Regarding the proposed M2C Changes

General Discussion
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As we have recently heard about the planned changes to the M2C, I would like to bring forth a few counterpoints to the argument for its removal.

“First, I’ve promised my team internally that I’d be focused on making sure we aren’t straying too far from Aliens lore.”

If this is a main reason as to why the M2C should be removed, then what about other things that don’t fall into the lore? What about the Scout specialist, or being able to do complex organ and brain surgeries in an active warzone? Are those in the Aliens lore?

“Second, I feel the gameplay that comes from the M2C creates a toxic mindset and protagonist syndrome.”

How does it create a toxic mindset? How is it toxic? And, how does it create a protagonist syndrome? If anything, roles such as CO create a much larger issue with protagonist syndrome, as a CO can do pretty much anything they want, and are always at the center of everything. A weapon doesn’t make a marine the protagonist, its their attitude that does.

“Third, I am trying to slow CM down.”

There are better ways than removing a weapon from the game. Plus, people are always going to find a way to go around it and play CM quickly, and have quick rounds. Long rounds almost always result in Xeno victories as well. Because they get significantly more numbers in the late game. You could slow it down by making there be less larva as time goes on.

“Fourth, I’d like the M56D to fit a different niche and the M2C sits in that niche too much right now for it to be possible.”

For what to be possible? Both weapons have their own niche. The M56D is a defensive weapon with its IFF. The M2C is an offensive weapon. Are you trying to say that you want the M56D to be an offensive weapon? If so, then that makes no sense, because the M2C is an offensive weapon, you would just be switching the two around so that the M2C is defensive and the M56D is offensive.

All in all, this really seems to be a personal choice of “Well I don’t like this weapon so it has to be removed”. Instead of completely removing it, why not suggest changes to it? It doesn’t cause any real issues other than FF, which every weapon causes.

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Can someone explain to me how the M2 is not accurate to the aliens lore? How is it in anyway different from the M37 based off a gun from around the same time period?

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Removal really isn’t necessary. I’ve been using it recently and while it can slap it suffers some major flaws such as:

  • Overheating
  • Lack of IFF
  • Ammunition capacity per mag/drum + overall (bring those spare mags)
  • You becoming a priority target for boilers/the hive.
  • Placement - you can and will shoot down cades if you aren’t careful. Defensively it’s a nightmare to use behind cades imo.
  • Offensively - you encounter the same issues as the Demo Spec… without the ability to just get up and walk away without any delay.
  • Easy to break

It certainly can force back xenos, scare them off, and even kill them if the xeno gets too aggressive in its path - but its not exactly the kind of weapon where a single dude with it can push up or hold an entire frontline nearly entirely alone, in the way some Specs can (with varying degrees of effectiveness and killing power).

TL;DR It has its own niche, it is not a game winning tool, and it is no more “protagonist” mindset than a SG, Spec, M56D user, CO, SO, XO, CE, CMP, MP, SL, chad Pfc well known to the community armed etc etc ad infinitum.

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M37 was in the movies.

What was not in the movies or anywhere in the Aliens media is individual marines carrying heavy machine guns that they can deploy in 1 second from the back and immediately shoot right in the thick of combat.

It’s just way too cheesy as a concept. And on the game side it’s another thing that pushed marines into that unfortunate static combat direction.

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Smartguns are really straddling the line between LMG and HMG; not in game mechanics of course but these are easily carried, stabilized machineguns - the M2 Browning (The stereotypical crew manned HMG) is ~140cm long 28kg and the Smartgun used in Aliens is ~130cm long, 18kg. (Weight might be questionable since I can’t quickly find out if this is smartgun prop weight or ‘if it were a real gun’ weight), though I think the 10x28mm vs 10x24 ammo and .50bmg vs 7.62 NATO gives a better idea that the smartgun is closer to an LMG.

Anyway it goes to show that a heavy machinegun you can walk around with and quickly use is really not that big stretch in the aliens universe.

