HI so I know there have been some max damage analyses done and heavy weapons do more than longarms. My question is this, if you use longarms instead of heavy weapons how much are you hurting yourself? If I wanted to play a solder with longarms instead of heavies am I going to gimp myself terribly?
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The difference seems to be about a die type at a glance. And the availability of some abilities like explode. But I done think it'll be a huge difference, and there are to my mind some advantages. You're looking at lower bulk on average, which means you can carry more specific gear or maybe an alternative weapon instead of a backup. Like having a main riffle and also the most recent scattergun to handle crowds. I feel like the flexibility will make up for the lower damage for the most part. Plus I expect you'll spend a lot less on bullets in your career.
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Heavy would always do more if more weapons were available at all levels.
It's not overly punishing from a raw single target damage perspective.
You can eyeball it as a deadly aim in damage difference.
HI so I know there have been some max damage analyses done and heavy weapons do more than longarms. My question is this, if you use longarms instead of heavy weapons how much are you hurting yourself? If I wanted to play a solder with longarms instead of heavies am I going to gimp myself terribly?
Long arms I think will tend to be better for people able to make full attacks using them like soldiers/exo cortex mechanics.
Heavy weapons are nicer for people who use abilities that prevent them from making much use out of full attacks such as envoy/drone mechanics.
Heavy weapons have a tendency to run out of steam early on. Longarms tend to be better for prolonged engagements requiring lots of ammo.
Heavy Weapons are best used for a few big hits against groups with their special qualities. If you're picking off individual targets not clustered together (and not facing hardness) in a sustained fight longarms are better.
While that's true of the energy weapons, automatic kinetic heavy weapons actually have a better effective ammunition capacity than longarms, while not sacrificing much damage to the seeker rifle line. They lose a bit more damage compared to gyrojet weapons, but then the ammunition advantage becomes even larger. And no, you can't catch up by just switching to an automatic longarm. That just gives you worse damage on top of your lower capacity. For comparison, the highest capacity seeker rifle has 24 shots at level 20. The lowest capacity machine gun has 20 shots in it at level 4. And yes, that is accounting for its higher usage rate. It may use 2 bullets per shot, but it holds 40.
You can burn all those bullets with fully automatic fire, but you're not obligated to.
As for the original question, you're usually losing 1 average damage at level 1 and up to 15 at levels 18 and 19, at least with kinetic weapons. The trade-off is that despite that little blurb above, longarms typically do have better ammunition usage than their equivalent heavy weapons. It's probably suboptimal for most circumstances, but that's not the same thing as bad.
The thing about Heavy Weapons is that you need a decent strength to really get the most out of them. That includes the 12-14 minimum you need to actually use them of course, but the Bombard Soldier fighting style (which specializes in using Heavy Weapons) has several features which makes having a high strength a very good idea.
If you want to specialize in longarms, this means that you can invest those ability scores in a different way. You could have a higher intelligence to get yourself more skill points, or charisma to make you better at talking to others (or spontaneous develop Psychic Powers if you so desire).
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Then exception, of course, is Soldiers who need only invest the Str.
If one is willing to delay using heavy weapons until level 5 (not that big a cost, really) that Str investment is pretty minimal (Str 10 to start and one of your 4 stat boosts). Non zero (especially for a Ysoki) but pretty small.
Hmm. Ysoki with heavy weapons. That is a hilarious image. Especially if he is hiding one in his cheek pouch :-). Is there any way to get a heavy weapon down to bulk 1?
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If one is willing to delay using heavy weapons until level 5 (not that big a cost, really) that Str investment is pretty minimal (Str 10 to start and one of your 4 stat boosts). Non zero (especially for a Ysoki) but pretty small.
Then exception, of course, is Soldiers who need only invest the Str.
You also need to do it again at 10th, so that's one each of your level 5 and 10 ability-ups accounted for. It's not too onerous (and, indeed, automatic for a switch hitter, which is a very valid Soldier build).
Hmm. Ysoki with heavy weapons. That is a hilarious image. Especially if he is hiding one in his cheek pouch :-). Is there any way to get a heavy weapon down to bulk 1?
It's a funny image, but no. And yeah, Ysoki need to actually invest to do this.
@MR. H
How did you come up the numbers for those weapons?
See notes section under the table.
