Remember Seeker Rifle also was Errata'd to be 1 shot per magazine.
Anyways it feels weird when I look at the Sniper Rifles and go, wow the Longbow seems better. All these traits seem fine but fatal d12 is nice only when you crit and even then I think the longbow's ability to not require a reload makes it superior still!
Not to mention I think the Semi-automatic Pistol is hands downs the best 1 handed gun...Errr Simple Weapon so far in the game. Not that it being simple is a real issue, name one class who would use a simple weapon over a martial weapon when using a weapon. If I recall all classes that want to use weapons are trained in martial weapons, correct? (This goes for the Starfinder 2E Playtest and Pathfinder 2E)
I'd agree that the semiauto is on the strong side of simple one handed ranged weapons. When I was shopping for sidearms for my soldier it seemed to be the clear favored choice. There being only one martial pistol at the moment may have been a factor here. Semiauto outranges the boom pistol and both do 1d6, though the boom pistol is sonic. At level 1 the Boom Pistol has the same effective ammo capacity as the semiauto and the price of a spare battery would buy two spare semiauto magazines. I was specifically looking for a cheap sidearm (point in favor of semi-auto) that I could use when it was inappropriate to bring out the cannon (neutral) or when the enemy was out of range of the stellar cannon (point for semi-auto). Semi-auto is tied for highest damage among pistols and has easily the longest range. This is a change from 1e where the laser pistol had an 80' range increment and the semiauto was a short range high damage option.
And incidentally, it's kind of wild that I can be out of range for my stellar cannon and still inside this pistol's first range increment.
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Thinking about some of the weapons with no home among the Starfinder classes, the Nano-Edge Rapier specifically just... being a reprinted Rapier, which is a bad weapon for every class in the Starfinder book.
Which kind of got me thinking of the archaic problem and how I'd want a character using these weapons to work. If I chose to play an archer in Starfinder (I wouldn't but for example) I'd want her to have nanocarbon arrows that fit into the tech level of the setting. The archaic trait is kind of pointless for player facing options because if it means anything then the weapons are useless, but if it doesn't mean anything then you've got a verisimilitude issue.
It seems pretty reasonable to me to just say that the rapier in the Pathfinder book is a nano-edge rapier if wielded by a Starfinder character, and save the page space spent on reprinting weapons like that on the weird stuff that is uniquely Starfinder.
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While I do think the archaic trait makes sense, in that bringing a fantasy sword into a sci-fi setting is going to look a bit out of place and should be noted by a trait in case the GM wants to do something about it, I do agree that the Starfriends could save themselves a lot of work and trouble if they also just reskinned practically every Pathfinder weapon, or at the very least the melee weapons, and used those as the basis for their melee arsenal. Guns can be iterated and innovated upon, as that's the focus of Starfinder's new combat meta, but melee weapons are secondary, so might as well port in stuff that's known to work and maybe iterate only a bit upon it for stuff like zero knives.
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Advanced weapons seem broken. Not mechanically per se but in the sense that it's impossible to gain fully scaling martial proficiency with them, which means the only classes that can wield them normally are ones that get innate proficiency or never reach master in the first place.
Is "advanced melee weapons are for mystics only" really the intended takeaway here?
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Remember Seeker Rifle also was Errata'd to be 1 shot per magazine.
This has not been errata'd yet (it's not on the official errata page). It was merely commentary that it "might" be misprinted.
It does currently have two "actual" downsides relative to a laser rifle, that being reload 2 and the inability to ever get more than 6 shots per reload.
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I would drop the archaic trait entirely and just pile more traits on futuristic weapons to indicate that they are better. I mentioned this in another thread that it's a weird inconsistency that "your old-timey rapier, no matter how magical it is, is worse at penetrating modern armor" but actual claws and punches do not have this problem even though you're doing those with your basic anatomy that is not necessarily futuristic.
Like Pathfinder has a certain budget for weapon traits, I don't see why Starfinder can't have a strictly better baseline for weapon traits, including some that simply do not appear on archaic weapons.
If anything that difference between "high tech" and "low tech" should exist on armor, not weapons, since "knives" have been very effective weapons for thousands of years and will likely continue to be so. But a 5.56×45mm NATO bullet will certainly penetrate gambeson, but wouldn't necessarily penetrate modern body armor.
From the Unwieldy Trait thread my eye caught this.
