need so bad the bolter buffs

The damage of the Bolters is no longer the problem, now it’s their utility. Meltas offer self sustain and a reliable stagger, and Bolters not only lack those traits but also any other traits that could make up for that. The Bolter weapon archetype has no unique identity in Space Marine 2 and that is what needs fixing now.

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dactyr wrote:

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Xen113 wrote:

Instead of a straight number boost, what they need is extra functionality imo. There should be small splash damage and a supression mechanic for the fully automatic weapons to make exchanges of ranged fire feel less like an unfair slog. it would also promote a little more team play this way. Supress groups of ranged enemies to make the approach easier for melee focused characters. 

I think they need a 10-15% buff against majoris and stronger, but need a MAJOR buff vs minoris. Relic bolters on Ruthless and Lethal should be 1 shotting for the most part (maybe not termagant's - they tend to be sorta resistance to ranged damaged)  at last hormagaunts that arnt empowered. Mastercrafted and such doing the same for the respective difficulties. Maybe you can choose an ammo loadout too with the ability to trade out normal bolt rounds with kraken rounds at a cost,an they do more damage to majoris and bigger but can hold less or something , and sorta scale it with armor thickness, i mean it would track with toughness vs strength checks for the table top power scaling too. 

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Xen113 wrote:

Instead of a straight number boost, what they need is extra functionality imo. There should be small splash damage and a supression mechanic for the fully automatic weapons to make exchanges of ranged fire feel less like an unfair slog. it would also promote a little more team play this way. Supress groups of ranged enemies to make the approach easier for melee focused characters. 

I think they need a 10-15% buff against majoris and stronger, but need a MAJOR buff vs minoris. Relic bolters on Ruthless and Lethal should be 1 shotting for the most part (maybe not termagant's - they tend to be sorta resistance to ranged damaged)  at last hormagaunts that arnt empowered. Mastercrafted and such doing the same for the respective difficulties 

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Bebacer wrote:

Forgive the taboo, but piggybacking on this thread since it's been Green Lit and is getting Dev attention, pulled from my recently created thread - https://community.focus-entmt.com/focus-entertainment/space-marine-2/ideas/7521-bolter-ammo-damage-improvement?page=1#post-7521:

​In my personal experience of the game and understanding of the lore, all the weapons that fire bolter ammo are under-powered (except maybe heavy bolt pistol) for 2 reasons. 

 1) Lore wise, it's described in ways such as "acting like a miniature rocket" and "designed to penetrate the target before detonating within, maximizing damage to the target and leaving little chance for survival". I get that, lore-wise, there also lots of crazy things stated about the enemies of mankind that might mitigate the lethality of regular bolter rounds, but on the whole they are represented in text and visually as being highly penetrative and destructive. 

 2) and more compellingly, I think, the kill to ammo spent ratio for bolter ammunition is making the game more challenging than a lot of other reasons, and virtually unbeatable under certain conditions. The most common in my experience is running out of ammo when a large enemy arrives, or if you get some particularly bad "rolls" and have multiple waves between ammo crates. I think ammo scarcity in general is in need of re-balance, but to stay focused on bolter ammo, when it have to use 2,3,4, or more rounds on the smallest enemies of each faction, the compounding total ammo needed to get through waves of enemies is just not available a lot of the time, and you wind up getting stuck between the choice of just fleeing the zone until ammo appears, or slugging it out with the melee mechanics, which are still somewhat janky for dodges.

Increasing bolter damage significantly while reducing overall ammo reserves, or even slightly reducing magazine size, would (I think) maintain difficulty as intended by the devs, but open up a lot of parts of the game that feel stifled (arbitrary/random difficulty, balance of weapons that are fun to use, increase in amount of viable team strategies, ammo fatigue/famine, "power fantasy",etc.). In my perspective, that would look like a 100-200% damage increase (1-2, maybe 3 hits for minoris enemies) and a 20-33% reduction in ammo reserves. If magazine reduction was needed, maybe 10-20%. 

