Smartgunner is boring

Development Ideaguys
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For me, smartgunner is a very dull experience. All you do is sit behind a few riflemen holding down left click , not thinking about any thing around you like friendly fire, darkness, or reloading doing a pitiful amount of chip damage to the ravager mauling the E2. I know frontline mode exists, but in that case you might as well be using a mk2 with a smartscope (you will do more damage but have to reload more). I feel that the smartgun fills the role of a backline marksman type fire support role, but it is strongest up close.

I think im not the only person who would like to see the smartgun be balanced around alt iff instead and have some other weapon/job takeover the dedicated full iff role. I think something that would work is a “designated marksman” role who would have an m4ra with a scope like the old full iff smartscope, but iff stacking wouldnt be an issue since there would only be about 4 of them. In this case i think there is 2 good paths for rebalancing the smartgun.

  1. keep it as its own role but add more of them, up its dps, and/or add more “smart” features to it like autoaim
  2. turn it into a rifleman req restricted weapon that is a side grade to the HPR. In this case it would probable have to loose its night vison(though the eyepiece and harness would still be required for it) and would need a significant nerf to its mag size/ammo economy. When compared to the HPR it would have zero recoil and a built in MD, but would have worse dps, slower reloads (still needing to open/close the feed cover), no bipod option, and you would be forced to use the smartgun harness (likely the new medium armor one) thus losing out on your backpack slot and b12/heavy armor.

I’m interested to see what other think about this. The smartgun is one of my favorite sci fi weapons and i hope im not the only one who wants to see the smartgun be a more aggressive movie accurate weapon (especially with the beautiful new sprites it just got)

P.S. this is my first ever forum post, so i hope i didn’t fuck anything up :slight_smile:

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Eh I think a better solution to the current state of SG would be to ban samson jack from smartgunner.

Real Talk

Any proposal that replaces its IFF with alt IFF and giving it some buffs would significantly buff good SGs who frontline anyway and dont stay a step back (like they should smh) and only be a nerf to SGs who are new/dont unga.

I think adding a new role with IFF marksman is role bloat-y, and would be equally boring as you describe SG being. Old smartscope marksmanning was literally a point and click adventure, I dont see how this is any different.

I also reckon that even if this is limited to 4 slots it would be still a problem with IFF stacking but worse, as now you have people who can shoot xenos at range without being seen. If there is a 4 wide choke, then optimally, 4 fraggers with no IFF, with SGs and m56ds optimally having to stay nearish as possible to maximize their vision. Replacing that with 4 new marksman with IFF means they can stay well back and let a lot more people flow through the choke, and reduces the shovefest in small chokes which is an intended nerf IMO.

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I haven’t touched CM in 1.5 months, yet I still get shot with stray bullets :melting_face:

Anyways, welcome to the forums!

Re: The point on adding a dedicated IFF marksman role, that’s probably never happening- The maintainer team is taking a pretty strong ‘no more IFF stacking’ stance, so anything that increases it will be a no-go.

Re: SG IFF, the only reason why SG alt IFF frontline mode didn’t go any further (the initial plan was to utterly murder SG IFF) was because of strong opposition from the playerbase. It’s still planned to have SG turn into a heavy MG frontline role, but it’s not very high on the priority list. It wouldn’t be hard to just gigabuff SG frontline and scrap IFF (there were some ideas floated around for SGs to be able to have some kind of ability that helps them not get murdered horribly when frontlining, but any SG worth their salt already frontlines semi-regularly and avoids dying without crutches anyway- No concrete plans whatsoever iirc though.)

Re: Buffing SG as a role, I think adding more SGs in their current state would be a bad idea- It probably falls under the ‘no more IFF doom stacking’ stance. Buffing DPS won’t be happening without IFF mode being removed (Current DPS is already a compromise), and Auto-Aim was already trialled.
IMO, auto-aim was fine to be merged into the current SG because frankly it did effectively fuckall on the frontline (You only need it to shoot sonic speed runners and lurkers, no one needs help clicking in the 2 tile-tall T3) while gimping speed. It did have a funny side effect of being OP as fuck on predators in group fights though.
Alas, it was still deemed too powerful (albeit I have reservations over whether people actually USED it, as opposed to seeing ‘auto-aim’, and assuming it was actually good (it was mediocre at best). Auto-aim is currently unique to the W-Y PMC ERT, or something. Or maybe it was MARSOC? I’m too lazy to pull up the PR.

