Topic on Talk:Weapon Guide

See User:Hordes/Weapons Guide

• Rewrite page to focus entirely on "players using the weapon", removing "how to counter weapon" entirely. Weapon counters in this page were simple one-liners most of the time, and is/should be covered in defense tactics.
• Update for 1.4/Biotech
• The "categories" are kind arbitrary in practice. idk if i need to say the generalist/specialist stuff at all in the overview
• Obviously this is mostly my opinion so more looks are better

The current weapons guide is bad, assembled and updated piecemeal and either made by those without a good handle on the mechanics or just thoroughly outdated or worse. So I'm keen for an update.

Re countering weapons. I agree, and its generally not a useful option anyway - most weapons are all jumbled in raids and you can't specifically tailor strategies to most of them. I could see the argument for special cases, especially when they're parallel to issues players will experience with using them. E.g. Doomsdays and triples and interactions with aiming time, shields etc. and with strategies to capture them but most other things should be in defense.

Re your rewritten guide. It is an excellent summary of each weapon available. It does have a couple of issues that we can discuss (Lack of attention to damage types being a big one), but the biggest issue is its not really a guide. This is a problem inherited from the current implementation, don't get me wrong. But if you're a new player looking for a guide on weapons, how do you know how to balance the information given? You know the AR has more range than the HSMG because you're told it, but you don't know how much to value that extra range. A branching progression might be the better option

Re: countering weapons

There are some raid types (melee only, sniper only are the big ones), and there are some non-rocket weapons that change how you fight raids (a sniper means you can't use snipers as well), but i still think defence tactics is the better place for all of it. Ideally it'd just be interlinked but ik it's a bit clunky to read.

Re: rewrite

I don't think I (or the wiki) should really be an arbitor of "this is good/bad", because, for a lot of weapons, it really does depend. How should anyone value Revolver's stagger vs Autopistol's DPS? AR's range might make it better against breachers, but a CR's damage might make it better... against the same target. There are clear-cut cases, like shotgun v AR or pistol v AR, which are listed as-is, but the finer differences are tough to hash out.

Whenever a player would prefer any given choice would depend on playstyle, difficulty, base layout, and personal preference, which are impossible to fully control for. I understand the theorem of "tell new players a strict rule first, then let them learn to break it" but i'm not confident, in general, here.

(i also don't know what "branching progression" means here)

A progression as in "Get this first, upgrade to this" and branching as in "if you want to kite upgrade to option a, if you want to killbox upgrade to option b"

Its a guide, its meant to provide advice. That is why they're reading it in the first place after all - if they knew what was good, they wouldn't need the guide in the first place.

And the fact of the matter is that there is a fairly limited set of end-game capable weapons. Technically you could farm enough legendaries and take all autopistols to the endgame. But thats not efficient when they're competing with excellents of the end game weapons - you end up spending more to keep the weaker weapons relevant instead of just upgrading. This means that outside of getting lucky with getting legendaries early on, weaker weapons are phased out and the vast majority of players standardize on HSMGs, ARs, CRs, CSGs or Miniguns. Thats 5 of 27 non-disposable ranged weapons. Of the remainder, grenades, launchers, BAs and SRs serve specific niche roles and are used as needed rather than general issue and can be discussed individually.

Each of those 5 has fairly distinct styles that mesh well with it. (For example, CSGs are fantastic for killboxes designed for them and internal fights, but do worse in field battles and so they push you into turtling. ) You can still narrow down the readers choices to the useful ones by offering them options in how they want to play and then providing progression to achieve it.

So for example, "I want to mainly use prepared defenses and killboxes but don't want to be dependent on them" might go (very roughly):

1. Loot any early guns but try for MPs and the occasional HSMG you might see at this point.
2. Research but skip constructing the Gunsmithing guns because you'll generally be looting better weapons than you can make and steel and components are usually better spent elsewhere.
3. Also research but skip crafting the Blowback operation guns unless you have a great crafter (routinely getting Excellents)
4. Instead try to research Gas operation while looting ARs, LMGs, and HSMGs with ARs going only to the pawns with good skills
5. Once you have Gas Op, switch to crafted HSMGs. Gradually try to get everyone at least Excellent+. MW if you have a production specialist.
6. Research becomes less of a priority, but eventually upgrade to CRs.

You can also get more specific with thresholds for when to swap or maintain - for example, Normal HSMG < Excellent MP < Good/Exc HSMG < MW MP

So, I'm not terribly fond of branching progression:

• Neolithic weapons deserve some mentions, b/c there are starts that have to rely on them (Lost Tribe / Naked Brutality).
• Similarly, "any gun is better than none" followed by "machine pistols / BAs are better than anything else before" are pretty much universal. Plus, you can't really choose what weapons raiders get
• Listing these 5 times for the 5 progressions is awfully redundant, so there'd just be a section for neolithic / early industrial weapons up top.
• Then it would be very similar to the rewrite as-is, just with each weapon having its own subsection or bullet point. There could be a section for the 5 endgame viable weapons up at the top, but then it feels out of place.

