Thoughts on SMGs?

Hi, I've recently invested in an SMG for my Light Assault - I play TR and thought it would be good to get a close-quarters weapon to shred people with.

However, I'm finding it to be a little lackluster. It feels a tiny bit under powered where I'm struggling to outgun some people at point-blank range, which is surprising as it's marketed as a close range weapon. It seems to do too little damage which puts it behind carbines in almost every way - I don't know if anyone's done calculations or graphs on its DPS but it really doesn't seem to have any benefit past a carbine, while it actually sacrifices range. Since accuracy isn't really very relevant at <10m range (maximum damage range without soft-point ammo), its increased accuracy seems like an unwarranted benefit and the -25% movement speed penalty as opposed to 50% doesn't seem to actually help that much as most good shooters will just ignore strafing and keep on target.

Is anyone else having similar experience with the SMGs? Primarily Vanu and New Conglomerate: Are you finding any problems with the SMG? Does it feel more powerful / less powerful than the other weapons close range? And also other TR, are you having experiences different to mine and want to say so, or are you having the same experience and want to agree?

TL;DR I think TR SMGs don't have the stopping power required to be an effective close range weapon, what do you think?

Great accuracy, even at mid range firing from the hip. Easy recoil to control. Also good for infiltrators. That's my experience with it.

General consensus is that SMG's are awesome for infiltrators, but they are kind of side-grades for everybody else.

Do you feel that they're rivals to the Light Assault's carbines? I understand they blow Infiltrator scout rifles out of the water, but do you feel they're any use to a class with heavier weapons available? Hip firing a carbine seems to be far more effective for me than an SMG when you're caught in a close-range engagement, and I don't think I've even managed to take down a heavy assault point-blank yet, whereas I could easily do so with the carbine.

In the beginning I thought they were insanely OP. But I must say they're very effective only at very close range.
For mid fighting carbines is till better for LA and Engineers: if you're a TR go for the Jaguar.

Needed weapon for infiltrators to actually make them formidable.

Only problem is it has made infiltrators much more confident in going behind enemy lines to go to a tech plant or biolab to overload everything they can and run off to the next XP farming spot.

So, infiltrating?

The TR SMG gives you markedly better ROF than any TR Carbine and markedly better hip fire right out of the box, you could try a advanced laser or an extended mag depending on whether you feel even better hip accuracy or just more ammo in the mag would help.

In terms of stopping power, the TR SMG has a theoretical damage output of 3750 per mag as it comes, that of course is based on the assumption that you will hit every round in the mag into somebodies head at 10m or less, so when I say theoretical I mean theoretical.

To compare that to TR Carbines, which all have 5720, yes it's lower theoretical damage per mag potential because of the smaller mag size and less damage per bullet, but to compare it to the best TR CQC carbine, the Lynx, the Lynx takes all of 3 seconds to burn a whole mag, the TRAC-5 (with the same damage output at the Lynx although lower ROF and worse from the hip) to give another comparison, takes about 3.2 seconds. The SMG, a fraction over 2 seconds.

DPS, theoretically the SMG could give you 1871 and a Lynx, 1906.5, the TRAC-5 1787.5. So yes, compared to the best CQC TR LMG, it has a slightly lower theoretical DPS and a markedly lower theoretical damage output per mag, but you can get your entire mag into somebody significantly faster which I think is the really important stat out of the three for 1 vs 1 CQC and you can do it very accurately from the hip with no laser attachment needed (although it'll do it even better with one attached of course).

Not saying it's better than a Carbine, it really depends on personal preferances and play styles, if you aren't enjoying it for CQC I can only suggest a Lynx or a Shotgun tbh.

I do like the fact Infiltrators are empowered now. Always seemed a little bit of a contradictory class, what with the sniping so far away they were unable to be hit by regular arms, yet they could go invisible for some strange reason? I always felt as an Infiltrator, you should never be scared that the enemy could see you as long as you were confident that you could kill anyone who wanted to shoot at you.

