Weapons of UG:CW - Chart of their parameters

What is Strength and weakness of this weapon? - I made a chart of their parameters.

(Updated the guide and resorted Line Infantry's weapons according to v0.75)

Weapons of Line Infantry

I sorted them into six groops

• Smoothbore Musket
  - Farmer, Re-bored Farmer, Springfield M1842, Palmetto M1842
  Characteristics: High Damage, Short/Medium Range, Very Low Accuracy, Very Strong Melee
  Smoothbore Musket is the lowest tier weapon of line infantry in this game despite of their highest damage and melee. This is because their inability of accuracy under other Rifles due to their rifling: Palmetto Musket has 13.5 accuracy which is 1.35 times high than Farmers, but M1841 Missisippi Rifle has 2.96 times higher accuracy than Palmetto, Springfield M1855 Rifle has 4.81 times higher and Fayetteville has 6.44 times higher accuracy although Farmer Musket has only 1.44 times higher Damage and 1.64 times stronger Melee than Happers Ferry Rifle. This big jump made the civil war the bloodiest war of United States history.
  
  
• Missisippi Rifle
  - M1841 Missisippi, MI&G Type II
  Characteristics: Medium Range, Medium Accuracy, Strong Melee
  Missisippi Rifle is the earliest Rifle and can be only available by the Confederacy. This is one of big advantage of Confederacy in early game. They have balanced range, accuracy and melee and establishes superiority over smoothbore musket but their accuracy is inadequate to face other rifles (Accuracy of M1841 Missisippi is just 61.54% of Springfield M1855's)
  
  
• Standard Melee Rifle
  - Lorenz, CS Richmond
  Characteristics: Long Range, High Accuracy, Strong Melee
  These two rifles have special characteristics to manage high level accuracy, range and melee. They are very important to maintain melee ability without losing certain amount of fire power in late game. Lorenz has less damage and fire rate than other standard rifles, and Richmond RIfle isn't available to Union.
  
  
• Springfield Rifle
  - Springfield M1855, Happers Ferry M1855, Springfield M1861, M1863
  Characteristics: Medium Damage, Long Range, High Accuracy, Weak Melee
  They perform backbone weapon of line infantry in mid campaign especially for Union with their high fire power which is caused by a combo of high accuracy and long range. However lack of their melee ability suffers Union severely with Southerners' determined charges. As above, I think Lorenz reserve brigades resolve this problem which has adequate fire power and perform melee reserves to counter-charge rebels...
  
  
• Mid Melee Rifle
  Characteristics: Medium Melee
  
  1. Tier: Tyler Taxas +Medium Accuracy
     
  2. Tier: Pattern 1853 Enfield +High Accuracy
     
  3. Tier: Fayetteville +Very Long Range, High Fire Rate and Very High Accuracy
  They are some kind of leftover... but they share the same charasteristic that their melee ability isn't so bad. They also share charasteristic that they are preferred in Sounthern.
  
  BTW, losig much of their melee ability, Fayetteville rifle's cost seems to be too high, although they are very rare rifles. It should be in between 75 and 90 dollars.
  -> I wrote my thought about it here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/502520/discussions/0/133258593397001495/
  
  
• Repeating Rifle
  - Colt Model 1855, Henry, Spencer
  Characteristics: Low/Medium Damage, Medium/Low Range, Very High Fire Rate, Medium Accuracy, Medium Melee
  I don't think repeating rifle is the strongest infantry weapon in this game. To say nothing of their rarity, their considerable short range makes difficult to use them in main weapon of line infantry. I think repeating rifle is the best to use in mobile reserves to focus firepower into required points. (However I prefer mounted rifles with Sharps carbines as mobile reserves to repeating rifle brigades...) Unexpectedly their melee ability is not bad, probably because their complicated mechanism gives them considerable amount of mass.

Weapon of Mounted Rifle

I sorted them into 6 groops, but borders between them is more vague than Line Infantary's.

• Shotgun
  - Saw-off
  Characteristics: Very High Damage, Strong Melee, Low Range and Accuracy
  
• Old Carbine
  - Cook&Brother
  Characteristics: High Melee, High Damage better Range and Accuracy than Shotgun
  
• High Rate Carbine
  - Sharps Model 1855, Model 1859, Smith
  Characteristics: High Fire Rate
  
• Shooting Carbine
  Pattern 1861 Enfield, Frank Wesson, Maynard
  Characteristics: Slightly Weak Melee and Good Range/Accuracy
  
• Melee Carbine
  1862 CS Richmond, Burnside
  Characteristics: Good Melee and Slightly less Range/Accuracy than Shooting Carbine
  
• Repeating Carbine
  - Spencer
  Characteristics: Very High Fire Rate

I wrote my thought about fire rate of carbines here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/502520/discussions/0/133258593397001495/

Target Rifles

Artillery

[Meningate]

Never jumped down this rabbit hole, it's gonna be like playing a brand new game. thanks boyz.

