I need help with which weapons to keep!

[Tahu!]

I have a problem with wanting to hold everything on me "just in case", and have gotten to the point of the game where I just can't realistically juggle all of these weapons. I've reached Executive, and have cleared I think 3 or 4 levels, got my first inventory extender, but desperately need advice on which items are worth keeping around.

I've got a Shotgun, Assault Rifle, Sparqbeam sidearm, Magnum, Laser Rapier, and I just found a Pulse Rifle. I have a Skorpion and the Magnet Gun (i can't remember the name of it) in storage.

I LOVE this game for letting me play with so much, but I'm so pea brained at decision making. The two weapons I absolutely will not drop right now are the laser rapier and the magnum, but everything else I'd be happy to hear opinions on.

[Profugo Barbatus]

All of them have their place based on Scarcity. Unless your running on hard plot with the time limit, you can pick a convenient, accessible place to store some gear. The Maintenance cargo lift to flight/storage seems to be a popular location, I tend to just dump excess gear in a med room and write down where it is irl.

Right now I've got the Rapier, Ion Rifle, Magnum, Skorpion, and Assault rifle on me, with a pulse gun, sparq, rail gun, and shotgun stashed around the world. The small ammo for the Skorpion is readily available and "Eat all the bullets" is a reliable solution to a surprise. Ion rifles too good what with energy being free. Assault Rifles around for same reason as the skorpion at this point, plenty of ammo so might as well use it. Magnum's a great panic gun with huge DPS, and the ammo is starting to trend towards "Regularly usable" for me.

[Jalir]

Shotgun kinda starts to fall off towards the end of the game, and sparq is also droppable now that you have the Pulse Rifle.

But really, the guns not worth keeping around are the ones you don't have much ammo for. When I have low/no ammo for one, it just goes in storage.

[Renegade]

I like keeping the sparkqbeam and laser rapier at least. Magnum is a good choice. I dropped the shotgun after the groves and kept the mag rifle. Scorpion is pretty good as you find loads of ammo for it, or sub it for assault rifle, depending on how much ammo youve got. Also depends on which upgrades youve got. I kept the mini pistol much longer than i intended because i put 2 upgrades on it.

[Audax Dreik]

A lot of this is just simply personal preference, so take with a grain of salt and adjust to your play style.

Laser Rapier is pure MUST. Why wouldn't you? That and a berserk patch will get you through most anything in a pinch. All other energy weapons I pass on though, while they seem like a good idea for unlimited ammo combined with charge stations, by the end of the game I was using way more of my energy on implants and found that the guns tore through it too fast. MagPulse has decent amounts of ammo so I kept that on hand for robots.

Pistol can be forgotten the second you find your Skorpion. From here on, I'll stash either the Skorpion or Shotgun in the medbay lift as ammo stores go up and down. I dropped both by the end of the game.

Magnum, Assault Rifle, and Railgun never leave my possession, though you may choose to store the Railgun somewhere from time to time if you believe you don't need the heavy artillery. I didn't use the grenade launcher at all and never carried it. It's a perfectly good and serviceable gun, but it just lobs your grenades for you and I couldn't justify the space on it ever.

So to be clear, end game: Rapier, Magnum, Assault Rifle, Railgun, MagPulse. You'll still get a lot of standard and teflon ammo as well as flechettes through the end of the game and it might seem tempting to switch back, but honestly, just let go and don't let the inventory rule you.

[HiddenStar]

It's pretty situational, IMO. The Laser Rapier is IMO a strict update over the other melee weapons, everything else drifts into the it has it's time and place territory.

The Pistol and Skorpion feel like an either/or type of deal, I went with the Skorpion. While it does less damage per shot than the updated pistol, by the time you get it the pistol type ammo starts becoming really plentiful and a salvo from it just melts a lot of enemies. Your preference might vary. If I replay this game I will just straight up skip upgrading the pistol. In particular the capacity update feels questionable. I rarely found myself shooting even the 10 bullet clip empty.

The Mag Pulse is really good against robots in the early game, then trails off as ammo becomes scarce, then becomes good again when the ammo becomes more common around the time you hit Exec/Groves. It feels like a cheat code against early game Security-1 droids and such.

The Sparq is godsend in the early game, it's perfect for shooting cameras in low power mode, combat in medium and the overload in a fantastic panic button. I dropped it when I found the Ion Rifle. The Ion Rifle does feel like a strict update, not sure how it fares against Sparq with the damage update. The only downsides are that it's much larger and you have to be more mindful of energy consumption.

The Shotgun feels really situational. There's a couple of places where the it really shines, anything with tight corridors containing human-sized cyborgs and the groves in particular, but it starts losing it's usefulness after the groves. Dragon's Breath rounds are kind meh, I found them mostly useful against the invisible mutants and avians. Invisible mutans become more visible when they are on fire and the avians are slow enough to cook properly over time.

