How is HMG on bots?

Been trying to branch out recently from my comfort zones on each faction. For bugs, I used to always run the grenade launcher, for bots, pretty much 99 percent of the time I have an anti material rifle. Because I have so many hours with each of these guns, they are basically my comfort weapons.

HMG puts in good work on bugs to, but I find the grenade launcher to be a better choice for crowd management, while using other options like thermites for the heavies. However with how covering fire works with bots, it does seem like the HMG, or any MG for that matter would be a great benefit on bots.

How does the HMG overall fare? Is it the best mg for bots? Or does something like the standard mg or stalwart actually work better in this scenario?

I usually couple the mg with the explosive crossbow. This gives the option to still deal with bug holes, fabricators, ect, while also having a strong primary option that is good at area denial.