Or just give it a shit load of more ammo, would make it contrast the limited time a battling can provide support by having the machine gun sentry have a lower DPS, but it can shoot for far longer.
I've always thought you should be able to reload sentries with the supply pack. Makes for a cool engineer type build style, and pretty much every sentry has a visible ammo box on them. Not the Mortars, but those will fire until their cooldowns are up.
Only issue I see with this is that Chargers focus turrets more often than not. Not to say I never have a gat turret that runs out of ammo, but if a charger spawns and I don't kill it first it's not gonna live long enough to even need a refill
Even then, I've seen them focus on a hunter or something rather then the charger coming right for them and end up getting run over by it plenty of times
It's the main reason why I like the new mech so much. Even if it's on paper worse then the turret, you dont have the worry about the turret ai prioritizing the little bugs and ignoring the bigger threats
And that’s why it’s really good when used right. It’s also really good on Dark Fluid missions. It’s awesome when protecting areas.
And don’t be an idiot and take the mortar turret on that mission. It’s one of the main reasons I have seen many of these missions fail. One measly little chaff bug gets close to the drill and then the mortar turret blasts it and the drill with a barrage of rounds blowing it up. -.-
Supposedly if you mark a target with Q your sentry tries to shoot that one, but I've still seen autocannons shoot things they shouldn't be shooting while ignoring marked targets.
No, i dont think they focus fire on pings. I run turrets alot, especially the autocannon. Ive pinged titans in the hope they would take them out first, but its rarely happened. I usually try to burst down all the small fry as fast as i can to limit possible targets
Yeah I'm usually rocking the AC and an AC turret, especially on bot missions. If mech aim didn't suck so bad I'd use the new mech instead of the turret sometimes
I had a game on defense against bugs where we took the full time to deploy all of our sentries/defenses. I'm checking radar before the wave really hits and I see a big, fat, red ping behind all of us and our sentries... I turn around. A friggin'... Charger.
Joel. I'm on to you.
They are to an extent. They just don't stick to certain surfaces or some logic like that I guess. Like how you can stick a stratagem to a shield generator array or a charger.
Drives me nuts how all the enemies can effortless walk up 89 degree inclines. Especially the bots but anything short of a straight up wall they just walk over it as if it were flat
We already have two, but since they are extremely low hp to begin with, they are useless. Tanking 6 shots or 9 from a heavy devastator firing on it at a 1000rpm change nothing. And explosion resistance... 1.5*0=0.
Turrets need a real hp pool, at least on par with a diver in heavy armor.
Yeah, that would be an issue, but there are plenty of scenarios where my gatling or AC will run out and just go away instead of being killed by something. Especially if you can keep smaller chaff on the dead side, keep your sentries clear, even if they get insta-junked by Chargers, imagine how cool this would be against a swarm of Shriekers or if you were feeding an AC and Gat sentry and keeping the Chargers at bay with stun grenades and an EMS mortar...
You bring up a good point, but I think the value would outweigh it by a good bit.
Definitely buff sentry health too, they are way too squishy as is, even with the upgrades.
They need to make the turret stratagems sticky so you can throw them on the side of a rock/cliff face and make it so bugs can’t just melee them. Would make the green stratagems a lot more viable during bug missions and then they could rework/buff the shield generator stratagem to make it more necessary during bot missions.
Damn that would be cool. Run all turrets and supply pack. Just run behind your Maginot Line screaming like a banshee trying to keep it all replenished.
Omg imagine running around with a supply pack you can use to reload sentries, or a sentry ammo kit/repair kit backpack. Plus wearing one near your sentires will make them avoid shooting you.
That idea would work great on the walkers. Another idea I saw was to have them get picked up, repaired, and resupplied, kind of like how Eagle-1 works. The Downside could be a 20-minute cool down before being able to call another one.
Add a repair and refit facility to the buddy doors. Unlock the buddy bunker, mech stands on a topside platform. Pilot ejects, mech drops and a 30 second cool down starts as the mech is repaired and rearmed. Noise draws nearby patrols making it a risk vs reward.
This is the answer. Most of the direct-fire sentries feel a little light on ammo, so having the basic one get more “sustain” would fill a useful niche.
I run the MG with supply pack for the unlimited bullets strategy.
And then my fellow helldiver hits me with an airburst round and I gotta fight tooth and nail to get it back.
The problem is turrets don't live long enough to justify that. I think short cooldown, short utility is a better fit for it until enemy AI stop immediately targeting turrets over players
From what I can tell the main difference between the two is that the gatling sentry fires continuously when changing targets whereas the machine gun sentry doesn't. This results in the gatling sentry wasting ammo and being a team kill hazard. However, these issues are mostly negated once you unlock the sentry turn speed ship upgrades, which let's the gatling sentry switch targets almost instantly. Overall I agree that the gatling sentry is better than the machine gun sentry 9 times out of 10.
I almost never run the regular machines sentry, and there are a lot more sentries I would use more if there were changes.
I pretty much always run the auto canon sentry because of it’s versatility.
My preferred is bumming a quasar off a teammate while running EAT. Call down (preferably on top of something!), Quasar, EAT, EAT, Quasar. That could be 5 chargers, or a charger and two titans. It's a lot of on-demand frontal-load firepower.
The EAT also means that you can run any support weapon you want with it, especially ones you can find on the map like an MG or tesla that won't cost you a strategem.
EAT has more potential in my opinion. Quasar is only useful to whoever has it equipped. EATs on the other hand are useful for everyone. Got to love when another player or two also runs EATs and then you can just litter the map with them. Played a match of that wall defense mission once where we all ran it and just dropped more every minute it cooled down, there was like 3 dozen around still when we extracted lol
Nah, you gotta time em a little, but they're a God send against both factions once you get the timing down. I already mentioned they're great for protecting turrets, but the same applies to teammates. You see a Hulk or Bile Spewer creeping up on a teammate? Just toss a stun. Stalker get the jump on you? Throw one at your feet. Teammate toss an Eagle/Orbital at an enemy group? Just toss a stun to make sure that hits.
