Which weapons to keep and which to ditch?

[Valorel]

Considering the severely limited inventory space, which weapons you feel are a keeper and which are ok to ditch?

Thanks!

[Sm0k3f47h3r]

read the description of the weapons. try them on the different enemy types. store the once you don't want to use in the storage system of the game.

[Nathan]

Sparqbeam has some decent upgrades and using energy you can practically always have ammo from recharge stations, 9mm & teflon ammo are some of the most common, so the pistol but also fully upgraded SMG can replace it later (the DPS on that thing will be too good, with DMG upgrade plus clip extension to 50 you can even kill heavier security bots in one clip before they can unload on you, at least on normal.)
In I forget which grove, Alpha or Delta, you'll find the ion rifle, a good replacement for the Sparqbeam, remember to fully charge it for a massive damage shot, best paired with something else while you wait for the cooldown.

Shotgun honestly a bit of a disappointment, same for MKIII Assault Rifle, SMG just outclasses it, Teflon ammo drops really often by the late game that you'll just have ammo for it and the DPS is good enough.
Magnum is fun, but again I kind of find the SMG deals with threats faster.

Do hoard all ammo and modkits and guns, store them perhaps in maintenance central recycler room so that you can go back to pick up a backup (your AR, shotty) if you run out of ammo for 9mm/teflon for instance.
Grenade launcher is meh, you can learn to master simply throwing the grenades yourself, a valuable skill to have anyway.

So I'd say minipistol and then SMG to replace that (SMG might do a couple of points less damage, but more armor penetration even with 9mm & RoF is so good)
Sparqbeam and then the ion (pulse?) rifle from the groves to replace that, especially with the damage upgrade you get from engineering (Plasma rifle is fun, but not exactly a replacement for ion rifle).
And maybe every once in a while keep a shotty, or AR, magnum on your person for backup, and perhaps railgun for really powerful bosses.
Wrench can be useful for saving ammo on cameras, though maybe the rapier is just safer as a backup, but then competes for energy with sparq/ion/any hardware you use like enviro suit or projectile shield or boots, sensaround, nightvision etc.

BTW better make sure you have everything you need on you when you go to Security level after dealing with the reactor, that's a point of no return and you will lose any gun you leave behind.


EDIT: OH right! Mag Pulse!
Yeah, it's actually really powerful, especially with the modkit (ammo becomes more frequent later in the game), always charge a shot to deal a ton of damage mainly to robotic/cybernetic enemies (It does DoT DMG so you can lean around corners, shoot, then wait for the enemy to zap to death), don't waste the ammo on fleshy creatures.

[TrantaLocked]

I'm 2/3 through the game. Through most of the mid game I decided on using the Magnum, Rapier, Sparqbeam and Shotgun/Mag-Pulse (switch depending on ammo stocks). I have a cache of all my extra weapons and items by the Cargo Lift at the SE corner of Flight Deck.

I really just didn't like most of the auto and heavy options over the other options when making my decision for mid game weapons. The rail gun has like no ammo mid game. The grenade launcher, you also have very little ammo unless you saved every gas grenade you got.

So I came to the conclusion that I only needed one heavy damage weapon, the Shotgun or Mag-Pulse Rifle (one stays in Cargo storage depending on ammo), due to them having decent ammo availability, and that my other weapons should be small for inventory space and be ammo efficient. Obviously I take Magnum over the normal Pistol due to there being plenty of ammo for it mid game.

The rifle version of the Sparqbeam is pretty cool but it actually loses out in voltage efficiency to the pistol version mid game. I assume the rifle version eventually gets a damage upgrade, but for mid game the pistol version is overall easier to pick. I will say though that I did kind of rely on the Sparq rifle's overmode for one of the mid-late game boss fights which kind of does need something heavier than just the Shotgun unless you want to punish yourself. So yeah, the Sparq rifle is still a great weapon but Sparq pistol is still legit and should be in everyone's early to mid game arsenal.

[Blamite Delight]

SMG, assault rifle, railgun and magnum

[DarkFenix]

Best four in my opinion: Skorpion, assault rifle, magpulse, grenade launcher. All weapons that are powerful and have fairly abundant ammo. All earn their place from the moment you pick them up until the end of the game.

After that you've got magnum and shotgun, both perfectly good to use when you've got a big stack of ammo saved up. I swapped them each in for a while in storage/executive just to use up their ammo, then I threw them away and stopped picking up more. Neither quite puts out the dps to edge out the above weapons.

Sparq and ion rifle are both decent enough weapons, but later on energy is best saved for your implants.

Pistol simply gets outdated by the skorpion, but is fine while it lasts. Throw it away the moment you pick up the skorpion and don't look back.

Then you have the useless novelties; the plasma and railgun. The former is mediocre and appears uselessly late, the latter just never gets enough ammo to justify the amount of space it takes up in your inventory (it just sits there occupying space 99% of the time).

[Valorel]

What about the grenade launcher? Worth it or just chuck grenades by hand?

[Ricky Icky]

I survived with the shotgun/smg/assault rifle and the energy rifle that you charge. I brought the rail gun with me too in the cargo stash for the last part too just because i saved all the ammo for it during my run just for the last parts.... I figured grenade launcher is a waste of inventory space since you can just toss em...i think they get a damage boost by using the launcher? I dunno, doesnt seem worth it though thats a lot of space for like 9 med kits or something.

