Assult Rifle vs. Minigun vs. LMG vs. Charged Rifle

[vampiresoap]

Which one is the best? and in what situation?

[ReZpawner]

Rimworld Science covered this in the last version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brFG-N2bpyo
Some changes have happened since, but it's still pretty decent as a guide.

[makkenhoff]

Missing my personal favorite, the Heavy SMG, useful in short to medium encounters, and is forgiving for the inexperienced user. I find base defenders don't have a lot of time in my micro-sized bases to respond to fast moving attackers, so having long range is just not usually something I have.

For the more experienced - assault rifles are great general purpose for all encounter distances, my second favorite. If I manage to get a 'standing army' I'll craft these for my soldier types, because they excel at nothing but aren't weak against much.

I think the Minigun is useful for selling, but using it in combat is just a joke without a punchline. It's wildly inaccurate against single targets - you can't direct a pawn to fire in 'this swath' - making it the worst weapon in my experience in Rimworld.

The LMG, Charge Rifle, and Sniper Rifle are all comparably powerful against heavy targets, but start to become less effective against light targets which tend to quickly negate the range advantage these weapons have. For example, I just sell the charge rifle, on the rich explorer scenario and replace it as soon as I have a trader show up with a more useful weapon.

I'd like to say, with regard to the stat analyse/parse type videos and breakdowns, I just don't enjoy seeing nor reading about it. Dealt with theorycraft in World of Warcraft raiding, never again. I want to enjoy my games without that level of 'play'.

[ReZpawner]

Well, if you want to get detailed about the encounters:

Assaultrifle : Best for your every-day encounters. Raids, hunting etc.
Sniper Rifle: By far the most useful weapon against mechs thanks to the long range. Equip 5 of your best shooters with these, and you'll squash pretty much any mechs approaching your base. As a bonus, this also works great against siege encounters.
Minigun: Have 10% or so of your guys equipped with this puppy, preferably someone with the trait "trigger happy" to really fuck with the approaching raiders.

Any other weapon is pretty much only good for specific encounters, like the shotguns on people who land on top of your base, or charge rifle at medium range encounters.

[mumblemumble]

I personally love the LMG : Big rounds, fairly accurate, decent speed : its not the best for capturing (overkill is a serious risk) but its a good line defender.

Though the new weapon in the PUBLIC alpha looks like it might be a new best option...

[cultist]

I think it's usually best to have a mix of long and mid-range weapons. I like to improvize so if I get a couple of brawlers, I will adapt my defenes to allow them to rush out and flank the enemy. If you don't really have the pawns to create a melee flank team, brawlers make good bodyguards for the shooters with some clever placement.

The more unified your defense strategy, the easier it is for the AI to create threats that exploit inevitable holes in your plan.

[Wintersdark]

I think the Minigun is useful for selling, but using it in combat is just a joke without a punchline. It's wildly inaccurate against single targets - you can't direct a pawn to fire in 'this swath' - making it the worst weapon in my experience in Rimworld.

This depends heavily on the environment.  If you're fighting in a large open field, then sure.  If you're fighting in hallways, however, a minigun is damned lethal, particularly in the hands of a low-skill (and otherwise largely useless shooter) with Trigger Happy. 

With that said, I'm STRONGLY in favour of having a couple in an equipment rack where people will likely be fighting.  A pair of miniguns is immensely helpful against large groups of foes, such as vicious Labrador Retriever assaults and the less dangerous Tribal Raids.

[Serenity]

The mingun is great for bad shooters since accuracy doesn't matter anyways and against tribal raids where you are guaranteed to hit something. But even then only in a firing line and not when things move to close combat where friendly fire is more of an issue.

The charge rifle is a very lethal weapon, but it's short range can cause issues in some situations. Overall a mix of weapons is the best.

[Wanderer_joins]

Minigun is underrated, it is by far the best weapon against mid-end game manhunter packs and tribal raids.

If i had to choose it would be sniper rifle, minigun, and whatever weapon shirt-mid ranged.