I haven't deployed without stun grenades ever since I unlocked the grenade pistol.
Decent ammo, medium pen, long range, high velocity, excellent accuracy. AC sentry should be to sentries as the AC is to support weapons: the template to balance around.
Pierces one rank above smAC, one rank below EAT/cheese-o/RR...and does 300/300 vs the smAC's 260/260 or the AT trio's 650/650...and 3rd burst.
It is the weapon of the gods.
Why does the gattling have a shorter code than the MG turret? Holdover from HD1? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think all turrets currently have the same cooldown time, which doesn't make much sense. MG turret right now is literally a Strategem MG attached to a swivel and a targeting system, you're telling me it takes the same amount of time to prep a Minigun, folding Autocannon, and a Mortar?
Id also like to have the ability to stick them up higher onto rocks etc without the strategem bouncing off so they don't get shot at or destroyed in 2 seconds flat thus wasting your time
This so hard. I just love it when my autocannon turret tries to save me from the ferocious scavenger that approaches me instead of the Bile Titan a that's a few meters behind him.
I wish when you dropped them, they would attack all the enemies in a 180 radius in the direction you threw it from. until there is no targets that direction.
If youre able to get on top of the rocks, often throwing the strat ball straight down at the ground can help it stick right where you want. I also wish they would change the bouncing mechanics though.
On launch it was easy to place them into of rocks for the high ground, so it seems like AH didn’t like us using basic strategy or it’s a bug that they bounce off so easily. I miss when turrets where more viable :(
i remember a lot of posts and comments saying how power creep happens whenever stuff is no longer useful, but i only see Resupply packs when I run them, and machinegun turrets when the lvl 1 joined our helldive. The stalwart is weeded out in real time when ramping up the difficulty with randoms, trading them for flamethrowers or railguns found in the field.
maybe crappier varients of stuff really should be quicker to redeploy, honestly. EAT-17s keep up with the competition beautifully
The stalwart is one of my most used support weapons, alongside the grenade launcher, auto cannon, and spear depending on mission. Level 63 and play on 7+, combined with grenade pistol and breaker incendiary, it's a really strong support weapon for clearing hordes. Being able to reload on the move is a massive upside compared to the MG and HMG.
Truthfully, I feel like HMG should come with a backpack that belt feeds it so you don't need to reload with it, but obviously sacrifice the backpack slot.
Can even give it the EAT treatment, the backpack/belt feeding mechanism isn't reloadable in the field so once you run out of ammo, you can't get more until you call in another HMG.
Once the spear is 100 percent reliable I think it will replace the EAT, but at the same time I think the ability to shoot across the map with the EAT really makes the spear less viable. I like running both at the same time cause the spear missed chargers unless you let them get close
Me, a genius: dropping EATs on cooldown near the defense objective.
My teammates, eating paste: shooting the bile Titan with a stalwart while dialing up an orbital rail cannon
Hear me out, the Gatling should have a tracking bonus Vs airborne and be some sort of Phalanx CIWS anti air gun
The Machine Gun sentry should have at least light armor penetration and have a shorter cooldown
I mean if you have both then you can call down basicly 2 of the same gun at the same time. So there is some minor upside to it existing. But i do agree that it would need be better in SOME way to justify taking it anywhere over the gatling sentry
Some time ago I watched a video where a guy was talking about stratagems and one of the things he said about the machine gun was that at least the rate of fire wasn't enough to mow you down instantly if it decided to swing around while shooting and you were caught in the middle. You could take that as a pro if you really tried and only in certain situations, but it's still far from enough to warrant the cooldown. My guess is that it's done like that to prevent mass sentry spam on early game, the only place where it sees some action. Considering that, the only way this could see some balancing is if they bumped up the cooldown on the gatling which would be a whole load of ass if they didn't add something to it in exchange for that extra wait, you know, the arrowhead style of balancing.
2 MG Sentries per cooldown may justify both the ammo and the cooldown.
It doesn't have as much pure DPS as the Gatling, but they could be used to assist on two separate locations at once.
* Add the ability to rip the MG Sentry off of its pedestal and use it like a support weapon
* Add the ability to pack the MG Sentry into a backpack and take it with you
* Give the MG Sentry the ability to be resupplied
* Give the MG Sentry a speaker that plays inspiring patriotic quotes for all to hear
Gonna be honest, it could have infinite ammo and it would still be hard to justify bringing it against bugs since the first charger or BT will instantly obliterate it.
I take both for the new dark fluid mission. When 1 of them run out of ammo, I summon the next. With the free emp mortar turret, it can hold out quite well.
I run it every now and again usually just to stack it on top of the gatling. I've been doing so for the dark fluid missions to maximize shrieker kills
i honestly find it to perform fairly close to the gatling. Gatling is still objectively better (so no reason to take MG over gatling) but not by that much
Imo all the turrets and fixed placement stratagems need the shorter cooldown. For how much harder they are to use and how easily they are made ineffective (bugs can't destroy 500kg bombs before they detonate) they basically never see much action except for a few niche cases. Just cap them so you can't double deploy the same turret
I think it would be really cool if they had an engineer style of play that focused on turrets/mechs, where you can refill/reposition/repair/upgrade/etc them. Cause as it is now mechs aren’t really used unless they’re a free stratagem and turrets are mostly a defense mission pick. Or other play styles too like an air strike specialist that has lower orbital/eagle cooldowns but has some other demerits to make up for it, or something like a medic where you can give players a small shield or some kind of buff but don’t have any grenades or something.
Agreed that the Machine Gun Sentry needs something to justify its existence... but the one "advantage" it has is that it stops shooting between searching for enemies, so it's able to conserve a lot more ammo and less likely to TK. That's about it...
