Bolt Sniper issues, and Bolters in general

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LGear

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LGear

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600g2g pts

2 months ago

Nov 6, 2024, 1:31:27 AM

As a big fan of Bolters in 40K, the Bolters in Space Marine 2 PvE have consistently been a source of consternation, namely because of how weak they feel at times. They do handle well in this game, and I like how they sound, but oftentimes beyond Average difficulty Bolters don't feel as powerful as they should even with the recent buffs. Bolters I feel fall into the game dev trap of automatic weapon balancing, where because they're automatic weapons with high fire-rate they have lower damage-per-shot. This on paper is a valid approach to balancing, but it's easy to make them far too weak for their supposed advantages, especially when including how bullet spongey enemies are at higher difficulties up to Lethal. If it takes a quarter of a magazine to kill a Minoris enemy with a Relic weapon then there's something wrong with the weapon balancing.

The weapon that exemplifies this issue more than not is the Bolt Sniper Rifle: this weapon deals fine damage on paper, but has the issue that it only has 1 magazine of 6 rounds and only 2 reloads worth of ammo, and yet something like the Master-Crafted Bolt Sniper takes 3 headshots on a Majoris enemy - which is the main target you'd be using this weapon against - on Average difficulty to kill them. The problem here is that the Bolt Sniper Rifle has far too little rounds for the kind of damage it deals, especially when considering stuff like misses and the fact that there's far more Minoris enemies than you have Bolt Sniper ammo for even if you're the most accurate man in the world, and unlike say the much beloved Melta weapons with their similarly low ammo count you don't room-clear with a single Bolt Sniper shot so you need to make your shots count. The stinginess in ammo reserve combined with its current damage means the Bolt Sniper is completely inferior to the Las Fusil, which while having even less ammo makes up for with its incredible damage that completely balances out its other weaknesses, whereas the current Bolt Sniper's strengths of having a faster RoF and no charging time aren't enough to justify its very low ammo count. This incentivizes sticking to the Bolt Pistol for every other type of combat, which is a rather unsatisfying thing to do as a Sniper, and really goes against the Doctrine of every other class that are capable of relying on their *primary* weapon as their main damage dealers. There are two possible solutions to this issue: either increase the headshot damage-per-shot, or increase the amount of ammo, and I'm more leaning towards the latter as a preferred solution.

Updated 2 months ago.

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The_TOMinator

Space Marine Captain

"For those we cherish, we die in glory!"

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The_TOMinator

Space Marine Captain

13 500g2g pts

2 months ago

Nov 6, 2024, 8:38:51 AM

Bolters feel a bit better in v4.1 but I agree they are still a bit underwhelming. The grenade launcher bolt rifle is the only one I place any sort of value in for obvious reasons and its not the bolter part! The stalker bolter is a close second, I like running that as an alternative at the moment.

You're completely right about the Bolt sniper rifle in my opinion. I've always thought its been in a bit of a no-man's land since launch. In theory, it should be your top tier single target damage dealer, but it is completely overshadowed by the Las Fusil in that regard which ironically is also a better crowd killer with the wide beam perks. So you'd think maybe that the bolt sniper fulfills the semi-automatic / designated marksman rifle role if the Las Fusil is your bolt action / anti-materiel rifle right? Well the Stalker bolter is way better at that and has the advantage of being able to be levelled on the Tactical class as well.

The bolt sniper rifle is just not filling a defined role - there is incredible scope for it to do unique things with the different bolter ammunition types in lore (Kraken penetrators, Hellfire rounds [made specifically for fighting Tyranids], Inferno rounds, metal storm frag, etc). I think a changeable ammo type would make it unique next to the las fusil and stalker without tripping over them.

Updated 2 months ago.

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LGear

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LGear

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600g2g pts

2 months ago

Nov 6, 2024, 1:27:22 PM

The_TOMinator wrote:
Bolters feel a bit better in v4.1 but I agree they are still a bit underwhelming. The grenade launcher bolt rifle is the only one I place any sort of value in for obvious reasons and its not the bolter part! The stalker bolter is a close second, I like running that as an alternative at the moment.

