The idea is rather straightforward, but in essence, while these two factions are relatively lacking for assault rifle weaponry right now, they do provide multiple low capacity “automatic rifle” style LMGs which could see a new lease in life if they could be used on a 6-man engineer squad.
We had a glimpse of what this could be with the bugged rocket artillery squad for Japan as well as the German Halloween event engineer who can operate an LMG, however, this would keep to the spirit of the “assault rifle” style category by restricting it only to machine guns which use magazines, rather than larger beltfeds.
Overall this also means that if Darkflow is having troubles with the fact that currently neither faction has no “assault rifle” category weapon for their assault engineers, and that should they receive such a weapon it’d be the only of its kind, that the US and Japan would have more options to allow them to still feel like a squad you can use at multiple BRs or in a variable manner, allowing for more depth of play.
As this is mostly just an idea to alleviate this concern, feedback is welcome. We’ve been promised assault engineers for the remaining two factions who lack it, so ideas on what could be done to make them interesting would be welcomed.
Incidentally, while we have no idea which units the squads would end up belonging to, I believe that a unit out of the 442nd would be an excellent candidate for the US assault engineers, as they were the most decorated combat unit of its size in US military history.
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This won’t solve anything. MGs are significantly less versatile than ARs.
They should just add ARs for those factions. There’s plenty weapons to choose from for US faction. And there’s at least one weapon that could be ingame classified as AR for Japan.
There’s plenty of suggestions topics about those weapons here on forum.
Both Japan and US deserve and should get event AR engineers.
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This wouldn’t really disqualify the AR, as I said this is mostly just to introduce more options than what is likely to be only 1 on release of the assault engineers.
As far as how many options there are, I’m gonna wager it’ll still lag behind the likes of the USSR and Germany, and for Japan I can genuinely only think of one, meaning the assault engineers would be effectively locked to the BR of that weapon unless you wanted to run them as a generic engi squad in which case why bother.
Overall, I do think having at least a few options, even if they aren’t “meta chasing”, can make a game more interesting, and for the factions with two of the strongest automatic rifles in the game, part of that would be to provide gameplay opportunities in other brackets.
This is literally the case for USSR AR engineers as well.
Only German faction is exception. And the reason?
Because the MkB 35 was illogically reclassified as an AR long after it was taken out of BP store.
This change was one big middle finger to all MKb 35 owners who bought the weapon for use by vehicle crews.
This change should be reverted to its original state.
AR engineers should be available only at BR5. Where all engineers can have automatic weapons in the form of SF rifles anyway. And thus the option to take ARs instead of SF rifles is purely based on personal preference.
I don’t see a single reason why an exclusive time limited squad should affect balance at lower BRs, where it’s not common for an entire engineer squad to have automatic weapons. (Individual engineers in event/premium squads are the exception. Having said that, these squads have other negatives and cannot be compared to a full squad of six engineers with automatic weapons.)
I suppose that’s fair, the Mkb 35 is however a reality we have on the table, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the option for Soviet ARs at lower BRs would be a possibility in the future.
That said, I do think that lower capacity automatic rifle style MGs do end up feeling like they could use some more of a spotlight, and while goofy and unwieldy, I think running around with a Madsen or a Breda 30 can be fun, albeit I’m not always able to set aside enough squads for the task as gunner squads I find I often end up reserving for my higher BR slots, leaving lower brackets with fewer of them to utilize.
That said, I also don’t see assaulter engineers for the US and Japan feeling as fun if they are locked to likely just 1 weapon on release, with the latter effectively perma-locked in that regard, so even at BR5 I feel like the ability to carry an AR is just less of a pronounced feature for these factions due to the presence of the T20, M2C, and Type Hei Auto. I suppose it remains to be seen how interesting the possible AR weapon candidate(s) would be though.
If the developers would like to give automatic weapons to the engineers on all BRs.
In that case, I’d say it’s completely pointless to restrict which soldier can can use what type of weapon anymore. And all classes of soldiers should be able to use any non-special weapon.
(Special weapon = weapon used by specialists in their second weapon slot. For example, Flamethrowers, AT weapons, Mortars)
idk if I’d go that far, since it would depend on the potency of whatever AR they put at a lower bracket, but I do think that introducing broader flexibility for weaponry is certainly worth exploring. I don’t think full on unrestricted primaries is prudent, but there’s certainly weaponry that starts feeling like it could provide unique gameplay opportunities if only it had a slight push here or there.
I don’t think so. With the way the gamemodes are designed in Enlisted, an automatic weapon will always be preferable and more meta than any semi or BA rifle.
Because you need to kill a large number of bots as quickly as possible within a fairly small area.
I suppose that’s fair, perhaps an engineer is too strong a class at a lower bracket to have automatics, the idea of limited mixing specialist weaponry does still remain attractive. maybe coopting the idea but beyond the engineer, I do still want to see the MG have some sort of broader application. Perhaps sniper-gunners with no engineer? a larger squad size than a dedicated sniper squad, able to bring a medium range automatic weapon would make for an interesting dynamic.
Rather just move the mkb to higher BR.
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Never said they didn’t, just that a lack of AR content now means that there’s gonna be content bottlenecks when they do eventually arrive regardless, likely meaning they are locked to 1 weapon in most cases you want something outside of non-specialist weaponry.
japan doesnt need AR engineers when the hei auto is the greatest rifle to ever exist in the game
stolen chinese thompson and problem solved
. lewis assault phase rifle. us has options