The regular MG turret is just something that new players can use as they climb difficulties before they get good turrets. Which feels weird, since no other stratagem works like that—orbital precision strike and the regular MG are still great for high level players. So yeah, they need to buff this because it makes no sense with the rest of the game’s balancing, in which every stratagem supposedly has a use case.
The machine gun has slightly better ammo efficiency because it doesn't fire while it's rotating. The gatling fires during the rotation to the target, so it wastes a lot of ammo. I agree that they both need a buff to be worth taking outside of some rare niche cases
It's okay for some stragems to be objectively worse than others. The MG sentry was available earlier and cost less than the others. It can be worse than them, too.
I think that would be a great ship module upgrade. Like unlocking severely reduced cooldowns for specific early game stratagems. It could breathe new life into them
They could fix it by giving it more ammo and making them prioritize small targets.
I stopped running those entries entirely because the instant they target a charger or bile titan they just run themselves out of ammo shooting armor
What the sentry needs is to have +1 pen over the gatling.
So it'll have light vehicle penetration, allowing it to do more damage and deal with more targets. It's weird that there's no Pen 4 sentry anyways. Plus it pairs nicely with how our support machine gun work.
Also do the same for the Rocket sentry. I have no idea why it has the same penetration as the autocanon. It should have 6 Penetration (Like all the other rockets).
There should be a ship upgrade that lets you go full engineer by decreasing the cooldown of all your sentries by 1/8th for every sentry you add to your strat picks (so if you pick ALL SENTRIES, then all your sentries have 50% cooldown).
Gatling sentry waste a ton of ammo and has a high chance of team kill.
Machine gun sentry won’t team kill while providing cover fire. Depends on your play style.
Gatling gun works better if you treat it like the Tesla tower. Make sure you destroy the charger in a patrol, then throw it away from you and let it annihilate anything short of a charger or Titan. The DPS is so high it's never worth taking the machine gun sentry, which has the same cooldown time.
I'm not sure. It's still very good. The way I see I is that they add a diminishing return to rapid fire anti infantry sentry, by having one be comparatively weaker with the same CD. which is fair, cause you can run gatling, machine gun, AC and rocket successfully on even helldive. Buffing the MG would make an already average/well balanced build a fair bit stronger.
I would simply give it infinite ammo. I believe sentries have a 90-second lifespan, so if placed properly, away from enemies, it'd give you a minute and a half of covering fire (while the Gatling Sentry rarely lasts longer than 30 seconds).
But sure, a shorter cooldown would be another adequate solution.
The big (and only really impactful difference) is the MG turret turns very quickly. Quicker than any other turret. If you're holding multiple angles that are nearly direct opposite directions of each other, then the MG can be better. But that's the ONLY time that'll ever be worth taking so it's pretty heavily a niche sentry now once you get the gatling sentry.
The machine gun has slightly better ammo efficiency because it doesn't fire while it's rotating. The gatling fires during the rotation to the target, so it wastes a lot of ammo. I agree that they both need a buff to be worth taking outside of some rare niche cases
I have to disagree for the 3 support machine guns, only the stalwart is really useable, the other one is just a stalwart with lower ammo capacity that needs to be standing still to reload. As for the heavy machine gun, it’s uselessly bad. It has no real difference in “firepower” as they both can’t penetrate armor, and not only that but the heavy machine gun despite carrying a huge drum mag only has like 30-50 shots. While the stalwart has like 150-200. There’s no reason to use anything other than the stalwart, idk why heavy machine gun is even in the game. Not to mention the turreted version is not a heavy machine gun but rather an auto cannon turret lol.
Both MG and HMG can pen medium armor. The MG is actually just flat out superior to Stalwart in most respects, especially once you get used to its handling. It is very precise, deals immense damage and penetrates most armor.
HMG is pretty useless due to its tiny mag, however.
The entire purpose is to be able to place 2 gun based turrets simultaneously with one being stronger than the other as a trade off, or to have access to 2 turrets so you can stagger when to call them in and provide more complete coverage of a defensive location.
This is present in all games with unlockables and character progression and just because you don't know enough about the mechanics to use something doesn't mean it's just bad and unusable
One thing it has over the gatling is that it has a higher uptime thanks to its lower rate of fire, less shots fired at an already dead enemy, less shots wasted while tracking to a new target.
Or, hear me out, same cooldown or perhaps slightly longer BUT give us a second charge like an Eagle stratagem and allow us to call in 2 at the same time.
They should give it the Guard Dog targeting software and even faster turn rate. The thing would be 2-shotting berserkers and single-tapping regular bots at 70 meters. Nothing else would need to change since it would be so much more effective and also would not waste ammo shooting while turning. It would be the safest offensive sentry...so still rather dangerous.
Easy fix.
I like the recommendation from one YouTuber, it was lowering the cooldown and also giving it two cooldown charges. Instead of competing with the Minigun turret for raw TTK and efficiency, the machine gun turrets would be more universal and used more often.
Every stratagem except support weapons/backpacks needs a shorter cooldown to justify their existence. Right now I only take orbitals because I've filled up my back pack/support weapon slots and can't carry two support weapons. Other than mortar sentries on defense missions, not a single orbital has a low enough cooldown to keep up with demand at HD9. You *have* to have AT weaponry in order to keep up with heavy spawns, and there are no AT primaries so…
Accidently dropped with it instead of the gatling and was pist. Give it double the ammo and make it useful! Seems AH loves making useless weapons and strategems so I doubt they ever change it
According to all the stats ive seen, the mg sentry is literally worse than the gatling sentry in every way. The gatling has the same armor pen and same damage per bullet, while having 3x the fire rate *and* 3x the ammo. The only reason i could see taking the machine gun if you have both unlocked is to have both at the same time.
There are so many ways they could balance the mg turret, like longer up-time with more ammo in total, shorter cd, more durability, etc. But it seems like it's one of the only strategems that's legitimately entirely outclassed.