You're completely right about the Bolt sniper rifle in my opinion. I've always thought its been in a bit of a no-man's land since launch. In theory, it should be your top tier single target damage dealer, but it is completely overshadowed by the Las Fusil in that regard which ironically is also a better crowd killer with the wide beam perks. So you'd think maybe that the bolt sniper fulfills the semi-automatic / designated marksman rifle role if the Las Fusil is your bolt action / anti-materiel rifle right? Well the Stalker bolter is way better at that and has the advantage of being able to be levelled on the Tactical class as well.

Indeed, the problem with the Bolt Sniper is that it's in an awkward position where it doesn't deal enough single target damage to justify its small ammo capacity, and it doesn't have the ammo capacity to fulfill the weapon's archetype of being a weapon better suited to dealing with numbers at range. The Las Fusil is just better at the former, and the Stalker Bolt Rifle is better at the latter (and as you mentioned the Las Fusil is also better at it than the Bolt Sniper), leaving the Bolt Sniper with no good niche to fill.

Changeable ammo might be a bit cumbersome to implement as the game currently is, and imho it'd be better to just increase the ammo capacities of both the Bolt Sniper and the Stalker Bolt Rifle to make them more comfortable to use between ammo caches, since their low damage plus low ammo makes misses with them quite punishing.

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nikof135

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nikof135

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9 400g2g pts

2 months ago

Nov 6, 2024, 1:54:41 PM

LGear wrote:

The_TOMinator wrote:
Bolters feel a bit better in v4.1 but I agree they are still a bit underwhelming. The grenade launcher bolt rifle is the only one I place any sort of value in for obvious reasons and its not the bolter part! The stalker bolter is a close second, I like running that as an alternative at the moment.

You're completely right about the Bolt sniper rifle in my opinion. I've always thought its been in a bit of a no-man's land since launch. In theory, it should be your top tier single target damage dealer, but it is completely overshadowed by the Las Fusil in that regard which ironically is also a better crowd killer with the wide beam perks. So you'd think maybe that the bolt sniper fulfills the semi-automatic / designated marksman rifle role if the Las Fusil is your bolt action / anti-materiel rifle right? Well the Stalker bolter is way better at that and has the advantage of being able to be levelled on the Tactical class as well.
Indeed, the problem with the Bolt Sniper is that it's in an awkward position where it doesn't deal enough single target damage to justify its small ammo capacity, and it doesn't have the ammo capacity to fulfill the weapon's archetype of being a weapon better suited to dealing with numbers at range. The Las Fusil is just better at the former, and the Stalker Bolt Rifle is better at the latter (and as you mentioned the Las Fusil is also better at it than the Bolt Sniper), leaving the Bolt Sniper with no good niche to fill.

Changeable ammo might be a bit cumbersome to implement as the game currently is, and imho it'd be better to just increase the ammo capacities of both the Bolt Sniper and the Stalker Bolt Rifle to make them more comfortable to use between ammo caches, since their low damage plus low ammo makes misses with them quite punishing.

In fact, interchangeable ammunition can be implemented in the same way as an under-barrel grenade launcher, by the way, I think that they could add combi-weapons in a similar way, it would be simply gorgeous, imagine a plasma with a bolter. Well, that is, this is already present in the game using the example of a bolt rifle with a grenade launcher

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Koetetsu

Online Space Marine

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Koetetsu

Online Space Marine

6 500g2g pts

2 months ago

Nov 6, 2024, 5:02:14 PM

I get that we wouldn't want a lore accurate bolter (imagine grenade launchers but the nades travel in a straight line and you have 30 per magazine) But I don't think it was a good idea to make them into regular assault rifles because they already exist in auto-guns and stubbers. But I don't see why they can't pay homage to it in the form of some perks like "killing an enemy with a headshot will cause an explosion to damage enemies behind them" or something along the lines of that.

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Bolt Sniper issues, and Bolters in general

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