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Yeah, Heavy Weapons are legitimately better in several ways...but require notably more resource investment (an extra Feat and Str 12, later Str 14...two extra Feats for an Exocortex Mechanic).
Then exception, of course, is Soldiers who need only invest the Str.
Why two extra feats for Exocortex mechanic and only one for others? They get longarms for free, so its actually 1 feat less for them, if I'm understanding the logic correctly.
The feats you would want for max damage are Long Arm Prof, Heavy Weapon Prof, Versatile Specialization (for all the weapons you're prof in that you don't get specialization for already), Weapon Focus(Weapon), Versatile Specialization.
So to get Heavy Arms instead of Longarms its 2 extra feats, you'd be taking Versatile Specialization anyway probably, so you'd want to take Heavy Arms and Versatile Focus which you wouldn't normally though I don't feel like the second is a dealbreaker (the lack of specialization in your weapon of choice definitely is.)
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Why two extra feats for Exocortex mechanic and only one for others? They get longarms for free, so its actually 1 feat less for them, if I'm understanding the logic correctly.
The feats you would want for max damage are Long Arm Prof, Heavy Weapon Prof, Versatile Specialization (for all the weapons you're prof in that you don't get specialization for already), Weapon Focus(Weapon), Versatile Specialization.
So to get Heavy Arms instead of Longarms its 2 extra feats, you'd be taking Versatile Specialization anyway probably, so you'd want to take Heavy Arms and Versatile Focus which you wouldn't normally though I don't feel like the second is a dealbreaker (the lack of specialization in your weapon of choice definitely is.)
It goes like this:
Soldiers already get Heavy Weapon Proficiency and Specialization, and are an exception to all of this.
Everyone else except Exocortex Mechanics gets neither Heavy Weapon Proficiency and Specialization nor Longarms Proficiency and Specialization.
Therefore, since we're comparing Longarms to Heavy Weapons, we must assume that, say, a Technomancer who's relevant to the discussion has already purchased Longarms Proficiency and Versatile Specialization. At that point, Heavy Weapon Proficiency is only one extra Feat.
An Exocortex mechanic, however, gets Longarms, and free specialization with them. Meaning that he would have to buy both Heavy Weapon Proficiency and Versatile Specialization to use Heavy Weapons effectively.
So, yes, the Exocortex guy can get Heavy Weapons for two Feats, while it takes everyone else three...but ranged combatants of other Classes will already have two of those if using a longarm. So it's only one Feat for them to make the jump from Longarms to Heavy Weapons.
The Technomancer or Envoy or Mystic isn't just one extra feat. They're also the opportunity cost of the additional strength diverting from other stats.
I would say it's probably not worth the investment if you're not already proficient with it. Which means, if you're not a soldier it's probably not worth it.
My technomancer character definitely wouldn't bother spending 3 feats (Prof in Longarms and Heavy Weapons and Weapon Versatility) and also need to increase my strength (an otherwise unused ability score).
No, I'll just stick to Longarms.
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But I love the thought of Eternal Spell (Overheat) on an Unwieldy weapon with Spellshot, since I can only make a single attack anyway. Possibly a nice steady Sniper rifle.
Arcing Surge (or something similar) for those important occasions.
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There's a reason the Glamered weapon fusion exists.
"What is that?"
"It's my trombone."
"Why do you have a trombone?"
"I think the question here is, why don't you?"
If one is willing to delay using heavy weapons until level 5 (not that big a cost, really) that Str investment is pretty minimal (Str 10 to start and one of your 4 stat boosts). Non zero (especially for a Ysoki) but pretty small.
Then exception, of course, is Soldiers who need only invest the Str.
You also need to do it again at 10th, so that's one each of your level 5 and 10 ability-ups accounted for. It's not too onerous (and, indeed, automatic for a switch hitter, which is a very valid Soldier build).
Hmm. Ysoki with heavy weapons. That is a hilarious image. Especially if he is hiding one in his cheek pouch :-). Is there any way to get a heavy weapon down to bulk 1?It's a funny image, but no. And yeah, Ysoki need to actually invest to do this.
I think it is likely that ysoki who want to use heavy weapons probably get a drone to do it for
As a person playing a Ysoki Bombardier Heavy Weapons guy, my biggest problem is that I can’t use an efficient Bandoleer. This is highly annoying with no practical reason for the limitation.
Nor can a Trox lol. It is an odd limitation though.