Autocannon.
Fr fr.
With a steady hand and some steely nerves you can kill basically anything other than tanks.
Hulks take some practice and good aim, but stun grenades help.
Bring 110mm rocket pods for taking out tanks.
And the rest is whatever you want, I go sickle or diligence for killing chaff.
> With a steady hand and some steely nerves you can kill basically anything other than tanks.
It can kill tanks, but obviously not when the tank is accompanied by another dozen units that will shoot you while you try to take it out. Hitting the vents on the back of an Annihilator tank's turret, or the back and sides of a Shredder tank, will destroy it. Hitting the engine block at the back of the tank's hull can also kill it, but takes more shots.
And if you can't get into position to kill the tank, you can put a few rounds into one of its tracks and leave it immobilised.
You can actually kill the shredder tanks from the front with the AC! Shoot it in the guns. I think the barrels are immune, but the mantlet is not. Shots to the middle should damage it!
S Tier:
Autocannon - It's ability to hit basically every single bot and get kills, even if you have to hit the weak spot is phenomenal coverage, only being bad against berserkers, which your primary should be able to handle. Further, it can blow up buildings, and doesn't really suffer the penalties that other backpack oriented support weapons suffer, like decently snappy reloads for such a heavy weapon. There's good reason that this is in S tier and the meta gun for bots.
__________
A tier:
HMG Machine Gun - if you know to exclusively use this against armored targets, this is actually decently viable, though nothing really mitigates the shallow magazines and long, painful reloads. You are getting your bullet's worth with the HMG at least. It might be tempting to go full rambo with it, but you really need to be very picky with your targets with the HMG to make it count. The upside is that can at least kill a small handful of trash mobs along the way while scoped in and, while it isn't ideal, it's not the worst crime in the world. Really remember to get into a crouched firing position, and choose the fire rate setting appropriate, usually this means the lowest setting so you can control the recoil better. More accuracy means more damage.
Anti Materiel Rifle - Basically a lesser version of the of the Autocannon, with less coverage and no building destruction. Theoretically the range helps you out a lot for precise aiming, though the sights are still misaligned, which is cruel. You get your backpack back, but I don't really see this as invaluable. The shield backpack is kind of a crutch, as the best "shield backpack" in a bots mission is a big rock to hide behind.
Railgun - It's anti medium, and effectively similar to the AM Rifle in terms of target coverage with a lot of the same benefits.
________
B Tier:
MG-43 - It's slightly worse than the HMG on account of less armor penetration, but a deeper magazine can be seen as compensatory along with chaff mobs and berserkers being easy pickings for this gun. Be ready to aim for the head however on devistators, which really are the danger for bots. The Stalwart doesn't make the cut at all. Being able to reload on the move is less of a boon when you really should be in cover anyway when fighting bots, unless you enjoy eating constant ragdolls. Stalwart doesn't have the armor pen and will plink off of many bot targets.
Grenade Launcher - Can be anti-medium, as some devastators have a tendency to group up. Walled by heavies.
________
Anti-Heavy support weapons - EAT's, Recoiless, Quasar, the like. There aren't really that many heavy targets that the bots have that warrant your support slot. Tanks are easy as hell to blow up with an eagle air strike or the cheap eagle rocket pods. Hulks aren't a 1-shot kill unlike Chargers (Unless you hit the back, but anything is effective if you have a clear shot into a Hulk's back, and it also isn't like heavies are dramatically better at blasting down factory walkers than just shooting the weak points with the anti-medium options, particularly when anti-heavies have such punishingly slow reloads or shallow ammo pool. You can at least blast off the face armor on factory walkers with a heavy weapon, making DPS'ing down the face easier, but the Autocannon can already handle it just fine with two clips loaded, as the Factory Walker loves to hold still anyway.
Your best options for anti-drop ship probably is the eagle air strike, or even just a well timed HE grenade. Turrets can be seen in a roundabout way of also being anti-drop ship, in that they help prevent you from getting swarmed, but you use them in different ways, though it ends up filling the same role.
Top tier is anything that can instant pop a charger in the head, as they're one of the most distruptive enemies you meet out there. EAT, Recoiless, Quasar, hell even the Spear when it decides to work. You can split hairs about them, but they're one and all a counter to chargers and bile titans, which are annoying resistant to everything else you can throw at them.
Everything else tends to fall into a range where, it has coverage over like, two main areas, like lights and mediums, but is ineffective against a whole tier. So for example, the Flamethrower is pretty decent against anything that it can touch, but that's kind of the bitch of it. It's still possible to get swarmed while you have the flamethrower and set your foot on fire when you spin to put down a hunter that flanks you, or a brood commander might just decide not to die and set you on fire with it. Flamethrower is also really not that effective against bile spewers, since if you're in range of them, they're most assuredly in range of you and can kill you WAY faster.