Thanks for the reply, this is helpful.

Looking at the DPS potential of the SMGs, is there any reason to ever ADS with one? The feeling I get from what I've read is that the SMGs are a purely "circle strafe and hipfire" weapon meant to dominate anyone in close quarters who tries to ADS and/or isn't at least moderately good at FPS mechanics. In that sort of world, the time it takes to ADS actually drops your potential DPS because the added accuracy is negligible at the effective range.

My opinion on this subject is this. If you don't already have CQC weapons for LA/ENG, Medic, and/or Heavy. You can get the SMG and have a very good CQC weapon for EVERY class for 700sc or 1000 certs. You can then modify this weapon to fit slightly different purposes by purchasing different mods for the same gun.

The VX6-7 or Serpent for LA/ENG, H-V45 for Medic, and the Orion or Pulsar LSW for Heavy WILL be better at nearly every range BUT you will have to purchase each of them separately to the tune of 2100sc or 3000 cert points. You then have to equip each weapon to the tune of 330 certs each.

ADS is useful with soft-point ammo which increases your maximum damage range up by 5 metres to 15 metres. It's also quite useful at shooting people in the head who're taking cover as the recoil is notably low and ADS restricts the cone of fire by a fair amount. I don't have good experiences of full auto though, few bullet burst fires seem to be the way to go.

the tr smg is inbetween the jaguar and the lynx, has better hip fire than the lynx and even the jaguar, but the dps falls inbetween the lynx and jaguar. you lose out on some range and either ammo or laser sight for those advantages. Its an option for light assault but kind of more of the same for the tr. I suspect the next bunch of smgs will be 2000+ dps guns but lower accuracy and even worse bullet velocity.

The trick here is that you lose 25% move speed, but the ADS specs of the SMG's are still much better than it's Hipfire specs. It's hipfire specs make it possible to strafe/kite people, but the ADS specs are still better.

I don't think move speed gets enough consideration in this kind of stuff, though. If you can strafe at a faster rate than your opponent can ADS track you, you're effectively bulletproof.

sounds like infiltrating to me

Just to be clear the differences between the DPS stats are again based on the assumption that all rounds hit the head and you are under 10m, you'd have to be very lucky or a hacker to ever, ever do it even once in game on anything other than point blank on a none moving target. What you really need to look for are really big differences, and here there aren't any.

Damage per mag is however important, with a stock SMG you'll have maybe enough ammo to drop 2 people, per mag presuming you aren't wasting too many shots, Carbine doesn't have this problem (certainly not to the same degree), with a Lynx you can comfortably drop 3 before a reload, sometimes even 4 if you get a bit lucky. So, if you feel you're being let down because you're having to reload all the time mid fight, try an extended mag, if that doesn't help, try going back to Carbine to feel the difference. The speed of the mag emptying is also important for 2 reasons, 1, you can pretty much down somebody while flanking close up before they have time to turn, same with Carbines but the SMG does it noticeably better, 2, you will have to be more careful with your fire since even a split second of wasted fire is a quarter of a mag gone.

I've been afraid to say anything positive about the SMG, lest people think It's OP and scream Nerf.

As an infiltrator It's now my main weapon. Sure o can roll out the sniper rifle if need be, but since beta I've been way more interested (and useful) when actually infiltrating. I made it work with a semi auto scout, I made it work with a semi auto sniper with scopes removed, and now I'm ditching those and going full SMG. I have killing power to take people out but not enough ammo to just rambo more than 2 people.

For other classes might as well use a shotgun or carbine. I'm considering trying SMG on LA, but really my shotgun is probably not going to be replaced by an SMG.

In short: probably better class specific long range weapons, and probably better off with a shotgun for CQC. SMG is for infils, imo.

I tried it. lulz.
Plain and simple: Easy killing mode, easy certs for infiltrators. Thanks SOE .../sarcasm.