You might very well be on to something here. I also noticed that the hits don't register unless you get that "red X" mark while shooting, and you get it only when you aim straight at the target. It's possible that the game engine doesn't calculate bullet trajectories at all, and simply imposes a "dispersion" penalty to damage based on distance to target / reticule ring size, but only if your aim is exactly at target. If your aiming isn't perfect, all damage is simply ignored. Actually, this makes perfect sense if calculating individual bullet trajectories to check for hits on a weapon that fires 2000 RPM puts some serious strain on battle server, and it very well might be so.

If all this is true however, then HMG is not a "spray-and-pray" weapon at all, but rather a "aim-perfectly-and-curse-stupid-game-mechanics" weapon.

Bump for this issue. This really needs to be addressed. I'm surprised that HMG heavies aren't screaming on the forums left and right for HMG hit detection to be fixed.

OMG

Checking this out tonight. If it's true I will report back with a ton more info and tests.

Also, this means a TON to me as a heavy. Normally I would just let a player run back and forth in my little circle of doom as they strafed and wouldn't aim at them at all (I'm lazy okay?). What this lets me know now is that I will be able to kill enemies faster if the red dot in on them.

As a Scrambler Rifle marksman, this is very good for me.

The hit detection on the hmg is good enough... maybe the damage on the proto hmg's need a slight little buff thats all.

Face it, guys: CCP hates heavies. Actually, CCP hates anything that isn't a medium suit or a lav.

Shooting at a wall reveals nothing. Sure you can see the bullets hitting the wall, but what difference does that make? Do walls take damage? No. Do walls have hit markers? No. That is simply a graphic similar to muzzle flash.

Was your friend on the same team? If so again, nothing.

I have been using the HMG since Chromosome and I can say with 100% certainty that unless the center dot is on target

I get absolutely no hit detection.

I see no hit markers.

No damage is dealt to the target.

If the bullets do in fact disperse in the cone as you say, then I should be dealing damage as soon as the cone touches the target, but this is not the case.

you should move this to technical issues and bugs, because this isn't a suggetion or feed back on a game mechanic, this is an error that another team should be working on.

Yea, lol. When I made the original post I wasn't sure if this was something broken or working as intended, which is why I posted it in Feedback.

I have been convinced now, for some time, that the HMG is definitely not working as intended, and needs to be fixed as soon as possible.

IMHO the HMG Hit detection should work like this:

Remove the center dot. It is useless on an area denial/suppression type weapon.

Fix the hit detection so that if x% of the circular reticule is on target then x% of total DPS is dealt to that target.

If I have 25% of the circle on a target, then I should be doing 25% of my total DPS to that target provided the target is within effective range. Outside of effective range this percentage would reduce according to damage falloff.

If I have 80% of the circle on one target and 20% on another, I should be dealing 80% of my total DPS to the first target and 20% to the other. Again this is provided both targets are in effective range.

Your percentages are a little to high.
They'd be about 5-10% less because of cone effect/dispersion. Spraying that many rounds downrange you'd most likely miss almost 1/4 of your chain/box w/e. That's just at 10m with a full auto, why I use six-kin, more rounds in less time keep the dispersion minimal

I don't understand why you say these percentages are to high.

The rounds disperse inside the cone right?

So if 100% of the rounds are inside the cone, and I have 25% of the cone on a target, then it makes perfect sense that I would deal 25% of my total DPS to that target.

I think what he means is that there would actually be around 95% of your bullets in the cone, with the other 5% flying errant outside of the circle. And this makes sense to me; I would expect with that many bullets firing that fast, some of them would veer way of course. This would also act as a good balance to it lacking precise aiming skills (you don't need to be aiming directly at your target to hit them, but you'll also never get 100% dps on them because of it).