Mounted and Loaded: A Love Letter to Fully-Automatic Squad Weapons

General Discussion
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I’ve always liked the mounted guns in this game, but recently, I’ve taken a particular shine to the HPR. Each of them has a beautiful little niche and it’s really neat to see particular statics who’ve mastered ‘em— as well as the occasional baldy who’s trying their best in an endearing way.

From the M56D, the weapon of the gentleman— ladies first, and they’ll fire from the back. The IFF and massive round capacity makes it PERFECT for supporting a push, with honestly VERY little loadout sacrifice.

A hand and a screwdriver, and maybe you can choose to splurge three slots of storage worth in a backpack or a drop pouch for an extra ammo can? Most of the time, if you’re not using it for demolition, it doesn’t even NEED a refill til the Op is done or you’ve had the opportunity to move back to the FOB. Incredible.

Then, there’s the M2C— favorite of the likes of Lorenzo and several others, this one feels much higher-commitment for much higher reward.

In all honesty, I’ve never been able to wrap my head around it; the sacrifice of a backpack to stow the damn thing alongside having not much in the way of a secondary (M39 fans have a field day, though!) make it far from my first choice. I have, however, seen some absolutely game-changing plays with this aluminum monster. God bless the soldiers rucking ‘em.

Finally, my beloved… the M41AE2 Heavy Pulse Rifle. This baby’s got just about everything you could ask for, and I’d never dream of asking her for anything more. Semi-auto off the bipod, FULLER auto on it. Sure, the bipod takes a moment to setup, but if you take the time and space to carry Deployable Barricades, it gets absolutely monstrous. A single stack of Deployables on a corner gives you near immunity to getting capped or killed, with the caveat of all things that can reach over a ‘cade still hurting like a bitch.

I could take a moment to talk about the damage output, but I’d like to instead talk about the DEMOLITION output, and the insanely undervalued performance it has in this way. Walls are breakable via shooting at them— some folks take notice of this, and may shoot down an already damaged wall. HPR don’t care. She don’t wince. She don’t HESITATE. I take down walls both resin and reinforced with it, and there is NOWHERE to hide for long.

Some WIMPS call me an Idiot— they tell me not to waste ammo! Stop shooting the wall! I spit at thee. I bite my thumb at thee. With an IMP ammo rack, you can hold a stack of Deployables AND twelve-hundred spare rounds of ammunition. With my general loadout, I like to rotate through three or four mags of common ammo, so that brings our total to a staggering 2400 rounds without including scavenging in the equation. Because the Heavy Pulse Rifle is still a Pulse Rifle chambered in 10x24, and the playstyle of an HPR user is relatively conservative, I tend to outlast an awful lot of folks. Brave folks. Braver than me, honestly. Bless them for their FREE MAGAZINES OF AMMO to empty into my loose ammo boxes on my IMP rack.

I’m running out of steam for this original post, and I’m also spending a lot of time on it on my lunch, but I just NEEDED to exclaim about how fucking nuts and honestly underused our mounted stuff is. Or rather, how it has so much POTENTIAL that I see? I love it all the same. Nothing beats a wall of bullets— especially the third Private today that’s walked into my stream and oh my god I’m so sorry oh my g

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blessed is the daka, that much is for sure. as for the tossing the m2c in the back slot that’s because you can and will lose the m2c if you don’t got slot to keep it safely on your body… the ‘chimp’ is our baby and we shall not let the foul taint of acid mar its form.

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Waiting patiently for weapon durability to be full merged so I can save my beloved weapon from SADAR shots gone awry and acid alike. Fuckin miss it already.

Also something I missed in my post— suppressors on the HPR are MEAN. Like, absolutely mean. The drop you get on xenos expecting MK1/2 shots and getting hit with near full HPR DPS is crazy. Likewise, though, I’m convinced it’s half the reason I’m a goddamn fracture magnet. If it’s not as loud as stock, people don’t watch the tracers close enough when I’m firing at the same spot for a full thirty seconds and wander right into it at full speed and I have to yank my finger off the trigger. Evil.

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yes suppressors are quite MEAN. but sadly for as great it works on xenos it works on the ungas as well, so i tend to not to use it. But have you ever tried the Recoil Compensator on a HPR? the lose of damage is bit of pain but holy hell turning the poor spread in a tight beam is well worth it, if wish to use a Magnetic Harness and not a Reflex Sight.

