Machine Gun (Q3)

In Quake 3 Arena, the Machine Gun is a starting weapon, along with the Gauntlet. The Machine Gun is a surprisingly good starting weapon, as its automatic fire gives a player enough continuous firepower to get to a powerful weapon.

Machine Gun has two relative cousins called Chain Gun and Heavy Machine Gun. Latter added to the Quake Live after removal of Chain Gun from most maps to replicate it, which has removed alongside of other Team Arena related weapons like Proximity Mine Launcher and Nailgun with Aug 2014 update.

Strategies

 * The Machine Gun is a surprisingly useful weapon. When using it, try to keep your distance. While this puts you at risk of getting killed with the Rocket Launcher's splash damage, the Machine Gun's accuracy makes it very possible to chip away at your foes no matter where they are. Try to predict your target's movement, lock your sights at the bodyframe. If you can get figure out your enemy's pattern, you can do a lot of damage.
 * At long distance open areas, keeping high ground may help you to evade splash damage hits coming from below. Yet it doesn't really offer any protection from long range Railgun shots or anyone else traversing among high ground like you as well. If important pickups are already taken and you don't have access to a better weapon yet, staying silent at high ground may help you to out-maneuver your opponent to slip around.
 * Your priority must be on taking cover against high grade weapons on a fresh respawn. Safest approach would be staying silent at high ledges, in front of gates and near corners by walking slow. You may wanna leave an area with multiple gates or low ground as fast as possible, while catching your breathe at the high ground or halls. Remember to check your back often and use corners as covers.
 * Bind thirdperson commands to different buttons to peek for enemies behind corners. "cg_thirdperson 1" and "cg_thirdperson 0" commands can be bound to different buttons to peek around loud corners. Just try to do it fast enough and gather information quickly before diving into. When you are so concerned around what's front, you may get attacked from behind instead. In league play these sort of commands may be banned but in common pub play it's not.
 * In a combat try to steer close to ramps or catwalks so you can use a height difference and at least ditch your opponent or evade a few lethal shots. When respawned in a rather unlucky position without weapon access seek ledges, ramps, stairways or catwalks to drop down. Positioning may help you to put your thoughts together and stay alive for longer.
 * Aiming for the farthest edge of the player hitboxes ever so slightly while following the trail of their movement is a good idea to keep the bullets focused on the foe. This way, you can answer right away with a wrist flick when they do a sharp turn hastily and keep tracking and chipping health away. Animation moves around a center-mass, locking your view at belt area's trail is a sure fire way of tracking better.
 * The Machine Gun can also be used to wear down targets at any range; for a Railgun or Shotgun finisher shot. Keep shooting and trying to change weapon causes a slight slowdown on switching, so try to cease fire right before your weapon swap. MG's extremely tight cone can be handy in Tier 6 space maps like Q3DM19 (Apocalypse Void) or Q3DM17 (The Longest Yard). Doing so will eat up your ammunition very quickly, you wouldn't want to make it a habit unless you can control the bullet packs laying around.
 * Machine Gun is also a great combination weapon on one-on-one combat at medium distance as well. Upon continuous hits you'll hear louder but slow pitched distinguishable grunts of pain from your foes which is a signal of a pain flinch which throws off their aim momentarily. That gives you enough time to change your movement direction to dodge or swap to a powerful weapon for follow up shots depending on distance and enemy's weapon of choice.
 * Upon dealing a total sum of 25 damage or higher which is the threshold; player will hear higher pitched cries from opponent they've been focusing on, also can cause a slight kickback effect on them. To achieve this against a target without armor only 4-5 bullets would suffice; where against fully armored targets that number adds up to 11-15 shots (more than a second) at least to deal prominent damage against foe.
 * Low health enemies will yell in pain with louder high pitched cries. Machine Gun is a great finisher for stacking up easy frags at open areas or interfering at combat of other players. A high spot to observe the arena might be an advantageous position.
