Most important aspects of a ranged weapon?

[N3XUS12]

Hi, I'm looking for some general advice on late game ranged weapons, and I use Vanilla Weapons Expanded.

What confuses me is the sheer number of weapons available and their many stats. I see that assault rifles are generally liked in the community despite their lack of damage with 1 shot. I'm presuming their 3-burst helps?

What are the most important stats when choosing weapons? Does range always counter damage/accuracy for example? I ask this because I always seem to fare better by giving colonists longer ranged weapons so they themselves have less chance of being hit.

How do you balance the range/dmg/accuracy when choosing a ranged weapon?

[whatamidoing]

Lots of the >vanilla >expanded weapons are basically clones without unique niches, so that's not going to help your confusion much. Consider getting clean vanilla expanded to trim the fat. Anyway, assault rifles (and charge rifles) are good all-around weapons, with decent range, damage, and accuracy, so they're decent in pretty much any situation. What more specialized weapons you want depends on your terrain and strategy. If you're fighting a few enemies in a siege in open terrain, you may want to use a sniper rifle, but that'd be an awful choice if you're fighting close-range against drop pod raiders in the middle of your base due to the poor rate of fire. For that sort of situation, the heavy SMG or chain shotgun excel due to their high damage and ROF. If you're up against a horde of enemies or large enemies, the minigun is devastating. It should be pretty intuitive what weapons you should use for whatever situation you find yourself in (or make for yourself with your base design), the vanilla weapons are pretty well-balanced.

[Swordmouse]

Seconding what whatamidoing said. Vanilla Expanded has a lot of pointless bloat, so I'd focus on the vanilla weapons to start.

You can't go wrong with assault rifles, they're the jack-of-all-trades in Rimworld. Though some smart folks did some number crunching, and it turns out heavy SMG's are one of the best early/mid game guns, both for damage, and for being effective in the hands of inexperienced shooters. But as above, it really depends on the situation, and shorter ranged weapons can make assaulting ranged enemies painful.

Quality is also important too. For example, LMG's are considered to be lackluster weapons, but a legendary LMG is going to be better than an excellent assault rifle/SMG. As a *general* rule, a legendary weapon is superior to every non-legendary weapon in its tier, regardless of what it is, though with legendary pistols it's probably a judgement call.

Lastly, once you get established, you may consider having TWO sets of weapons - short-range, high damage like charge rifles, heavy SMG's, or chain shotguns for around the base, and longer ranged, like miniguns/assault rifles etc for when you get raids. The reason being, if the enemy attacks you via drop pods, you have no time to prepare, and you'll be fighting them CQB. Whereas when a threat arrives from outside your walls, you have time to get your longer ranged weapons.

[ichifish]

Plenty of people will chime in with advice for particular build outs, but I just wanted to say that I used

THIS ONE TRICK THAT CHANGED MY LIFE!

The mod Weapons Tab.

It won’t answer your questions about which guns (and melee weapons) to use in which situations, but it organizes the information in a table that makes comparison far easier.

[Astasia]

Depends a lot on what you are doing with the weapons. Vanilla RimWorld weapons are pretty situational already, Vanilla Expanded takes that concept and fills it out more giving you more options and progression.

If you are holding a choke point behind some melee colonists in a tight area, like with an infestation or manhunter pack, or melee raid, then chain shotguns are the best option in vanilla. They have very short range but very high damage. With VE you have like the Charge Shotgun that provides the endgame solution, as well as other shotguns to use earlier game.

If you are kiting a siege then the sniper rifle is the best option vanilla. VE again adds more snipers so the charge sniper or whatever would be the progression there.

Assault Rifles and Charge Rifles are a general purpose weapon, if you have an open kill box or are assaulting an enemy camp/outpost those are generally the weapons to use with a good balance of range and damage.

SMGs are low skill weapons, they perform pretty well early game and with lower skill shooters with a large number of bullets that tend to hit even when they miss. Later game they fall behind rifles in terms of damage output and range.

Chainguns are very strong against tightly clustered groups and do surprisingly well against large single targets like centipedes with high skill.

VE doesn't add any bloat here, it just fills out the progression in each of those categories. In vanilla it's very hard to argue against using anything other than charge rifles in any situation because they are just so good. The chain shotgun and chaingun can still narrowly pull an advantage but equipping a weapon that excels at only one thing only slightly better than a weapon that is very good at everything is kind of meh. With VE you get the lower tier and higher tier option for all of those weapon roles, so equipping a charge shotgun later game to deal with infestations makes a lot more sense because it definitely outperforms the charge rifle in that role now.