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I wish I saved it, but I had a clip once of me using an HPR. The queen dared to step on green flames for 2 seconds, that’s all it took to take her from like 3/4 health to instantly dead.

It was SO peak. Use the compensator. You become the beam.

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I’m a personal huge fan of just arthritis instead- reflex sight and spam-clicking keeps my fire rate enormously high and is by and large worth the lack of a magharn. Recoil Compensator just feels like a sham in comparison, though I respect my brothers and sisters in arms using it.

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Nah king instead I’ll call you a grifter because you haven’t spoken at all about our lord and saviour: The glorious M41A mk2 with bipod, MH, stock and EB.
Shit’s got the DPS, it has pinpoint accuracy at medium range (and good accuracy at long ranges, which the HPR can only dream of) and it has something that the wimpy ass HPR will never be able to pull off: It has AP ammo available.
I once tried shooting a deployed mk2 on a fortified defender and the little brat was looking me smug as hell until it realized that something was wrong and by the time it realized that I almost dumped an entire AP mag on his face in some ~2 seconds it was almost in crit.
I’ve also cockblocked ravs on my own with this build while using regular mags. Just find yourself an almost fully destroyed cade, a portacade, a window frame or a table to get instant deployment times and shoot until nothing is left.

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Stunning post. I can feel your passion.

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mk2 with bipod has half the dps of a HPR with bipod. HPR is the only weapon that gets a MASSIVE 300 rpm firerate boost from bipod all the way up to 600rpm

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CLF Version: Toyota Hilux with gun on it.

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the only time I’d ever want to use anything except what GOD’S OWN UNITED SECTORS COLONIAL MARINE CORPS GAVE ME!

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RPM =/= DPS. Have in mind that the HPR has bad accuracy when compared with the M41A, so you could have an absurd RPM but it doesn’t matters if you can’t reliably land your shots.
The HPR can only have good accuracy when it has the red dot sight but being a machinegunner places you in a prime position for being the target of woy lunges, defender tailswipes, screes, crusher and burrower stomps and neuro scatter spits among a ton of other stuff that could make you lose your gun. So not having a mag harness kinda defeats the purpose of using a bipod gun instead of using an M2C or M56D.

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The F key on my keyboard allows me to pick up one of the last two things I dropped. The E key on my keyboard allows me to stow the thing in my hand in an appropriate location. With these powers combined, only like two of those things (that lead to me perma’ing anyway) will affect my scheduled lead appointment.

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i use the hpr with an angled grip and a mag harness. chew on that for a moment. how does that make you feel

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it hurts. why are you doing this to me it hurts. :((((((

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no hpr is accurate just spamclick fire on fullauto (this way you reset the scatter rampup) and if you lose your gun its a skill issue because the gun is a defensive pressure/zoning gun.

For more tips look at:

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So I used to main HPR before the weapons got reworked to their current state, I tried to give it a try in the current state and it is barely possible to achieve similar results

In this game, if you stand still you are dead. Staying in motion, being mobile or able to move fast is one of the biggest advantages you will have, whether xeno or marine.

While M56 and M2C are basically emplacements, I always regarded the HPR as something that would increase the volume of fire for the squad while the user remains on the move (albeit slower than other weapons).

So the trade off here was slow movement and wield speeds (low mobility), lack of any AP ammo for armored castes, reduced accuracy or burst spread, traded for a large ammo capacity for maintained fire suppression.

Bipod user = a dead user. Which is why you barely see them nowadays.

How I ideally would use the HPR was with a reflex sight and a V-Grip or flashlight grip and on single-shot to minimize the spread. Unmounted. Just spamming the thousands of clicks.

You could combine it with an MD and flares to guide your fire and illuminate your targets to increase your effectiveness.

This would make it effective as an individual weapon because you could suppress chokes, and trade off your mobility for it, making you very vulnerable to frontline armored castes.

However in it’s current state, the reduced accuracy, increased spread, the same significant mobility nerf, alongside a reduced ROF on semi-auto and absolutely unusable burst without a bipod, makes the HPR in my opinion no longer a viable individual weapon for a player and now only a certain type of emplacement weapon.

