being sidetracked about morality of war, in my humble opponion; if an alien is alive, he will cause more casulties. the aliens are superior already(supposely) and if protecting civilians are making a huge impact on the combat efficency, it is not worth it. it may just as well cause more deaths in the long run, sure u try to save the civilians, but not to the point you're going to lose your fight, its going to save no one. Think of it this way, if u cant redo a mission and u cant save and load, would you still use the same tactics? human rights and geneva came about after the WII to stop wars and severity of wars, but when survival of humanity is at stake, its of little value. its a contraversial topic and open to interpretation and debate, but moving on to heavy weapons.
First of all, thanks BTaxis for improving heavy weapons, but perhaps information in this thread will be of use.
Heavy weapons contrary to the "Light"LMG that every squad carries, can pump out over 1000 lead per minute, with changable barrels and magazine extensions it will have Greater range, Greater stopping power, greater penetration and sustained bombardment compared to a Assault Rifle. The heavy weapons as such might be too heavy to carry by your average person, and heavy weapons usually involve more than one person operating it. Being the gunner, his assistant and ammunition carrier. The 5.56 have reported having troubles of penetration of Soft covers while 7.62 can break through the same covers, whilst the Real MG rounds, being 13.6mm or 0.5Cal can penetrate brick walls and as a matter of fact demolish them in several rounds. Then we have our Cannons, which i think logically orknoks or soldiers with implants will carry. 20mm - 30mm rounds like what the A10 warhog will have, it goes through tank armor and uses up 20 rounds per second. Most automatic guns you will find in FPS might have information of 600RPM, but do calculations and you'll find that fully automatic will chew through 30 round clips in less than 3 seconds, compared to 10 odd seconds in most video games.
To sum that up tactically, Heavy weapons should be hard to move, operate, uses up alot of ammunition to the point of usually requiring the whole squad to carry ammunition but delivers enough firepower that the whole squad can be based around. Ammunition is usually the biggest issue, as soldiers have a big kit with them already, but since firebird dosnt have a armory in it, its not imbalanced. LMGs are Semi - Heavy weapons.
For rocket launchers, its actually so accurate that you can use as a sniper, and it does splash dmg, and uses small tus as u run out of cover to shoot, dive back into it then reload.
Assault Rifles are called so because its a political term by Hitler himself, it in reality is not really different to a SMG, think of carbines which are half way in between. It was revolutionary because it was more capable than a Rifle at close range, mind you trained british marksman can pump out 10 accurate rounds in a bolt action rifle in less than 5 seconds. It out ranged and had better accuracy and stopping power than a SMG back in WII. it out performed all "standard" infantry weapons. Now it is the standard issue, it offers no advantage and as a matter of fact. Insurgency in Iraq run in 3 cell groups of RPG, LMG and Sniper, where Assault Rifle is complete abolished. ARs are good standard weapons, but offers no real advantage, just something to think about. Since i am chinese, we actually used(not personally) Ak47 as a SMG because of its poor accuracy whilst T81 was used as an Assault Rifle, now phased out of regular army by T95 and T03.
Attached grenade launchers are a different issue, although i am not asking for that to be implemented into the game, i might just be carrying off in a rant so i'll just stop here
I didnt have time to spell check this time around as i am in a hurry, so just bear with me for abit.