Final point can be done without a restructure, so I think I can just do that.

EDIT:

If I were to say the "top-5" niches, I would say them as follows: (this is for a sanity check)

• Assault Rifle: Strongest overall weapon outside of a killbox, and still good inside one. Even with a killbox, breachers and sappers are made to ignore them.
• Heavy SMG: One of the best weapons for low-skill shooters. Stronger than an assault rifle inside a killbox, and decent when fighting from longer distances. Cheapest of the available options.
• Charge Rifle: Sidegrade to the assault rifle. Deals more damage, and with higher AP, but is less flexible against breachers and sappers. Good in a killbox, but not reliant on one. Quite expensive.
• Chain Shotgun: Strongest weapon in the game in its 12-tile range. Amazing in a specialized killbox or other close-range fights, like infestations. Poor weapon otherwise; ideally, have some way of manipulating both breachers and sappers.
• Minigun: Massive 25-shot burst, but with a massive cooldown. Insane optimal DPS, but inaccurate. This inaccuracy makes it unparalleled for mowing down a crowd of enemies, but it is entirely reliant on a static defensive setup to function. Expensive.

Gah, sorry I missed this. You don't need to cover the basics every time, thats why its branching. You can cover the basics that are the same regardless, and then split recommendations from there once the player actually has lattitude to be selective. Neolithics can be covered in that section though realistically, its just "make recurve bows if you desperately need more ranged weapons and can't wait till raids come, and don't bother with researching greatbows unless you have no hostile industrial+ factions and even then...". Neolithic melee has more leeway.

But there are choices that should be made early and there is more choice than you imply. If you want to lean into chain shotguns later in the game, you can save yourself a lot annoyance and construction mats/time by specializing in close range early.

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Re Sanity Check: AR: "Strongest" is dubious. Its a generalist - it can do anything pretty well. You can kite, it has very solid range, and its DPS is pretty good throughout its range. But ultimately the player controls the engagement distance. For example: unlike say CSGs, Charge rifles don't exactly have problems getting in range (even if it is shorter than the AR) and they do more damage. Arguably they're stronger. Miniguns too.

HSMG:

CSG:

Minigun: I'd disagree that it requires a static defensive set up, you absolutely can take them out to field battles. It does tend toward static combat though because of its move speed penalty and the long warm up and cool down. You want to stick them somewhere you don't have to move them from and just keep them firing, but they can be devastating there too. Admittedly, that is from the PoV of a 500% threat player - target rich environments are the norm so this opinion might be skewed.

CR: The CR and the AR don't really occupy the same niche, so calling it a side grade is like calling the Minigun a sidegrade to it. Honestly, at the higher qualities you'll likely have access to when the CR is craftable, I'd argue its closer to an upgrade to the HSMG - you lose a little below 9 tiles in exchange for a lot beyond 9 tiles in both DPS and AP. Unless you still have low skilled pawns in the late game, you should eventually upgrade from the HSMG to the CR. See what I mean @ User:Harakoni/Sandbox#Leg_CR_vs_Leg_HSMG

"once the player actually has lattitude to be selective / But there are choices that should be made early and there is more choice than you imply."

As I see it: if (you're) saying not to craft the Gunsmithing/Blowback guns most of the time, then presumably you'd be mostly looting them. If you are looting weapons, then there is little choice in what raiders actually carry, and then one of machine pistol / BA / pump shotgun are the best until you get to the harder raids. You're gonna use what you have; getting multiple BAs from raiders isn't very common, so you can't really plan a build or playstyle, for instance.

Then after gas op, we're directly at SMG/CSG and very close to ARs (for Crashlanded), while gunning for minigun/CR is a bit silly. I'm mostly biased because i rely on trap tunnels a lot. I understand buying weapons and deserter exists, but even these aren't very reliable.

You are still limited by what you can loot, but you loot a lot of weapons before you can research very far down the tech tree, especially as tribals. You kill a lot more raiders than you have pawns, and scavenger and pirate gunners will make up a lot of early pirate raids. Outlanders with town guards too. And thats before things like opening caskets in ancient dangers, trading for weapons, getting caravans to kill enemies for you and looting any losses etc.

But new players also need to know what to choose - they'll have more options than they'll have pawns. Knowing the the HSMG is basically just a MP+ 1 quality until you hit MW is good to know when you're scavenging. But theres long term stuff too - if they're trying to decide between the BAs and the MPs they just looted, and they intend to use CSGs later on, picking the BAs means any defenses they build now that work with the BA won't work with their final choice.

Options open up once you get to Gas Op. At that point you can potentially start making the weapons you take into end game, or at least picking the branch of the research tree you want to go down to get your end game weapons. But do you build interim HSMGs while you wait, do you spec fully into HSMGs, do you go straight into CSGs, do you keep your looted ARs and skip HSMGs etc are relevant questions.