I would say that the only use left for the HPR is to be deployed as an emplacement on FOB cades with a bipod. Specificially there and then, because in any other situation the bipod will get you killed very quickly.

There is simply no other use case for the HPR at this time.

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I mean, HPR has effectively been a situational sacrifice-mobility-for-mega-firepower weapon for a good while now. It’s been a very, very long time since it was a viable mobile-machine gun. That’s what makes it a unique weapon, anyway- It’s a blend between an M2C and a rifle, fulfilling a specific niche no other weapon can. An HPR without a bipod is pretty much worse than a dedicated unga with a MK2, and has been for a long time.

You say that an HPR with a bipod is a death sentence, but it’s really just high risk high reward. Yes, it’s easier to die, but you CAN prevent and mitigate most of the risk. Play defensively, know when to set up the bipod and when to stay mobile, and you’ll do pretty well. Same with M2Cs. 600 RPM high-accuracy full auto is nothing to sneeze at, you delete pushing xenos extremely quickly, and that makes you public enemy number 1 (after the M2C hero).

I would argue that the gun just doesn’t really suit your playstyle anymore, rather than it objectively being in a shit state.

If you want a mobile squad support weapon, well- That niche is already taken by the M56B SG, which accomplishes it fairly well.

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Understandable opinion.

An HPR without a bipod is pretty much worse than a dedicated unga with a MK2, and has been for a long time.

However the counterpoint is that before the current iteration of weapons rework, this was not the case unless a mk2 was running AP ammo. I am not sure how familiar you were with it.

It’s possible, you may be right.

However one thing that works in my side of the argument of it being in a shit state is the fact that it can only rarely be seen used as you describe it, due to how dynamic the environment at the contact line with the xenos is. At the contact line it is required of you to rapidly change the directions you are shooting at, rapidly relocate, because the xenos are also rapidly moving.

Having to stand still, to mount and stay still while firing, leads to limited firing lanes, missed opportunities, increased damage taken in due to abilities or inability to dodge.

Which brings us to the point where we do converge.

At the contact line losing mobility in most circumstances, even if you manage to hose out a few rounds at 600RPM, is still a death sentence most of the time.

Even at Full auto 600RPM, the firepower and AP of the HPR is too weak to effectively hold back an attack from more uparmored castes where the effectiveness of it falls off unless combined with more marines on your side. For this purpose the M2C is way more effective like you mentioned.

Which is why the conclusion I drew is that the only use for the HPR is as a defensive emplacement, preferably behind a barricade, closest thing to a mounted M56 than anything else. (This is typically FOB or some barricades blocking a choke like LV cave entrances)

But the -how it is- is very clear from the gameplay itself, where you barely see the weapon used, and the few who do use it turn dead in short time.

This tells me the only use case for it is -very- niche and that most people would not trade any of their main weapons or utilities for it as the means of being most effective in a round. This puts it in the lower tiers of possible loadouts and equipment that you can chose from.

Of course I could be wrong and if you do have some examples of its use or exact applications for it, I would be happy to hear.

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I like to use it as a mobile demolitions platform with a spare 1200 rounds on my back and a stack of deployable shields I can use to setup an anti-oppressor hook/warrior grab zone that stops the most bullshit of instant death being less-mobile, as well as offering Marines the understated confidence boost of someone standing still in cades that makes them want to push past and walk directly into my line of fire.

The demolitions platform is also honestly the other super important part of the equation- as long as you carry enough ammo, you can straight-up break resin walls and doors on TOP of map doors, which allows marines to slow-push and forces xenos to walk through a dead zone of no cover to pull up. This allows me to do things like calling a Crusher’s bluff from the safety of my cades as it dashes in (I have the vision to start lighting up less experienced crushers at this point) and then light it up as it waddles away- which actually happened yesterday morning.

It’s definitely niche, but I’ve run it for loads of Ops at this point as my solo-weapon and as long as I stick to the main Unga-ball I can act as a squad support weapon and occasionally net a solo-kill if something like a Warrior or a Praetorian or even a Lurker tries to cap someone in front of my line. This is also another way I’ve managed to get two Warrior kills in less than 20 seconds- one Lunged, and I shot right over the Marine to kill it. Then, another Warrior Lunges the same poor Marine and then dies in the same way; basically before they know it because of the Suppressor. It’s beautiful.

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