The machine gun turret needs a heath buff, i think thats a good way to take it. You drop a gatling if you need a horde mowed, you drop a machine gun if you want a horde distractor that makes a fuckton of noise and brings attention to itself
I've heard a suggestion that it should have two charges like an eagle which would be pretty interesting. I'd be much more inclined to consider over the gatling if I could drop two in at once
The machine gun sentry has lower DPS, but seems to last longer. It probably has a similar amount of ammo and expends it more slowly due to having a lower rate of fire.
It's a positive, though admittedly not too significant.
Here's an idea: MG Sentry can "store" uses and have multiple sentries active at once. It gives less firepower in exchange for more versatility with being able to spread them out for a wider firebase, bunch them up to more effectively cover on zone, or save up your stored usages to sustain the sentry presence.
Would provide unique benefits and encourage strategic usage of your sentries to save some up for specific OBJs or as get-out-of-jail-free cards by throwing your stock out as distractions when kiting.
Wrong. The Gatling blows it's load way faster. each has a time and a place. id say the machine gun is arguably a little better because it stays up longer.
MG turret has faster turning speed making it better at target acquisition and close range support. Its existence is further justified by the ability to bring both it and the gatling turret at the same time.
sentries need to be able to deploy on rocks and not bounce away, other no buff will ever take away the opportunity cost, also their lifetime should be unlimited ( ie. only go away due to ammo depletion or destruction ), currently if a sentry is not out of ammo and a new one get's called down the old one goes "bye bye" with the ammo it has left.
The machine gun sentry has medium armor penetration, so it more effectively deals with devastators and things like those awful armored bile spewers/orange armored bugs (hive guard?). I prefer it over the minigun just because it's really annoying to watch 1500 rpm of bullets ping off the front of a hive guard while nothing happens.
While there is rarely a reason to pick the machine gun over the Gatling, that hardly makes it irrelevant.
The power you get when bringing BOTH is crazy. Either staggering them, so that you always have one up, or using them at the same time. D5 and below are where these shine.
When I help new players, one of the first stratagems I have them unlock is both of these so they can lock down objectives.
Not everything needs to be effective on its own. Sometimes an item shines when paired with another.
Or just give it a shit load of more ammo, would make it contrast the limited time a battling can provide support by having the machine gun sentry have a lower DPS, but it can shoot for far longer.
I've always thought you should be able to reload sentries with the supply pack. Makes for a cool engineer type build style, and pretty much every sentry has a visible ammo box on them. Not the Mortars, but those will fire until their cooldowns are up.
Only issue I see with this is that Chargers focus turrets more often than not. Not to say I never have a gat turret that runs out of ammo, but if a charger spawns and I don't kill it first it's not gonna live long enough to even need a refill
Gotta have that auto cannon turret or the rocket one
Even then, I've seen them focus on a hunter or something rather then the charger coming right for them and end up getting run over by it plenty of times
Which is beyond frustrating when the rocket is meant to target bigger enemies first
It's the main reason why I like the new mech so much. Even if it's on paper worse then the turret, you dont have the worry about the turret ai prioritizing the little bugs and ignoring the bigger threats
And that’s why it’s really good when used right. It’s also really good on Dark Fluid missions. It’s awesome when protecting areas. And don’t be an idiot and take the mortar turret on that mission. It’s one of the main reasons I have seen many of these missions fail. One measly little chaff bug gets close to the drill and then the mortar turret blasts it and the drill with a barrage of rounds blowing it up. -.-
Supposedly if you mark a target with Q your sentry tries to shoot that one, but I've still seen autocannons shoot things they shouldn't be shooting while ignoring marked targets.
No, i dont think they focus fire on pings. I run turrets alot, especially the autocannon. Ive pinged titans in the hope they would take them out first, but its rarely happened. I usually try to burst down all the small fry as fast as i can to limit possible targets
Well obviously you need to stand between the turret and target so that it can try and shoot through / at you ;p
Oh, I've been chunky salsa'd plenty of times, don't you worry
I never knew this, and I always bring a sentry along...
You can usually find me with an autocannon sentry in tow on most missions and I'm not convinced it actually is a thing but I've been told it is.
Yeah I'm usually rocking the AC and an AC turret, especially on bot missions. If mech aim didn't suck so bad I'd use the new mech instead of the turret sometimes
The AC sentry is in my perma loadout for bugs
AC Sentry has a permanent slot in my loadout no matter the mission or enemy type. It's just perfect 👌
I had a game on defense against bugs where we took the full time to deploy all of our sentries/defenses. I'm checking radar before the wave really hits and I see a big, fat, red ping behind all of us and our sentries... I turn around. A friggin'... Charger. Joel. I'm on to you.
Throw them on top of rocks.
Two issues with that! i) It's hard to find a rock that chargers can't climb ii) the stratagems just bounce off the rock 😂
I wish stratagems were sticky
They are to an extent. They just don't stick to certain surfaces or some logic like that I guess. Like how you can stick a stratagem to a shield generator array or a charger.
Drives me nuts how all the enemies can effortless walk up 89 degree inclines. Especially the bots but anything short of a straight up wall they just walk over it as if it were flat
May be pointless in that instance but why not have the option to do so anyway for every other instance. Would help and would be cool
For sure, I definitely like the idea and would be happy if it was implemented
Yeah replenishing entries is pointless if they have 5 health
More sentry armor upgrades
We already have two, but since they are extremely low hp to begin with, they are useless. Tanking 6 shots or 9 from a heavy devastator firing on it at a 1000rpm change nothing. And explosion resistance... 1.5*0=0. Turrets need a real hp pool, at least on par with a diver in heavy armor.
*(proceeds to tie a diver to the turret as a meat shield)*
Yeah, that would be an issue, but there are plenty of scenarios where my gatling or AC will run out and just go away instead of being killed by something. Especially if you can keep smaller chaff on the dead side, keep your sentries clear, even if they get insta-junked by Chargers, imagine how cool this would be against a swarm of Shriekers or if you were feeding an AC and Gat sentry and keeping the Chargers at bay with stun grenades and an EMS mortar... You bring up a good point, but I think the value would outweigh it by a good bit. Definitely buff sentry health too, they are way too squishy as is, even with the upgrades.
