Call me crazy, but I think we can do a little fun with machine guns and maybe balance them around specific mechanics. This would allow them to be tiered downward and allow for interesting and more realistic uses for MG’s.
If you’ve ever played Day of Defeat (and I’m sure other games from around that time) you may be familiar with it’s machine gun mechanics. To summarize - MG’s have extreme recoil and spread when fired from the hip. They also destroy your stamina when fired so movement itself is difficult. However, when the bipod is active (be it prone or on cover), they are highly accurate and extremely deadly weapons. They’re often the cornerstone of gameplay and often hold down key objectives, passageways, and chokepoints.
I think we can use this prior gameplay to our advantage and implement fun and exciting new weaponry types into Enlisted!
So, for certain types of MG’s (heavier ones such as belt-feds especially!). I’d think it could work well for the MG42, the M1919, the Maxim-Tokarev, the Beltfed DP, but honestly, some weaponry would be needed to be added and whatnot, since there is a place for more mobile LMG’s as they already are in the game.
What I suggest is:
-A class of MG called ‘Mounted Machine Gun’
-Lower BR compared to equivalent LMG
-Higher Magazine size compared to equivalent LMG
-Very accurate and controllable when mounted
-Extremely Inaccurate, High recoiling, and Stamina draining when fired unmounted
-Mounting can be done while prone or against a surface
-Activating Bipod has an animation and takes time
-No Overheat (To give a reason to use over just having an engineer build an MG nest)
-These MG’s could be foldered with current MG’s or placed earlier than their LMG counterparts.
All told, this allows for a mobile, powerful, but situational use of machine guns which allow for emergent gameplay focused around the MG just like real life.
While MG squads might want to stack LMGs, squads which take a single MG soldier might wish to base their fire around the mounted MG.
Additionally, the inclusion of ‘belt fed MG34’ or lower tier M1919 (etc etc) would let these sorts of historical weapons have life at a tier where they would be much more notable.
Current MG’s often have a lot of spread, are fairly high in BR (and the good LMG’s only really start appearing from T3 onward), and are already fairly hard to use when moving. I think this could be neat!