Using the heavy class heavy bolter as an example (what I'm most familiar with), I don't need to carry around 400, 500, 600 rounds of ammo just to have to chew through (what feels like) 3, 4, 5, or more rounds on each minoris enemy. That's like only 100-150, maybe 200 enemies per magazine, assuming they are all minoris. Being able to carry even just 300 rounds, but knowing that proper application is going to allow me to chew through 200+ enemies would feel way better, and line up a lot better with where we typically seem to be encountering ammo.

Lore wise, if devs care about there being a good reason, just say they were converted to Kraken Penetrator Rounds or whatever (at this point I think they are just not performing for what they should be as standard, but whatever it takes to convince the Devs, PLEASE....   PLEASE).

I second this and mention it in a separate idea as well. I think this hits correctly. If they want to introduce a big change like this and incorporate it in lore they could say that it was a bad batch of bolter rounds, found that there was a conspiracy of heresy that was discovered orchestrated by imurah to make the bolter rounds weaker and it was rooted out by the inquisition and now we have less but the bolter rounds are now functioning properly. 

Frankly the bolters feel like a bit more than pebble throwers. Nowhere near we need to get rid of large number of enemies or heavily armored enemies. Only the fully upgraded heavy bolter feels like it's somewhat useful on the first 3 difficulties.

Forgive the taboo, but piggybacking on this thread since it's been Green Lit and is getting Dev attention, pulled from my recently created thread - https://community.focus-entmt.com/focus-entertainment/space-marine-2/ideas/7521-bolter-ammo-damage-improvement?page=1#post-7521:

​In my personal experience of the game and understanding of the lore, all the weapons that fire bolter ammo are under-powered (except maybe heavy bolt pistol) for 2 reasons. 

 1) Lore wise, it's described in ways such as "acting like a miniature rocket" and "designed to penetrate the target before detonating within, maximizing damage to the target and leaving little chance for survival". I get that, lore-wise, there also lots of crazy things stated about the enemies of mankind that might mitigate the lethality of regular bolter rounds, but on the whole they are represented in text and visually as being highly penetrative and destructive. 

 2) and more compellingly, I think, the kill to ammo spent ratio for bolter ammunition is making the game more challenging than a lot of other reasons, and virtually unbeatable under certain conditions. The most common in my experience is running out of ammo when a large enemy arrives, or if you get some particularly bad "rolls" and have multiple waves between ammo crates. I think ammo scarcity in general is in need of re-balance, but to stay focused on bolter ammo, when it have to use 2,3,4, or more rounds on the smallest enemies of each faction, the compounding total ammo needed to get through waves of enemies is just not available a lot of the time, and you wind up getting stuck between the choice of just fleeing the zone until ammo appears, or slugging it out with the melee mechanics, which are still somewhat janky for dodges.

Increasing bolter damage significantly while reducing overall ammo reserves, or even slightly reducing magazine size, would (I think) maintain difficulty as intended by the devs, but open up a lot of parts of the game that feel stifled (arbitrary/random difficulty, balance of weapons that are fun to use, increase in amount of viable team strategies, ammo fatigue/famine, "power fantasy",etc.). In my perspective, that would look like a 100-200% damage increase (1-2, maybe 3 hits for minoris enemies) and a 20-33% reduction in ammo reserves. If magazine reduction was needed, maybe 10-20%. 

Using the heavy class heavy bolter as an example (what I'm most familiar with), I don't need to carry around 400, 500, 600 rounds of ammo just to have to chew through (what feels like) 3, 4, 5, or more rounds on each minoris enemy. That's like only 100-150, maybe 200 enemies per magazine, assuming they are all minoris. Being able to carry even just 300 rounds, but knowing that proper application is going to allow me to chew through 200+ enemies would feel way better, and line up a lot better with where we typically seem to be encountering ammo.

Lore wise, if devs care about there being a good reason, just say they were converted to Kraken Penetrator Rounds or whatever (at this point I think they are just not performing for what they should be as standard, but whatever it takes to convince the Devs, PLEASE....   PLEASE).