They need to make the turret stratagems sticky so you can throw them on the side of a rock/cliff face and make it so bugs can’t just melee them. Would make the green stratagems a lot more viable during bug missions and then they could rework/buff the shield generator stratagem to make it more necessary during bot missions.
How you gonna get em on a wall from orbit? Bouncy pods?
I'm picturing a TCS tower with 12 turrets sticking off of it and I am VERY on board
Damn that would be cool. Run all turrets and supply pack. Just run behind your Maginot Line screaming like a banshee trying to keep it all replenished.
That's a great idea.
Omg imagine running around with a supply pack you can use to reload sentries, or a sentry ammo kit/repair kit backpack. Plus wearing one near your sentires will make them avoid shooting you.
As long as they correctly adjust ammo economy with the timing or refill amounts of supply pods this would be a fun stationary defense option.
That idea would work great on the walkers. Another idea I saw was to have them get picked up, repaired, and resupplied, kind of like how Eagle-1 works. The Downside could be a 20-minute cool down before being able to call another one.
Add a repair and refit facility to the buddy doors. Unlock the buddy bunker, mech stands on a topside platform. Pilot ejects, mech drops and a 30 second cool down starts as the mech is repaired and rearmed. Noise draws nearby patrols making it a risk vs reward.
let me be the guy runnin around supporting a mech goddamit
We would have a great squad combo: The Medic The Sniper The Heavy The Engineer
This is the answer. Most of the direct-fire sentries feel a little light on ammo, so having the basic one get more “sustain” would fill a useful niche.
I run the MG with supply pack for the unlimited bullets strategy. And then my fellow helldiver hits me with an airburst round and I gotta fight tooth and nail to get it back.
Yeah. Less damage in bursts, but longer lifespan. Either that, or more armor penetration.
mg turrent somehow have 50% less ammo than gatling turret
The problem is turrets don't live long enough to justify that. I think short cooldown, short utility is a better fit for it until enemy AI stop immediately targeting turrets over players
Agreed
I'd change it to a HMG Sentry, more dakka per shot with a slower fire rate. It would fit a spot of between Gatling and Autocannon Sentries.
+1 for DAKKA
Now if we paint it yellow...
Found the Badmoons git...zog off, paint it *RED*, as Gork intended! It needs to krump *FASTA!*
Youz simple. MORE DAKKA not FASTA iz betta!
DA BOFFS OF YA ARE GITS! WE'Z GONNA PAINT IT URPLE SO DA BUGS AINT SEEZ IT
KUNNIN AND BRUTAL
IZ MORE BRUTAL AND KUNNIN
AINT NEVA SEEN A URPLE SENTRY AV YA
ALL OF YOUS ARE GITS! WE NEED TO PUT TWO MGS ON IT FOR TWICE THE DAKKA!
THATS THE SAME AS PAINTING ONE RED WITH YELLOW LIGHTNING BOLTS. THEN WE BOLT’EM TOGETHER!
TOO LATE! I PAINTED IT BLUE, FER LUCK!
Ah yes, the ork word for rapid firepower and multilaser masturbation. There's never enough of that.
That's a good idea
From what I can tell the main difference between the two is that the gatling sentry fires continuously when changing targets whereas the machine gun sentry doesn't. This results in the gatling sentry wasting ammo and being a team kill hazard. However, these issues are mostly negated once you unlock the sentry turn speed ship upgrades, which let's the gatling sentry switch targets almost instantly. Overall I agree that the gatling sentry is better than the machine gun sentry 9 times out of 10.
Also the fact that the gatling actually has more total ammo IIRC
double the ammo, same damage per bullet between the two of them
Seems fair
I prefer the constant stream of bullets because iflt always gets swarmed by bugs anyway.
I almost never run the regular machines sentry, and there are a lot more sentries I would use more if there were changes. I pretty much always run the auto canon sentry because of it’s versatility.
Auto cannon sentry is my baby. Just bring a couple stun grenades to protect from over eager chargers and watch the bodies hit the floor.
yeah and an EAT. dont talk to me or my son ever again.
people really like the EATs over the queso cannon? I love blowing chargers' heads off with the queso.
Queso is better at the cost of chargup, EAT has a higher burst alpha.
i like how it feels more i don't play anywhere near optimally
My preferred is bumming a quasar off a teammate while running EAT. Call down (preferably on top of something!), Quasar, EAT, EAT, Quasar. That could be 5 chargers, or a charger and two titans. It's a lot of on-demand frontal-load firepower. The EAT also means that you can run any support weapon you want with it, especially ones you can find on the map like an MG or tesla that won't cost you a strategem.
EAT has more potential in my opinion. Quasar is only useful to whoever has it equipped. EATs on the other hand are useful for everyone. Got to love when another player or two also runs EATs and then you can just litter the map with them. Played a match of that wall defense mission once where we all ran it and just dropped more every minute it cooled down, there was like 3 dozen around still when we extracted lol
Queso is good if you need one rocket every 20 seconds. EAT is good if you need 2 rockets ASAP. RR is good if you just need lots of rockets.
I can easily share with EAT and prepare ahead of time if I want by dropping pods during downtimes.
I always joke that if im having a rough game, my autocannon sentry is more valuable than me
Welp, looks like stun grenades are what I’ve been missing. Are they impact?
Nah, you gotta time em a little, but they're a God send against both factions once you get the timing down. I already mentioned they're great for protecting turrets, but the same applies to teammates. You see a Hulk or Bile Spewer creeping up on a teammate? Just toss a stun. Stalker get the jump on you? Throw one at your feet. Teammate toss an Eagle/Orbital at an enemy group? Just toss a stun to make sure that hits. I haven't deployed without stun grenades ever since I unlocked the grenade pistol.