I think that hands down, PvE has the best implementation of the smartgun. It’s literally everything people want it to be. Strong, no IFF, limited ammunition, no NVGs, exactly what you’d expect from its depiction in the movies. It’s a beast that shreds. Unfortunately, PvE is ultimately balanced around 12-ish protagonists running around murdering hundreds of AI xenos, so… yeah, I’m not sure how you’d ever make the SG feel ‘strong’ without it being literal power creep.

Ultimately though, I would hardly call the SG a weak role. Yes, the gun kind of sucks dick, but you get free thermals and your kit is decent. In terms of killing potential, you’re definitely above PFCs but below Specs, which is to be expected- I mean, NVGs are such a huge boost, not even counting the fact you can use binoculars (huge) with them. You’re almost scout-tier at being able to choose battles and situational awareness, and you’re also the best team player + groundside leader (unironically better than SL) for marines. I’d say SG is in a pretty balanced spot as of now. (Keep in mind this might just be bias from a veteran player)

You also just reminded me I forgot about the audio PR for SG, which makes the SG feel 10x stronger from the sound alone
Woopsies, I should finish that off.

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If you ask me, smartgunner is best played as a discouragement tool - your IFF pass-through allows you to punish any overextending Xenomorphs. Even if you might not be able to kill Xenomorphs, players tend to panic when they’re under attack. Plus, you should be working with your other smartgunners to try and stack the effect - the entire point of the squad roles is that you’re not meant to try and do everything alone, Its a TEAM-based MRP deathmatch game, right? Talk to your squad, talk to the other smartgunners to make a first contact plan, and try to work together!

Another big part of SG-ing is the ability to figure out what goes bump in the night! You’re ability to call out the enemy (Only a handful of roles (Smartgunners (4) sniper+spotter (2), CO SG (1) and the scout (1) are able to use binoculars with full night-vision! Its usually best practice to call out castes over the radio that can grab/stun, so Warriors, Praetorians and the Queen!). Furthermore, you have the ability to call in CAS, mortar and OBs without having a pamphlet, and with the aforementioned night vision, you can target better than most other non-specialist roles!

There was a PR to replace auto-fire with aim-assist, though it got denied due to balance concerns (You can find it here: replaces smartgunner auto fire with aim assist by jupyterkat ¡ Pull Request #9099 ¡ cmss13-devs/cmss13 ¡ GitHub)

I’m rather against this. Smartgunner should be a dedicated weapon for a dedicated role.

I’ll be honest - the best SG players have (and rely heavily on) gamesense. You need to be able to try and predict the enemy movement - this is helped by the inbuilt MD, but you need to also, try and outpace/outrange enemy attacks. That isn’t really a skill you can earn without a large time investment. For other tips, I’d suggest binding toggle frontline mode to a keybind - c works perfectly (While you’re at it, bind your Activate underbarrel attachment to c. It won’t conflict, as one is for the SG and the other is for other firearms!)

If you want to play a CM-related server with actually powerful (Movie accurate!) smartguns, I’d suggest checking out our sister server, Colonial Marines: Space Station 13: Player Versus Environment(AI). Their smartguns shred. Heres a link: https://discord.gg/pve-cmss13. I’d highly recommend it!

Welcome to the forums! Where we’re always redundant (Because no one here can be bothered to read what anyone else writes!). Apologies if this post comes off as condescending, that isn’t at all my intention - the mentor part of my brain tells me I should share tips and tricks whenever possible!

Salmon Jack beat me to the punch.. Damn you, Smartgunner main!!!

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Welcome friend!

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I think as far as current SG goes, you might find it more…effective? Interesting? I dunno…as a true support specialist. Follow around the SADAR like a lost puppy or be friends with That HPR/M2C guy. A lot of the power of SG is just in awareness: aware of surroundings (you have NVGs), aware of xenos (you have MD), and aware of your teammates (because shooting them is no object, given IFF, you free yourself up for higher-order awareness a la what weapons do they have and how can I synergize with them)

Truly I think the best combat combo in this ENTIRE GAME that is completely uncounterable is SADAR AP followed by smart gunner. That’s how you get big things dead. That’s how you make rockets not a waste of money. That’s how you finish up a shot in a way that reduces the risk to all the marines that just got blasted over and are going to pop up any second.

The other side of balance is then about protagging, yes; but I don’t think that’s worth the effort until later on because most of your impact will be from following up shots, chasing very low or retreating xenos when the other marines who just engaged are having to stumble away with fracs and IB and being in crit. You can blindfire into boiler gas and keep anything and everything off whoever just got hit so a warrior doesn’t lunge in and drag them away.