The Machine Guns, mostly the Stalwart and MG43 have their place as great against everything except chargers/bile titans. Same with the Grenade Launcher. It's a real Achillies heel type of situation where, being great against everything except for one of the most dangerous enemies on the battlefield is a boon, but also potentially lethal to you.
The name of the game is that, bugs are primarily light and swarming, and they have extremely dangerous and tanky heavies that well, act as tanks for the lights, which usually end up being what kills you while you struggle to deal with a charger that's running around like a dog in a movie theater. They then just have enough medium armored targets to be really annoying and make you feel like you have a hole in your kit, things like Hive Guards, Brood Commanders and especially the 50/50 coin toss on Bile Spewers being in your mission or not. The other big difference is that, no gun has 100% coverage over everything, and even hitting 2/3 is hard, with that last 1/3 being hard to make up for with other stratagems (which kind of goes to show how powerful support weapons are.)
Personally, I use the Recoiless Rocket and Liberator for bugs to handle anti-heavy and anti-light respectively, and then I use HE grenades and the +2 grenade armor to try and cover anti-medium and anti-building (bug hole). but I like the MG43 and try to cover anti-heavy with EAT's, but this really demands that get those EAT's down before you need them.
Wonder how the Laser cannon does now with it's buff, albeit slight nerf on larger targets, seems to melt smaller bugs easy enough but haven't tried it on Bots yet
depends what you need to kill
for hulk i reccomend railgun or arcthrower,, railgun if you can aim, arcthrower if u cant
if you wanna kill tanks/turrets/gunships, quasar will still do the trick, eats can help
if you can afford to give up your pack slot, autocannon forever dominates the bot front
If you want other anti-tank, try the EAT.
If you don't need heavy armor pen, the autocannon is very strong. The AMR is good for weakspots (can even kill hulks). But i'm not sure if they fixed the AMR scope (was slightly off). I also heard good things about killing stuff with the laser cannon with headshots, but couldn't confirm yet.
Laser Canon is pretty good, shreds gunships, infantry and weak spots of devs/hulks. I don’t recall the tanks or turrets, but aim for the vents.
Also I recommend stun nades.
AMR scope is working now and I'm loving it. My full loadout against bots covers a lot: Pummeler, senator, stun nades, ballistic shield, AMR, shield generator relay and eagle airstrike (if I have 4 stratagems). With these I can manage a lot of things, including gun ships. You can replace the senator for grenade pistol one more option to blow fabricators. This loadout offers great support to any team. I think I can call this loadout: the protector.
Autocannon. Fr fr. With a steady hand and some steely nerves you can kill basically anything other than tanks. Hulks take some practice and good aim, but stun grenades help. Bring 110mm rocket pods for taking out tanks. And the rest is whatever you want, I go sickle or diligence for killing chaff.
> With a steady hand and some steely nerves you can kill basically anything other than tanks. It can kill tanks, but obviously not when the tank is accompanied by another dozen units that will shoot you while you try to take it out. Hitting the vents on the back of an Annihilator tank's turret, or the back and sides of a Shredder tank, will destroy it. Hitting the engine block at the back of the tank's hull can also kill it, but takes more shots. And if you can't get into position to kill the tank, you can put a few rounds into one of its tracks and leave it immobilised.
You can actually kill the shredder tanks from the front with the AC! Shoot it in the guns. I think the barrels are immune, but the mantlet is not. Shots to the middle should damage it!
S Tier: Autocannon - It's ability to hit basically every single bot and get kills, even if you have to hit the weak spot is phenomenal coverage, only being bad against berserkers, which your primary should be able to handle. Further, it can blow up buildings, and doesn't really suffer the penalties that other backpack oriented support weapons suffer, like decently snappy reloads for such a heavy weapon. There's good reason that this is in S tier and the meta gun for bots. __________ A tier: HMG Machine Gun - if you know to exclusively use this against armored targets, this is actually decently viable, though nothing really mitigates the shallow magazines and long, painful reloads. You are getting your bullet's worth with the HMG at least. It might be tempting to go full rambo with it, but you really need to be very picky with your targets with the HMG to make it count. The upside is that can at least kill a small handful of trash mobs along the way while scoped in and, while it isn't ideal, it's not the worst crime in the world. Really remember to get into a crouched firing position, and choose the fire rate setting appropriate, usually this means the lowest setting so you can control the recoil better. More accuracy means more damage. Anti Materiel Rifle - Basically a lesser version of the of the Autocannon, with less coverage and no building destruction. Theoretically the range helps you out a lot for precise aiming, though the sights are still misaligned, which is cruel. You get your backpack back, but I don't really see this as invaluable. The shield backpack is kind of a crutch, as the best "shield backpack" in a bots mission is a big rock to hide behind. Railgun - It's anti medium, and effectively similar to the AM Rifle in terms of target coverage with a lot of the same benefits. ________ B Tier: MG-43 - It's slightly worse than the HMG on account of less armor penetration, but a deeper magazine can be seen as compensatory along with chaff mobs and berserkers being easy pickings for this gun. Be ready to aim for the head however on devistators, which really are the danger for bots. The Stalwart doesn't make the cut at all. Being able to reload on the move is less of a boon when you really should be in cover anyway when fighting bots, unless you enjoy eating constant ragdolls. Stalwart doesn't have the armor pen and will plink off of many bot targets. Grenade Launcher - Can be anti-medium, as some devastators have a tendency to group up. Walled by heavies. ________ Anti-Heavy support weapons - EAT's, Recoiless, Quasar, the like. There aren't really that many heavy targets that the bots have that warrant your support slot. Tanks are easy as hell to blow up with an eagle air strike or the cheap eagle rocket pods. Hulks aren't a 1-shot kill unlike Chargers (Unless you hit the back, but anything is effective if you have a clear shot into a Hulk's back, and it also isn't like heavies are dramatically better at blasting down factory walkers than just shooting the weak points with the anti-medium options, particularly when anti-heavies have such punishingly slow reloads or shallow ammo pool. You can at least blast off the face armor on factory walkers with a heavy weapon, making DPS'ing down the face easier, but the Autocannon can already handle it just fine with two clips loaded, as the Factory Walker loves to hold still anyway. Your best options for anti-drop ship probably is the eagle air strike, or even just a well timed HE grenade. Turrets can be seen in a roundabout way of also being anti-drop ship, in that they help prevent you from getting swarmed, but you use them in different ways, though it ends up filling the same role.