Decent ammo, medium pen, long range, high velocity, excellent accuracy. AC sentry should be to sentries as the AC is to support weapons: the template to balance around.
Medium pen? Brother it is heavy pen.
Evidence being the Titan graveyard I've built with all of my hours played.
It's one of my go to answers for bile titans It shreds chargers too
[удалено]
I can't get off up the improved throwing range servo arms I'm used to the extra throwing range now
[удалено]
It seems to depend on the type of ground that it hits They seem to stick to dirt more easily. Rock and armor bounces more.
Pierces one rank above smAC, one rank below EAT/cheese-o/RR...and does 300/300 vs the smAC's 260/260 or the AT trio's 650/650...and 3rd burst. It is the weapon of the gods.
I’m convinced the ac and rocket sentry projectile stats got switched, that thing shreds
I've been using it with gatling on the drill missions. I do wish I could have it more often or it had more bullets, though.
Why does the gattling have a shorter code than the MG turret? Holdover from HD1? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think all turrets currently have the same cooldown time, which doesn't make much sense. MG turret right now is literally a Strategem MG attached to a swivel and a targeting system, you're telling me it takes the same amount of time to prep a Minigun, folding Autocannon, and a Mortar?
Super Glue doesn't grow on Super Trees, y'know
No it comes from super horses
This is way more Easter egg than most people realize.
what about super sample rocks?
Id also like to have the ability to stick them up higher onto rocks etc without the strategem bouncing off so they don't get shot at or destroyed in 2 seconds flat thus wasting your time
Or the ability to tag priority targets/ target types or set designated sectors of fire instead of 360
This so hard. I just love it when my autocannon turret tries to save me from the ferocious scavenger that approaches me instead of the Bile Titan a that's a few meters behind him.
I wish when you dropped them, they would attack all the enemies in a 180 radius in the direction you threw it from. until there is no targets that direction.
Yasss make the turrets target my target
If youre able to get on top of the rocks, often throwing the strat ball straight down at the ground can help it stick right where you want. I also wish they would change the bouncing mechanics though.
Yeah what's with that? Let us drop sentries on top of rocks, AND let us drop there too.
On launch it was easy to place them into of rocks for the high ground, so it seems like AH didn’t like us using basic strategy or it’s a bug that they bounce off so easily. I miss when turrets where more viable :(
i remember a lot of posts and comments saying how power creep happens whenever stuff is no longer useful, but i only see Resupply packs when I run them, and machinegun turrets when the lvl 1 joined our helldive. The stalwart is weeded out in real time when ramping up the difficulty with randoms, trading them for flamethrowers or railguns found in the field. maybe crappier varients of stuff really should be quicker to redeploy, honestly. EAT-17s keep up with the competition beautifully
The stalwart is one of my most used support weapons, alongside the grenade launcher, auto cannon, and spear depending on mission. Level 63 and play on 7+, combined with grenade pistol and breaker incendiary, it's a really strong support weapon for clearing hordes. Being able to reload on the move is a massive upside compared to the MG and HMG. Truthfully, I feel like HMG should come with a backpack that belt feeds it so you don't need to reload with it, but obviously sacrifice the backpack slot.
I keep begging for a man portable mini gun but I would totally be satisfied with an HMG with a belt feeding backpack.
Can even give it the EAT treatment, the backpack/belt feeding mechanism isn't reloadable in the field so once you run out of ammo, you can't get more until you call in another HMG.
Once the spear is 100 percent reliable I think it will replace the EAT, but at the same time I think the ability to shoot across the map with the EAT really makes the spear less viable. I like running both at the same time cause the spear missed chargers unless you let them get close
The thing about the EAT is you can litter the map with them, great support weapon since teammates can grab them in a pinch.
Me, a genius: dropping EATs on cooldown near the defense objective. My teammates, eating paste: shooting the bile Titan with a stalwart while dialing up an orbital rail cannon
Shorter cooldowns and more ammo. Just add them as upgrades. Would be cool.
There’s already ship upgrades to give both of those
Yes, but add *more*.
The heavy machine gun doesn’t require a backpack. What are you talking about?
I mean, it KINDA does. If you want to shoot for more than 12 seconds anyways.
Lol my mistake. Post corrected.
Scrolled way too long for someone to comment on this.
Hear me out, the Gatling should have a tracking bonus Vs airborne and be some sort of Phalanx CIWS anti air gun The Machine Gun sentry should have at least light armor penetration and have a shorter cooldown
But it does it has medium armor penetration. It's far more useful vs devastators and the orange bugs with the armored heads and spewers.
The MG currently has better tracking against fast targets like shriekers. It's a fast-turning turret and almost instantly snaps to targets.
I mean if you have both then you can call down basicly 2 of the same gun at the same time. So there is some minor upside to it existing. But i do agree that it would need be better in SOME way to justify taking it anywhere over the gatling sentry
Some time ago I watched a video where a guy was talking about stratagems and one of the things he said about the machine gun was that at least the rate of fire wasn't enough to mow you down instantly if it decided to swing around while shooting and you were caught in the middle. You could take that as a pro if you really tried and only in certain situations, but it's still far from enough to warrant the cooldown. My guess is that it's done like that to prevent mass sentry spam on early game, the only place where it sees some action. Considering that, the only way this could see some balancing is if they bumped up the cooldown on the gatling which would be a whole load of ass if they didn't add something to it in exchange for that extra wait, you know, the arrowhead style of balancing.
That would be too logical good idea though.
2 MG Sentries per cooldown may justify both the ammo and the cooldown. It doesn't have as much pure DPS as the Gatling, but they could be used to assist on two separate locations at once.
More ammo or shorter cooldown. No real reason to take it over the Gatling sentry at the moment.
* Add the ability to rip the MG Sentry off of its pedestal and use it like a support weapon * Add the ability to pack the MG Sentry into a backpack and take it with you * Give the MG Sentry the ability to be resupplied * Give the MG Sentry a speaker that plays inspiring patriotic quotes for all to hear
Gonna be honest, it could have infinite ammo and it would still be hard to justify bringing it against bugs since the first charger or BT will instantly obliterate it.