Right now bolters are a joke and using them is practically pointless. No need to buff them in pvp just buff them in PvE another 30% damage increase should be enough.

Stagger.  Bolters shoot literal bolts, large pieces of metal that explode?  Then they should be able to stagger any target if you shoot it in the face.  

please, just give bolters a headshot stagger.  Think of stagger as a long range parry.  The enemy is way more mobile than 2/3 of the space marines.  A headshot stagger can get you into malee range, counters long range majoris.  Headshot stagger.

Have played patch 4.5 and still, the bolters are underperforming and the new pistols is so weak to even at relic level 

Bolter damage still trash across the board. Saver doesnt understand that percentage based increases don't do anything with the extremely low numbers we have to work with. Good job devs, now our boltgun does 1.6 damage per shot instead of 1.4. Amazing buff. You guys clearly aren't nuckle dragging apes.

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SgtRorschach wrote:

The damage of the Bolters is no longer the problem, now it’s their utility. Meltas offer self sustain and a reliable stagger, and Bolters not only lack those traits but also any other traits that could make up for that. The Bolter weapon archetype has no unique identity in Space Marine 2 and that is what needs fixing now.

agreed!!

agree , they have to buff them

Instead of a straight number boost, what they need is extra functionality imo. There should be small splash damage and a supression mechanic for the fully automatic weapons to make exchanges of ranged fire feel less like an unfair slog. it would also promote a little more team play this way. Supress groups of ranged enemies to make the approach easier for melee focused characters. 

needs moar buffz - oculus is still a joke of a weapon which is sad because its lowkey my favorite one and it just sucks

https://community.focus-entmt.com/focus-entertainment/space-marine-2/ideas/7015-bolter-rework-concept s a more detailed idea on a possible rework @Mzulft​

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BeelzeBob wrote:

Also, to the OP's point about the grenade launcher it really needs to be reined in. The damage and aoe are fine, but the mag size at high tier is too big and the ammo restore perk gives too many grenades. This thing is absolutely eclipsing all other tactical weapons right now, and it's not even close. Oh also from what I understand the GL gets x1.5 headshot damage? That clearly should not be a thing.

I agree with this for the most part, I think the grenades need to be lethal, though they should be more about chaff than focused fire: increased AOE spread and splash by alot or add a shrapnel effect for hordes of enemies but reduce majoris/exterimis/terminus damage a lot -  can even be creatve and add a difficulty armor system that allows the base damage of the grenade to remain high but does less to the bigger enemies, they also need a reduction in the amount per batch. I'm fine with them recovering with the perk to refill mag on majoris kill like it is now, but it cant be 11 rounds it needs to be like 5. in return though the Bolter round needs more damage per shot to majoris exterimis and terminus, it needs an armor pricing effect / feel, the reserve can be adjusted to address this but the bolters need to hit harder per shot by ALOT essentially they should have the same damage potential as other weapons if all shots land with a lower reserve make each shot hit harder per shot. for example each bolter round hits about 50% less than a full plasma charged shot, BUT its reserve capacity is 50% more shots than a plasma incinerator can fire in charged shots in one full ammo reserve for exmaple. 

The big problem here is not the bolters buff, it's that the enemy is a bullet sponge, because on lower difficulties enemies die quickly, but on lethal and ruthless they can tank a lot of bullets, I think this is not a good approach to difficulty, and I think we will prefer more enemies than less but more tanks.

10% and 5% increase in bolter damage with recent patch is practically nothing. bolter (and weapon "leveling" in general) feels not satisfying. Having enemies have more hp by difficulty increase kill the meaning of having better weapons as result is the same. Killing a warrior with torso shots keeps same 2 full mags emptied depending on weapon level and difficulty. Melee weapons are same: low level difficulty + standard weapon = 3 melee hits to kill a single hormagaunt. Ruthless difficulty + relic tier weapon = 3 melee hits to kill a single hormagaunt.