[Nathan]

Oh BTW, I should add that though personally I'm not a massive fan of the laser rapier (the overall hit feedback in the game is one of SSRs weakest aspects, so swinging with the rapier feels like swinging dead air no matter what)
BUT, it's really powerful, I've seen people cut down Cortex Reavers in record times when they EMP grenade them, use a berzerk patch (maybe others as well, like reflex, stamina) and then rush in to swing as much as they can while the boss is down, the rapier can really save the day in such cases, easily probably a better boss weapon over a railgun for instance (taking only that 2x2 inv space), if you can look past the weak enemy hit feedback of the game and only care about min maxing.

[PhosphoR]

Must haves are Laser Rapier, Magnum, Skorpion, Assault Rifle, Magpulse. Early on you will want the Sparq Beam, can be ditched for the Ion Rifle later. And you might want the Railgun and/or Plasma Rifle later on too. Just pick which of these you like the most. Grenade Launcher can be useful, grenades do more damage fired from it but it does take up a lot of space. Try it out and see if you like it. Shotgun can be good to save ammo for other things. Make use of the storage crates at the freight elevator in the centre of Maintenance to store the guns you are not currently using but might want to use later.

[DarkFenix]

Originally posted by Valorel:

What about the grenade launcher? Worth it or just chuck grenades by hand?

The grenade launcher is amazing, grenades fired from it are more damaging (courtesy of the upgrade for the launcher), explode on impact, and go much further, much faster. Grenades are a bit of a niche tool without it, carefully throwing them at close range and hoping the enemy remains inside the blast radius. With the launcher it's basically the railgun, except you have an actual ammo supply, and it's an "I win" button against bosses via EMP.

[Spoke]

Originally posted by DarkFenix:

Originally posted by Valorel:

What about the grenade launcher? Worth it or just chuck grenades by hand?

The grenade launcher is amazing, grenades fired from it are more damaging (courtesy of the upgrade for the launcher), explode on impact, and go much further, much faster. Grenades are a bit of a niche tool without it, carefully throwing them at close range and hoping the enemy remains inside the blast radius. With the launcher it's basically the railgun, except you have an actual ammo supply, and it's an "I win" button against bosses via EMP.

In my experience the nade launcher is way too situational for taking away 8 inventory slots. Explosion on impact is nice but i find that cooking grenades in hand is good enough for most situations.

[Shortez]

I went to security level with Assault Rifle, Magnum, laser rapier, rail gun, skorpion, ION rifle. Of course I didn't had everything with me on person used the lift to store. Honestly the weapons to ditch is 9mm pistol when you get skorpion.
Shotgun after you're done with groves.
Wrench of course.
Sparq after getting ION.
Granade launcher is just too big of a weapon. To be justified.
Assault Rifle isn't all that great too you could just keep using skorpion instead but I've had so much penetration ammo for the rifle that it felt like a waste to just toss it.

[Rei Johannes]

I'm not that far in game but so far i've saved:
Sparqbeam because after latest updates it can actually kill enemies. Downside is energy consumption.
Magnum, of course.
Assault rifle.
Shotgun, but i feel like futher i go in citadel more it depends on dragons breath(or something like that) ammo.

[TrantaLocked]

I had never been able to maintain more than 3 of each frag and EMP granades at any given time. Are people saying they have 10+ frag grenades in their inventory? How? The only way I'd figure you'd have so many grenades is if you weren't using them.

[Stargoat]

Sparqbeam is your early-game economy weapon, as long as you're happy to run back to recharge stations (make sure reload uses battery is off!). Overcharge is fun, but charge level 2 followed up with a pistol shot will handle a lot of early game foes.

Minipistol is your workhorse early on. It's outclassed by the skorp, but only slightly. You can grab a burstfire mod from Reactor.

Magpulse is better than it seems. Ruins energy shields and good damage vs bots when double charged, but it's better to open with, followed up by the Skorp/Mk3/Magnum rather than to use on its own.

Magnum is amazing, either aim for weakpoints or get the 'weakpoint auto aim' upgrade. It's an incredibly efficient weapon, even with the low ammo drops.

Shotgun is a great economy weapon (like the magnum) once it's upgraded. Don't bother with dragon's breath rounds, though.

Skorpion SMG is equally amazing at close range, but the accuracy doesn't cut it at long range. You can easily chew through ammo.

If the MK3 Assault Rifle had a tighter spread it'd be the go-to for long range engagements. It's a good weapon, but unfortunately it's effective range isn't that much better than the skorp (especially on full-auto).

Grenade Launcher is hands down the heavy weapon you want for dealing with groups (frag), or robots and the hunkier cyborgs (emp). Grenades can be a bit scarce, though, and the reload is long. You can one-shot virus mutants with the otherwise somewhat less-useful gas grenades.

Ion Rifle is... some people love it, I don't. Overcharge is fun, but the energy usage is way too high unless you have easy access to recharge stations. By the time you find it, the balance between energy and physical ammunition has shifted, since you have a lot of hungry implants.

Railgun is great, It's pinpoint accurate and can one-shot a lot of end game foes, also pierces shields and armour. The recharge (separate to reload) is long, though, so for extended fights, you'll want a backup weapon. It also has very scarce ammunition.

Plasma Rifle is... a larger danger to the operator than their opponent, honestly. Without powering with plasma cores, it makes a decent energy-based primary, but as with the Ion Rifle, I personally would rather have the energy for shields or rocketboots.

Melee weapons:
Good early game, or if you're roleplaying conan the barbarian, not necessary otherwise. The laser rapier could be useful for mission level 3 as an economy weapon.

Grenades:
Great. Super useful early on, but much better when loaded into a grenade launcher.

Proximity mines:
These things hurt.

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Overall, I'd say most weapons have a use in the mid-to end-game, except sparky and minipistol (which have already done their leg of the batton race, so to speak). None are good in every situation, but all shine in their particular niche, so it really depends not on the specific weapons you choose to bring, but the balance of your overall loadout.