So, one of the things I'm rather worried about is a lack of weapon variants in Starfinder.
Let me explain what I mean by that. Yes, I'm certain we'll have a "sniper rifle", and a "pistol", and a "shotgun", but generic weaponry just doesn't cut it in a science fiction setting. You get variants on weapons and armor that is sometimes subtle, and sometimes obvious. Let me toss out an example right here, stolen pretty much straight from Warframe (a rather popular free to play Science Fantasy video game)
This is the Lanka. The Lanka is a sniper rifle that, after a short charge, fires out a shot of fast moving electricity with pinpoint accuracy. It has a very long reload time, and has to charge up to get full damage, but when it does, it hits like a truck. It also has a ten round magazine, limiting the number of times you need to reload it in any given fight, to help make up for its drawbacks, and if you're fully zoomed in it has a +50% chance to critically hit. It's pure electricity and high damage if you can get over its problems.
This fancy thing is the Vectis. It's single shot, which is a bit of a double-edged sword - the reload is less than a second to compensate, which is good because you'll be reloading after every shot. It's much weaker than the fully charged Lanka (about a third of the damage) but at higher zoom levels it deals more damage, has no charge time, and is very intuitive to use, giving it a sort of bolt action feel. It's also easier to mod than the lanka due to an inherent mod polarity slot (basically makes it cost less to insert offensive types of mods, in this case).
This somewhat bulbous thing is the Vulkar. It has the same damage as the Vectis, but a few benefits - most notably, it's a semi-automatic sniper rifle, which is great. It has a 6 round magazine, but in exchange has a reload timer of 3 seconds (very very long comparatively), and every now and then one of its shots will be a dud that does no damage, which sucks BAD when you're relying on a hit to have effect.
Finally, this bulky thing is the Rubico. Like the Vulkar, it's semi-automatic and has a five round magazine, as it's essentially a sniper rifle revolver. It has less damage than Vectis or Vulkar (and thus much less than the Lanka), and like the Vulkar has a very long reload time, but in exchange has a much, much higher critical chance, particularly when zoomed in, and deals x3 damage on a crit rather than x2.
Do you see what I mean? These are all "sniper rifles", and falling under a generic "sniper rifle" label would be an injustice to all but whichever one the generic sniper rifle most closely resembles. But people would pay to have variants like this of different weapon types - rate of fire, damage dealt, recoil, clip size, item weight, critical chance, critical damage, these are all things that can be affected by weapon variants even before getting into the mods you can put into weapons like this. It'd be huge for the community to get access to these sorts of things, and for Paizo specifically it'd basically be like printing money to have a bunch of different variants of pistols, assault rifles, SMGs, LMGs, sniper rifles, shotguns, and whatever else.
Food for thought. I really hope this is the sort of thing that gets included in the final release, because it's worked well for every different science fiction or science fantasy game I can think of, tabletop or not.
No, I prefer generic weapon descriptions. The fantasy "longsword" covers a multitude of different sword types from different cultures (not one of which was ever refered to as a "longsword" in it's time). There simply isn't the space to detail every potential possibility. Ten different types of sniper rifle leaves less room for genuinely different weapons.
Descriptions of manufacturer and model number can easily be added as flavor text by the GM.
As for things like rate of fire, magazine capacity, etc, I doubt these will be properties of the gear. Most ammo will be untracked, and number of attacks per round dependent on BAB and special abilities. Even damage may be detached from weapon stats, as it "scales with level".
When has Paizo chosen to do any of that? Ever?
That's a serious question. When has "no consumables" ever been a thing Paizo has ever done outside of ludicrously expensive and difficult to get abilities? the best example I can think of is the Kineticist, and even then they have to deal with the burn mechanics in order to be any sort of competitive.
I feel you're wrong. On... basically every point.
I'm also not looking for ten types of every weapon in the same book, I'm looking for one or two new variants to come along with supplements - armory supplements are some of the best received updates by the community in Shadowrun, the Warhammer 40k games, and I'm sure others that I could list if I wasn't so tired, and those are essentially the markets Starfinder is attempting to break into.
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No, I prefer generic weapon descriptions. The fantasy "longsword" covers a multitude of different sword types from different cultures (not one of which was ever refered to as a "longsword" in it's time). There simply isn't the space to detail every potential possibility. Ten different types of sniper rifle leaves less room for genuinely different weapons.
Descriptions of manufacturer and model number can easily be added as flavor text by the GM.
As for things like rate of fire, magazine capacity, etc, I doubt these will be properties of the gear. Most ammo will be untracked, and number of attacks per round dependent on BAB and special abilities. Even damage may be detached from weapon stats, as it "scales with level".
When has Paizo chosen to do any of that? Ever?
That's a serious question. When has "no consumables" ever been a thing Paizo has ever done outside of ludicrously expensive and difficult to get abilities? the best example I can think of is the Kineticist, and even then they have to deal with the burn mechanics in order to be any sort of competitive.
I feel you're wrong. On... basically every point.
I'm also not looking for ten types of every weapon in the same book, I'm looking for one or two new variants to come along with supplements - armory supplements are some of the best received updates by the community in Shadowrun, the Warhammer 40k games, and I'm sure others that I could list if I wasn't so tired, and those are essentially the markets Starfinder is attempting to break into.
Jack in for the emperor You troll shaman astates! also theirs lizard people... and maybe jedi and kingon... what I don't know what kind of game your running but I know what mines gonna look like...
I'd rather see generic: specific variants are largely just fluff, if you stat them out, they become a problem of 'best weapon' and no one with any sense uses the other variants anyway. Something Shadowrun in particular is very guilty of.
That said, ammo, magazine capacity and etc will almost certainly be tracked. It certainly was in the public play test. The mechanic overcharged his gun and spent 'three shots' from his magazine.
i'd like something between generic and specific. I think they mentioned a diode laser pistol, which makes me wonder what other kind of weapon types there are. Assuming for a moment EAC is the new touch, and KAC is the new AC, then maybe one kind of weapon hits KAC with high damage, another low damage but EAC. maybe one gives you a straight bonus to hit. just enough customization to make my weapon feel unique from my buddy's even if we both have a laser pistol. And now that I think about it, since in Pathfinder there's a ton of melee weapons and a few ranged, with sStarfinder being the opposite, maybe instead of a hundred types of guns, it'll be again, customizable guns.
Don't forget a Fatman!!
Ah Esther, you are my muse!
i'd like something between generic and specific. I think they mentioned a diode laser pistol, which makes me wonder what other kind of weapon types there are. Assuming for a moment EAC is the new touch, and KAC is the new AC, then maybe one kind of weapon hits KAC with high damage, another low damage but EAC. maybe one gives you a straight bonus to hit. just enough customization to make my weapon feel unique from my buddy's even if we both have a laser pistol. And now that I think about it, since in Pathfinder there's a ton of melee weapons and a few ranged, with sStarfinder being the opposite, maybe instead of a hundred types of guns, it'll be again, customizable guns.
I'm more guessing, personally, that KAC and EAC are going to just be different, not specifically "touch and normal". If laser guns are as common as conventional weapons, that means that armor is going to be built for one, the other, or both. you'd want to equip up for what you're going to be fighting, rather than just have a general use armor for all the time, and armor in general would provide efense against both (For example, power armor would be mostly kinetic armor, but have shielding systems to ward off energy too to a lesser extent. It'd be something like +10 KAC versus +4 EAC)
Not one or the other being better, simply different, and you want to cover all your bases.
What you're describing sounds a lot like high tech/expensive magical weapons.
Seeing as Sniper Weapons is an entire weapon's group with separate proficiency then I say that variations are definitely IN!