Smart Weapons?

[Mamo]

Idk how smart weapons work, i mean do their bullets always hit enemies or there are chances? Pros and cons when using them? Thanks for all the help.

[Ez Duzit]

Smart guns rock. Although not so much in the very early game. But once you are leveled up a little bit, smart guns are a force to be reckoned with. And like any type weapon, some smart guns are much better then others, The Prototype Shingen Mark V is a variant of the TKI-20 Shingen and is the best smart gun in the main game and definitely worth getting. You can get it during the Takemura mission "gimme danger" at Arasaka Industrial Park.

[👑 Yuuwaffl 💀 (Syum)]

How They Work: Smart Weapons interface directly with the player, removing the need for manual aim. They have a feature where all bullets can track enemies like guided missiles. However, they do less damage than traditional weapons to mitigate this ease of use.

Smart Link Cyberware: To use Smart Weapons, you’ll need to have the Smart Link Cyberware in your hands. This is an equippable Cybernetics implant for your Hands that allows you to utilize the smart-targeting module on Smart weapons. Without it, you are essentially missing out on the most important aspect of this weapon category.

Using Smart Weapons: Equip a Smart Gun and, in combat, you will see that the Smart Link will auto-target various enemies. Pulling the trigger will cause the bullets to automatically detect and hit the enemy.

[DemetriusKlein]

You need to install the "Smart Link" cyber first in a ripperdoc, after this, improve "intelligence" and invest the points of advantages in the skills that improve intelligent weapons.
The normal smart weapons of the game do not provide, only with the iconics will you see results.
In the mission with Takemura, to invade Arsaka and hack the float, you will get SMG Prototype: Shingen Mark V. kill everyone and look for it.
In the mission of the parade, where Takemura asks you to kill the 3 snipers, right after killing the first, you will find the Genjiroh pistol on floor 21. The door code is 2906.
SMG Yinglong you will have to craft, you will have to do a police mission, you can look at the exact place on YouTube.
These are the top 3 in my opinion, but you will also take the Skippy pistol and the Divided We Stand assault rifle.
After killing Adam Smasher, you can return where you took Silverhand's car and take a Ba Xing Chong shotgun.
These are the intelligent iconic weapons of the base game, if you have DLC Phantom Liberty, you will have some more pistols, SMGS and assault rifles to catch.
The only iconic smart sniper of the game COULD BE ACQUIDED by Gifting 2 Twitch Subscriptions on ELIGIBLE Twitch Partner and Affiliat Channels Beteen Septamber 25, 2023 and Octber 21, 2023, has already expired.

[ImHelping]

If you get tired of smartguns being a letdown for the amount of investment, keep the Smartgun implant hand around for +2 extra ram if you still use a deck. Tattoos don't give extra ram.

Because while power weapons are better than smartguns for actually killing things quick, ricochet shots are a joke.

Also don't forget the smart sniper rifle has a nasty habit of missing shots that you could have made in your sleep when it actually counts. Expect people to get defensive about that. There is a reason people keep saying "but the pay2win DLC Warden!/But the iconic!"

Along those lines. The DLC chimera boss crafted weapon mod you can only pick one of? The one for smartguns is not worth it at all (5% Specific hacks when hitting specific parts of the body. For that to matter reminds you "But they would have been dead with a real gun", or will be a boss essentially immune anyways). But too late to go back once you realize that.

Stick with the one that adds explosive ammo to any power weapon, or double boosts tech weapons and removes their damage reduction for through walls shots instead.

Smart weapons can be a good time, but you should plan for their utility options like +ram on kill perks for live combat hacking frequency if you want to stick with them (Though again... power/tech would kill them faster even with low perks).

They are a mixed bag for car chase missions because they have a nasty habit of hitting the car instead of driver, but are easier to shoot drones with in a hurry (except drone chase missions are rare and often heavily scripted)

[The Grin]

No the smartguns don't hit ALL ENEMIES.
Tiger claws are specialized in the usage of smart guns and they all have a jammer.
So you shouldn't use smartguns against Tiger claws.

[Graf Erik]

Honestly, I tried several times to get the hang of smart guns, but I guess they are just not for me

What you need to know:
-You need an implant to use them
-You first need to 'lock on' the target, that takes some time. Can be speed up witha a perk iirc
-The projectiles of smart guns aren't bullets, they are homing micro rockets. And that means they are slow and do rather low damage.
-There is a 'homing probability', you can increase it with a perks. So sometimes you just miss
-You can fire in an arc, around cover. Theoreticaly.
-There is some synergy with smart guns and hacking. Higher homing probability with larger rams, ram recovery when hitting a hacked target with a smart gun, something like that

Practically: The lock-on, the slow projectile speed and low damage means that smart gus are rather slow to take down enemies. You draw, you aim, you wait for lock-on, fire a few rounds, wait (and hope that they hit), fire some more, wait that they hit, change target, wait for lock-on... and the whole time you are taking damage

Maybe its just because I play with kb+m and I've been doing that for 30 years, but with a TechWeapon I can take down enemies 4 times faster AND more reliable. And I can shoot straight through cover and dont have to fire around it in an arc and hope that it hits (and you have higher projectile speed and range).
Maybe if you are playing with a controller or you are just bad at aiming then smart guns are for you?
In my current playthrough when I decided to finaly get rid of Skippy ,a speaking Smart gun. You need to take down 100 enemies with it to finish its quest... I ended up charging at my enemies and shooting them at point-blank range. Fired 5cm from the face not even a smart round can miss the head.