[XeoNovaDan]

Here's my insight on each weapon...

Assault Rifle: The most versatile ranged weapon in RimWorld. It performs OK at close-quarters, and great at mid-range, and it's a very accurate weapon for solid reliability. It's a solid weapon all-round.

Minigun: Highly underrated. A lot of people criticise the minigun because of its poor accuracy against single targets, but that's not what it's meant for; it's a weapon that excels at crowd control. If there's a group of enemies, force a trigger-happy minigunner (forced miss radius so accuracy is completely irrelevant) to aim at the rear-most enemy and watch everybody in front and around soak all of the bullets, and a squad will shred a lot of things. In the case of urban combat, aim at a wall and watch anybody that walks into the path go down pretty quickly.

TL;DR: Excellent crowd control weapon, literally anybody can use it as long as they can equip a gun, blows other weapons out of the water against crowds - except for rocket launchers.

LMG: Situational really. While it generally lags behind in DPS compared to the charge rifle, it is arguably feasible for minor crowd control due to longer burst length, and it holds its own against the charge rifle if in the hands of a bionic + luci'd level 3+ trigger-happy (A16) against larger targets with higher quality LMGs.

Charge Rifle: The king of close-quarters combat against single targets. High accuracy, high fire rate, decent damage per shot, pretty damn dangerous. It lacks somewhat in range though, trailing weapons like the pistol and machine pistol in that aspect.

[Elithen]

I see some other people throwing in their two cents, so here's mine;

Assault rifle - Best all-around weapon for equipping colonists with on an everyday basis. As was mentioned before, it excels at nothing but has no weaknesses (just make sure that, like with all ranged weapons, if someone attacks the wielder in melee you manually tell the colonist to fire instead of slap their enemy, you should only have to do it once per close encounter). You'll want something that hits harder for big game hunting, but I trust anyone who plays this game can work that out for themselves. The range of the AR makes it a useful gun for colonists that might not otherwise be very useful in combat, and makes sure that the AR sees good use as a defensive weapon from behind a shielded melee line or turrets. Also, good weapon range (and higher accuracy out to long range, especially once you start crafting superior+ rifles) gives you more flexibility when attacking siege camps and mech ships, so more of your people can get good cover while its high rate of fire means you can mass fire on the enemy and pull them out of their cover. Suffers against heavily armored targets and you need large numbers to make up the difference, but still performs well in most combat situations.

Charge rifle - Also useful for everyday carrying, puts down mad animals, hunting targets and stray enemies easily. Lacks the range of the AR, and therefore its flexibility. Does more damage than the AR and deals that damage very reliably out to about 20 tiles, making the charge rifle very useful for defensive purposes or offensive ambushes. This and the shotgun are good for trapdoor spider tactics against sappers and manhunter packs. I usually have a small number of my better shooters constantly equipped with armor, kevlar helmets, and charge rifles to help tear through drop-pod attacks and massive tribal raids. Charge rifles are more expensive to craft than ARs and if you're not rolling in resources it can be hard to justify building these instead, but hang on to what you pick up from pirates and you'll find them useful.

LMG - Not a bad weapon, but practically speaking it is less effective than the AR against all targets other than a mass charging wave of unarmored tribals, or perhaps a lone snake. This is not to say that it is ineffective, as slightly higher damage per bullet (8 vs the AR's 7) and double-sized burst gives it a good potential damage output, but this is limited in practice by the accuracy rating of the LMG. It has roughly the same range as a charge rifle (random fact, it has the exact same range as a turret at 25.9 tiles), but is much less accurate, especially past 15 tiles. This can be compensated for in late-game somewhat by crafting your own quality LMGs or getting lucky drops, but it will still seriously suffer in accuracy past that 15 tile mark, as the medium-range accuracy stat only creeps up a little with increasing quality. That being said, crafting an LMG only takes 4 components to the AR's 7, so it can be more affordable if you don't have component crafting up yet or just want a gun to toss into the hands of second-rate fighters to save ARs for skilled shooters.

Minigun - Powerful when used properly, but "properly" here means "against large raids and with the target being selected by the player". Long aiming time and cooldown coupled with serious move speed penalties means this is the gun that will teach you to use equipment racks. Interestingly enough, you shouldn't feel the need to worry about giving most miniguns to colonists with high shooting skill. Because of the low natural accuracy stat of the weapon and another stat I'll explain in a sec, there is little practical benefit to giving a minigun of superior quality or below to a colonist with a shooting skill of more than 5 or 6, and honestly you can do just fine with a skill of 4. These colonists should be used as crowd control, firing at the largest groups of closely packed enemies, and to be most effective at this the player will need to manually tell the minigun wielder to fire at the best target. Miniguns of excellent or higher quality can also be used this way, with the only difference being that you'll start seeing more shots land on your selected target, or in the squares near them, instead of being far misses. However, put one of these high-quality miniguns in the hands of a talented shooter with a bionic arm or two, and all of a sudden it becomes a weapon that can kill any enemy in a single good burst out to 10-15 tiles, and that's a lot of fun.

The minigun also has a stat that it shares with all explosive weapons and the mechs' heavy charge blaster, called Forced Miss Radius. This is what makes the minigun so hard to use, and why inaccuracy is often best, for spreading shots out over a large area instead of trying to get a single target (missed shots don't vanish, they can still hit something if there is something there to be hit). What Forced Miss Radius does is load a modifier (in the case of the minigun, this modifier is 2.4) and, if the wielder of the minigun scores a hit, it then finds a value between 0 and 2.4, in addition to determining a random direction. If the value it finds is less than 1, the shot hits the intended target (or is stopped by cover, armor, what have you), otherwise the shot actually hits a nearby tile using that random direction, determining the distance using the modifier. This is how the minigun will usually make a mockery of any attempt to use it accurately, unless against a large animal at close range.

minigun tl;dr - only equip them to fight very large groups of raiders/manhunters, or when hunting large animals. Also give them to colonists with "trigger happy" trait for double the stupid.

Sniper rifle - Powerful but needs range to be effective. Very useful for harassing incoming raiders or picking off members of siege camps to draw the rest into ambushes. Also useful against Charge Lance-equipped Scythers since mechs never deliberately take cover. Do not use for hunting, if the animal is asleep they get a cover bonus for being "lying down" which seems to be very effective against sniper fire and makes your glorious sniper look like a damn moron blasting away and hitting nothing. Obviously, next to useless at close range. While it might seem obvious to give your sniper rifles to "careful shooter" traited colonists, in effect this makes the shooting cooldown so long that they can only fire once before an enemy closes the distance, and most enemies will not be 1HKO by a sniper. Sniper rifles are best used by typical high skill shooters with bionic arms, as they are one of the weapons most dependent upon shooter skill and manipulation ability since the high accuracy stat of the weapon can be hamstrung by a mediocre shooter, especially at the long ranges it's intended to be used at.

Heavy SMG - In my opinion, the heavy SMG is a better shotgun than the shotgun. Having some of these to give to your non-combat-but-still-with-more-shooting-skill-than-melee colonists is a good investment. In the hands of such colonists, you can count on it being reasonably effective out to 8-10 tiles, scoring at least one 13 damage hit per burst. Useful for trapdoor spider tactics due to short aiming time but be careful that its 1.5 second (at normal speed) cooldown doesn't leave the wielder open to counterattack before they can duck back inside.

Shotgun - Budget/early game hallway defense. It beats the heavy smg for use as a trapdoor gun since it has no burst time you must wait for, is fairly accurate with its one 20 damage shot out to max range (16 tiles) even if used by a merely decent shooter, and has a cooldown of 1.15 seconds, leaving your colonist able to retreat back inside the door before enemies can react, and guaranteed before any tribal ranged weapon has time to aim and fire. In any other situation, the heavy smg is either better or the same due to it's higher possible damage per burst and multiple chances to hit for wielders with low accuracy.

