Sliceydicey
Mongoose
It sounds like it's too late to make any changes to the Core Rulebook, but I just bought the beta and wanted to get people's thoughts. Energy weapons seem a bit underpowered compared to high end projectile weapons, which seems weird.
Compare the Gauss Rifle to the best Laser Rifle:
-Damage vs Unarmored Targets: Laser Rifle does 5d6+3 damage (Average: 20.5). Gauss Rifle with Burst Fire does 4d6+3 (Average: 17). However, a Gauss Rifle going Full Auto gets 3 attacks at 4d6 (Average: 14) each!!! Since the targets are unarmored, that's almost certainly going to kill anywhere from 1-3 enemies. Seems like the Gauss Rifle is the clear choice here.
-Damage vs Armored Targets: Against a target with armor 5 or more, the Energy Rifle does 5d6 +3 (Average: 20.5). Gauss Rifle with Burst Fire effectively does 4d6 + 8 (Average 22) because of its AP5. And if there armor is not super high, it may still make sense to do Full Auto here. So it still outperforms the Energy Rifle.
-Range: Laser Rifle has a Range of 300m vs the Gauss range of 600m.
-Zero-G: Laser Rifle has Zero-G quality, where as Gauss Rifle does not, so that certainly makes it attractive in Zero G combat.
-Ammo: The Laser Rifle has 100 shots. The Gauss Rifle has 80 shots, but realistically it will often be using Burst Fire and Full Auto, which means it could have as few as 8 Full Auto Shots or as many as 80 single shots.
-Tech Level: The Gauss Rifle is slightly higher tech level, making it marginally more difficult to acquire.
-Laws: I may be mistaken, but it looks like you're more likely to be able to legally walk around with a Gauss Rifle than a Laser Rifle.
With the possible exception of Zero G combat, it's hard to imagine favoring the Laser Rifle over the Gauss Rifle, which outperforms it against armored and unarmored targets and has better range. Sure, you'll only get 8 shots going full auto, but how many combats last that long? And even those that do, it's just a minor action to reload.
I think if you compare the Gauss Pistol vs the Laser Pistol, you'll see the Gauss Pistol also performs better in nearly every scenario. It may be that this is more a problem with the Gauss weapons being too powerful than an inherent weakness of energy weapons, but if it's reasonably easy to acquire both types of weapons, it's difficult to see the appeal of Energy Weapons.
In fact, the only real appeal I see aside from Zero-G is that Energy Weapons include Stunners, which obviously have their own unique advantages. Did I get anything wrong here, or are Energy Weapons fairly narrow and underwhelming?
Compare the Gauss Rifle to the best Laser Rifle:
-Damage vs Unarmored Targets: Laser Rifle does 5d6+3 damage (Average: 20.5). Gauss Rifle with Burst Fire does 4d6+3 (Average: 17). However, a Gauss Rifle going Full Auto gets 3 attacks at 4d6 (Average: 14) each!!! Since the targets are unarmored, that's almost certainly going to kill anywhere from 1-3 enemies. Seems like the Gauss Rifle is the clear choice here.
-Damage vs Armored Targets: Against a target with armor 5 or more, the Energy Rifle does 5d6 +3 (Average: 20.5). Gauss Rifle with Burst Fire effectively does 4d6 + 8 (Average 22) because of its AP5. And if there armor is not super high, it may still make sense to do Full Auto here. So it still outperforms the Energy Rifle.
-Range: Laser Rifle has a Range of 300m vs the Gauss range of 600m.
-Zero-G: Laser Rifle has Zero-G quality, where as Gauss Rifle does not, so that certainly makes it attractive in Zero G combat.
-Ammo: The Laser Rifle has 100 shots. The Gauss Rifle has 80 shots, but realistically it will often be using Burst Fire and Full Auto, which means it could have as few as 8 Full Auto Shots or as many as 80 single shots.
-Tech Level: The Gauss Rifle is slightly higher tech level, making it marginally more difficult to acquire.
-Laws: I may be mistaken, but it looks like you're more likely to be able to legally walk around with a Gauss Rifle than a Laser Rifle.
With the possible exception of Zero G combat, it's hard to imagine favoring the Laser Rifle over the Gauss Rifle, which outperforms it against armored and unarmored targets and has better range. Sure, you'll only get 8 shots going full auto, but how many combats last that long? And even those that do, it's just a minor action to reload.
I think if you compare the Gauss Pistol vs the Laser Pistol, you'll see the Gauss Pistol also performs better in nearly every scenario. It may be that this is more a problem with the Gauss weapons being too powerful than an inherent weakness of energy weapons, but if it's reasonably easy to acquire both types of weapons, it's difficult to see the appeal of Energy Weapons.
In fact, the only real appeal I see aside from Zero-G is that Energy Weapons include Stunners, which obviously have their own unique advantages. Did I get anything wrong here, or are Energy Weapons fairly narrow and underwhelming?
