Are the guides wrong and am I missing something.

[Pnume]

Quite early in the game I looked at some guides and the consensus was pretty much praising Short weapons/skills.

I've just completed a 1st OCU playthrought in Sergeant difficulty and pretty quickly "Long" became the most viable option and pretty much mandatory in the late game.

Sure short or melee might do more damage but the exposure to counters makes them not worth it. By the end with long I was hardly getting hit and destroying everything. Missile launchers are just too good. Late game was a walk in the park.

Did I miss something? Is short really good?

[Jaasrg]

Multihit short weapons to be precise because of how much more power they get when short levels get up there.

[Outsider]

Machine guns with high -short- exp and skills like duel and speed will let you annihilate enemies' torsos in one attack preventing them from counter-attacking altogether.
Alternatively you can take out their arms to the same effect.

[Pnume]

Originally posted by Outsider:

Machine guns with high -short- exp and skills like duel and speed will let you annihilate enemies' torsos in one attack preventing them from counter-attacking altogether.
Alternatively you can take out their arms to the same effect.

The character can miss, the skill may not trigger and if they don't your mech is half way done if not one-shot + your close to the front line and very exposed.

Destroying both arms will take 2 rounds with 1 mech if you aim

You can one shot enemies with rocket launcher and Guide and you stay at a safe distance.

[Outsider]

Originally posted by Pnume:

Originally posted by Outsider:

Machine guns with high -short- exp and skills like duel and speed will let you annihilate enemies' torsos in one attack preventing them from counter-attacking altogether.
Alternatively you can take out their arms to the same effect.

The character can miss, the skill may not trigger and if they don't your mech is half way done if not one-shot + your close to the front line and very exposed.

Destroying both arms will take 2 rounds with 1 mech if you aim

You can one shot enemies with rocket launcher and Guide and you stay at a safe distance.

It's a math game. missiles are mathematically inferior to machine guns at the same skill level.
With 5+3 hits and no penalty in the torso (speed3+duel3) your guy will NOT miss, he WILL destroy the enemy, exception being the last boss. And with 9999 skill bonus to damage, every single hit will inflict 70+ damage even with weak weapon.
If you just don't like them, it's cool, you can play the game the way you want, but don't argue the math.

[GamerXT]

As long as you don`t keep going wide, it shouldnt matter unless perhaps playing on higher difficulties.......

[Hercule Poirot]

Originally posted by Pnume:

Quite early in the game I looked at some guides and the consensus was pretty much praising Short weapons/skills.

I've just completed a 1st OCU playthrought in Sergeant difficulty and pretty quickly "Long" became the most viable option and pretty much mandatory in the late game.

Sure short or melee might do more damage but the exposure to counters makes them not worth it. By the end with long I was hardly getting hit and destroying everything. Missile launchers are just too good. Late game was a walk in the park.

Did I miss something? Is short really good?

short is superior to long in late game imo. Ofc the ideal built is a maxed out character that can apply guided v3 missles AND short weapons with switch v3 and speed v3. and aimed v3 ...

downside of missles is ammo count. chaff is a thing and miss rate. in late game guided just doesnt one shot opponents anymore (usually) and enemy misslers inflcit too much damage

highly mobile short specialists with salvo guns and respective skills perform better in my experience

[battlecruiser2004]

Putting the ammo count aside, you can't really trade shots with the enemy for long periods of time at long range, the majority of the enemies will try to close in on you (since that's their only means of attack) and unless you have a bazooka you won't be putting your long range launchers to use

[Pnume]

Originally posted by battlecruiser2004:

Putting the ammo count aside, you can't really trade shots with the enemy for long periods of time at long range, the majority of the enemies will try to close in on you (since that's their only means of attack) and unless you have a bazooka you won't be putting your long range launchers to use

Maybe it is on higher difficulties but in Sergeant it has never been an issue.
Late game was a cake walk using mostly launchers. Early game was more tricky especially the part when you don't have any skills

[Pnume]

Originally posted by Outsider:

Originally posted by Pnume:

The character can miss, the skill may not trigger and if they don't your mech is half way done if not one-shot + your close to the front line and very exposed.