[Morkler]

honestly i have finished a number of campaigns(yet to do hardest difficulty for feds and States) but i have found having dedicated melee regiments of a thousand with farmers, is a very effective way to rush the heavy forts, especially with the way the ai only targets the front rank, very easy to draw fire and then club to death forts and to have them guard flanks and rear actions against pescy cav.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

By the way, one parameter left off of this that is actually pretty big: availability.

The Fayetteville is not normally available until pretty late... but you can get it via Reputation rather early, before the enemy has anything close to as accurate or long-ranged.

Meanwhile, the Colt repeater is available in significantly larger numbers, and earlier, compared to Henrys or Spencers.

Kudos for mentioning how important it is that the Mississippis are available early, but for a number of other weapons as well, the amount you can buy or trade rep for, and exactly when you can start doing so, is probably worth listing as well here.

[Aluminum Elite Master]

The previous comment is incredibly important.

de Salle's comment about how accuracy actually works is vital, because otherwise people look at the Farmers and Rebored Farmers and think they are completely worthless.

In fact, those smooth-bores, if you take the time to painfully pause, set them to hold-fire, unpause, and then let them fire only at extremely close range... well, if you do that level of micro, even the shooting of the smooth-bores isn't that bad, let alone the fact that yeah, if you want to charge enemies, the smooth-bores are by far the best option both in melee stat and cost.

[Hugh de Salle]

Accuracy is effected by how close to the enemy you are not just by the stats on the rifle.

What this means is that Smooth-bores up close are deadly combine that with their cost and melee stats and simply put they are the best weapons in the game bar none.

plainly put a rifles effective range like a Harper ferry is 350 yards and an 1842 smooth-bore is 250 yards , While the rifle has the advantage of range that gap can be closed in mere seconds meaning that any advantage is gone for the rifle.

People tend to fail hard at the higher difficultys as the CSA because they spend resources on rifles instead of the much cheaper smooth-bores they then cant understand why they fail badly in melee with the union.

[le scrub]

@HeroDave, look at the Hunter's cost comparative to the other target rifles. It ends up being the perfect rifle to groom green skirmishers into trained marksmen, and you have a little over one hundred lying around in your armory at the start of the war if you're Union.

[DILLxDOE]

true but also not.
the curves dont change i guess, but with longer range weapons they indeed can shoot on bigger range.

i had many instances where the ai had to close in into the circle because they had springfield 42's, but my men had harpers ferry's, they started shooting so early that the enemy unit routs before they even get one shot off. not just once, but it became my go to tactic, that way i killed like 4800 men with one unit, and suffered like 200 casualties in return.

[TechnoSarge]

(This is addendum to my comment below - it wouldn't accept full post.)

I hear you doubting me. But I have the curves.

By the way, the devs played straight with Repeating Rifles (Colt 55, Henry, Spencer), Skirmisher and Cavalry weapons with respect to their listed ranges; it's only muzzle-loading infantry weapons that were levelized. Cannons are as listed, too.

Another by-the-by: the weapon curves are hard-coded. The modders can't change them. They can only change the name of the weapon that uses each curve.

[TechnoSarge]

I originally made use of a lot of weapons based on their listed ranges. But a programmer who mods the game gave me access to the weapon damage curves vs. range. FOR MUZZLE-LOADING INFANTRY WEAPONS THE CURVES ALL END AT 300 YARDS. That means that, for instance, an 1861 Springfield (listed range 400) actually shoots only as far as the Farmer's Musket (listed range 200). You can not stand back out of range of the other guy and hurt him.

I think the devs did this to make the sides a bit more even. Since the Union can purchase fancier weapons, the Yankees having a range advantage would make Confederates much harder to play.

The curves DO differ by weapon. Generally, ones with higher listed ranges tend to be more accurate in the 0-300 yd range... but not by much.

[MainKiller7]

Actually I differed and had great results equipping one of my elite regiments with Spencers.

I built them to be a ranged fighting brigade and with that in mind, it increases the effective range and capability of the Spencers. Keeping in mind this brigade ALWAYS has its sister brigades beside skilled for either balanced or melee combat, the Spencer then becomes very practical when the other brigades face hell and they are left to just massacre,