Not to mention the Shirren-eye Rifle has Kickback instead of Breakdown which makes it objectively worse then the Assassin's Rifle and makes it worse then the two 150ft Pathfinder 2E guns mentioned earlier. the Shirren-eye Rifle should either have Unwieldy or Knockback but not both. If it keeps both then switch Fatal d12 for Deadly making it slightly better. Other wise why is the Shirren-eye Rifle strickly worse then the Assassin Rifle in terms of effectiveness? Why!?
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Kickback deals additional damage more consistently than backstabber. Backstabber only works on enemies who are off guard and not immune to precision. Kickback applies on all attacks and isn't hard to negate the drawback.
The automatic property's expend seems kind of rough. 2 expend per target is some brutal scaling which makes the weapons really difficult to use against groups of enemies, even though hitting a big group is their primary use case.
If they're supposed to be hybrid weapons that split the difference by being worse at Area fire I'm not sure they really work there either. A machine gun's single target profile is 40 feet d8 with no traits, which compares unfavorably to simple weapons. Even the advanced magnetar rifle compares kind of unfavorably, especially with its tiny magazine and reload 2.
There should also be some guidance on over-expending. I believe the design is that you can't fire a weapon if you're unable to meet its expend requirements (although weirdly enough, the rules on ammo and expend don't say that as clearly as they should), but RAW that would mean the aforementioned magnetar cannon could not be fired if there were four people in my cone. I'm not sure what the best case to adjudicate such a scenario would be, but having the gun not function feels wrong. So does letting the player pick who to exclude. Generally too, I feel like having such a low target cap feels kind of bad, especially since it drops lower still if the gun's not fully loaded.
IDK I was trying to build an action hero soldier for a one shot this morning and looked at my weapon options and all of them just seem wildly unappealing and kind of lame. Action Hero specifically makes them better with their cone buffs, but they still just kind of felt like a worst of both worlds, where you run into serious ammo issues using them as area weapons but they still kind of aren't that great in their single target profile. The magnetar almost looked appealing, but the ammo is problematic even with ready reload (and also it's literally impossible for soldiers to gain full proficiency with them).
Magnetar can hit 3 people in it's amazing 60ft AoE Cone since it only has 6 ammunition in each clip, which also ruins it's Primary Target feature of the Action Hero Soldier actually making you worse then using the Stellar Cannon...They Automatic fire makes you burn 2xTargets of Ammunition is kinda, no it's ultra bad when you compare it to Area weapons. I could see it being a thing is Action Hero Soldier got an ability or Feat (This would be a QOL so please no feat but) That reduced the ammunition cost to being Number of Targets.
We speak of balance but let's compare Machine Gun vs Rotolaser. Why does one have a 40ft range, 1d8P and 20 Magazine size with the trait Automatic and Analog? While the other had 30ft Range, 1d8F, 10 charges and Automatic and Tech traits? It seems like the Rotolaser doing fire damage actually makes it worse along side it can be combat hacked to stop it from functioning as a whole.
Remember: Analog is a positive Trait (Can't be hacked) vs Tech which is a negative Trait (Can be hacked).
Fire Damage is very often resisted.
I'd say analog is more of a neutral trait: if we're comparing these weapons to those in Pathfinder, archaic weapons can't be hacked either, so it's just that tech is a purely detrimental trait, albeit a relatively minor one.
I imagine the Tech trait will be more useful once we have more classes, features, spells, etc. that interact positively with it. Technomancers, anyone? It should definitely be added risk for added reward.
Sniper weapons could really stand to have a magazine quantity other than 1, just because the operative sniper will spend so many turns going "aim, fire, reload".
Just having a sniper weapon with a magazine of "2" would at least add some variety to turns.
The rotolaser having a battery instead of a magazine means that it's ammunition becomes functionally infinite at higher levels, but that's a balance point that I have no expectation or desire to see persist into the final version of the game.
Magnetar can hit 3 people in it's amazing 60ft AoE Cone since it only has 6 ammunition in each clip, which also ruins it's Primary Target feature of the Action Hero Soldier actually making you worse then using the Stellar Cannon...They Automatic fire makes you burn 2xTargets of Ammunition is kinda, no it's ultra bad when you compare it to Area weapons. I could see it being a thing is Action Hero Soldier got an ability or Feat (This would be a QOL so please no feat but) That reduced the ammunition cost to being Number of Targets.
We speak of balance but let's compare Machine Gun vs Rotolaser. Why does one have a 40ft range, 1d8P and 20 Magazine size with the trait Automatic and Analog? While the other had 30ft Range, 1d8F, 10 charges and Automatic and Tech traits? It seems like the Rotolaser doing fire damage actually makes it worse along side it can be combat hacked to stop it from functioning as a whole.
