Minigun
Minigun
A multi-barrel machine gun. It's unwieldy, but once it starts firing it fires very fast. Where most self-loading guns are powered by the energy from the gunpowder, the minigun uses an electric motor to rapidly cycle cartridges through the weapon.
Base Stats
Ranged Combat
Description
Heavy weapon that fires a large barrage of bullets after a long warmup time.
Acquisition
The minigun can be crafted at a Machining table after researching Multibarrel weapons, or occasionally dropped by heavy mercenary raiders.
Analysis
Miniguns are excellent crowd control weapons. Their extremely high DPS are valuable assets when it comes to crowd control, especially in late-game when there are many more enemies in raids. If you manage to get multiple miniguns to your name, you could possibly have a great deal of firepower on your side, but also a high risk of collateral damage if within your base, dependent on setup.
A single centipede armed with a minigun is almost trivial to deal with if engaged at even medium range and behind a wall or sandbags, simply spreading out sufficiently, or distracted with lone colonists; stack up multiple miniguns with Inferno cannons and Heavy charge blasters and things can quickly get out of hand without killzoning, (ideally at least 6) mortars or just outright raw firepower.
Usage
The minigun is a good weapon against entrenched raiders packed closely together. It can hit multiple raiders at once, rapidly pumping their bodies full of lead.
It often requires manual targeting as colonists tend not to choose the best targets for the minigun to shoot at. It also performs significantly better if you're firing at a point right behind the enemy by manually aiming it there.
It is capable of hitting single targets, and is surprisingly effective at it, even rivalling the charge rifle in terms of average DPS.
Version history
In Beta 19 its forced miss radius is removed allowing it to hit single targets; to compensate, its accuracy has been nerfed. It also received a buff to damage and a nerf to fire rate; the overall damage is slightly higher.