The BRUTE has been a massive upgrade over the Breaching Shotgun that I can’t see any reason why anyone would think the Breaching Shotgun is superior to the BRUTE.
The only thing the Breaching Shotgun has over the BRUTE, arguable, was more ammo availability and that non-Combat Techs could use it. Albeit this is a moot point somewhat if all the CTs use it, and the Combat Techs spend their entire loadout on more BRUTE rockets and if cargo is not incompetent and buys more ammo.
Considering how trash most Sentry Guns are, its not unusual to see why so many frontline CTs use the BRUTE.
The Breaching Shotgun had limitations. You needed to get in CQC to use it (leaving you at risk of being attacked). You took at least two shots to clear a hard resin wall, meaning you either had to stand around exposing yourself, or use a stock for burst-fire, but the stock had the drawback of making your inventory management significantly more cumbersome since you could no longer stash it inside the belt.
I dunno, compared to just standing at 6 tiles and blowing a huge hole from safety behind the front line, its certainly safer.
The thing that a lot of people are missing with the XM51 over the brute, was the speed of wall demolishioning it did. Every single wall behind the marine front would be gone, and it would make the entire battlefield open as all hell if marines ever retreated. Hell, I had to endure it on LV so many times when marines landed LZ1, and when fob siege came, the entire main dome was wall-less.
As rainbowstalin pointed, there is a reason to take Breaching Shotgun over BRUTE. BRUTE makes a big hole in xeno defences and xenos can’t do much about it, while breaching shotgun lets you clear everything that isn’t impossible to destroy anyway.
Maybe make BRUTE leave 3x3 sticky resin at every resin wall destroyed?
XM51 was wildly useful on FOBs, because it let you demolish all the random R-Walls mappers love putting everywhere without having to get carpal tunnel juggling tools. It’s probably why it was removed but BRUTE is definitely a complete side-grade to XM51 purely because one is far more useful on offense and the other is far more useful on defense.
Marines now have an easy answer to every problem they once had. T3 diving you? M10 AP spam. Line of walls and doors too risky to push? BRUTE from a safe distance. Too many backliners harassing you? Regular/OT fire spam. Z-levels? Safely unload from above, high and dry from and risk or danger while completely out of sight. Getting capped? Just stick it out, you’ll stand up sooner than before. Even survivors have more nightmares/teams than ever armed to the teeth while xenos can’t even get an early sentinel to punish armorless shotgunners.
For every recent ‘solve’ for Marines, xenos have been given nothing, and this is driving the deathball-driven marine wins we’re seeing.
My point of view, you cannot compare Breaching shotgun and Brute. I don’t see how even breaching shotgun come into this topic at all when its about Brute. Breaching shotgun shine to make defence areas, there is where it truly shine. Clear a area to hold up, 100% that one. Brute is 100% bi-polar. It shine in a front deleting everything ahead. how deep? Many, many many x walls deep in one shot, where breaching shotgun does not even come close. So why compare from the start? I find these two hard to compare when what they do is close and other is distance. I feel this topic is derailing because in the front line. The breaching shotgun was up close, did one wall. thats it but was way more risky than brute. It did not however delete 3x7 walls at the time with one shot from a distance where shotgun didn’t, i am a bit puzzled how this got derailed but i am happy to someone to explain to me how brute and breaching shotgun was or are the same when its two different things and behave way different. I am not here to say this and that, but I would love some feedback on that one so I know more personally. Is this a feedback of if brute goes away the shotgun breaching will come back? We could honestly at this point remove the rule of the great wall of xenos because simply brute exist. Because now the mechanic to make any big wall is obsolete for the xenos.
You dont even need to go back one year in time on how sensor behave. If you ever read the 10 xenos is south central barren on LV from command, the staff would come in and ban the command who said it because its OOC in IC knowledge. What changed is they made a PR that made OOC in IC allowed, witch is a rulebreak from the start. But PR goes beyond the rules of cm. So they add it in, so here we are. And i will die on that hill on sensors. Fair enough on LV on north river, but on solaris you need to take two fuel tanks and you know every way the xeno does after it, SE hive, SW hive. Lambda.. Nah man its not even behind any hives spawn on solaris. Mappers have the fault here. Even if it was mapped in, it does not protect the rule of OOC in IC knownledge, and the people who protect it I can only say one thing. If someone told queen their every move after sensor. would it be allowed? nope. thats meta. but what that’s what the pr does isn’t it. “me Pikachu face” So marines knowing it suddenly is allowed, but xeno cannot until hijack (where it is already a xeno win) but they are not even allowed to know where the last marines are until the very end of a xeno already victory because that would be OOC in IC meta. “me staring on every single devs in cm” Sure, that make any sense of rulebreaks when marines can simply have it groundside pre win happend..Does that make any sense? no? why is there not a tower where xeno know where every marine is? How come crawling is a thing that was suppose to be a xeno thing but marine is the one who got the crawling instead? Why cant xeno crawl? Why can marines break ooc rules but xeno cannot? PR’s what happend. I have still to wait xeno can crawl, know the marines on livemap. Will it happen? Hah!!1111!1
Hey guys what if we tried to um just like um make the Brute a couple tiles shorter or um one tile narrower just to see if that helps a little bit what do you think guys
You could take an IMP Rack with 3 boxes of breaching shells for 360 total ammo. What it lacked in upfront alpha-strike it made up for with longevity. It was functionally always available if you equipped for it; where as with BRUTE rockets the supply is slightly more limited at start for marines. While BRUTE has point buy, Marines started the game with enough ammo cases to fill 3 ammo cases of 120 breaching shells, with another full box vendable in Req (and more loose ammo to fill another box with). Regular walls took 1~2 shots to kill, depending on if it was already damaged (grenades, CAS, copious shooting). R-walls only took 4 (maybe 6, i forgor). With the stock, you could instantly kill a wall or 2, and an R-wall is destroyed in 3 seconds. You could do this as a Rifleman, sacrificing nothing, and functionally gaining a wall destroying spec incapable of causing mass FF.
