The only advantage of the breaching shotgun would be that it would clear metal walls quicker than a UBS.
Otherwise, I believe the UBS would now trump the Breaching Shotgun in all other catagories.
The shotgun belt can hold more shotgun ammo than the Breach belt can hold breach ammo, and shotgun ammo is infinite in supply whereas the breach ammo is limited. Further more, its easier to keep the UBS reloaded than the Breaching shotgun.
If the fire range is reduced from 5 tiles to 2-3, I truly believe this will kill the main utility of the breaching shotgun, relegating it only to clearing metal walls around the FOB.
It would simply be too dangerous to use on the frontline, because you could literally take a UBS, use it to clear resin walls, AND now be able to stun/hurt xenos.
I saw a marine destroy a R wall in 2 seconds thanks to 2 burst shots. While I understand the benefit for marines to get more varied breaching tools, I have a feeling it’s currently a bit much
The wall must have been damaged then, since it takes about 4 to destroy a reinforced wall in my experience. It could have also been a real fake reinforced wall.
Maybe the option to have a 2 shot burst should be removed if that’s the case? The issue does not strike me as the amount of shots to kill a wall, since R-Walls take about 4, its more that the burst makes it much stronger. Though the burst mode is harder to use more so since that means you have to carry the gun in your suit slot or not store it at all since it will no longer fit in the belt.
You also gotta remember that while yes its fast, you don’t get the mats as you would from deconstructioning it. So if you just spray all the R walls that could otherwise be deconstructed with time, you could lose a lot of potential materials.
I have indeed noticed that well… I don’t really find much use for C4 and breaching charges besides tunnels and clustered colony walls since the XM51 is just well… pretty fucking wild on them.
Personally, I believe the range should absolutely stay as-is considering it’s a massive distinguishing factor from it and the U7, but I do believe the current speed at which it demolishes colony walls is a bit much. It should be slower than it is currently, but still faster than the U7 imo.
Maybe the second shot from the burst mode shouldn’t deal damage to walls?
That would make single shot ammo efficient, and burst more geared towards combat, but it’s also hard to telegraph to the player that their 2nd shot doesn’t do anything to walls.
I don’t think removing the burst entirely is a great solution, personally. Probably the safest and easiest option is just increase the shots to kill walls by 1-2 and see how it is from there.
IMO that is more a case for C4 (less so breaching charges which I think are ok) being pretty weak. I think they should be 4x4 or 5x5 blasts, not 3x3. Especially for how long it takes to plant them. Breaching charges are pretty much a direct upgrade in every single way and trying to use C4 to demolish anything is hugely inefficient considering how few you get.
Maybe some kind of wall-cracking effect there would be better, even. Like a 3x3 explosion but it’ll destroy n connected walls past that.
I’ve tried out the gun a few times, both as a user and fighting against it, since the new nerf to its maximum fire range being reduced to 3 tiles. I’ve also left my feedback in the appropriate channels.
As a Marine, I feel the weapon is now functionally a worse version of a underbarrel shotgun. Its only advantage is the ability to clear metal walls slightly faster than a UBS, otherwise the UBS not only has the same range as the XM51, but it deals more damage to xenos and can stun them.
The UBS can also carry far more ammo in a shotgun ammo belt, and it can usually clear metal walls in 5 shots.
As a Xeno I find the breaching shotgun users have to massivly expose themselves to use them, I’ve seen quite a lot of users getting warrior grabbed or otherwise being harrarrsed.
If I had to make a change, I’d suggest either removing the burst fire, or making the burst fire reduce the fire range to 2-3 tiles. Without the burst fire I feel the weapon is fair in use, its biggest balance factor is its ammo capacity and the fact a 2x2 section of r-resin walls will take about 16 shots to clear, which is basically 1.5 mags, or almost 30% of your total capacity.
saying that it’s “only slightly faster” is a bit of an understatement. a regular colony wall needs 5-6 shots with the UBS (depending on your luck) and 16 shots for reinforced walls. each shot deals roughly 590 damage on average to walls. regular walls have 3000 hp and reinforced ones 9000. in comparison the xm51 deals 2550 damage. that’s a lot of ammo and time you need to bring down one wall compared to 2/4 shells for the scattergun.
the UBS does have a range of 3 tiles. while true, the damage you output at that range is so random that it will either take you 3 or 10 shots to break down a resin door.
but honestly, even putting all of that aside, the UBS has its own use cases separate to the xm51. i still bring it with me most of the time (even if i’m running the scattergun) just because it’s that powerful of an attachment.
yeah i am not a fan of this personally. the goal was to always have the user be exposed to less danger than usual. i did have a talk with zonespace about the balance of the weapon and we’ve settled on increasing the range to 4 while removing excess ammo from circulation.
