Is the Trench Gun Perk Useful?

[Mooncabbage]

I'm not 100% sure about the name of this one, as I am not ingame, but I am talking about the shotgun perk with the cone effect. I took it on one of my assault troops, and I have not once used it. It's seems to me far too difficult to get any kind of useful shot with it. The cone is very narrow, the range is very short, and it doesn't ignore cover at all, so unless you get a very lucky flank, I can't see it ever being useful.

It's entirely possible I'm just not using it right, or maybe it needs to be buffed in some way to make it worth taking. Opinions anyone?

[Zyrrashijn]

It can be used for a nice ambush just like the flamethrower, where the enemy patrols in your direction. Just hide the trooper in the enemies path and spring the trap once they are in range. Or run 'n gun when the enemy has clumped behind cover

[aimlessgun]

Good opener from stealth if you get into the right position.

Can be extremely good when you get a flank on multiple guys. I found this happened a decent amount of the time, and killing even 2 guys is pretty nice, so I think it's worth it. You certainly can't go wrong with Close and Personal though (assuming this isn't a stun assault). If I were respeccing a MSGT who was already gonna have Street Sweeper, I might drop Trench for Close and Personal and take Formidable or Extra Conditioning instead of Aggression and you should still be able to hit 100% crit.

[Dwarfling]

Besides opening with it the sort of flanks you can use it on usually happens when fighting inside buildings like the ADVENT ones where they grab the sides of a door. As always, you risk revealing another pod.

[Sacred Sakura]

If you have a support grenadier with the frost nade with you, you can wipe an entire pod, only losing the assaults actions, that can be very friggn nice.

[Manifest]

Opinions anyone?

I don't understand what you find so hard about using it? You just use it like with standard run and gun, run up to an enemy flank and shoot them, often enemies will be relatively close so you can at least get two. It's hardly restricted any more than a regular shotgun shot.

In almost every engagement you probably have a decent trench gun angle with run and gun.

[trihero]

It's useful. Run + gun trench gun. Mix and match with Command. It's very handy for network assaults when they're stunned and fish in the barrel. I prefer streetsweeper because I like the +30% crit perk, but streetsweeper takes quite a while to build towards since it's a max level perk.

Esssentially what it does is turn your shotgun into a grenade, and shotguns have a lot of damage/crit so it does much more damage than a regular frag grenade.

[Mooncabbage]

I finally had an opportunity to use Trench Gun last night, it was ok. It suffers from many of the same problems as the flame thrower, it's very situational. It's very rare for a pod to be lined up for shots, atleast for me. It's too short ranged for a decent ambush opener aswell. I will continue to look for opportunities to use it anyway, who knows, maybe I will change my mind.

[PWK87]

I've found it a bit lackluster. As a stealth opener I still prefer grenades or a flamethrower. It just seemed to miss a lot, even when flanking. Its also outclassed in every way by the MSGT level Street Sweeper which can't miss, does bonus damage to unarmored, ignores low cover, and has a much wider cone. I can see it being useful in some situations, but I like close and personal much more at that teir and for the way I use assaults.

[Mooncabbage]

Having tried to use it again, in what I thought was the perfect circumstances, I found it deeply underwhelming. The cone told me it was going to hit 3 guys, and despite Perfect Information informing me that it had a 100% chance to hit, 0% crit, 10% dodge, it totally ignored the back two (who were behind high cover). It's frustrating that the HUD showed a hit, when it repeatedly misses (I reloaded the turn a few times to test it). Since you're almost never going to get a flank on more than 1 or 2 guys at once, it's a bit underwhelming. Also, it seems to suffer from point blank missing, although I feel like that might be fixed in 1.2 (not sure).

[Jacke]

Having tried to use it again, in what I thought was the perfect circumstances, I found it deeply underwhelming. The cone told me it was going to hit 3 guys, and despite Perfect Information informing me that it had a 100% chance to hit, 0% crit, 10% dodge, it totally ignored the back two (who were behind high cover). It's frustrating that the HUD showed a hit, when it repeatedly misses (I reloaded the turn a few times to test it). Since you're almost never going to get a flank on more than 1 or 2 guys at once, it's a bit underwhelming. Also, it seems to suffer from point blank missing, although I feel like that might be fixed in 1.2 (not sure).

