I honestly think hornet shells are one of the worst choices you could ever pick, and only exist as noob bait. Not even the GL spec can make good use of them.
While it’s cool in theory, carrying hornet shells in bulk is very ineffective, in both combat and carrying capacity. You could get a better result from 1 mk2 burst as you do with 1 hornet shell. While it’s cheap, and you can easily fill (most) of your storage slots up, there is literally no point. Hornet shells contribute nothing compared to other marine weapons.
Hornet shells are not worth the space or investment mid-combat. Imo, their only current use is as small (but slightly bursty) iff dps.
Overgoing the Stats
It’s important to note its current stats, and just how awful it is stat-wise:
it’s holotargetting - You can get up 10% extra damage with 10 of the hornet thorns hitting
all 5 pellets from a shell hit on direct hit, so it applies the full 5% - only 2 direct hits are needed to max the debuff. However this significantly decreases the dmg to around 40
If you avoid direct hits you can (realistically) get up to 70 dmg per bullet maximum (poor accuracy always makes 1 or 2 pellets miss). which means 3 hornet shells for full debuff, but way harder to aim.
Even then - using it this way is still super sucky.
In the time you let out 2 hornet shells you could have done minimum 240 damage with your mk2, with extra mobility, no hassle, and easier to aim. Even against an armored target (30 armor) - and no ap ammo - you would have dealt like 180 damage by the time you can hit 2 hornet shells.
Hornet shells scale with your allies dps too ofcourse - but for every 100 dmg your allies do, it’s 10 dmg from hornet debuff. The debuff is not even a concern for xenomorphs, and realistically ineffective outside of situations where you’d need just that ooone more bullet to crit a xeno. (and wow, a normal rifle can do that job better in a majority of situations)
At most, you could use the debuff as a pointer for other riflemen to shoot - they’ll be more drawn to shooting the glowing bad guy over the non glowing bad guy.
The most egregious part is the space it takes up, and poor ammo economy. Most people won’t take only hornet shells (for good reason) - if you use a grenade belt you will have about 15 or so hornet shells stored. 15 bullets that are very difficult to refill and almost useless in combat, since req doesn’t send down useless shells.
This leads to it being a useless gun (either you dont use them up fast) or a useless gun (you use them all up fast). You use them, they’re all gone, and you did worse dmg then every other gun in the game and wasted half your inventory space. You don’t use them, you still wasted half your inventory space.
Using it as an offhand tertiary weapon is not worth it either - Smartscope m4ra exists and does everything a hornet shell can do but better, even when used in an offhand.
Some suggestions to buff it:
Summary
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instead of reducing the dmg on direct hits, it could just do the full 100 dmg, .22 lr is pistol bullets anyway and probably won’t overpenetrate on xenomorphs the same as agm-f.
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I don’t get why it maxes out at 10% extra dmg - That could be an area to buff.
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Or the damage itself - 70 dmg per shell is pitiful dmg, and bad compared to the other options in the m79. Ofc, those are more expensive (except the baton slug, which is better in every way) - but still, hornet shells should be at a minimum, usable.
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The ammo economy is AWFUL on hornets, and refilling on ammo is a pain in the ass. Ammo economy could use a buff, especially if it remains as ass as it is with dmg.
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The storage capacity on hornets is AWFUL, and could use a buff.
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Hornet shells could be made AOE / pierce through enemys. That way you can debuff multiple enemies at once, giving it a more respectable niche.
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Hornet shells could have better, or more impactful debuffs, which gives it a more respectable niche.