On maps like Chance’s you could clear the entire way from FOB to West Reactor Entrance with 2 boxes. Then you have a 3rd box to destroy resin doors with to advance the push on the hive. Especially on Chance’s, where the mapmaker was allergic to putting an R-wall anywhere within the colony grounds. Seriously. The only R-walls I can think of on the map line the exterior of the Reactor.
The XM51’s only critical weakness is that it was wildly inefficient to use against Resin Walls. Metal Walls and R-walls are where it shined since it had a rapid TTK on an otherwise very durable target. Using it against Resin Walls it struggled, since xenos can just build a new on top of it. It was far stronger on the initial push than it would be if xenos managed to push marines back and rebuild. Note: Against Resin doors it was still very powerful since it one shot them (and if you were slick enough with the burst fire you could kill 2 doors with 1 burst).
I still think the XM51 was more balanced than the BRUTE since it had limited range, and using that range was risky since marines c/would walk between you and the wall all the time. The only safe, consistent, way to destroy walls was to be up against them, allowing xenos to dive the XM51, displace, or cap them. And in order to be that XM51 guy you had to empty EVERY prep vendor for the shells. 1~2 XM51 wall clearing specialists versus anywhere between 0~8 Engis taking a BRUTE.
Breaching shotgun did a lot. Any building behind marine lines could be completly leveled quite quick with just that, something otherwise only available to OB. So while BRUTE buffs marines on attack, breaching shotgun buffed them on defence.
Sure, they are not directly comparable, but it is pick your poison type of deal, let PFCs demolish buildings creating essentialy LV beach anywhere there was a building before, or let CTs have a long-ranged breaching tool.
Now I got a small idea, we got that transparent resin wall, right? What if it was very good at weakening BRUTE rockets effect? It sucks at anything else, so it is perfect. Gives xeno builders a reason to think a bit more and construct walls with layers, one regular, one transparent etc. Xenos can counter BRUTE, but it requires a bit of effort on their part, while OTs with BRUTE could no longer just shoot at any wall willy-nilly. Come on, it adds depth to xeno architecture and breaching.
BRUTE was added a (relatively) long time ago, and I hadn’t played much Xeno since then. Recently been on a streak of playing round start Xeno.
Holyyyyyyyyyyyyy shit this is busted. As SL and CT, far more accessible than CAS (I didn’t realise that that’s actually a problem at first). It felt like a fun “clear the way tool” as Marine but man it’s obnoxious as Xeno especially in Hive. Every cover just wiped out, and even worse is that the projectile just deletes everything in an area after the wall it’s lazed on. I’ve seen CTs lazing singular 1x1s but the projectile just deletes everything behind it at absurd distances.
2-3 months not that long ago. I would rather have the old XM-51 than brute, since I can use it as almost any role and I still have the same chance to die/cap by same ol’ woys. It was an upgrade to bayonet, sure but it is an ubs++ that people accustomed to. Maybe remove the flame and we’re peachy as yea sure it provides light for 1-2 secs top, but the problem not with vision for the BRUTE user and with vision for like 2++ robustos howling outside of the smoke radius.
The progression for breaking walls and doors used to be: melee with knife → melee with axe or m39 spear → ubs with 1 tile in between. Now it jump to 4+ tiles away, safe and sound inside the unga horde while breaking 4+ structure tiles (wall, door). It absurdly dumb for marines to just point and click, not even m2c can 1 shot walls.
I think we should use the plasma cutter from tgmc rather than brute.
Wasn’t it nerfed already to carry less rockets when you buy it, and the rockets cost more or something?
If not I think those would be good changes.
Or just remove it and go back to C4s and breaching charges. I like the BRUTE (it’s very aesthetically pleasing, whoever sprited it did an awesome job) but marines don’t need more tools to clear structures from safety when CAS exists (although I hear it might be getting counterplay soon?) and the mortar. Or even just a grenade or two.
I remember my first round with the BRUTE, got to it a bit late since I don’t play Combat Tech much anymore, but good lord it felt strong.
You can no longer buy more BRUTE rockets as engi , pack comes with loaded launcher and 3 more shots, as tradeoff for sentry. Req gets 3*scale (so just 3 unless it is quite a high pop) rockets and can buy 6 per 30 points (sadar is 3 rockets per 30 points). (it was never strong, it was just made to FEEL strong, HEDP has always been better at removing resin, no windup, same range, faster rof and easier to aim, stuns xenos, useful in indestructible chokes). The best solution would be to make sentryguns fun but that is gona take a while, the reason why people pick brute is that sentryguns suck major ass