50 cal should insta gib squads retarded enough to charge it frontally. It should annhilate wooden garrisons, and mutilate light vehicles that dont flank. Otherwise, they shouldnt have even addded the 50 cal to the game because its a disgrace to american engineering.
Relic screwed up alot of things historically, obviously in this game, but making the 50 cal a whimpy little shit flinger is probably my biggest pet peeve/trigger in coh2. Why the fuck does mG42 have incendiary rounds and shit, but 50 cal is basically ignorable unless youre charge across red cover?? Honestly in that scenario i wouldnt be surprised if 50 cal got its gunner sniped and then got wiped.
You are not the brightest candle on the cake, eh? The .50 cal trumps the MG 42 at vet0 in every category except cooldown rate and rate of fire.
The .50 cal deals more suppression/fire (the effect is lessened by the lower rate of fire, but the result comes out almost equal), more damage, is more mobile (less set-up time than a Maxim, like WTF?! That Thing shouldn't be able to be carried around by single man if we took you "realism" into the game) and reloads faster.
And you know what's really funny? Flanking the .50 cal doesn't even really work, because the crew has 6.6 rear armour. Why? Nobody knows, but it seems they carry their helmets on their backs.
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Now, what could be done to make the .50 cal more appropriate for the time it comes out at?
1.:Improve the damage a bit. It should still fit the game, and having an MG deal ridiculous amounts of damage by default is just plain stupid, especially if that MG is already the one dealing the most damage out of all HMGs.
2.: Improve penetration. That will give it more reliable damage output against light vehicles, yet at the same time it shouldn't be too much, because the .50 cal is used against factions that already have shitty light vehicles. The balance must be found within "Works good against the Luchs, but doesn't completely fuck over the 222.", unless the 222 will finally have its health reverted and instead receive the armour that it actually needs to be good.
3.: Make it fucking less mobile. It is more mobile than the Maxim right now, that's just ridiculous. You can't have the strongest HMG in the game and have it be the most mobile. That's like giving the Pershing 400 frontal armour.
4.: A proper veterancy ability, timed and munitions expensive. Enables it able to shoot through shot blockers for a time (similar to how the PaK 43 works), but with reduced damage and no suppression. Yes, we're talking about buildings here, and yes it is absolutely unrealistic. But it is something actually useful that (with the nerf to damage during that time) wouldn't be too OP.
P.S.: And to not make it even more useless than it already is: Finally bump up the 251 to the level of the M5 (they cost the same, yet one is basically useless, while the other can take care of even two 222s), that way it could survive the .50 cal even in its current condition for longer than a split second...