ASRS is the main source of ammo bloat so i’ve reduced the chance for free shells to come up. i’ve also reduced the scaling of prep ammo a bit more. there can be a LOT of spare ammo just laying around which was never my intention.
i’ve seen people take a box of shells with them and just demolish entire maps with it (looking at you, big red). i have to admit it was pretty funny to see it the first couple of times. the problem is though, if there’s that much spare ammo just sitting in FOB then there’s no need to be methodical with how you use the weapon. you just point, click and delete everything that might prove a mild inconvenience to you. and it also just makes the map… flat. which might sound a bit ironic considering what the gun is, but the intent was to make flank routes into buildings to make combat a bit more dynamic than just pushing the same hellchoke over and over again until one side gives in.
that forces me to choose between two options:
i either make the weapon weaker while keeping the same amount of ammo in circulation, or
i make the weapon stay roughly the same while lowering how much ammo there is flying around
zonespace preferred the second option, and so did i. the weapon should be used more as a scalpel rather than a wrecking ball. i never imagined one-man wrecking crews becoming a thing when making this thing
honestly the stock is in such an oddball state. i keep getting differing feedback between it being completely useless and completely overpowered. i do like your idea, though. i’ll try to have it implemented in next balance change that goes out unless zonespace has different thoughts about the stock
In an average round there are enough spare breaching shotgun boxes in the squad prep rooms to make four ammo boxes in total. That’s discounting anything req gets. I can’t state if this is excessive, though I usually very quickly exhaust my ammo supply when in battle.
Overall I think so long as the firing range is kept at around 4 to 5 tiles, I’ll be happy either way. 2-3 tiles just feels bad.
as a hivelord player its just another kick in the really limited plasma sacs, cas deletes more than ever, now this gun too its just not a good time to be a hivelord
demolition tools have never been in a good place. i have no opinions on the XM51 but I distinctly remember us being promised new demolition tools when the U-7 was originally nerfed. Granted, we have some of them but most of them are either too expensive (like breaching charges) or synth-only (breaching hammer). There is definitely improvement to be had on demolition in general in ways that aren’t oppressive.
My counterpoint is that giving Marines more reliable ways to clear out resin structures will incentivize Marines to go on the offensive. If Marines are too defensively oriented then it encourages defensive gameplay, which is less exciting.
As it stands though the XM51 is the most reliable method of terrain clerance that is economical. As noted above, Breaching Charges are rare and only clear 1 tile, C4 is rare, breaching hammer is rare and CAS is expensive to use solely to clear terrain. The XM51 stands out because it has no real peer outside of the underbarrel shotgun, which has a harsher range limitation.
I agree with the Breaching charges rarity but c4 is suprisingly common although using it on resin is sicko behavior that I don’t condone, I just speak from almost prime hivelord playtime and truly disliking how its always being hard countered when the real solution is whack the walls with machete and have cover but marines would rather just not have to do that part of the gameplay and it sucks ass.
C4 could use a change to something more like a wall-cracker, where it checks all connected walls within 5 tile range and destroys them.
For its price, and how long it takes to set up and use, the actual damage done by C4 is anemic. It’d be really nice to have something where I can go, “yes I do want to blow out the entire wall right here, right now” rather than spending 10 minutes on it with a U7 or XM51, or god forbid using tools to take them apart one by one.
honestly the XM51 is perfectly niche IMO after a few rounds of playing with it. my reasoning is as follows:
1- it eats either an armor/belt/back slot
2- it has mags and shells (making it a PITD to reload)
3- it does terrible damage
4- ammo is more common than breaching charges/c4 and requires no engineering skill
I guess if one wanted to ‘nerf’ it make it require construction 1 so an engineer+ could use it but a Roflman, Medic, SG, etc., would need to burn a pamphlet (of which a character can only read one per operation).
To be fair, only three of these guns spawn at a minimum, with it scaling upwards, even assuming the guns are selling out there are a limited amount of them, ammunition is also a major constraint point.
A 2x2 wall of hard resin would take 16 shots to remove. It quickly becomes uneconomical for a XM51 user to try to blast all resin walls out of the way, they generally want to reserve it for doors or for very contested chockpoints.
The 4 tile fire range does also force the user to expose themselves to xeno counter-attacks to use the weapon. Which is fair.
like I said I think it works perfectly for its design. if, and strong if, to satiate the xenocord I’d just slap the engi 1 requirement. I think it’s fine because of its existing limitations. my only personal grievance is that it’s 16g shotgun while an IRL masterkey is a 40mm underslung that spits 7x tungsten spikes.
yeah, that’s just the source material i was working with. M51 Breaching Scattergun | Xenopedia | Fandom
it’s wack, doesn’t make much sense and likes to contradict itself but i tried to pick out what made the most sense to me
i did have a few things i wanted to change about the weapon’s balance and mechanics but i kinda got burned out on the gun and cm in general so i never got around to it. i’m still happy with how the weapon turned out though.
tbh BC is literally just C4 but better. BC effectively clears in a 1 tile radius (so 3 adjacent tiles), same as C4 while being MUCH faster to plant and, and directional damage. The only downside is you can’t use it on tunnels. It puzzles me why SLs buy C4 (5 pts) instead of BC (7 pts), and then proclaim “hurr durr pwease cover me im planting this C4 on a wall for 3 seconds”, only to be surprised when they die to a woyer.
Re: XM51, Considering how ‘rare’ C4 & BC are, I find XM51 to be in an acceptable spot right now. It neither feels broken nor useless. Resin walls proper require significantly more shots than colony walls, so they’re actually not that great for breaking hive defences as people claim (without the stock)
As for the engi 1 requirement, I don’t think it’s necessary- Though it’s an acceptable nerf. I generally only use it as SL anyways, and so far I’ve only seen a handful of PFCs actually carry it cough Steelpoint cough cough, since baldies are too bald to know the gun exists and robustos can’t fit it in their M4/M37 dual loadout…