Pistols in vanilla really have no purpose, they are just "bloat" that exists to be mostly useless drops. With VE you can use pistols with shields (by default I think), so you can hold like a riot shield in one hand and a charge pistol in the other and that provides a more defensive ranged weapon option at the cost of lower offense.

Edit: Chaingun, minigun, whatever.

[Hykal]

Assault rifles are great all rounders.
Bolt-action is a DMR.
Charge lance is a single shot assault rifle.
Snipers for sniping.
Heavy SMGs and miniguns for killboxes.
Charge rifles for mechanoids and power armored pirates.
Chain shotguns for melee support (i.e, bugs and manhunters).

Pistols, revolvers, machine pistols, for smelting.

Apply relevant info to Vanilla Weapons Expanded.

[Kittenpox]

Originally posted by Astasia:

Pistols in vanilla really have no purpose, they are just "bloat" that exists to be mostly useless drops. With VE you can use pistols with shields (by default I think), so you can hold like a riot shield in one hand and a charge pistol in the other and that provides a more defensive ranged weapon option at the cost of lower offense.

@OP - Using an Autopistol is a useful way to level up low-skill shooters, due to its quick refire rate. Every attempted shot* adds a little bit of skill, so shooting more frequently = more skill gain. On a pawn with like {Shooting 2}, you're not expecting them to be the MVP in this fight, so for that reason pistols do have some purpose. Even if it's not great in late-game combat. :-)

* Miniguns and the like fire a barrage of bullets, which counts as one shot - so those aren't great for experience gain.

[Astasia]

Shooting skill exp is based on the attack rate (aiming time plus cooldown) of the weapon so it really doesn't matter what gun is used to train. Snipers are a little less ideal in some combat as they are slow enough that the shooter may fail to fire before an enemy is killed by somebody else, but while hunting snipers are great for shooting exp, and that is probably the optimal training situation. As cool as autopistols are they have no advantage here, in combat just give a pawn a SMG and they will level just as fast as with a pistol but be significantly more effective at killing things.

That said I did forget the utility of pistols before and just remembered. Machine pistols have the lowest damage attack of any weapon which makes them the best bet for downing pawns without killing them. People usually use blunt to avoid injuries to eyes and infections/tending, but for ranged combat and keeping your pawns out of melee machine pistols work well.

[Morkonan]

Originally posted by N3XUS12:

...
How do you balance the range/dmg/accuracy when choosing a ranged weapon?

I don't know VWE, so keep that in mind.

There isn't a one-fits-all solution and as far as what's important stat-wise goes, it's situational. In general, though, weapons with good range and performance at that range or better overall performance at several ranges are best.

First, you're going to always end up having a several different weapons in use by your pawns at any one time. Stacking everyone with the same weapon puts you at a bit of a disadvantage if the enemy doesn't cooperate with your weapon choices.

https://rimworldwiki.com/wiki/Weapons

Next, never forget that Quality can make a weapon that's in a lower class than others much better than higher-tech weapons. In Rimworld, Quality is HUGE in terms of what you can do with a weapon. Do not dump High Quality weapons. Examine them. Look at their stats. A High Quality weapon is better than it's more advanced counterpart in the next best class of weapons.


You won't me min/maxxing for quite awhile. You'll also be scrounging for whatever you can get. The best weapon in the game is the one you have....

The most important thing in the early game is to get weapons. Mid-game, get better ones. Late game, get all the ones.

For certain pawns wielding low RoF or specialty weapons, you will most certainly want a backup stashed close by. Getting off two or maybe three sniper shots is worth it, but after that most of the enemy is too close, so get that sniper a mid-range backup. (Assault Rifle is a good choice, or just stash whatever you have an extra of on a shelf near where that sniper is likely to be.)

Range determines how far away from getting killed you can be while still being effective at trying to kill the enemy. Look at the range listings in the chart. Note how most are particularly effective at certain ranges.

RoF is important only if you can hit the enemy with it. There's no such thing as suppressive fire in Rimworld.

DPS is almost everything. I'm the only one around here that likes "Stopping Power" (Stagger) when defending against incoming raiders.

Because of that, I like the LMG more than most other players for that. It's a specialty weapon, as far as I'm concerned, and best used when you're outnumbered because of that Stagger effect. If I have a large enough crew, someone is getting assigned an LMG.

