I've found the SMG to be a great ambush weapon. I'll hide on the "friendly" side of hills and let enemies walk past me, then come up behind them and gun 'em down.

I've also seen a lot of criticism about the SMG being poor at close-quarters engagements, since the rifle can one-shot-kill and the SMG can't. That's true, but at the same time the rifle requires more careful aiming where an SMG user is doing something constructive for himself simply by opening fire. More often than not when I surprise someone while I'm holding an SMG, the other person panics and I cut him down before he can line up a shot. Sometimes I come up against a good player who hits my face before I can kill him, but even in those situations I can inflict some serious injury. Generally if I return I'll be able to take out the wounded rifleman.

The SMG really is not a good fighting weapon. If a rifleman and an SMGer meet at close quarters, say around a corner, the SMGer will spray at the rifleman, damaging him little by little while the rifleman has to just get one headshot and the SMGer is down. If the rifleman is skilled, he can beat an SMGer in any scenario. Sniping, the SMG is hopelessly innacurate. Close range, the Rifle has SO much more power and accuracy and the firing rate is higher than it used to be, so it's easier to get more shots in.

The only thing i like doing with the SMG is sneaking up behind unsuspecting people and spraying my whole clip right into their heads! XD

other than that that's about it for now from me :\

SMG's work well in CQB maps, like Broville, Urban Warfare and Normandie, where you can surprise people in the corners. If you get caught at range against a rifleman, you can fire off a burst, maneuver in cover and work your way to their location.

In open maps, such as the default gen, Skybridges, and Harbor (to a certain extent), SMG's are very difficult to use as there is little cover from the riflemen.

In my eyes, the effectivity of an SMG depends on both the skill of the user, the skill of the target, and the weapon of the target.

A good SMG user against a bad or panicky rifleman, the effective range will be much further than a good SMG user vs a good rifleman. Conversely, a good SMG user vs another good SMG user, the effective distance is as long as you want it to be as you both are equally as likely to hit each other.

which map?

@Beret and Drury: I've capped the intel solo with an SMG before. Admittedly it was only a four on four match at the time, but it can be done.

That said, it is not that hard to defeat a SMGer, their strength is the ability to make people panic.

Not only that, but most people seem to suck at using it making it easy to pick them off with the rifle even at short range.

Well one time I was defending with the SMG and someone with a rifle comes to our base. I shoot couple bursts, managing to hit the guy few times and he panics and falls off a cliff and dies. First I thought "Damn I was going to kill that guy!" after a few seconds: "Well, it was for the team."

That works only when you take a pack of rifle dudes with you.

And that pack alone can do more damage to structures than SMG SO...

It can always be used against the other team's structures, in which case it's not actually griefing.

Trouble with that is you have to make it across the map to the enemy base.

Alive.

...With an SMG.

SMG tends to break enemy morale when massed.

It can always be used against the other team's structures, in which case it's not actually griefing.

I love going up against nubs with smgs. They might as well be unarmed.

I love the SMG.

I recommend that if you use it you use it in groups, for then it is absolutely devastating.

The power of the SMG lies not in its accuracy or damage but the chaos and panic it causes.

It is true that it does not take much to take out a submachine gunner, but it is clear that whenever you start pounding at someone with submachine gun fire they will usually panic.

I also like it as a support weapon; firing when the enemy gets out of cover, then move up if they get in cover again(so I can get close enough to throw grenades).

At close range it is a lovely weapon too and clearing out bunkers and destroyed bunkers with it is both effective and particularly satisfying.

I think the SMG will be a lot more useful when are are more than 2 guns in the game

I use the rifle for taking down 1-2 thick bridges, just because it is a little bit more accurate. but usually I will use the SMG for destroying, the rifle is just more accurate at destroying

Except you can destroy bunkers with rifle too.

And you don't even have to kill yourself for SMG, just to get killed by first rifleman you meet.

The machine gun is perfectly balanced right now. People are really just missing the idea of the SMG in the first place. It should have been easy to see as you first used the gun. IT IS MEANT TO DESTROY BLOCKS, NOT MASSACRE THE ENEMY TEAM IN A FEW SECONDS. You use this weapon for tactics and that is about it. Destroying enemy bunkers is extremely helpful to the team.

Assuming both opponents are skilled, and both spot each other at the same time, I'd say the SMG holds the advantage at a range of up to 10 blocks away, and no more. Outside that, the rifleman has a much greater chance, and quite often will not even be hit by return fire at all at greater ranges. The only reason the SMG can win at closer ranges is because it's wildly inaccurate fire scores enough hits to make the rifleman panic and not aim back properly. Unless an SMG user can distract a rifleman for the time it takes to whittle their health down, the rifle will still win, mostly because the only way to hit the broad side of a barn with the SMG is to stay perfectly still for a much longer period of time, crouching, using sights, and shooting little bursts, which is the perfect target for a rifleman.

@Galaxy: Actually, even a rifleman-gunner two-man team can raise some serious hell, particularly on vanilla maps or any other map where engagements can occur at a huge variety of ranges.

@Prioch: I do the same, myself. The SMG really does not work at all on large expanses of water or other flat land where you're really visible, but it'll serve you out to fog if you've got cover. The advantage the SMG has is that you can enter and leave cover faster, since the SMG requires less aiming and can fire several shots at once.

i usually use the SMG because I might need to rip down a bunker or a bridge, I will switch to the rifle when I need to snipe people, and the SMG is a little harder to snipe with. but I was sniping with the SMG yesterday, the people were barely visible through the fog, but i could still kill them. i think crouching really helps, and do not forget to fire in bursts of 1-3 if you're not already.

Suppressive fire, I constantly stress the need for people to work together in 3-man squads consisting of two riflemen and one machine gunner. If done correctly, they can do some serious damage and keep the enemy pinned down (or kill them, that's always preferred...).

SMG's good for other stuff too, as I outlined above. There's some legitimate tactical use for it.

Rifle = good for everything. Destroying forts (more accurate), killing people, short range fights (assuming both rifle and SMG user are pros)

SMG = good for griefing

Once it becomes more accurate and/or easier to control than it is now, because then it will become a more viable sniping weapon than the rifle (it's already not too bad for sniping, by way of sheer volume of fire).

It's actually already started to outclass the rifle, what I'd really like is for the SMG to stay as it is and the rifle go back to its old accuracy, so that SMG users get consistently destroyed by rifle users at long ranges.

If you're talking about situational use, rather than implementation, then the SMG is good for blue raiders on vanilla maps, clearing out cluttered hallway environments (like the main tunnel on Bridge Wars after it's been built up and damaged a bit), and digging straight down towards tunneling enemies (provided you're within a few blocks of the tunnel roof, anyway). It's also good to use in a bunker in tandem with a rifle user to keep the enemy back. The SMG user drives people into cover and destroys it, and the rifle user picks them off.

At what point does an SMG completely outclass the rifle?

*Supposing the user is skilled in both rifle and SMG.