As I worked on Xenonauts X-Division mod (as creator) and openxcom modding. There are always very simple mechanic to balance heavy gear.
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Heavy weapons could be used without penalty when the user got heavy armor/enough strength.
This is one of the most logical one. Heavy weapons are powerful weapons and they don’t have debufs like bad acc, slow firing. Miniguns are fast firing weapons and they got good acc at least at a assault rifle level. They got good range too as they got huge barrels so they can be effective at longer then assault rifles. So heavy armors are special to able to handle this heavy weapons. Heavy armors are slow even the carrier got enough str because heavy is heavy. But it’s not about their weapon or how to use them. So when balancing, heavy could not escape from a bad situation and need to get position to fire. So enemy can nuke him easier if they can catch it open. But when a heavy starts firing, you should not be in line of fire. So, DO NOT nerf any weapon based stats if a heavy is using a heavy gun. -
Wait for getting position for firing
Another balancing is making heavy lose time at preparing. So heavy should wait for time before starts firing. Here again we talk about the time for the heavy soldier, not the gun. Soldier can be slow but not the weapon. Gears Tactic made it with anchor. This is the perfection. You go somewhere, anchor there and shoot firing fast and very accurate. End of story.
At PP, we just have penalties… They gave so much penalty to heavy, it’s like they try to balance whole game over this class. It’s skills are useless for normal weapons, his armor is weak, slow, somehow huge acc pen without a logical reason (that helm is not from ww1 you know), his weapons got no range, no acc, ultra slow… his “must have” skills are not his own and random (strongman and the acc bonus one)…
There is not a single good thing about those… yeah you can use cannon even end game because you want to use it… you don’t need it… even you got many more ways to use… maybe with lvl 7 rage burst skill… but alone… nop… got good weapons at late game… if you get that tech… if you got enough resources, if if if…when you got terminator assaults and one shot snipers…
My assault sniper got strong man. I am thinking to give this skill to him and give my minigun. I am use that he will able to use that much better then my heavy/sniper… why do i do that? because I want to use that gun!