Pretty soon (in year 2) most pirates come equipped with either sniper rifles or charge rifles, a grenadier here and there. Early on they use shivs, shivs, shotguns and survival rifles. I hardly ever see PDW, assault rifle, heavy SMG.
As you colony wealth grows as does the strength of the raids that come to attack you, on higher challenges you tend to get much larger raids and the quality of the gear the enemies that attack you gets better, Vanilla Rimworld Sniper rifles and Charge rifles are the bee's knees in terms of weapons pirates can use.
It has to do with the points assigned to a raid or siege. The more points, the less likely it is that a group with low points will be spawned in as part of that. Note that in the Factions.xml file, a spawngroup can consist of a single pawn, which may explain why you see snipers a lot - they eat more points than the low-level scrubs.
Quote from: Mrshilka on July 28, 2015, 02:52:59 PM
As you colony wealth grows as does the strength of the raids that come to attack you, on higher challenges you tend to get much larger raids and the quality of the gear the enemies that attack you gets better, Vanilla Rimworld Sniper rifles and Charge rifles are the bee's knees in terms of weapons pirates can use.
Funny thing is, I find the assault rifle better than the Charge rifle.
Yeah I agree, the assault rifle is excellent due to it's great range and very high accuracy.
Quote from: Listy on July 29, 2015, 01:13:47 AM
Quote from: Mrshilka on July 28, 2015, 02:52:59 PM
As you colony wealth grows as does the strength of the raids that come to attack you, on higher challenges you tend to get much larger raids and the quality of the gear the enemies that attack you gets better, Vanilla Rimworld Sniper rifles and Charge rifles are the bee's knees in terms of weapons pirates can use.
Funny thing is, I find the assault rifle better than the Charge rifle.
It is unless you firing at someone with power armor or a higher than normal Sharp armour rating, Charge rifles are electrical dmg.
Quote from: Mrshilka on July 29, 2015, 02:55:47 AM
Quote from: Listy on July 29, 2015, 01:13:47 AM
Quote from: Mrshilka on July 28, 2015, 02:52:59 PM
As you colony wealth grows as does the strength of the raids that come to attack you, on higher challenges you tend to get much larger raids and the quality of the gear the enemies that attack you gets better, Vanilla Rimworld Sniper rifles and Charge rifles are the bee's knees in terms of weapons pirates can use.
Funny thing is, I find the assault rifle better than the Charge rifle.
It is unless you firing at someone with power armor or a higher than normal Sharp armour rating, Charge rifles are electrical dmg.
<ThingDef ParentName="BaseBullet">
<defName>Bullet_ChargeRifle</defName>
...
<damageDef>Bullet</damageDef>
I think charge rifle actually deal sharp damage just like any other gun. Also when I used power armor charge rifle dealt significantly less damage
My mistake then, Charge rifles always seem to be one of the best guns in the game and thought it was because they ignored most armour, sadly its description if that is the case is more useless fluff.
Lightning guns sounds very cool though.
I got raided on extreme challenge with 4 triple rocket launchers and 4 snipers and a handful of other small armed raiders. I bout messed my self.
The type of weapons you see throughout is complete random from my experience. I have had games were i get more of one thing then the other then tje very next game will be the opposite.
charge rifle has such a short range. 12 damage, 3 bursts, 24 range. base accuracy at 24 range is 52%.
Assault rifle, 7 damage, 3 bursts, 32 range. Base accuracy at 32 is 63%. Base accuracy at 24 range is 76%.
I will use an assault rifle over a charge rifle every time.
i usually use burst weapons for my ambush squad of trigger-happies.
so miniguns > charge rifles > assault > uzi > shotguns > pistols.
when you use this for ambush, range is usually not that relevant, what you want is DPS.
which is why i separate all my troops into squads of : careful shooter snipers (with powerclaws), trigger happy burst weapons (with powerclaws), brawler swordsmen (double bionic arms).
i use my snipers as bait, then i draw enemies towards my burst squad ambush.
any brawlers that tries to melee my burst squad gets raped when i mob them with powerclaws.
Quote from: TLHeart on July 29, 2015, 05:23:25 PM
charge rifle has such a short range. 12 damage, 3 bursts, 24 range. base accuracy at 24 range is 52%.
Assault rifle, 7 damage, 3 bursts, 32 range. Base accuracy at 32 is 63%. Base accuracy at 24 range is 76%.
I will use an assault rifle over a charge rifle every time.
Well a charge rifle does deal almost twice as much damage if you can aim. It's a good close-ranged weapon.
Quote from: b0rsuk on July 30, 2015, 01:32:21 AM
Quote from: TLHeart on July 29, 2015, 05:23:25 PM
charge rifle has such a short range. 12 damage, 3 bursts, 24 range. base accuracy at 24 range is 52%.
Assault rifle, 7 damage, 3 bursts, 32 range. Base accuracy at 32 is 63%. Base accuracy at 24 range is 76%.
I will use an assault rifle over a charge rifle every time.
Well a charge rifle does deal almost twice as much damage if you can aim. It's a good close-ranged weapon.
guy with 20 in shooting, 75% of his shots with charge rifle seem to fail, while 100% of shots with assault rifle seem to hit AND has more range.
that's a lot more practical DPS.
i didn't crunch any theoric numbers, but from my personal experience i will take AR over CR any day, any time.
by the time (range-wise) charge rifles get actually any good, you could aswell use shielded brawlers...
Quote from: b0rsuk on July 30, 2015, 01:32:21 AM
Well a charge rifle does deal almost twice as much damage if you can aim. It's a good close-ranged weapon.
Yes a charge rifle is an okay close range weapon, 8 cells and closer. I would rather the enemy not get that close. How many shots are you going to get off at the enemy from 8 to 1 cell? The enemy moves at 4+cells a sec, every 2.16 sec you will get a shot off. Warmup 1.5, cooldown .66. Takes the enemy less than 2 seconds to close that range.
Assault rifle has the same warmup and cooldown cycle.
At close range AR has a base accuracy of 87% at short range
a charge rifle has a base accuracy of 82% at short range
Yeah, I always favor moderate damage, high accuracy weapons. I value consistency above all, so I'd rather see half damage all of the time than full damage some of the time. I also agree the assault rifle sits in a really nice spot.
It's actually really great that there are different answers to this question for different reasons, there should not be a best choice weapon that is optimal for all situations.
I kind of feel that all guns need a buff, its kind of weird that one of the best strategies in the game is to bumrush down an open field and stab them with your shivs...
I struggle morso against the primitives than the raiders, which shouldn't be the case imo
That has never been my experience (a gang of dudes with assault rifles generally crushes all primitive raiders) but again it's great that there are different answers to this question, it tells me vanilla weapon balance is pretty OK.