Hear ye, hear ye. An auto-cannon main with a degree in busting hulks and splitting hevvie devvies decided to take a break from the plappiest cannon this side of the creek and give the HMG a proper go. My experience was enlightening and actually rather fun, so read on if you're a total geek and want a break from the doom and gloom than sometimes takes front page on this sub.

When it came out, I quickly wrote the HMG off as a trash gun. It wasn't hard. The sights were off, it had no third person aim, its recoil was ungodly, its damage felt weak, its mag size was awful and its reload was beyond frustrating. Since then, most of things are still the same, but it has a third person aim now.

So what's the deal with the meaty man melter?

In a word? No, can't do it, need more.

In a phrase? Medium Penetration two.

In a word again? Medpen2.

This allows it to completely bypass Devvie body armour, damage hulk eyes, shred factory strider bellies and more. So, I loaded up, strapped my finest recoil reducing armour on, pulled the incendiary breaker out and a resupply pack and got up into the bots faces for some haz7/8 fun, on the clankers paycheque of course.

My experience? This thing isn't as bad as people think it is. Put it on the lowest RPM, crouch and tap fire and you can actually do some serious work, including downing hulks at 30m range, making mincemeat of devvies and cutting through tank heat vents like nobodies business. Some good points of note:

• The Med 2 penetration causes significantly higher damage to devastators, I often just went for centre of mass and took them out in 6-7 body shots, full auto viable at 20m range and closer. TTK on devvies is actually goated if you can burst them, even on lowest RPM. Entirely possible to mince a whole squad of devs at close range on a single mag.
• Hulks were easy prey with stun grenades and TTK was on par with AC when my aim was good.

• Excellent finisher on tanks with typical AT weapons, the recoilless/Quasar will leave a tank/cannon tower with a shred of health if you hit the vent, the HMG can finish them off with just a single tap.

• Reloading just before you empty the mag decreases the reload speed, its still pretty long, but much more manageable if you don't deplete completely.

• Being able to demolish bug objectives like spore shrooms and shrieker nests is really nice, even if it in occurs a high ammo cost.

The HMG's raw damage isn't actually much higher than the standard MG (Roughly 20% higher per bullet) and this isn't enough to hit any important thresholds, but the Med 2 penetration does make a huge different versus medium armoured targets, even though the regular MG can hurt these targets too.

In combo with the Incen breaker, I would use the breaker to deal with most chaff, including spamming it over long ranges, then swap to the HMG for heavier targets. The supply pack means tons of grenades and stims for you, which is good, because you'll fucking need them. Onto the down sides.

• Lack of stumble power means Devvies can still return fire, this is bad versus rocket devs but awful versus hev devs and it was a coin toss if I could kill them before they stumbled me(!)
• Flinching is AWFUL with this gun. You have to get mail-ordered approval to actual aim at anything and taking damage throws your aim off badly, because of the sheer time needed to get back on target, I found this very, VERY frustrating.
• Recoil makes medium to long range combat extremely low DPS ventures. You can tap fire the HMG to stay on target at ranges of 40-50m but your actual damage output will be low as hell. On the bright side, 75 rounds feels like a shit-load when you're tap firing.
• Super long reload on empty can be life ending, if you get caught with your pants down, this gun will NOT help you. Its extremely cumbersome.
• Two rounds to kill the chaff bots feels shit, NGL.
• Gunships are hard. Their movement speed is around the same speed as your tracking speed, making it really hard to stay on target and the engines feel inconsistent to destroy. You can do it, for sure, but other options are better, speaking of which-
• The biggest issue, the opportunity cost. By far, the biggest issue.

Truth be told, I did enjoy my close quarter, stim popping, stun flinging HMG warrior. You put out a lot of damage and can handle most targets, including slapping the HMG on its highest ROF and shredding a factory strider's belly or a tank's vent. But the flinching, slow aim speed and punishing reload make the weapon frankly inferior to its competition. The laser cannon has much lower raw DPS on bodies, but as good versus weak points, with infinite ammo, infinite range and better aiming. Then compared to the AC, its weaker again, at the cost of a back pack slot, you can minor AOE, better range, stumble power and plap strength. More than a worthwhile trade.

My honest opinion, a buff to the raw damage output could help keep the weapon as a "tough to use but powerful" option, people have suggested a back-fed backpack which could be fun, but a lot of work for the devs to implement. I do think it needs a buff though, its just weaker than its cousins. That said, its totally viable on 7/8. Keep the RPM low, use the recoil reduction armour and tap fire at 20m to stay on target. Try my incendiary heavy gunner build out and see what you think. Be liberal with stuns and ammo, stay in the fight and keep the wall of flaming lead up! Oh, and don't use the FPS sight. Its completely off.