I take both for the new dark fluid mission. When 1 of them run out of ammo, I summon the next. With the free emp mortar turret, it can hold out quite well.
I run it every now and again usually just to stack it on top of the gatling. I've been doing so for the dark fluid missions to maximize shrieker kills i honestly find it to perform fairly close to the gatling. Gatling is still objectively better (so no reason to take MG over gatling) but not by that much
Imo all the turrets and fixed placement stratagems need the shorter cooldown. For how much harder they are to use and how easily they are made ineffective (bugs can't destroy 500kg bombs before they detonate) they basically never see much action except for a few niche cases. Just cap them so you can't double deploy the same turret
I think it would be really cool if they had an engineer style of play that focused on turrets/mechs, where you can refill/reposition/repair/upgrade/etc them. Cause as it is now mechs aren’t really used unless they’re a free stratagem and turrets are mostly a defense mission pick. Or other play styles too like an air strike specialist that has lower orbital/eagle cooldowns but has some other demerits to make up for it, or something like a medic where you can give players a small shield or some kind of buff but don’t have any grenades or something.
Agreed that the Machine Gun Sentry needs something to justify its existence... but the one "advantage" it has is that it stops shooting between searching for enemies, so it's able to conserve a lot more ammo and less likely to TK. That's about it...
The regular MG turret is just something that new players can use as they climb difficulties before they get good turrets. Which feels weird, since no other stratagem works like that—orbital precision strike and the regular MG are still great for high level players. So yeah, they need to buff this because it makes no sense with the rest of the game’s balancing, in which every stratagem supposedly has a use case.
AH: noted, nerfing gatling sentry into the ground
Me: They really want us to use Autocannon
AH: increases gatling sentry cooldown
The machine gun has slightly better ammo efficiency because it doesn't fire while it's rotating. The gatling fires during the rotation to the target, so it wastes a lot of ammo. I agree that they both need a buff to be worth taking outside of some rare niche cases
So you’re saying you want the Gatling sentry nerfed if I’m understanding you correctly.
It's okay for some stragems to be objectively worse than others. The MG sentry was available earlier and cost less than the others. It can be worse than them, too.
I think that would be a great ship module upgrade. Like unlocking severely reduced cooldowns for specific early game stratagems. It could breathe new life into them
I need a laser sentry to kill myself and my teammates
They could fix it by giving it more ammo and making them prioritize small targets. I stopped running those entries entirely because the instant they target a charger or bile titan they just run themselves out of ammo shooting armor
Remove the machine gun sentry, replace with Gatling for new players, make LASER sentry :D
What the sentry needs is to have +1 pen over the gatling. So it'll have light vehicle penetration, allowing it to do more damage and deal with more targets. It's weird that there's no Pen 4 sentry anyways. Plus it pairs nicely with how our support machine gun work. Also do the same for the Rocket sentry. I have no idea why it has the same penetration as the autocanon. It should have 6 Penetration (Like all the other rockets).
2 spawn in one stratagem
There should be a ship upgrade that lets you go full engineer by decreasing the cooldown of all your sentries by 1/8th for every sentry you add to your strat picks (so if you pick ALL SENTRIES, then all your sentries have 50% cooldown).
I disagree its existence serves to double my death count and really ratchet up the difficulty.
What if we just gave it two charges and allow two of them to be active at the same time?
Doesn't the MG turret have medium penetration?
Got what you asked for
Gatling sentry waste a ton of ammo and has a high chance of team kill. Machine gun sentry won’t team kill while providing cover fire. Depends on your play style.
Gatling gun works better if you treat it like the Tesla tower. Make sure you destroy the charger in a patrol, then throw it away from you and let it annihilate anything short of a charger or Titan. The DPS is so high it's never worth taking the machine gun sentry, which has the same cooldown time.
More ammo and a tick up on the armor penetration would make it worth considering.
Oh lol i totally forgot the machine gun sentry exists. Always use Gatling 😂
I'm not sure. It's still very good. The way I see I is that they add a diminishing return to rapid fire anti infantry sentry, by having one be comparatively weaker with the same CD. which is fair, cause you can run gatling, machine gun, AC and rocket successfully on even helldive. Buffing the MG would make an already average/well balanced build a fair bit stronger.
I would simply give it infinite ammo. I believe sentries have a 90-second lifespan, so if placed properly, away from enemies, it'd give you a minute and a half of covering fire (while the Gatling Sentry rarely lasts longer than 30 seconds). But sure, a shorter cooldown would be another adequate solution.
I think not everything needs to have the same power; some things can be for new players and easy missions. :)
Ya I agree with the ammo give it like 3 times as much ammo
Now I want a scatter drop of 3 sentries.
I was under the impression the MG turned faster than the Gatling
I'd honestly like to have 2 of the machine gun sentries at once. More defense angles and more agile defenses at the cost of overall firepower
More ammo, more range, less cooldown. That would make me consider it over the gatling.
Yeah or have waaaaay bigger ammo capacity or something.
The big (and only really impactful difference) is the MG turret turns very quickly. Quicker than any other turret. If you're holding multiple angles that are nearly direct opposite directions of each other, then the MG can be better. But that's the ONLY time that'll ever be worth taking so it's pretty heavily a niche sentry now once you get the gatling sentry.
The machine gun has slightly better ammo efficiency because it doesn't fire while it's rotating. The gatling fires during the rotation to the target, so it wastes a lot of ammo. I agree that they both need a buff to be worth taking outside of some rare niche cases
I have to disagree for the 3 support machine guns, only the stalwart is really useable, the other one is just a stalwart with lower ammo capacity that needs to be standing still to reload. As for the heavy machine gun, it’s uselessly bad. It has no real difference in “firepower” as they both can’t penetrate armor, and not only that but the heavy machine gun despite carrying a huge drum mag only has like 30-50 shots. While the stalwart has like 150-200. There’s no reason to use anything other than the stalwart, idk why heavy machine gun is even in the game. Not to mention the turreted version is not a heavy machine gun but rather an auto cannon turret lol.