If anything the reality of what even an LMG would be like vs what our in-game smartguns are like is wildly off base. I mean, it serves a big gameplay function - mobile high RoF IFF fire support and all that - If it were high damage per bullet the gun would need a complete mechanical do-over. However it’s pretty obvious, a real LMG (let alone HMG) would be far deadlier than the peashooter smartguns with the damage output of pistols that we actually have.

Machineguns historically are one of the biggest game changers in small unit infantry tactics, it’s kind of hilarious that in CM it just amounts to letting you deal chip damage through mobs of people.

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Who’s removing smartgun? Smartgun is cool, while M2C, being this huge thing that you can put down faster than you can wield your rifle(without grips), is just cheesy.

As for smartguns being peashooters, the unfortunate problem is that if they were stronger smartgunner balls would simply delete everything in their wake.

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If they were stronger you’d have to remove IFF and possibly change other mechanics of them to maintain balance.

I would try it more like much slower while deployed and ready, higher damage, very high accuracy, higher than normal miss chance on marines (pseudo IFF) but remove actual IFF, tangentially on that topic:

In this way turn it into mobile positional fire support (that is strong base of firepower from a fortified/semi fortified location) that can help hold a location against heavy attacks - more like mobile ‘firefighter’. Rather than midline/backline group fire and anti-harasser. This would have the consequence of reducing the firepower of marine murderballs (high volume/low surface area blob of marines) and force marines to disperse into a larger surface area / volume ratio to maintain damage output, which, imo, is one of the larger issues with xeno<>marine balance atm; once marines lose murderball group damage with IFF they start lacking firepower to deal with ravs/crushers/queens charging in and out on the frontline and loss of specialists seals it and forces marines to retreat and rely on cas, ob, or mortar for damage output/movement constraint.

On the other hand if the positional fire (e.g. frontline or flanking) is effective, you can have fallback points or cover flanks without strict need of fortifications; the idea is basically your smartgunner provides large squad firepower/damage output and can rapidly redeploy for flanking maneuvers but cannot actively attack or retreat quickly because he’s slow with the gun ready and is vulnerable to elimination because he has to frontline without IFF. Higher risk/reward design and what I would consider a necessary step away from the marine murderball problem (which is primarily a lack of firepower/survivability for low volume high surface area marine groups, e.g. non-murderballs).

As for the M2C I don’t really care either way about it staying or going. It’s an interesting weapon but it was never well implemented - the guy putting it together had these weird ideas of marines not being able to do long range fire support but also designed the M2C around the idea of breaking through walls and flanking xenos with high firepower - which isn’t really possible without long range, high speed, and high accuracy; you get like 20 seconds to flank vs xenos and then you have to retreat because it only takes 2-3 harassers to eviscerate a few flanking marines.

The first test implementation was actually pretty good but then it was turned into a pseudo-shotgun and people just used it for memeing at 3 tiles on a ravager or whatever because of its fast deployment, low accuracy, and short effective range - it simply was never useful for flanking. Like I’m getting long winded here but I just never liked how it functions from a design point of view anyway, kinda like I don’t really enjoy the smartgun how it is, but I’m still fine with them. They could just be designed better.

As for incorporating buffs into the M56D; my thoughts would be:
First and foremost change it back to using wasd gets you off the gun, I don’t know why someone made you fixed onto it unless you press resist.

Secondly, its fire rate is too low for anything but backline fire support - it lacks the damage output to be viable frontlining or flanking. It hits hard but too slowly. If I could, I would make spraying the gun more inaccurate while careful firing is very accurate; this enables short range high damage and long range effective harassment/threatening which provides more counterplay for xeno players - like learning there’s a 56D or two set up, so don’t blindly rush at it, but if you’re at long range it’s only going to plink you, there’s no severe danger.

Thirdly, it lacks the vision range to be particularly useful for long range fire support - I would recommend either keep current vision range but build a motion detector into it so you can ‘see’ (very roughly) out to 14 tiles, or actually increase the vision range.