The issue with this 'firing in an arc around cover' is
a) You cant see whats behind the cover. Maybe something is blocking the trajectory. Sometimes you fire one mag after another on a covered target and nothing happens. You just wave your gun around, spray and pray that someting will find a way through.
b) There is a limited lock-on angle. You cant fire too far around or you'll lose the target lock. Depending how big the cover is and how close you are, it might not be possible to arc around (and yes, there are perks to increase the lock-on-angle).
But again, with a TechWeapon you can simply shoot straight through the cover. Just like that. Boom, head-shot! Case closed.

Oh, and on short range nothing can beat the brute force of Power Weapons.

Edit: The only situation where I found Smart Guns to be usefull was against Cyber Psychos with shields. These take almost no damage to direct hits, but with smart guns you can arc around the shield straight to the head.
Thankfully you can move around perks at any time (outside combat), so you can simply put a few perks on Smart Guns (dont forget to get the implant first), send the Psycho to sleep, move the perk points back

[valium]

Some enemies you will need to actually aim, though I think cyberware malfunction should stop that.

Most smart weapons are pretty bad, the exceptions are insanely good though.

The Chao and Ogou are the good smart pistols. Skippy if you dont mind having to deal with not returning him and being annoying about it.

The Pizdets and Yinglong can rival even the best of the non-smart weapons, and can work with each other with the Submachine Fun perk. Add in Overclock and you have some of the highest DPS in the game.

The Hercules is alright in terms of power, but it is a fun weapon.

Ba Xing Chong was a bit overnerfed in 2.0, which is sad for a strictly post-game weapon.

I switch between Monowire and smart weapons on my "netrunner" build that mostly uses stealth/disabling quickhacks and Contagion to proc Black Mamba.

[ImHelping]

Originally posted by valium:

The Pizdets and Yinglong can rival even the best of the non-smart weapons, and can work with each other with the Submachine Fun perk. Add in Overclock and you have some of the highest DPS in the game.

The pizdets from the DLC is also an example of why smartguns are frustrating. Because it is dropped by a boss prone to scripted smoke bombs, warping up to catwalks at bad angles for a smartgun to actually hit him while he peeks the top inch of his head over cover to sniper you, and just running around like an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ after spawning a ton of soldiers and drones in the back half.

He wasn't hard for me, but that is because I habitually skew towards "Be a direct blunt murder monster fist, nerd ninja stuff on the side". Because I can admit how awkward and lazy such design can feel for purist builds putting up with that nonsense. Goes for other games too *flashbacks to annihilating himself with crit fail sneak attacks until he trained to be a meathead immune to crit fails in Arcanum, THEN he could sneak attack with an explosive dwarf axe*

Honestly the top use of cyberware disable in that fight was "It is only 4 ram even for orange tier" to lazily throw their way through walls via that "Can hack enemies who are hacking you through walls" perk, when they warped to the opposite side of the arena to hide behind cover while I was killing their friends. Because no amount of stacks could stop them from scripted leaps/cloaks.

I do love the concept of "We put a silencer on a smartgun!" though. Cool spy ♥♥♥♥, but useless for stealth builds because it won't kill 2-3 people before they can alert. Especially not compared to the cartoonish stealth power of a DLC unlocked cheeta print unity pistol.

[valium]

Purist builds dont struggle as much as you are pretending, they either learn to adapt, or they turn the difficulty down if they spread themselves too thin. Every build needs dash and maybe air dash, it is not going to dirty their builds for basic fun parkour elements.

[ImHelping]

Originally posted by valium:

Purist builds dont struggle as much as you are pretending, they either learn to adapt, or they turn the difficulty down if they spread themselves too thin. Every build needs dash and maybe air dash, it is not going to dirty their builds for basic fun parkour elements.

I mean, I can often skip plain dash just fine, but air dash doesn't solve the issues of what gear is weak on the ground.

Also you are bragging "Purists builds do not struggle!" while also demanding people avoid being a purist build burning 15 reflexes and a long line of perk points on air dash. That is a huge investment for a hacker if they are struggling to make smartguns feel worth it, and would also encourage skipping smartguns to save on perks you already spent unlocking air dash.

So, yet more reasons for me to point people toward body nerd over reflex nerd then. Adrenaline interacts with overclocking better anyways.

[valium]

Dash is not 15 in reflex, and I said maybe air dash. You can mainly replace that with dash and double jump.

Maybe you are just bad at the game, and projecting.