When I said the flame throwers were kind of slow, I meant it's annoying watching your player shoot fire for 8 seconds in a very small area, I don't mean to buff it up or anything. The flame throwers are very powerful, that they fire slowly and it's annoying to watch a guy shoot the same small area for 8 seconds. The minigun gets over with shooting the projectiles almost instantly from when it starts.
Ah, okay then, I misunderstood.
I can try playing around with bulletSpeed for this weapon, but I'm not sure how it'll turn out.
In all honesty, there is never a reason for me to use a minigun as it IS completely useless in almost all situations(OR maybe I'm extremely unlucky!! That's it!). I really like the small minigun I just wish I could use it without getting myself killed and looking like in idiot in front of the aliens. As far as I can remember, I've used the miniguns at most 15 times and I only remember hitting an enemy five times(as in out of 150 shots with either of the miniguns, I've landed only five on an enemy. Never in medium-long range engagements.) Is there a suppression mechanic that I don't understand or what?
No, there is no particular suppression mechanics in X-Com, except that wounded units are more likely to fall back.
It's true that miniguns rarely hit, but also beat in mind that each bullet decreases the target's armour. So, three hits from this weapon is a bit better than from, say, a rifle, even if the bullet is the same.
Anyway, as I said, it's often a situational weapon. It's not really my favourite either, but that's mostly because we don't have suitable missions for it! Maybe once surface X-Com base are in (Oheartenstein is working on it), miniguns and similar weapons will have a place to shine.