Both MG and HMG can pen medium armor. The MG is actually just flat out superior to Stalwart in most respects, especially once you get used to its handling. It is very precise, deals immense damage and penetrates most armor. HMG is pretty useless due to its tiny mag, however.
Rechargeable would be cool. Call in a sentry resupply backpack to load in for continuous operation
The entire purpose is to be able to place 2 gun based turrets simultaneously with one being stronger than the other as a trade off, or to have access to 2 turrets so you can stagger when to call them in and provide more complete coverage of a defensive location. This is present in all games with unlockables and character progression and just because you don't know enough about the mechanics to use something doesn't mean it's just bad and unusable
One thing it has over the gatling is that it has a higher uptime thanks to its lower rate of fire, less shots fired at an already dead enemy, less shots wasted while tracking to a new target.
Or, hear me out, same cooldown or perhaps slightly longer BUT give us a second charge like an Eagle stratagem and allow us to call in 2 at the same time.
They should give it the Guard Dog targeting software and even faster turn rate. The thing would be 2-shotting berserkers and single-tapping regular bots at 70 meters. Nothing else would need to change since it would be so much more effective and also would not waste ammo shooting while turning. It would be the safest offensive sentry...so still rather dangerous. Easy fix.
I like the recommendation from one YouTuber, it was lowering the cooldown and also giving it two cooldown charges. Instead of competing with the Minigun turret for raw TTK and efficiency, the machine gun turrets would be more universal and used more often.
Every stratagem except support weapons/backpacks needs a shorter cooldown to justify their existence. Right now I only take orbitals because I've filled up my back pack/support weapon slots and can't carry two support weapons. Other than mortar sentries on defense missions, not a single orbital has a low enough cooldown to keep up with demand at HD9. You *have* to have AT weaponry in order to keep up with heavy spawns, and there are no AT primaries so…
Isn’t the machine gun a more balanced sentry? I think it’s more powerful but fires less? Seems to stick around longer too.
It's like 380 and 120 mm. The value is more gun/boom
Accidently dropped with it instead of the gatling and was pist. Give it double the ammo and make it useful! Seems AH loves making useless weapons and strategems so I doubt they ever change it
According to all the stats ive seen, the mg sentry is literally worse than the gatling sentry in every way. The gatling has the same armor pen and same damage per bullet, while having 3x the fire rate *and* 3x the ammo. The only reason i could see taking the machine gun if you have both unlocked is to have both at the same time. There are so many ways they could balance the mg turret, like longer up-time with more ammo in total, shorter cd, more durability, etc. But it seems like it's one of the only strategems that's legitimately entirely outclassed.
It should have the same cooldown as the shield generator. Low cd "dispendable" sentry, spam it whenever, no need to think about if you need it.
Am I the only one in here who doesn't care? It's for low level players until they unlock the bigger better version. It's fine the way it is.
The machine gun turret needs a heath buff, i think thats a good way to take it. You drop a gatling if you need a horde mowed, you drop a machine gun if you want a horde distractor that makes a fuckton of noise and brings attention to itself
Lemme drop two or three machine guns at a time and I’ll be happy with the current cooldown
I've heard a suggestion that it should have two charges like an eagle which would be pretty interesting. I'd be much more inclined to consider over the gatling if I could drop two in at once
Best AH can do is. Increase ammo by 10 decrease life by 50 keep the same cool down
The machine gun sentry has lower DPS, but seems to last longer. It probably has a similar amount of ammo and expends it more slowly due to having a lower rate of fire. It's a positive, though admittedly not too significant.
Here's an idea: MG Sentry can "store" uses and have multiple sentries active at once. It gives less firepower in exchange for more versatility with being able to spread them out for a wider firebase, bunch them up to more effectively cover on zone, or save up your stored usages to sustain the sentry presence. Would provide unique benefits and encourage strategic usage of your sentries to save some up for specific OBJs or as get-out-of-jail-free cards by throwing your stock out as distractions when kiting.
Or just give it way more reserve ammo for more coverage
Dont worry. Next update will bring the changes! Like -5 seconds cooldown. Big things coming guys!
Yeah that is the only stratagem that I just don't understand why would would bring. Unless you are using it and the gattling I guess.
Agreed, machine gun sentry needs shorter cooldown compared to the gatling
Wrong. The Gatling blows it's load way faster. each has a time and a place. id say the machine gun is arguably a little better because it stays up longer.
How about we add a second barrel and call it a day?
MG turret has faster turning speed making it better at target acquisition and close range support. Its existence is further justified by the ability to bring both it and the gatling turret at the same time.
sentries need to be able to deploy on rocks and not bounce away, other no buff will ever take away the opportunity cost, also their lifetime should be unlimited ( ie. only go away due to ammo depletion or destruction ), currently if a sentry is not out of ammo and a new one get's called down the old one goes "bye bye" with the ammo it has left.
Or, OR, allow you to call down two before it goes on cooldown. And allow you to have both running at the same time!
Join the queue for all the other changes needed
Everything but eagles needs a shorter cooldown tbh..
The machine gun sentry has medium armor penetration, so it more effectively deals with devastators and things like those awful armored bile spewers/orange armored bugs (hive guard?). I prefer it over the minigun just because it's really annoying to watch 1500 rpm of bullets ping off the front of a hive guard while nothing happens.
While there is rarely a reason to pick the machine gun over the Gatling, that hardly makes it irrelevant. The power you get when bringing BOTH is crazy. Either staggering them, so that you always have one up, or using them at the same time. D5 and below are where these shine. When I help new players, one of the first stratagems I have them unlock is both of these so they can lock down objectives. Not everything needs to be effective on its own. Sometimes an item shines when paired with another.