/vr/ - Retro Games

>>4812947
Yes it would.

The machinegun already have to be heavy because it necessitates a belt feeding mechanism and delinker, a heavier barrel (so the gun can shoot for longer before heating up), and generally a stronger (thicker) receiver and trunnion, so the gun can withstand being cycled and fired like balls, and generally a bipod to support shooting the gun from various static positions.
You could add a grenade launcher to this, but the gun is already pretty heavy, and mind you need to carry a lot of ammo for a squad automatic weapon.

A dedicated multi grenade launcher generally is a pretty good weapon (because it can shoot a lot of grenades fast, and it looks badass), but not all types of squads find the tradeoff worth it to have one less rifleman, as the amount of good (and safe) opportunities to employ a grenade can often be far fewer than a good opportunity to just use a rifle.

So thus, the idea of mounting a compact single-shot launcher design onto an infantry rifle, is pretty appealing, because that means you have a grenadier, but he's still also a rifleman at the same time, so even if he has no good opportunity to use his launcher, he can still use his rifle.
You obviously don't get the same capacity and speed as a dedicated MGL, however, you can issue multiple underbarrel launchers per squad to make up for it. They increase the weight of your gun, but they are useful, and most contemporary infantry rifles are reasonably light.

That's all in real life, however, how you do it in videogames is up to you. I'd totally be up for some LMG+MGL shenanigans for some Duke Nukem tier game.