Naturally this is all theorycrafting; how things actually play out in practice is never how you intended things to work out, so you have to be ready to make drastic changes to anything newly implemented if you want to get your desired results.

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I havent been on the server or kept up for a good month now, no clue what’s going on until i get my computer fixed.
But from what im seeing in here it’s that the M2C is going to have some major changes.

All i have to say in the matter is that while the M2C does give marines a leg up offensively, it is a glass cannon and all it takes to stop this is a sentinel.
Scatter spit the marine and acid glob the M2C.

I’ve seen marines fight over who gets the last box of tungsten ammo, because that’s how fast it gets chewed up. The ammo and kit itself are so costly most ROs will tell you to fuck off.
And after you’ve gone through all your ammo, unless you have a backup weapon, you’re fucked.

The only thing i have to say is if you wanted the players to be slightly less abusive with the kits, stop them from getting the kits from the marine vendors and the ammo from the supply vend.

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None of it matters much, because the way you play M2C is the same way you play SADAR - you stay in the second line, let the line infantry take the xeno charge, then when some T3 overextends you find a clear firing line, instadeploy and zap it.

If you’re playing it that way, you’re going to be the last guy to die most of the time, and never lose your M2C, also since you’re not wasting ammo, you’d never run out of it.

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Just remove M2C. It doesn’t need to be reworked. It doesn’t need to be replaced.

Most M2C players hold down LMB and don’t let it go regardless of what is happening.

Queen stunned 7 tiles away? LOL HOLD DOWN LMB AND MOW DOWN THE MARINE PUSH TRYING TO KLIL HER WHILE YELLING “GET OUT OF MY FIRING LINE!”

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I’m gonna be 100% with this thread:

If we’re gonna be removing the M2C because it’s “not true to canon/doesn’t fit the setting” and because it creates “protagonist syndrome” then we should disarm the Rifleman role extensively anyway.

There’s been such an absurd powercreep for the basic PFC over the years to the point where weapons/kits that used to be pretty rare are now available in every PFC vendor (as opposed to 4-5 of them in req) and where the amount of options available to an ordinary rifleman is just beyond insane. Obviously more options seems cool on the surface, but isn’t a military meant to be… uniform? For the most part? How come one rifleman carries a Heavy Machinegun on his back, the next guy carries a Heavy Pulse Rifle and Shotgun, the other carries a XM prototype rifle, etc etc.

If we wanted to be true to lore and reality, and remove protagonist syndrome, we should remove most weapons from PFC vendors except the basic 4 - the Pulse Rifle, the Battle Rifle, the Shotgun, and the SMG. Every “limited” weapon gives off some sense of “protagonism” because you automatically feel valuable when wielding it, since not everyone has one. It’s the same with limited roles, especially Spec and SG.

You can see why this will never happen, then, and should also see why removing the M2C on the basis of these “issues” makes no sense either. So long as there are limited weapons and roles, people will always have their powertrip. It’s normal when you have such a system.

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https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/862155128441012234/875099592696397854/M2C-gameplay.gif(image larger than 8 MB)

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I think you’re highlighting the real problem here, which is that static machine guns don’t really fit in the CM game loop.

To be competitive, a deployable machine gun should have a better firepower than a handheld weapon. But it also should also be less mobile to compensate for that higher firepower. Anything actually balanced on those two factors would be pretty weak in any open ground fight due to being easy target for xeno overruns or boilers. Thus it’s only going to be a cade hugging weapon. But marines don’t actually need any more defensive tools. They’re already extremely strong at FOB holding and giving them something like 20 range scoped IFF M2C that as a drawback takes 10 seconds to deploy \ fold, would actually make FOBs untakeable.

What marines need now is more offensive power. Something that they can use in pushes. Thus Morrow’s plan of rebalancing the particularly thicc caste armor to make them just a tad bit more kill-able with just about any given random marine weapon at the expense of removing M2C, seems pretty fine to me.