster CCP can give us the other heavies the faster we can begin to judge the heavies to each other not medium frames. Hopefully also the redo of armor plates will be a boost to heavies tanks and i do know that good corps like ILL OMENS use full squads of heavies with HMGs to basically just force people out of certain areas as close range NO ONE can withstand the push of several heavies.