Protag only comes once you know how all that works AND that you can be a hellpusher and your entire goal in pushing is never at all to chase and kill (you’re a slowass!!!), but just to get everyone behind you with a better damage MK2 and light armor with less clunk to go “OHHHHHH I SHOULD LIKE RUSH FORWARD NOW!!!”

I don’t think wanting Big Strong SG like movie is wrong either; this is just how to make the most of what SG is on PvP as of now.

NOOOOOOOOO it makes me weaker because I’m cringing from the tinnitus

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if you can shoot through marines, your place is back there

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Almost 300 hours as SG here… the visual update we got recently was pretty cool. I could have sworn I saw a PR about allowing SG to wear a flak jacket with their kit but alas it seems to have been purged from GitHub. I do agree though SG can feel boring but it’s certainly not a weak role

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Just not a lot involved in it:

Low accuracy peashooter even on frontline mode; doesn’t meaningfully contribute to squad protection or alien suppression; runners and lurkers will dance around a smartgunner but run in terror from an M4A3 or M10 pistol.

All you can do is apply token chip damage that only starts to matter when you’ve got 3 smartgunners together. It doesn’t feel awesome and it doesn’t play awesome. It’s just a wet fart of a weapon.

M2C, HPR, and to a lesser extent a Mk2 with a bipod and extended mags, do a better job of fire support than the smartgun does, and all three require more thinking and are more fun to use.

The newer IFF mode that the B8 has could be a step in the right direction if anyone actually fixed it up so it wasn’t nigh on useless (get rid of the fire delay after you click on a friendly which cuts effective weapon RPM by more than half) and then generally buffed up the smartgun.

Something additional like being able to deploy it in a bipod mode might also be good.

Anyway it’s one of those things that could be cool, but I don’t think it ever will be, and a lot of people actually like it being a braindead IFF peashooter, which is just crazy to me.

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If you don’t take a spare battery and a full belt of ammo so you can mindlessly hold the trigger down for an hour and a half then you’re not really having fun are you?

On the real, playing as a pseudo-FTL with the night vision binocs and lasing hard points then pushing them with suppressive covering fire is really where Smartgunner shines. Just behind the pointmen with full situational awareness and vision to see past their flares means you’re effectively keeping bugs pinned away from your vulnerable boys who will do the real damage following your fire— and then punishing those that push into you, all while you’ve got super accurate CAS in case shit hits the fan.

You may not be able to protag out super easy with pure DPS, but it’s an incredibly fun role as-is and I’m really not sure what the hate is for.

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I assume you are referring to this PvE PR, which added it as a uniform accessory. (Which, to be fair, one SG in the movie does wear.)

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Yeah, I think it’s just a clash in playstyles, I find SG to be more enjoyable than RFN despite me feeling like a DPS god on RFN relative to SG- But honestly, knowing your gun is a piece of shit just makes killing xenos that much more amazing, it’s like getting kills with the golden gun.

I’d say SG is a bit more enjoyable for me since I just muscle-memory switch to AP/Precision and Frontline/IFF, so I always keep track of whether my firing lanes are clear + what strain of xeno I’m shooting, what armour value they have and thus what mode to be on. As such, I’m not just ‘holding LMB’ like I would if I was using MK2 AP, I’m switching between 4 combinations of damage styles every time a firing lane is open, or if the xeno I’m shooting has > 15 armour.

Many SGs literally don’t even touch the button-mashing aspect which is a shame, because if you don’t switch ammo and IFF modes you can literally halve your DPS, or even completely nullify it (*cough people using precision on defenders and chargers).

Besides the button mashing, I play it the same as RFN but with the added comfort of knowing I can use meatshields to shield myself from danger, and also that I can save other people from woyers and such easily. I mean, using binoculars and such to identify opportunities to go in for the kill is just the same as RFN, except you have perma-NVGs which make it way easier.

TL;DR People who just hold LMB without harnessing the smartgun’s fantastic utility aren’t experiencing everything it has to offer. An SG is absolutely stronger and more impactful than an RFN despite having less burst DPS.

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Actually I’ve decided that I agree, SG is boring and people should definitely not play it :wink:

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I will find you.

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Bravo preps. 2am EST. Be there.

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I KNEW I WASNT CRAZY! I’ve played so much SG that the flak jacket alone would add another 50 hours of playtime from me. Why can’t we have cool shit like this :sob:

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SG will always be one of my favorite rolls. It is so soul. I don’t know how it could be boring. Just use your imagination and yell GET SOME!!!

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It shouldn’t be the hardest thing to PR on the PvP codebase. Good luck, gamer :saluting_face: