Your ranged weapons of choice

Started by Syrchalis, June 23, 2018, 05:32:07 AM

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Syrchalis

Hey everyone,
what I want to know is what ranged weapons do you use early/mid/late game and depending on shooting skill.

For me it's like this:
Early
Good shooters: Highest quality bows
Bad shooters: Melee weapons or lower quality bows (whatever is available really)

Mid
Everyone: Heavy SMG or machine pistol (easy to use and excellent DPS for relatively low price)
Maybe bolt-action for a good sniper, but usually I don't bother, because of how strong the above are

Late
Good shooters (with aiming time reducing perks - (mostly from mods that I use)): Sniper rifle
Bad shooters or good ones without aiming time perks: Assault Rifle (I cannot stand the low range of the Charge Rifle and it's DPS isn't so amazing either)

Currently experimenting with giving everyone LMGs instead. I think the raw DPS might be worth it.

Please also note if anything has changed in 1.0 for you. I'm still playing B18, so my list is not for 1.0.

Also if you want to steal formatting, here you go:

[b]Early[/b]
[color=lime]Good shooters:[/color] <text>
[color=red]Bad shooters:[/color] <text>

[b]Mid[/b]
[color=#44AAFF]Everyone:[/color] <text>

[b]Late[/b]
[color=lime]Good shooters:[/color] <text>
[color=red]Bad shooters:[/color] <text>
For mod support visit the steam pages of my mods, Github or if necessary, write me a PM on Discord. Usually you will find the best help in #troubleshooting in the RimWorld discord.

SpoonBender

#1
I don't agree with your rejection of the charge rifle. For me it is obviously the weapon with the most DPS stopping power. Check the numbers on https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Weapon. Short range the minigun has more DPS, but the warm up time is just too slow, often the target is dead before it starts firing. Also the large miss radius causes too much collateral damage. I don't like weapons with really short range, like the chain shotgun. They will beat your face before you can shoot them and again, it will cause too much collateral damage. Assault rifles are next best, lower DPS, but more time to shoot.

Early
Good shooters: With tribe starts I b-line for the Great Bows tech. They're almost as good as a bolt-action rifle, great range and easy to craft. Also any decent weapons I can scavenge. I prefer Great Bows over low damage firearms like revolvers and autopistols.<text>
Bad shooters: Same thing, best weapon is still the best with low shooters stats. Sometime i use fraggranades on bad shooters, because accuracy isn't as important. I only use melee on pawns with the brawler trait, or with exceptionally high melee and low shooting stat.<text>

Mid
Everyone: Any decent weapon I can scavenge. I b-line for component assembly first, because otherwise you won't be able to craft many weapons anyway. Usually raiders leave weapons like LMG's, Heavy SMG's, assualt rifles, shotguns and sometimes charge rifles. That'll do for a while. I only use sniper rifles for tactical long range combat. Their DPS is just too low.<text>

Late
Everyone: Charge rifles all around. I design my killbox for their optimum range. Nothing passes if enough charge rifles unload. To optimise you can manually set targets to prevent total overkill on one target.<text>

Kirby23590

Well here's mine. This one comes from my gameplay in B18 mostly.

Early
Good shooters:For industrial. I will go with bolt-action rifles and revolvers and if i'm lucky, machine pistols. Bows like recurve and greatbows help too.
Badshooters:Autopistols & Revolvers and shortbows. If they are better at melee give them maces or knives or the gladii.

Mid
Good shooters:Assault rifles from traders, bolt-action rifles in reserve and machine pistols.
Badshooters:Incendiary launchers for AOE (Area of efffect.) To scare off raiders using rock chunks as cover. LMGs for suppresion and i also give them assault rifles and machine pistols to them help out as well. And frag grenades depending in the situation.

Late
Good shooters:Charge rifles and High quality Assault rifles for long ranges. And sniper rifles against centipedes when it is required.
Badshooters:Miniguns against tribal raids or a group of raiders in cover and sometimes infestations or manhunter packs. I also give them triple rocketlaunchers or doomsday launchers at times. I still give them charge rifles and assault rifles but mostly the normal and good qualities types.

To be honest i don't use killboxes all the times since it kills the challenge IMO. But when sappers came in late or mid game. The weapons that i mostly use was bolt action and SMGs in Mid game or Snipers rifles and assault + charge rifles in late game with some of the best shooters wearing power armor. Along with some trained animals and some melee using shield belts for distraction to help out my shooters.

One "happy family" in the rims...
Custom font made by Marnador.



Syrchalis

The reason I dislike charge rifles was a playthrough in which I used the machine pistol in the midgame and did not upgrade for a long time. Since the weapon has virtually no cooldown and most delay is the aiming delay, my shooters with a big bonus to that stat were firing the thing like a minigun, just also laser-accurate. The DPS was actually amazing.

Since there isn't too much to reduce aiming time in vanilla the DPS charts aren't entirely accurate for me (e.g. sniper rifles are WAY better DPS wise if you can nearly insta-fire them, it's still a long cooldown, but with no aiming delay they are the ultimate hit and run weapon).

Well anyway, my main problem with charge rifles is just the range. I feel like assault rifles let me take way fewer hits, even if the engagement lasts longer. In a killbox tho I agree with charge rifles being pretty good.
For mod support visit the steam pages of my mods, Github or if necessary, write me a PM on Discord. Usually you will find the best help in #troubleshooting in the RimWorld discord.

ashaffee

Shotguns are by far my favorite at all stages of the game. Potential to 1 hit incoming threat. Does the most damage close range with the highest accuracy. Factor in accuracy and damage I'd say the shotgun does the highest dps in the game at short to midish range.

For long kill box bases I can see rifles being preferred. But personally my base is just walled off and layered so enemies when they do break in do so in smaller numbers and come in very close combat ranges. My favorite is to send my 3 shot gunners to different areas in the walls and kill the people that separated from their group.

I will always keep a few snipers on the team  since they can basically get a safe shot from anywhere in my base. All other rifle guns are cool but I'll only use them when I get good quality of them since shotguns get more dps in my base design.

TheMeInTeam

For tribal/extreme:

Early game - recurve bows into scavenged weapons.
After that - scavenged weapons into miniguns + mortars with snipers in select situations.

Syrchalis

Quote from: ashaffee on June 23, 2018, 01:52:00 PM
Shotguns are by far my favorite at all stages of the game. Potential to 1 hit incoming threat. Does the most damage close range with the highest accuracy. Factor in accuracy and damage I'd say the shotgun does the highest dps in the game at short to midish range.

For long kill box bases I can see rifles being preferred. But personally my base is just walled off and layered so enemies when they do break in do so in smaller numbers and come in very close combat ranges. My favorite is to send my 3 shot gunners to different areas in the walls and kill the people that separated from their group.

I will always keep a few snipers on the team  since they can basically get a safe shot from anywhere in my base. All other rifle guns are cool but I'll only use them when I get good quality of them since shotguns get more dps in my base design.

Ah interesting. My bases are never walled off early. I usually only build a wall very late into the game when raids become overwhelming and mechanoids can't even be dealt with anymore without mortars, usually I have a pretty inflated wealth at that point (like past 5 million). I learned that having an open base isn't actually that bad for defense, because you can use your buildings as excellent cover and if they go into your living quarters you have a corridor of death with many doors.

However, range is very important for an open base, so shotguns are usually quite low in priority list. I don't say no to plundered early pump shotguns though.
For mod support visit the steam pages of my mods, Github or if necessary, write me a PM on Discord. Usually you will find the best help in #troubleshooting in the RimWorld discord.

Teleblaster18

In B18 regular scenarios?

Early and Mid Game, the formula is simple: the best shooters get the best weapon that technology and scavenging will allow.

Late Game: AR's almost exclusively.  Their range and versatility make it the standard weapon of choice for me, just about every time.

johnnyroberts

#8
I do love the good ol' Lee-Enfield or whatever it's called now, it'll always be the Lee to me. I just find it useful in in almost all situations and I always tend to find a ton of the things off raiders and whatnot.

But MVP goes to the shotgun, I always keep a few around and at least 1 pawn constantly armed with one. It is not so useful early on and only in some situations, but having a shotgun or two on hand has saved my colonies many times before. When you get hit with infestations and drop raids you have zero or very little time to prepare and are usually forced into close quarter combat, and this is when the shotgun shines, home defense at its best.

TheMeInTeam

Shotguns are excellent.  Their burst hits extremely hard and they go off quickly after opening doors.  They are respectable DPS fired at touch range too.

Heavy SMGs are similarly fantastic, barely worse than charge rifles.  Machine pistols are also very underrated weapons.  The advantage to all of these is that they have DPS when fired at melee range that pushes all but the very best melee weapons possible, while still having respectable range and great mobility in terms of warm-up/cooldown.

One might point out that this damage is sharp, but that's true for high damage melee weapons too.  In melee a steel mace is only 6 DPS, on par with an AR and much weaker than SMG.  You'd need to be point-blank firing the strongest armor in the game for SMG to lose out there...and even then SMG can hit at more than 1 range :p.

Snipers are more of a utility weapon but in the situations they have a use case at all, they're very strong.

Syrchalis

For me the MUP (most underrated player) award goes to the machine pistol for sure. I still see it as somewhat trashy, but in truth it's hilarious DPS and actually okay range while being low-tech and cheap make it somewhat of an insane weapon. Plus it works well with bad and good shooters.

If I have a choice I build heavy SMGs tho, simply because they hit a lot harder and I can keep using them for longer.

By now my current colony is all LMG, but I don't have any real results yet what I think about it. For hunting it sure is hilarious.
For mod support visit the steam pages of my mods, Github or if necessary, write me a PM on Discord. Usually you will find the best help in #troubleshooting in the RimWorld discord.

TheMeInTeam

LMG slow windup makes them more like poor man miniguns, but they do carry some of that crowd control from bullet intercept chance.

I do like how the weapons are truly more or less optimal by situation.  I just wish melee were more oppressive for ranged at actual melee range.

Alenerel

smg, then lmg, then assault rifles. not sure about charge/assault. recently i have discovered how awesome sniper rifles are.

still there is a question i have in mind since a lot of time. in the wiki there is the dps for all weapons in short mid and long range with base accuracy... i was wondering if a weapon like the lmg could out dps the charge rifle and assault rifle in hands of someone with 2 bionic arms and eyes and 10 shooting skill. the lmg shoots 6 bullets, which is a lot and most of them miss. but i wonder if most of them would hit with such buffs.

TheMeInTeam

Quote from: Alenerel on June 24, 2018, 09:55:38 AM
smg, then lmg, then assault rifles. not sure about charge/assault. recently i have discovered how awesome sniper rifles are.

still there is a question i have in mind since a lot of time. in the wiki there is the dps for all weapons in short mid and long range with base accuracy... i was wondering if a weapon like the lmg could out dps the charge rifle and assault rifle in hands of someone with 2 bionic arms and eyes and 10 shooting skill. the lmg shoots 6 bullets, which is a lot and most of them miss. but i wonder if most of them would hit with such buffs.

LMG will never out-dps charge rifle if shooting at one target using same shooter.  If every bullet hits from both weapons, charge rifle is still more DPS.

LMG will out-DPS charge rifle on low skill shooters when fired into crowds, because each bullet has a chance to hit something other than your target.

BLACK_FR

Early-mid game: best you can find (not craft)
Late-game: miniguns. They are way better than any other weapon in the game and don't need shooting skill. I also keep few other weapons for specific situations (sniper rifle for sieges and mechanoids, assault rifle/shotguns for mining)
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