Destroying both arms will take 2 rounds with 1 mech if you aim

You can one shot enemies with rocket launcher and Guide and you stay at a safe distance.

It's a math game. missiles are mathematically inferior to machine guns at the same skill level.
With 5+3 hits and no penalty in the torso (speed3+duel3) your guy will NOT miss, he WILL destroy the enemy, exception being the last boss. And with 9999 skill bonus to damage, every single hit will inflict 70+ damage even with weak weapon.
If you just don't like them, it's cool, you can play the game the way you want, but don't argue the math.

It's not that I don't like them. I just couldn't make them work and they ended up being liabilities

[T-Bone Biggins]

Yeah the game wasn't too varied or balanced, and they retained that in the remake. Short is basically it unless a character just cannot learn the good skills. I never played FM2 but I am really waiting for the FM3 remake due to weapon ranges, more variety like shotguns (more even spread and overall damage compared to MG, less range) plus that cool fake web browser, the way skills are handled, it's all pretty good. Long story on both branches. FM3 was a pretty tough high-point for FM4 to beat.

[Chloe Wolf]

In my own very casual experience, and I could certainly be playing the game wrong, I've found that long range attacks work best on full-health targets to soften them up for a one-hit kill by a short or melee unit. That way I never see counterattacks. As the game moves forward and short or melee units gain the ability to burst or stun enemies though, long range just feels less and less useful. I'd much rather Duel 3 and obliterate an enemy than have to send 3 or 4 volleys of rockets at it first and then use my short to kill it anyway.

[T-Bone Biggins]

Originally posted by Chloe Wolf:

In my own very casual experience, and I could certainly be playing the game wrong, I've found that long range attacks work best on full-health targets to soften them up for a one-hit kill by a short or melee unit. That way I never see counterattacks. As the game moves forward and short or melee units gain the ability to burst or stun enemies though, long range just feels less and less useful. I'd much rather Duel 3 and obliterate an enemy than have to send 3 or 4 volleys of rockets at it first and then use my short to kill it anyway.

Long is definitely potent in the very beginning and starts to wane as the game progresses.

[Shirayuki Mizore]

If you didn't bother to level up skills and played on low/average difficulties then long range may end up looking superior. I know it from personal experience because this is exactly how my first playthrough looked like. Due to range restrictions on short weapons I felt very punished by using short or melee weapons so I decided to give everyone rockets and swallow enemies with them. There were some difficulties in second part of the game but ultimately rocket barrage prevailed.

However with higher difficulties you will start notice the missiles are slowly starting feeling insufficient and same will go for untrained guard.

The true glory of machine guns starts when you maxed out the skill. You will simply oneshot everybody Duel 3 or Duel Max, higher difficulties may require 2 rounds if unlucky, but that's it.

[king_of_jamaica]

Short is completely broken in this game.

Spend some time in the arena getting enough Short EXP to learn Duel and you've basically won the game. Especially if you take the time to get it to level 3, which shouldn't take long.
Being able to instantly delete an enemy by focusing the body, or rendering enemies useless by targeting arms is just too useful to ignore.

If anything, I would say Long is the worst skill, but with Guide can be marginally useful for softening up targets as you approach Short range. There are only two dedicated Melee units in the entire game, one per scenario, so it can safely be ignored unless you want to do a meme run with all melee, which I think is actually possible.

My strategy was to get everyone that can learn all three Short skills to do so, have them learn Guide as well if they can, and then dual-wield the best machine guns, shoulders are a shield and missile launcher. I would say a shield is essential in the late game since there are just so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ many Missileer units.

Even without Duel, if you can get a unit to learn Speed, a high shot-count machine gun can vaporize units with Speed 3, you just don't get the guaranteed kill. And obviously that doesn't scale to the higher difficulties where HP values are hyper-inflated.

[Jaasrg]

I'd say melee is the worst, unless you can pull first into double and both hit body and that's enough for kill. But to get the skills you need to do melee, but you don't want to because it's so dangerous...
And then there's the stun, skill that can actually do nothing because they recovered from it in the very same combat it was caused on them.