The magnum is awesome, but you do have to be mindful of the ammo and make sure you land those shots. Keep in mind also that the update makes it take more inventory space. I think you could probably do without the upgrade.

The assault rifle feels like a good allrounder gun, but feels like there isn't quite enough ammo around to kind of "main" it. Perhaps the ammo becomes more common in the late game.

Beyond those I've found the Grenade Launcher which I personaly didn't really vibe with and the railgun which I am saving for lategame use. I will probably switch the shotgun for it when the time comes.

Overall, pick the weapon and the ammo you need for the situation, try to make the shots count and switch between different weapons to prevent you from running out of ammo for any single one.

[Tahu!]

Thank you everyone so much for your input!! I think realistically, I should learn to embrace the temporary nature of holding onto weapons as was mentioned, and not try to hoard *all* of them at the same time. But I will consider stashing some away in a convenient spot since my mini storage is Too Full. I haven't met anything in the game that required a railgun that couldn't be handled by EMP and a laser rapier, and I might just forego energy firearms entirely just so I could divert energy to other abilities and shielding.

[Desperado]

Lead pipe - only useful until you find a gun or run out of bullets
Wrench - pretty much a flat upgrade to pipe
Laser Rapier - this + berserk patch will kill any enemy in the game in about 3 seconds flat so keep it if you ever run into trouble with anything
Pistol - good early on while you're trying to conserve ammo, but by the time you're in executive you're drowning in it so you may as well ditch it for the SMG
Sparqbeam - will be your best backup gun for saving ammo and killing things fast until you find the ion rifle which is a straight upgrade
Magnum - Not as good as you'd expect but you get a lot of ammo for it and it can reliably down tough enemies
Shotgun - Useful through most of the mid-game, but once you're finished with Executive and the Groves you can probably ditch it since its performance against bots is middling at best
Mag-pulse - sucks against organics, but holds its own against bots nearly til the end, and it gets a lot of ammo especially late game
SMG - chews through ammo real fast but it deletes most enemies before they can really damage you
Assault Rifle - same as above for the most part, useless until you get the full-auto upgrade though
Grenade Launcher - best way to use your grenades if you got em, especially EMPing the toughest enemies
Ion Rifle - Sparqbeam but more, you'll probably ditch it once you get the plasma rifle on the last level though, but being infinite ammo + high damage is nothing to laugh at
Railgun - you basically use this to get rid of the biggest enemies in one shot, reload time is such a ♥♥♥♥♥ though it's not effective against more than one guy at a time
Plasma rifle - you get this on the last level, its an infinite ammo high-damage machinegun, as long as you have battery packs you can breeze through the rest of the game with it

I'd say the must-have things to have in your inventory for the final gauntlet are:
-Laser Rapier
-Magnum
-AR
-Railgun
-GL
-Ion Rifle or Mag-pulse if you can fit them
-anything else is beneath consideration

[BlueFenixR]

The Scorpion gun its pretty stupid power wise even though it sucks ammo like crazy, so save about 300 bullets and the rest you can get from the last floor.

Magnum its also pretty good and accurate, ammo its plentiful so also a good save for the last 2 levels.

The magnetic gun its great against almost everything, specially robots and enemies with shields, and you can cheese diego pretty easily with it.

You get 3 upgrades to the energy weapons so drop one when you get a new one.

Magnetic weapon its a good choice too but not necessary and ammo ain't that plentiful.

The Rifle does have plentiful ammo too, but i dropped it in favor of the scorpio.

[OctoHex]

I recommend this strategy in any of these types of games:

Use early weapons for as long as you can and save high damage "combat enders" for later levels. Opt to use energy/renewable weapons as much as possible to conserve limited ammos (running to recharge stations is free), but dump the spark as soon as you get the Ion Rifle, and dump the Ion rifle as soon as you get the plasma.

Use the minipistol until you get the skorpion, then toss it (same ammo pool). Use the Skorpion until you run out of ammo, then switch to the Rifle.

Save armor piercing rounds for after you've exhausted all normal rounds for inventory reasons, also, enemies are almost all robotic towards the end.

Use the shotgun until you've exausted all ammo, then switch to the Magnum. Again, use dragon breath (not much armor piercing) first, then regular.

Save the grenade launcher for boss fights only. I didn't use it until I got to the security level.

If possible, keep the shock pulser til the end. Really makes killing cyborg warriors, Security-2, and other hulking bots easier.

There are several points of no return after you (spoiler), but the cargo lift is still available once in security (not the bridge), so plan that ex machina. I only found one mod for the railgun, but there are about 4 railguns between executive and maintenance and one in security, so I probably didn't need to crowd the lift with that thing.

[Iceqert]

I played this game like it's Pokemon game.
Gotta have em all.
After some time my equipment was full of weapons, no space left for any junk items.
You just never know what type of ammo game will throw at you.