There’s an awful lot of in that— especially in comparison to primary weapons. The M41AE2 is only an M41A in the barest sense of the word; it shoots 10x24 rounds and has a similar damage profile. Similar, but far different in the details.
The HPR simply demands that you work with it, instead of it working with you, and like the guide a scroll back up the page explains, there’s lots of little tricks and hacks to synergize better with the weapon as it is today. Perhaps back in the day it was some wonderplatform that outperformed any Mark 2 any day of the week… but nowadays, it’s simply the most mobile* of our stationary guns.
I like plenty as is, and give myself enough arthritic scares as I have to in order to make it work how I do. I just pray the codebase doesn’t change in a way that makes me hurt my index even more : P
As a CO nothing makes me happier than seeing my marines wielding these squad support weapons. It truly does add a lot to the push and is such a treat to have with me in any situation, hold or push.
A Bipod HPR has proven itself to be a situationally powerful weapon ever since the PR was added that made it auto-switch to automatic fire when you deploy a bipod.
The cons of this setup are critical.
You burn through ammo incredibly fast, necessitating you crafting a custom loadout and devoting significant time to carry a lot of spare munitions on you, at least if you expect to be able to fight on a frontline longer than 30 seconds
Movement slowdown if you commit to the bit, you will likely use an IMP Ammo Rack backpack, which inflicts mandatory slowdown on you
Terrible mobility issues. The M41AE2 is not a chaser gun, trying to run and shoot will quickly see you fall behind the pack.
Low ROF when not using the bipod means you will struggle to fend off a xeno who ambushes you, you’ll either suffer or have to sacrifice your loadout to carry a more effective sidearm (M4A3 HP comes to mind).
You are extremely constrained regarding your positioning; you can’t shoot through allies and ungas love to run in front of you at the worst time. Actually, getting into a good firing position represents 70% of your efforts.
But for all of this, you get a gun that will kill almost any xeno in seconds, including the Queen, if you can get a few seconds to fire on the target. I’ve personally seen Queens die so fast; they fail to trigger their screech as they simply never thought they’d die so quickly that they could not react in time.
Even high armour xenos like Crushers can’t sustain bipod HPR fire.
Best way to use a HPR/M2C is to deploy it as a countermeasure of a xeno push. They never saw that M2C/Bipoded HPR there until they were right up to you. You just deployed it infront of the xeno and now they have three options: focus you, run away, die
In my experience, this is an incorrect assumption. You only need a mag in your gun and your armor, and 600 bullets lasts a long time since most xenos wont stay in line of fire for more then a few seconds. (draining like, 20-30 bullets every encounter at most unless your shooting walls)
I’d argue HPR has the best ammo economy in any gun in the videogame (except maybe sg) and that is why it’s amazing as a tertiary weapon, even if it doesn’t synergize with gunswaps outside of providing situational utility.
Yeah it’s power is definitely slow-paced and hard to follow up on
Playstyle wise, the pressure and zoning of the HPR is it’s greatest strongsuit IMO, and why its mobility makes it frequently more reliable then the M2C (because you can reposition faster) and how it’s dmg actually contributes to its usability insanely well
But its use as a burst cannon is also really good yeah, and gets some easy frags on overextending/fresh benos.
but m2c does certainly have advantages. Crusher, rav, queen are still counters to HPR because of bipod pushing, armor abilities, and in case of queen, ranged stun. Any single time an enemy can close the distance or stun you or your ally pushes you is when your gun stops being usable. But I personally believe if you compare M2C’s disadvantages + advantages to HPR’s, HPR is way easier to use and more applicable in more situations but maybe a little bit less useable as an instant burst cannon.
Otherwise ya I love hpr I think it’s amazing. Putting the power in the hands of a single rifleman to control an area is amazing.
Very true… its funny that your allies are more detrimental to HPR’s effectiveness then the enemy lmao. But it’s not a bad thing because you can still position in ways to give allies wiggle room to at least try and not push you, and HPR really is useless without allies to take advantage of the zoning in order to clear resin for example, or at least useless without keeping your allies safe by covering a flank or doing enfilade on a flank or something
Positioning rly is the skill expression of the weapon tho, and is what keeps it balanced imo
But when combined with cades it’s almost too easy to use, too safe, and too unfun to fight tbh. That’s my biggest gripe with the weapon and I feel like it should have usability penalties around cades (maybe it shouldnt be able to shoot over cades, similar to how m2c hits cades). I know that significantly nerfs the bipod but its like… It really shouldn’t be able to stay so safe when its doing so much dmg.
Maybe making it usable with portacades only would work or something?
It goes from a squad support weapon to cover the front to the ULTIMATE defensive tool behind cades (since most marines do not tend to push when cade hugging, so you got free will to shoot anything).
Pushing a HPR at FOB specifically is nearly impossible unless you got strong follow up like defender fortify / full shard rav / crusher shield, etc. or a good stun like Queen.
Two or more HPR heroes and its joever.
You can do this even without a HPR, though, a bipod MK2 is even more terrifying in the right hands since it has AP too, the HPR just can keep shooting without pause for a good minute or so while you have to at least reload the mk2 midway.
in that— especially in comparison to primary weapons. The M41AE2 is only an M41A in the barest sense of the word; it shoots 10x24 rounds and has a similar damage profile. Similar, but far different in the details.