LMG battery and rate of fire
 

I recently purchased an Echo 1 LMG.
Its ROF with a 9.6v nimh battery is around 14 rps which, after some searching online, is rather low. Oh well, I wanted an RPK and I am glad I got it.

Unfortunately the only 9.6v nimh battery that fits the Echo 1 LMG is the one that comes with it. Not wanting to turn to lipo, I am considering using 8.4v nimh batteries. However 8.4v batteries will lower the ROF to around 12 rps.

So my question is how much of a negative impact will a loss of about 2 rps have on the LMG's effectiveness?

all depend of the upgrade you planing to do . if you want to keep it stock sure a 7.4 lipo will be good and not suppose to fry your gun if your not to trigger happy hehe but will make your rof goes just a little bit up . that what i think .

Rate of Fire is just a preference anyway.

7.4v lipo are pretty much safe if you don't over discharge them and get a good charger, and are not hard enough on the system to kill anything.

Is the 9.6 a mini or large? Which LMG? Your post is not clear. If you have the echo 1 red star RPK, I know you can fit a 12.8v madbull LFP in there. ;) rate of fire what!?!? lol Anyway, I have run it with a 7.4v lipo

I was able to suppress 2-3 people behind cover with a bolt action sniper rifle.
As long as you're good at what you do, rate of fire isn't that critical

Thanks everyone, I will be looking into 7.4 lipo

+1 on that it only takes 1 bb to hit a tree near a group of the enemy for them to get their heads down. In real life and preferably for airsoft a support gun is best suited to have a moderate rate of fire so you can sustain fire on a location for a longer ammount of time. Just think 1000 round will last alot longer at 18rps then it will at 30rps

High rate of fire only makes up for poor aim.

Low rate of fire may make you a more effective support gunner because you won't reload as often.

I am not even convinced that High ROF makes up for anything. It just burns bbs faster. The ONLY advantage I have ever
heard for high ROF is trigger response which is more of a CQB thing.

Why do you want to burn through your box mag faster? My LMG shoots 13bps and I think that's just fine...

Thanks again for the responses,
I am not trying to increase my ROF but just wanted to know if losing a bit of ROF would diminish the effectiveness of being a support gunner. From the responses I have come to conclusion that it does not really matter as long as I carry out my role properly.

Since the Echo1 Redstar LMG/RPK has a small battery compartment and taking into consideration the recommendations I have gotten, I will be going with 7.4 lipo batteries.

I have done a bit of research and will be doing more before buying the right charger and charging a lipo for the first time. For now I'm considering Firefox 7.4v 2300mAh Lipo batteries and an Imax B6 universal charger. However more research will be done before I make my first lipo related purchases.

High rof makes up for the spread you get at 260ft, helps cutting through bush too
Also helps in cqb when you have to lead targets or shoot people running past doors
High rof has advantages, otherwise nobody would use it lol
And this is coming from someone who used to run his 249 at 850rpm =p