Oh no! A user posting a suggestion with his first post! Worse, it's about guns!
We all used to love gen, but that era is long gone. I think that by adding in support weapons, and tweaking existing ones, we could possibly move more towards that tactical gameplay era, when AoS felt like a battlefield, rather than a CoD or counterstrike style game. The main point of these suggestions is to encourage deep teamwork, which was all important, and is what should set AoS apart from most any other shooter.
The first step is reducing block damage at range. Right now building isn't paramount, because cover is easily destroyed, unless you are very good at building. This is less of a problem on servers where trenches can be dug, but how often do you see people doing that any more? Building (moreso than destruction) is what sets Ace of Spades apart and makes it fun, but very few people will bother to build nowadays.
The second is reducing the defensive advantage this would give by adding in support weapons, which will also hopefully increase teamwork. I feel that what AoS needs is weapons that aren't just different ways to kill, but ways to support your allies. For example:
Suppression: A weapon that allows a soldier to keep his enemies heads down. Although wiser heads than me will probably work out the specifics, I imagine it would be a GPMG of some sort. Low damage, Wildly inaccurate when standing, but standing SMG levels of accuracy when crouched, though higher recoil, very low block damage, and a large ammo belt. Because the player will be fighting the recoil when firing, and will use an SMG if he wanted to burst fire, this weapon won't be great at killing. It will, however be excellent at suppressing enemies, especially dug- in ones. Because the user is vulnerable against anyone with a decent weapon, it creates an incentive to move with other players, and for other players to watch out for him. Being shot at makes even the best players panic a bit, and no-one wants to stand up into a stream of MG fire. If we do eventually get vehicles, this provides a nice weapon for them to use, maybe with increased accuracy. High volumes of MG fire will also contribute to the epic feeling when the minimap is a haze of yellow in a violent firefight, and everything is drowned out by pew-pew (Which is the real reason we love Goonhaven 1).
Block-Destroying weapon:
This is the one that has me stumped. Although it should be made harder, we do still need a way to destroy cover at range, and in a way that won't allow for deuces to get easy bazooka kills. My thought was a grenade launcher of some sort. Excellent at breaking blocks, but with relatively low damage to actual players (55ish for a direct hit). The shorter range will mean that bunkers won't be destroyable from the edge of the map like they are now, and the users vulnerability provides another incentive for teamwork. The GPMG and block destroying weapon will be useful in concert, suppressing a bunker to allow the squad to move up, then destroying it.
This would hopefully make people work together again, as well as seeing a return to strategically-placed bunkers being the king of the battlefield, rather than an inconvenience.
I'm sorry about the awful sentence structure, I'm not exactly on top form at the moment.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post, unless you didn't.