It’s been an issue with me not being able to carry a sidearm on me without wasting space for my kit. If I get a belt I waste either the slot on my armour or the belt which mean that I can easily lose my gun or be down 5 mags on my main gun. A shoulder hostel takes away 5 slots from a webbing vest and a hostel pouch usually 3 main gun mags from the pouch in exchange for my sidearm with a single mag loaded. Unless I have a backpack or some other special backpack for extra space like the smock it is simple not worth carrying a sidearm unless you don’t plan on taking much with you. I’d like something done like adding mag space on the pouch hostel or an extra spot to attach a sidearm and some mags on it.
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There’s a reason why in real life only NCO’s and Officer’s carry Pistols into battle.
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Depends, I always carry a sidearm in most of my loadaouts.
If you have magharness, there is no reason to carry a sidearm unless you are using flamer, or nade launcher.
It is only a minor increase of chance that you lose your gun. Because to use that empty armor slot you have to recognise that you are fucked, so then you holster your gun, so you pray that marines will get your body, hope that medics won’t be forced to relocate you just as they were about to defib you etc.
I find armor slot being empty a waste (if you don’t have mag harness). I always stick MD there.
90% of times my gun was lost wasn’t because I couldn’t holster it, it was because I exploded, I got pounced, I got lunged, FF’ed hard etc, so empty armor slot wouldn’t matter.
What do you carry in your satchel and webbing?
Modd88 and a single mag for it is enough for any emergency. That takes normal and small slot in your satchel, you can’t spare that space? That is just two less mags.
Regular PFC doesn’t need anything but basic medical supplies and ammo. Maybe MRE too.
If you really want that much ammo, why not carry rifle ammo box on your back, so then all you need is 5 mags in belt, all to simply refill them when safe. This leaves space for shoulder holster and two mags on your uniform, MRE and one, or two nades in your armor. Two medical pouches, one with splints and gauze, other with injectors/pills.
You still have empty armor slot if you really need it in that case.
when you can reload almost as fast as pulling a sidearm, its almost never worth it when 99% of all sidearms are meme worthy with how bad they are (nor do they have good audio)
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Marines by and large don’t have enough room to carry things unless they’re just playing a basic unga. PFC’s and Smartgunners; no storage problems. Just about anyone else? Depends on what you’re trying to do to varying degrees.
It’s especially bad right now for medics, IO’s, and commtechs, and options like the pistol toolbelt which would help to an extent cost an inexplicable 15 points and are only available in commtech and SL vendors, not even through req. Making them actually harder to get than specialist gear (which is at least free through their vendors and can be bought by req).
Meanwhile there’s a constant creep simultaneously increasing the medical supplies you MUST carry on you, as well as reducing storage capacity options like first aid or engineering kits storing anything actually useful.
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NCO’s and officers have pistols as a status symbol, it has nothing to do with how much they can or cannot carry.
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What’s the loadout you’re trying to bring? Ive found ways to squeeze in pistols with lots of ammo
tbh you can get away with as little as 3 pistol mags
The problem with using pistols isn’t that you can’t carry enough pistol ammo with them, the problem is that you suffer a huge opportunity cost in what else you could have been carrying because the holster eats up extremely important storage slots.
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you can carry a backpack and a pistol which is honestly the biggest upside but you can also use the m39 rig which is stronger than people think
I have found sidearms great not when you have run out of ammo with your primary, but when you have been knocked down and wish to quickly distance yourself from approaching xenos.
The moment you whip out your pistol you can unload into incoming xenos, not as to kill them but force them to disengage. Also, you have no movement penalties so you can quickly run back to the marine line
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Make a pouch that holds a pistol and 3 magazines for it and pistols will be great again.
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Having to take the pistol out instead of instantaneously via hotkeys is a pretty big deal though
I mean you have like more options than any other weapon, you can have it in a pouch, on a belt with ammo, or have it instead of webbing. then you can have a backpack that holds an extra pistol and a bible that holds a bunch of mags or something. you can still hold a shotgun with these loadouts. again though its kind of bad but there are definitely reasons to keep a pistol. mostly for flamer builds where you want like 3 weapons.
not true, there’s always a good reason to carry a sidearm: once you are half ass decent with macros and point blank combat, swapping to a sidearm is ALWAYS faster than reloading, unless you like mentally counting how many shells you have loaded mid pounce, or if you have enough bullets to scare off that sentinel moving in to spit you
you need 2 shells if its a pump 3 if its a mou drop the ammo by wielding on the ground
In my opinion magharness totally removes the need for sidearm.
Sure, if you had yet another slot that can’t be used for anything but pistol and some ammo, that would be better.
Needing to whip out a pistol when I lack ammo in my main gun basically never happens to me.
With shotgun you have 10 shells when fully ready, just to shoot them all in a wall takes ages, by that time either you are boned, or the xeno is.
You don’t need to mentally keep a note of how many shells you have loaded, the sound of a shotgun gets higher the less shells it have, just like any other gun, while those others send you a special message into the chat how many exactly rounds they have left.
For me a sidearm serves three purposes:
- I lost my main gun because I don’t use magharness (or I do, but got revived in a heated situation and medic had to abandon my armor and gun).
- I’m running flamer/nade lanucher/sniper, generally any gun that suck close range, or has barerly any effect on a certain type of xeno (that being queens, ravagers and crushers most of the time).
- I lost my main gun, but found a replacement that lacks any attachements, so I can canibalise revolver for rail light and bayonet.
Reloading a pulse rifle compared to whiping a pistol out of satchel requires the same ammount of clicks assuming you don’t have container menu opened 24/7 obscuring a fair chunk of your screen.
One click is for satchel, the other click is for pistol. One click for ammo belt and one click on a pulse rifle. The same speed and if you didn’t drop your gun (or put it in storage), then there is no wield delay.
you’re better off using the throw + pickup last held with a knife than a sidearm
Adding even one mag slot to the pistol pouch would be a big step toward making sidearms a viable choice.
Keeping your spare mag elsewhere makes it more difficult to use in the very situations you take a sidearm for: when you’re trying to get the hell out and don’t have your primary. Having to dip into your satchel or suit storage to fish out your spare mag (which will move around as you take and replace items throughout the round) takes your eyes off the action long enough to be a problem, and it’s more difficult to build muscle memory for executing it consistently since there’s no dedicated container to assign a keybind to.
To me this feels unwarranted since you’re already giving up a pouch slot for a single, highly situational tool. One mag slot would give you the flexibility to either reload or switch to an alternate ammo type reliably in a pinch, but not enough to obviate the need for supplemental storage if you want to use it for an extended period.
As somebody that plays a lot of inventory-intensive roles, the belt, armor and webbing slots are so build-defining that devoting one purely to a sidearm is sacrificing A LOT, making it a non-starter for the roles that could really use this pouch most.
Think of it this way:
A medical pouch eliminates four small slots worth of dedicated storage, as does the tool pouch.
The flare pouch saves two medium slots’ worth of room for a single item.
The medium storage pouch offers like one medium and a tiny slot of essentially universal storage (which at this point is strictly mechanically superior to the pistol pouch if you bind its slot, which seems silly).
Aaaaand a pistol pouch gives you a single medium slot of dedicated storage, but becomes entirely useless after 3-5 seconds unless you use supplemental storage or return to the FOB. Might as well just toss the pouch otherwise.
honestly i like the combat tool belt except 1) you gotta pay points or hope the ASRS brings one up and 2) cant also stash c4 in it like a normal tool belt
Why don’t we have a combat medic-belt that can hold a pistol? I’d buy that for free.
Not a bad idea actually. The cost is the fact you are carrying less medical supplies.
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