Armor penetrating question

[Simple Tora]

I'm a little confused on this system and why it seems like there's a lot of weapons from warbonds with light armor pen. Aside from low level diff where you can do whatever you want is there really a reason to ever run anything that doesn't have med-high pen? 90% of the enemies you face seem to be unaffected to light armor pen so why is that even a thing?

I know a lot of the really heavy things like titans/striders etc. are meant to be taken care of with stratagems but in my experience the game swarms you with stuff that you need med-heavy pen to even damage on anything above 5 which i'd imagine 6-7 is around the sweet spot for most people that isn't too easy nor too hard

[Fluffy Monster Thing]

Because the devs dislike the idea of fun and accessible primary weapons, and if there's so much as an attempt at adding one there will be weirdos that shriek about it loud enough that they can package it and make it into a new strategem.

[⛑️💉zidj]

having at least one thing med pen in your loadout is handy. more than that and it's just redundant. light AP works once you learn where you should be aiming with it.

[Doyle216]

There really is no point in using a light pen weapon over a med pen weapon. Anything a light pen weapon can do a med pen weapon can do, but better.

If you like AR category use the lib penetrator or the adjudicator.
If you like marksman rifles use the deadeye or the diligence CS.
SMGs use the reprimand.
Shotguns use the Halt or the Slugger, a special case could be made for the breaker incendiary.
Explosive category, use the crossbow. The eruptor kinda sucks after it's "fix"
Energy based is a bit more open, the punisher plasma is decent, the blitzer is a bit better. Double edge sickle has a place, as well as the scorcher. But the scorcher is only good until you get the purifier. Then you'll probably never use it again.
The jar and torcher are niche.

Now this doesn't mean you can't use any weapon you want. Far be it for me to tell you what to do and how you have fun in your game. I'm just saying the weapons I've listed will do what the other light pen weapons in the same category could do, just more effectively.

Either way, have fun.

[Vivianite]

you can run light armor pen against most enemies, but on the bot front id hesitate the suggestion because devastators often have medium armor-points at center-mass.

bugs are fine with light armor pen but be careful when you see bile spewers and hive guards

illuminate is fine, i use a light armor pen tbh, overseers armor is light except for the helm and i often kill them faster that way.

[Plumber]

It’s a way to differentiate the ideal targets for each weapon. For example, light / AP2 weapons can wipe typical spongy or fragile enemies very efficiently whereas AP3 / medium weapons typically trade ammo economy and raw output for more reliable damage alongside generally better performance against “durable” hitzones which are a separate mechanic from the penetration level system.

The strengths and weaknesses of the three machine gun support weapons are a good frame of reference for the general silhouette of this game’s sandbox. Stalwart can’t hit AP3 hitzones and has bad durable damage, but it can tear apart endless droves of weak or health-spongy enemies like Hunters or Berserkers, sporting a mobile reload that prevents them from threatening you even when you need to reload. The HMG on the other hand has AP4 with tremendous strength and can take care of most armored targets in exchange for being less economic and ergonomic, the stationary reload making it harder to use against weaker enemies effectively. The LMG is AP3, toeing the line and trading a little bit of comfort from Stalwart by having a stationary reload and being able to deal with some targets HMG can with careful aim and positioning, making it ideal for cutting down swathes of light and medium enemies but struggling against heavies since it strictly has to flank them for an extended period of time. Your mobility and economy tends to scale down in return for more stable damage output against tougher enemies.

But that’s just support weapons, and yes, the regular primary/secondary picks have a lot of wacky things going on where some medium pen options also have the best performance anyway, or some fail to outperform light weapons against armored targets. It’s not even a recent development; even the launch days had Scorcher and Liberator Penetrator as examples of both sides of the scale.

I feel like the Illuminate were designed explicitly to give AP2 weapons a more concrete use-case since their shields have no armor or durability but an extreme amount of health. I would be surprised if their future heavy units didn’t follow suit.

[AnemoneMeer]

A number of light pen weapons possess greatly superior DPS or secondary features to compensate. The Defender SMG can be shot omnidirectionally while moving, letting you kite enemies with it very effectively (great vs bugs) and allows you to hold objective items while doing so. The Tenderizer AR deals incredible DPS with minimal recoil, nearly instantly eviscerating stalkers.

Different fronts also have different amounts of armor. Illuminate barely have any. Bugs tend to be either light or heavy with very little medium. Bots have a lot of enemies that require medium pen to fight properly.

[Dakota]

The basic answer is that the light pen weapons aren't good, we had a huge discussion on it that lasted for like a month before too where people kept trying to say they were good, but in reality there's like only like 3 medium pen weapons that have particularly lower DPS than the light pen counterparts, medium pen weapons also often have explosions to take out groups and do massive durable damage, and you can even run heavy pen weapons in the form of the eruptor, senator, and ultimatum which is full on anti tank.

The light chaff enemies are easily cleared with things like an incendiary grenade, your secondary weapon, easily spammable strategems that take out groups of them, a liberator guard dog pack, etc while the big enemies become a big problem if they're not dealt with quickly.

Simply put you'll have a much easier time just running medium pen weapons when there's medium armor enemies on the field. Light pen weapons have to aim around weakspots on such enemies and generally lack a faster time to kill due to either inaccuracy (as a lot of light pen weapons are bullet hoses that are inaccurate despite needing precision to do any damage to most targets), extremely bad durable damage output, time it takes to get to an angle where you can shoot the weakspot or aiming at it precisely, or the bad ammo economy that many light pen weapons also have.

Even easier if you also have answers to big enemies too, like say running a recoilless rifle to immediately deal with heavy enemies, having a medium pen weapon to deal with the medium armor enemies, and having a utility weapon that can blow up spawners.