I also like the basic Bolt Action Rifle as a generally issued weapon before I get Assault Rifles. Even so, I will keep a couple of them around. They're excellent for hunting and have a nice bit of damage per shot. (You need range when hunting to help to avoid "Animal Revenge.") With incoming raiders, your Bolt Actions are going to get a shot off on them before most of what they can carry as a personal weapons get a chance to shoot back. In Rimworld, shooting first is always best.

Sniper rifles - Someone is going to be getting one as soon as possible. You can do a heck of a lot of one-shot damage, even to Cent weapon-packs and sensors, with a Sniper Rifle. Anything you hit is likely going to be dead or very slowed and bleeding out. It is not a weapon to use if you want to capture prisoners.

Assault Rifle - That's the bread-and-butter of a good bit of your combat. It's an outstanding weapon. Most of your colonists will end up being armed with these for a good bit of the time. I'll generally keep a few colonists armed with these throughout the rest of the game.

Charge Rifles - Excellent DPS when at effective range. Zero stopping power, though. I'll arm several pawns with these as I can.

Specialty Weapons:

Pistols - Eh. I'd only keep one if it was of very high quality. (I still remember a Legendary Revolver I had, once... More damage than a Hunting Rifle and the same range, IRRC. The Pawn that used it only had one good arm. :)

Shotguns - These are the close range choice, capable of delivering a good bit of "____-Off" DPS to the face of an enemy. If possible, I'll have one pawn armed with either and they'll be the last word before the melee pawn(s) begin to speak. A Chain Shotgun is a very convincing attitude adjuster against charging melee pawns, especially if they've already had their shields downed.

Charge Lance - Specialty case weapon, most useful against Mechs. If you're fighting heavily armored opponents, pick one to hit with this. It may not one-shot them, but your follow-up shots will take advantage of that damage. They are, at best, a one to two shot weapon, then you're in the scrum.

Grenades - ALL grenades must be micromanaged, no excuses. You will lose several pawns to HE Grenades, so I'm confident you'll eventually be motivated find the Pause button... :) HE Grenades are a sort of desperate answer - They don't have a lot of uses in Rimworld other than the occasional massed enemy, maybe Bugs, or a couple of Cents that can't see you. But, you're almost always better served by equipping something else.

EMP Grenades, however, are a chase-time and a "Must Have." You absolutely need to have at least one EMP Grenade Belt to be able to safely trivialize early Mechs. Your grenadier darts out from being hidden behind cover, lobs an EMP, and Mechs go sleepy-time... They also disrupt Shield Belts.

Firefoam - Not great, you may as well use Firefoam Poppers and just relocate them. (They don't require power.) They can disrupt Shield Belts, but fighting big fires isn't a big deal as long as you don't start a lot of big fires...

Molotov - Best used by hucking them into a stone closet that's infested with bugs and then shutting the door. You can burn old clothes with them if you don't want to cart them to a fire. Against Raiders, they're sub-par. They will cause "Panic" but you'd rather that Raider be dead, so why didn't you use a real weapon against them?

ETC: Everything else has clear uses and is pretty much a specialty case. I haven't used some of the weapons, since I haven't played the latest version in awhile, so can't chime in on some things. Plus, I don't push towards end-game anymore and am usually restarting somewhere after Charge Rifles.


Melee/Primitive - Some things don't go out of style. A good club or mace is a breadwinner in terms of convincing angry Raiders to be on your team. Some Bows are excellent weapons for their time, too. Javelins used to be a near "I Win" button. They still do good damage. When outfitting your Melee fighters, try Maces at first, then switch to more DPS-worthy weapons later once you've got plenty of pawns.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Firefoam - Not great, you may as well use Firefoam Poppers and just relocate them. (They don't require power.) They can disrupt Shield Belts, but fighting big fires isn't a big deal as long as you don't start a lot of big fires...

There is no firefoam grenade, only firefoam shells.

[fastninja]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Originally posted by Morkonan:

Firefoam - Not great, you may as well use Firefoam Poppers and just relocate them. (They don't require power.) They can disrupt Shield Belts, but fighting big fires isn't a big deal as long as you don't start a lot of big fires...

There is no firefoam grenade, only firefoam shells.

or fire foam launcher which is what he is refering to

[N3XUS12]

Wow guys, this is why I love the rimworld community. Thankyou so much for the incredibly detailed answers! I'll definitely be taking your collective advice on board.