Survival rifle - I like this gun. While its long aiming time (double that of an AR) means that it suffers a bit in close-range combat, it is very accurate from about 8 tiles away all the way to its max range of 37 tiles. With a damage value of 18 it hits hard, and a quality survival rifle can be used by a decent shooter even against enemies in cover, holding its own against more rapid weapons at mid-long range due to accuracy. While it technically outranges the AR, you won't be able to take advantage of that too much, as it doesn't outrange it by enough to get more than one extra shot in, but it will let you take advantage of more cover in a large firefight. Since it's cheap to craft and never gets completely outdated due to its high damage, this gun stays important.

Great bow - Roughly comparable to the survival rifle, but still less effective in every way (especially mid-long range accuracy), and can't be made at a crafting spot. Only advantage is that it doesn't need components to craft, just wood, so if you can't get your hands on good guns, whipping some of these up at a smithy can tide you over.

Pila - Not outrageously practical, with a range comparable to a charge rifle and an aiming time of more than 4 seconds; but it is accurate enough out to somewhere around 16-17 tiles, and high damage gives it the notable possibility to decapitate a human with a single hit to the neck, or kill with two hits to an unarmored torso. If you can get within that effective range, you'll give the enemy a very bad day, but in large firefights it is less effective.

Machine pistol/pistol - These guns are technically better than throwing rocks, but you won't need them for very long as they quickly become obsolete compared to other weapons you have available.

Short bow - Same as with the pistols above, with the one caveat that it is the only ranged weapon you can make immediately at the start of the game, using a crafting spot.



Looking back at how much I wrote reminds me of why I was trying to stop answering questions on forums. Oh well, hope this helps someone.

[ReZpawner]

Looking back at how much I wrote reminds me of why I was trying to stop answering questions on forums. Oh well, hope this helps someone.

Really? I just try to keep it short these days, because nobody can ever be arsed to say "thank you" when you make an effort in an answer.

For what it's worth - thanks for making an effort.

[ShadowTani]

Didn't see anyone mention it here, but the charge rifle is also useful for those relying on slave trade, as they will incapacitate foes more often than many other weapons. It's also a very efficient weapon against mechanoids alongside an EMP grenadier if you don't have the patience for taking them down with snipers (which also gotten a bit tougher with their new AI).

Obviously, since many of the weapons are better in various situations, and you won't always have time to go change weapons around every raid it's best to keep colonists equipped with a variety of weapons in my personal experience.

[Elithen]

For what it's worth - thanks for making an effort.

Happy to help.

It's also a very efficient weapon against mechanoids alongside an EMP grenadier if you don't have the patience for taking them down with snipers (which also gotten a bit tougher with their new AI).

Well if you really want to handle mech ships, you paste them with mortars using a sandbagged turret line set up near the wreck to keep the mechs in place after they pop out, but I'd already written too much, so cheers.

Was that bit about increased incapacitation chance something official about the weapon, or something you've noticed through playing? I never only have one charge rifle in a place, so the massed fire makes it a moot point, but that sounds interesting for both slave trade and "recruitment."

[Mihsan]

Which one is the best? and in what situation?

I love how people always ignore/forget survival rifle, which is my favorite weapon because of long range, high accuracy and hight damage per shot. It is great for defensive fighting.

Charge rifle is awesome tactical/assault weapon that you will move in on your enemy. Perfect for close/medium range.

I lost my trust in assault rifles when I had to use them against armored pirate on Go-Juice. It took insane number of bullets to put him down. I prefer my pirates with lesser ammounts of bigger holes in them.

LMG's work fine against centipedes because they are easy to hit. I guess it can work against masses of covered enemy too... but if your enemy can find cover, then you are doing something wrong. For other purposes it just not accurate enough.

Minigun I dont like because it ignores accuracy skill. But it is great as tool to destroy hives and crashed ship part.

P.S.: But really weapons does not matter so much. I once had assault team of bionical soldiers in power armor that was using machine pistols. There was nothing that they could not kill.