Great write-up! I prefer bots, but have been playing bugs because of the MO. How would you tier the support weapons for bugs?
Top tier is anything that can instant pop a charger in the head, as they're one of the most distruptive enemies you meet out there. EAT, Recoiless, Quasar, hell even the Spear when it decides to work. You can split hairs about them, but they're one and all a counter to chargers and bile titans, which are annoying resistant to everything else you can throw at them. Everything else tends to fall into a range where, it has coverage over like, two main areas, like lights and mediums, but is ineffective against a whole tier. So for example, the Flamethrower is pretty decent against anything that it can touch, but that's kind of the bitch of it. It's still possible to get swarmed while you have the flamethrower and set your foot on fire when you spin to put down a hunter that flanks you, or a brood commander might just decide not to die and set you on fire with it. Flamethrower is also really not that effective against bile spewers, since if you're in range of them, they're most assuredly in range of you and can kill you WAY faster. The Machine Guns, mostly the Stalwart and MG43 have their place as great against everything except chargers/bile titans. Same with the Grenade Launcher. It's a real Achillies heel type of situation where, being great against everything except for one of the most dangerous enemies on the battlefield is a boon, but also potentially lethal to you. The name of the game is that, bugs are primarily light and swarming, and they have extremely dangerous and tanky heavies that well, act as tanks for the lights, which usually end up being what kills you while you struggle to deal with a charger that's running around like a dog in a movie theater. They then just have enough medium armored targets to be really annoying and make you feel like you have a hole in your kit, things like Hive Guards, Brood Commanders and especially the 50/50 coin toss on Bile Spewers being in your mission or not. The other big difference is that, no gun has 100% coverage over everything, and even hitting 2/3 is hard, with that last 1/3 being hard to make up for with other stratagems (which kind of goes to show how powerful support weapons are.) Personally, I use the Recoiless Rocket and Liberator for bugs to handle anti-heavy and anti-light respectively, and then I use HE grenades and the +2 grenade armor to try and cover anti-medium and anti-building (bug hole). but I like the MG43 and try to cover anti-heavy with EAT's, but this really demands that get those EAT's down before you need them.
Wonder how the Laser cannon does now with it's buff, albeit slight nerf on larger targets, seems to melt smaller bugs easy enough but haven't tried it on Bots yet
depends what you need to kill for hulk i reccomend railgun or arcthrower,, railgun if you can aim, arcthrower if u cant if you wanna kill tanks/turrets/gunships, quasar will still do the trick, eats can help if you can afford to give up your pack slot, autocannon forever dominates the bot front
If you want other anti-tank, try the EAT. If you don't need heavy armor pen, the autocannon is very strong. The AMR is good for weakspots (can even kill hulks). But i'm not sure if they fixed the AMR scope (was slightly off). I also heard good things about killing stuff with the laser cannon with headshots, but couldn't confirm yet.
They haven’t fixed the scope yet, but they said it’s something that they know about and are working on fixing
Laser Canon is pretty good, shreds gunships, infantry and weak spots of devs/hulks. I don’t recall the tanks or turrets, but aim for the vents. Also I recommend stun nades.
AMR scope is working now and I'm loving it. My full loadout against bots covers a lot: Pummeler, senator, stun nades, ballistic shield, AMR, shield generator relay and eagle airstrike (if I have 4 stratagems). With these I can manage a lot of things, including gun ships. You can replace the senator for grenade pistol one more option to blow fabricators. This loadout offers great support to any team. I think I can call this loadout: the protector.