I'm wondering if somehow the changes to Flamethrower in 1.1 affected other cone attacks like Trench Gun.

Those changes allowed Flamethrower to wrap around cover, but that also effectively cut its range by 1. This required increasing its range by 1 to get back the same effective range it hand in 1.0.

[dstar3k]

Having tried to use it again, in what I thought was the perfect circumstances, I found it deeply underwhelming. The cone told me it was going to hit 3 guys, and despite Perfect Information informing me that it had a 100% chance to hit, 0% crit, 10% dodge, it totally ignored the back two (who were behind high cover). It's frustrating that the HUD showed a hit, when it repeatedly misses (I reloaded the turn a few times to test it). Since you're almost never going to get a flank on more than 1 or 2 guys at once, it's a bit underwhelming. Also, it seems to suffer from point blank missing, although I feel like that might be fixed in 1.2 (not sure).

1) I thought Perfect Information wasn't actually accurate with LW2?
2) I read somewhere, but don't know if it's true, that Trench Gun doesn't affect targets behind high cover.

[umie214]

I don't like it, as it's redundant with Street Sweeper, which is godly. Close and Personal is great instead.

[Manifest]

I'm wondering if somehow the changes to Flamethrower in 1.1 affected other cone attacks like Trench Gun.

Those changes allowed Flamethrower to wrap around cover, but that also effectively cut its range by 1. This required increasing its range by 1 to get back the same effective range it hand in 1.0.

I'm 99% sure that's not really feasible. Also you said it yourself, the flamethrower couldn't wrap around cover, (in the old version) and the trench gun still has troubles wrapping around cover, it's always been like that. If you see the thread Amineri made on the flamethrower changes she says "we want flamethrowers to work less like shotguns", because being more restricted by cover is a trenchgun/street sweeper thing.

[Manifest]

The cone told me it was going to hit 3 guys, and despite Perfect Information informing me that it had a 100% chance to hit, 0% crit, 10% dodge, it totally ignored the back two (who were behind high cover).

I'll tell you some of the points about Trench Gun you might've missed. First of all, as an AOE shot attack, perfect information doesn't work with it, it'll always show 100%.

When you're using Trench Gun on 3 enemies, what you're actually doing is the same as just taking 3 separate standard shots at those enemies, if you want to know your chances to hit, just check them with the standard shot.

This also means you shouldn't expect hits when shooting at targets in high cover, not only does high cover block the spread pattern (so the enemy isn't even highlighted if you're aiming directly from the front, but it's highly likely to miss (same as a regular shot).

This video shows an optimal use of Trench Gun https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E2vvu1ZWJc, note that this isn't a standard case (indoors), but it's not that uncommon is it? I very frequently have enemies spaced around 6 tiles from each other, and can get 2 shots for one.

The point of trench gun is when you run and gun, very frequently you can flank two enemies. So how is it bad to take shots at them both? Apart from light em' up, there are almost no low rank perks that let you take multiple shots like this. I don't see how you can't flank two enemies that often (around once a mission at least), does your assault have low mobility?

[Jacke]

I'm wondering if somehow the changes to Flamethrower in 1.1 affected other cone attacks like Trench Gun.

Those changes allowed Flamethrower to wrap around cover, but that also effectively cut its range by 1. This required increasing its range by 1 to get back the same effective range it hand in 1.0.

I'm 99% sure that's not really feasible. Also you said it yourself, the flamethrower couldn't wrap around cover, (in the old version) and the trench gun still has troubles wrapping around cover, it's always been like that. If you see the thread Amineri made on the flamethrower changes she says "we want flamethrowers to work less like shotguns", because being more restricted by cover is a trenchgun/street sweeper thing.

I'm not saying Trench Gun was changed to wrap around cover. I'm suggesting Trench Gun was possibly affected by the change to Flamethrower that effectively reduced its range by 1. This may or may not be possible. I can't find any values for Trench Gun in the INI files, so it must be handled elsewhere.

[Mooncabbage]

Part of the problem may be that the Assault trooper I have Trench Gun on is relatively low mobility, so it's often difficult to rush her up to good flanking positions.

Thanks for the info Manifest! I will keep it in mind. I would tend to never move my assault trooper into the position shown in the video though, as if the shot was to fail on any of them, it leaves the assault trooper very exposed. Perhaps it's because I keep looking for good cover that I find Trench Gun so difficult to use well?