Remember: Analog is a positive Trait (Can't be hacked) vs Tech which is a negative Trait (Can be hacked).
Fire Damage is very often resisted.
One upside of batteries at least in SF1 is they eventually stated you could recharge them in your ship or towns so the advantage of laser weapons tended to be long term economy and ease of resupplying their ammo.
I'd say analog is more of a neutral trait: if we're comparing these weapons to those in Pathfinder, archaic weapons can't be hacked either, so it's just that tech is a purely detrimental trait, albeit a relatively minor one.
The big advantage to tech is generally upgrade slots. Where with I think 10 minutes you can shift mods on a weapon/armor. Right now there just are not enough mods that anybody would really care about that.
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After finally playing the first session of Cosmic Birthday I asked myself, what's the purpose of having certain weapons that expend more energy? For example, why energy weapons like an arc pistol have a magazine of 10 charges that you spend 2 each time you shoot instead of just having a magazine of 5 charges that expends 1 per shot? I assume there's a reason for this like having ways to reduce expenditure but its seems a little pointless honestly.
After finally playing the first session of Cosmic Birthday I asked myself, what's the purpose of having certain weapons that expend more energy? For example, why energy weapons like an arc pistol have a magazine of 10 charges that you spend 2 each time you shoot instead of just having a magazine of 5 charges that expends 1 per shot? I assume there's a reason for this like having ways to reduce expenditure but its seems a little pointless honestly.
It's how you get reduced effective magazine sizes when batteries come in standardised sizes.
After finally playing the first session of Cosmic Birthday I asked myself, what's the purpose of having certain weapons that expend more energy? For example, why energy weapons like an arc pistol have a magazine of 10 charges that you spend 2 each time you shoot instead of just having a magazine of 5 charges that expends 1 per shot? I assume there's a reason for this like having ways to reduce expenditure but its seems a little pointless honestly.
From my point of view it seems that all Battery weapons use the exact same ammunition I.E a Battery. Which can be 100% upgraded to be 20,30 or 40 charges which makes them once again superior to Magazine weapons not in terms of cost, well depends if you can charge batteries on your ship or in settlements. Which would just break the economy not that ammunition is expensive or anything already past level 1...
As additional thing, I keep forgetting Kickback adds +1 Damage flat which I still think about be +2 Damage, since you need +2 Strength or a Bipod to keep it from taking a -2 Attack Penalty but that is just me thinking the +1 Damage is not enough to justify Kickback.
Kickback is essentially a version of Propulsive for ranged weapons that don't directly rely on Strength for the amount of force behind the projectile (e.g., a larger amount of black powder instead stiffer/springier material in a composite bow).
Speaking of weapons, I've so far when making 10 PCs, sure 2 of them were NPCs using PC rules but it oddly turned out that everyone decided to go with either one of the following weapons so far with 1 single exception and that's an Action Hero Soldier who considered a Rotolaser because batteries are just too good.
Semi-Auto Pistol x4 (Guns Blazing Envoy, Skrimisher Operative x2. and ??? Operative)
Laser Rifle x1 (In the Spotlight Envoy)
Stellar Cannon x2 (Bombard Soldier x2)
Rotolaser x1 (Action hero Soldier)
Exception was two of the Pcs were either a Solarian or Witchwarper so they decided to opt out of using a weapon. However there doesn't seem to be much choice among AoE Weapons that seem actually good for range outside of the Stellar Cannon, Laser rifle d8 but has a Magazine makes it better then the 3 Rifles which only have a single shot per clip. (Seeker, Assassin, Shirren-eye). Rotolaser was chosen before of the super large battery upgrades, same for Laser Rifle and the Semi-Auto is just good at 60ft.
I played a level 5 test fight with a Witchwarper built around exploiting the Aeon Rifle as hard as I could. It went pretty well, the class feels like a solid base for spamming out buckets of Sure Strikes. Obviously has the issue of needing to spend two general feats to have proficiency, I'd like to see a caster weapon that is more accessible to the casters.
I did have a question on how the "insert a spellgem to change the damage type" mechanic worked, though. The wording is can, which implies that if you have a snowball spell gem inserted the weapon is functionally versatile Fire/Cold. I feel like intuitively it wouldn't be optional and if you wanted to do fire damage you would need to remove the spell gem, though obviously it's stronger if you don't.