 * Shooting zoomed-in at long distances adviced. MG generally used to cover the lack of range of such weapons like Shotgun, Grenade Launcher or Lightning Gun. Cover fire from MG would be needed until player enters the desired combat range. Fast ditching players like strafe jumpers or foes flung by acceleration pads still can easily be aimed at, while that doesn't really cut their momentum like a Railgun shot; it damages them throughly when they're out of effective combat range.
 * MG can fend off or at least chip down a stocked player for a small while if you stand near health orbs that has a sight upon a bypass-choke point after stacking a few armor shards, Green Armor or Yellow Armor to endure a single burst damage. Denying closest Medikits and focusing them with MG would slow their restock routine a bit in a large map. Beware, if you can't put a long distance for safety, or can't estimate their approach you might be toasted by a weapon combo before evacuating the area.
 * When going against somebody that has the Machine Gun, try to change directions at random so that it's difficult to predict where you'll go. If a Machine Gunner can get a lock on you, then they can do a fair amount of damage or kill you before they go down. Try to shake off their sights by firing back at them and taking sharp turns to the sides by stutter strafing; unexpected slight distance changes by slight tap steps may cause them miss quite a few shots.
 * Machine Gun shouldn't be used to stand your ground next to highly important pickups without a backup weapon. Anyone on a restock routine will approach you with better weapons and with higher effective health. Unless you perfectly time the spawn of item, you can't evade a confrontation at close quarters without suppression fire. If you have to stand by some goodies, lure enemy to simpler pickups like health orbs, weapons or dropped power-ups then bash them with a gauntlet once you predicted their action.
 * When you are desperate at a crowded match for a recovery, rat the ammo boxes for effective long range weapons and skip the other ammo boxes in a scattered spawn scheme. Look for weapon spawn and related ammo box spawns are in separated positions in the map, memorize and pick them up whether you have the weapon or not. This strategy won't work all of a sudden, and so tedious to ditch stocked opponents after each and every encounter without the use of teleporters or an item like Personal Teleporter.
 * In Quake Live, MG has throughly became obsolete because lacking potential damage, also the addition of "starter loadouts" feature in some team oriented game types. So people skip this weapon for something like Heavy Machine Gun, and swap it out. That makes it only a finisher weapon when you only hear loud pain cries, to cause a kickback you have to effectively swap back and forth to it from far distances while rushing onward.
 * Lacking fire rate and overall firepower in Quake Live, its long range utility erased away from most maps if not all. Now players can start the game with their own weapon pair of choice at certain game modes and Machine Gun can be found in maps along with rest of the arsenal. It still remained as a good finisher weapon and hitscan to retaliate and repel foes away, yet it's overshadowed by better options.
 * The Machine Gun can be useful against somebody that has a Battle Suit. Since it hits targets as soon as it fires and it generates no splash damage, it can put a dent in a Battle Suit user with longer exposure. Try to fight them from medium or long range, because even if the damage output is sure quick, Suit still packs 25-50% damage reduction alone.

Advantages

 * One of the first weapons the player is equipped with.
 * High rate of fire, good for causing kickbacks on the target.
 * Hitscan, requires little to none leading.
 * Useful in both beginner and expert hands.
 * Highly accurate, small spread actually serves this notion.
 * Good finishing weapon, reliably combines with rest of the arsenal.
 * Long reach, chips away at fast targets or whoever out of effective combat range.
 * Ammo boxes are almost impossible to miss.
 * Good for scouting health items and ratting other ammo boxes.

Disadvantages

 * Low damage output becomes even lower at Quake Live.
 * Its already low damage takes a penalty at team oriented TDM and CTF modes.
 * Not eligible against crowds or in team games, requires a slower or elusive approach.
 * Quickly chews through ammo, prolonged usage whirls user back into looking for ammo packs.
 * Only effective at long distance and wide views, weak against cover and pre-firing.
 * Requires height advantage, cover or parkour flicks to hold enclosed areas.
 * Slight spread may cause misses at very long reaches against small targets.
 * Holding a position is nigh impossible without stacks or weapon combos.
 * Encountering a highly stacked player and surviving depends on positioning.