Equipment/Obsoletable equipment

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This page is intended to monitor and prevent the "ültimate überweapon" syndrome. Eventually, all equpiment that can be obsoleted should be listed here and every other equipment piece should have its advantages to the very end-game. By obsolete equipment piece I mean one that in mid to late-game, with no research, resource and financial constraints, can be replaced with good effect for every player, regardless of his play-style, strategic situation, difficulty setting, etc.

Let's not take price or market availability into account (though they will be useful balancing factors to make even obsolete weapons viable in the early to mid-game). OTOH even skills and inventory sizes should be somewhat considered (e.g. it is impossible for a primary weapon to obsolete a secondary weapon, but a single-handed sidearm obsoletes any roughly equivalent primary weapon).

Damage type should be considered only if there is a considerable susceptibility in a strong alien, or resistance in most strong aliens or alien armour types. Generally, damage type should not be a weapon's only advantage, as it gets boring (though a really gameplay-friendly exception, e.g. fetching the lovely old flamethrower from the cellar against a really tough late-game alien, could be nice). Big resistances or susceptibilities tend to force players to have huge inventories, while there should be many equally viable weapon sets that players choose according to their personal play-style or even current mood.

Primary Weapons

Secondary Weapons

Misc

Armor

Counter-examples (unobvious)

  • Kerrblade is not obsoleted by Plasma Blade, because it does much higher melee damage per 1 TU.
  • Flamethrower is not obsoleted by anything, since it can be used to precisely and cheaply set ablaze any nearby spot on the map. (Perhaps it could also induce panic.)
  • Grenade Launcher with Plasma Grenade Shells is not obsoleted by Plasma Blaster, because the latter does not allow to reach around a corner, since plasma balls explode on impact instead of bouncing.

Top tier set of basic weapons

This set is good enough under most circumstances and it should be obvious to newbies (if a totally clueless newbie chooses only the three Particle Beam weapons he should still have chances on easy; please correct, improve and discuss):

Top tier common alternatives

Analogous bottom tier set of basic weapons

This set should be quite obvious, as well, allow some variations and be very cheap to research:

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