Eh, not really. Damage potential isn’t that important for sidearms, given you won’t be using them in a sustained, protracted fight. That’s what primary weapons are for.
If you take a pistol, you aren’t taking it because of the damage potential in the magazines. You’re taking it because it shits out said damage at supersonic speeds unrivalled by any other primary weapon. You take it to smite runners/lurkers/vampires/sentinels/spitters/drones/hivelords in 5 microseconds when they’re cornering you, something primary weapons are simply incapable of.
Alright, sidearms (if assuming any gun), if you aren’t carrying 2 rifles it’s a waste of space in loadout imo.
(if assuming pistols) I feel like pistols ARE good, you can even have them be an extra weapon. Pistols are useful because they are the best weapon to finish off an enemy or pretty reliable to defend yourself in an emergency. High firerate, decent range, high burst dps, concealable, easily carried ontop of your kit. Especially m4a3 imo.
Tradeoff of m88 compared to m4a3 is its more useful as a backup weapon, less so as a finishing weapon
The surprise factor really is unmatched tho on pistols, and very deadly in practice.
It’s just really easy to slap on your loadout and use too. Shotgun pb has a bit of a high skill floor and can be unreliable at times. You can easily fit pistol into a mk2 shotgun kit, but it’s gonna be difficult to use right too. So just never use it unless it’s one of those two situations or any other situation where it’s ideal.
Bind it to like an off-key if you want to make sure you don’t accidentally draw it outside of the situations it’s useful in.
Imo tho, the best “true sidearm” is just grenades. Like, no contest. A HEDP pouch (6 hedp handthrown) will carry you out of so many bad situations.
True, but if you sacrificing a belt/suit for a side arm the amount of Damage potential is subpar. A shoulder holster may have the lest amount of Damage potential, but at lest its a not to much of sacrifice to have your vest slot used.
More or less yes you don’t need to have to much Damage potential for your side arms. but it still feels bad that if you do want to keep more ammo for your side, the fact it scales so poorly.
IMO ideal sidearm is still killy but not quite as good as a primary, with its main benefits being instant draw speed, and good accuracy one-handed, so that it’s something you can still successfully defend yourself with, or finish off a target if your primary ran out.
The drawback is having low sustain and less killing power than a primary, which typically has double or quadruple or more the amount of ammo in a magazine.
Smartpistol has one of the highest RoF in the game with big mag size and really decent AP. You really can melt xenos if you click fast enough, and even kill/force to disengage T3s in really short amount of time. And don’t forget it has IFF. There is falloff but compared to other pistols it’s almost non-existant IIRC. The biggest problem is ammo, although because not many people carry smartpistol you can rob squad prep and req, so if you don’t use it as your primary you should have enough ammo for a round.
Ya the smartpistol slaps but it hard to keep up the the ammo needs… shocking what High RoF plus IFF does to a ungaloid. I find with the smartpistol I over shoot do to the IFF. Also it makes for a great primary for medics, you don’t got to shoot much anyhow and when you to the IFF works wonders.
I’ll chip in to the support of the smart pistol as a medic. The IFF means you can fire past other marines when a runner or lurker gets into the little clusters of wounded and medics that tend to form. Most of the time when I’m using it my goal isn’t to kill, it’s to drive the xeno away. With shotguns and M39s I have to worry about FF which slows my reaction down.
I think a pouch with 2 magazines reserve and can hold a sidearm is the best option.
Just delete the old sidearm pouch, and buff pistol magazine pouches by a bit.
Now you can have a pistol with ammo in your suit slot, belt, and two pockets. The TRUE way CM was made to be played.
