Mecha Weapons Tier List

[AmkG]

For the sake of game balance, we should consider putting items, skills, mecha etc. into tier lists. This allows us to consider if some part of the game is so overpowered that we should rebalance it, or so underpowered that we should consider cutting them out of the game.

Now of course in a single-player game, balance is less about fairness (it's single player after all), and more about interestingness. This is the concept of a "solved" game: i.e. once you have discovered the optimum strategy, your interest in the game wanes, or in other words you have solved the game (discovered the optimum way to play it) so you stop playing it, it's boring to you now. Thus, to increase the "interestingness" of GearHead Caramel, we should make multiple optimal divergent strategies, so that players can remain engaged in the game, mixing strategies and so on. If there are only one or a few optimal strategies, players will leave the game after discovering that strategy and trying it out a few times.

Part of that is to get tier lists from playtesting. The goal when optimizing for balance is to reduce the spread of tier lists. There should not be any "Tier S" game things, and there should not be any "Tier F" game things. And the difference between "Tier A" game things should be small compared to "Tier C" game things.

I'm putting up these tiers: S, A, B, C, and F. Any weapon I don't mention is implicitly tier F, because it's so useless I can't even remember it.

The tiers here apply to this commit: e6e1d54cbb94d6846a73480945df6603b3975a55

Tier S

I don't think there are any Tier S weapons, so at least this part is fine, nothing needs major nerfing (at least for me).

Tier A

Flame Urumi - Surprisingly powerful. Flail means even mecha with nice shields and Defender weapons are likely to get hit, it has Fast Attack so even if the target has good mobility you can try swinging at it twice (and it's got a good accuracy for a Flail weapon as well), and it has Ignite Ammo, which in combination with Fast Attack means quickly reducing the ammunition of opponents. Finally the gravy on top: it has range 3, meaning if your mecha is fast enough you can take a few steps to swing the Flame Urumi at the opponent for your first move in the turn, then Fast Attack the same target on the second move of your turn. When I was making the Mughal Daum I thought the interesting weapons would be the Shock Katars, but the Urumi turns out to be slightly more powerful than those.

Iron Lance - Best charging weapon. A simple yet powerfully effective spike of iron. Raw damage and penetration trumps its lack of any additional effects, and with a Spinal Pilot Link and a focused melee build you can start one-shotting halfway from Wujung to your target in the DeadZone. The best defense is to one-shot two of your opponents on your turn. The best crowd control is to kill the whole crowd. This used to be Tier S but is now at the upper edge of Tier A due to the massive increase in Charge pricing. Probably the best loadout in the game is an Iron Lance with a Flame Urumi: charge, then whip the enemy.

Shock Katar - Get it in pairs and multi-wield it against opponents. It's actually a bit mismatched with the Flame Urumi due to the range difference, the best thing for you to do would be to move the Urumi to another mecha and replace it with a charge weapon. Charge into an opponent and multi-wield the Katars into it. They are ridiculously heavy and make the Mughal Daum really really really slow, for a melee mecha, off the shelf (you're better off replacing its jets with wheels and squeezing in Overchargers and hoping your mecha piloting skills can compensate for the mobility and armor you are sacrificing), but the Haywire makes up for most of it. Because you can make two attacks with it with Multi Wield, even nimble opponents are at risk of getting hit and going Haywire. The Urumi is better than this mostly because of the massive weight (11.7 tons each!) of the Shock Katars (both Fast Attack and Multi Wield are mostly similar), otherwise the Shock Katars would have taken the top slot in Tier A.

Giant Drill - Something to tide you over until you can get an Iron Lance. The main benefit is that you can somewhat-grind this at Allied Armor if you waste enough time on Blue Fortress missions to make the shopkeeper rotate its stock (or sometimes not even have to grind, it can just appear there at random), whereas if you're really unlucky you might not be able to ever salvage or buy an Iron Dielancer (if you don't get any Bone Devils, you're not likely to encounter Dielancers of any kind). End-game material yet purchasable at your first town (with some grinding), it's a definite Tier A weapon.

Ion Lance - Another good charging weapon. What it lacks in raw damage and penetration it makes up for with Haywire and Drains Power. Haywire in particular is great for crowd control (though as the entry for Iron Lance notes, the best crowd control is to kill the crowd quickly).

Heavy Railgun - Arguably the best ranged weapon. Damage 3 burst 4? Wow! Too bad it kinda misses a good bit if you're not using a dedicated ranged build. You almost never need the single-shot mode: if you have some other weapons as well, 15 shots from this weapon is usually enough for most missions. This is at the low end of Tier A though and I wouldn't argue against someone putting it in the high end of Tier B instead.

Bolt Cannon - Damage 2 Burst 5, almost as good as the Heavy Railgun. The difference is that its magazine is practically bottomless at 250. Even at Burst 5 it's 50 shots, far higher than any other ranged weapon! This brings up the bottom of Tier A. It can be hard to decide which of these two is better. If you're making a ranged mech, though, just get both. Use the Bolt Cannon for most attacks, and the Heavy Railgun for quickly destroying high-priortiy targets.

Tier B

Wrecking Ball - A good whacking weapon. It gets 100% chance to hit on almost anything, making it a better counter to Stealth Hiding than Scouting itself (just get near enough to the hiding mecha and slap it with the Wrecking Ball, which makes it unhide immediately). The Smash (which with Flail is what makes it get 100% on almost anything) is a bit of a weakness though, as it just softens up the mecha but not doing a lot of lethal damage to it, otherwise it would be solidly in Tier A, so it's actually a fair tradeoff I think.

Mecha Wrecker - Another good whacking weapon. Slightly weaker than the Wrecking Ball. It doesn't have Smash, instead getting Brutal, so it's not a reliable hit, but at least it quickly strips armor from whatever module it does hit.

Flame Knout - Yet another good whacking weapon, and also has Ignites Ammo. Mecha Wrecker slightly edges it out, and the 100% to-hit of Wrecking Ball definitely beats this.

Grounding Whip - Noticing a trend on Flail weapons? The big advantage of Flail appears later on with higher Mecha Fighting skills: it makes multi-attack a lot more likely due to avoiding most of the defenses that potentially reduce multi-attack. This particular weapon is comparable to the Flame Knout, instead getting Drains Power. The higher penetration of Flame Knout makes it higher for me (accuracy is less important on Flail weapons, after all).

Ji - A solid early charging weapon. Sure you'll replace it with a Giant Drill or Iron Lance later, but those are solid Tier A weapons. It's a good starting weapon, probably the best melee starting weapon, edging out the Wolfram's Pickaxe it's based on. Because of how Charge works, the Damage 3 Ji actually deals the same damage on average in a Charge Attack as the Damage 4 Pickaxe does on a normal attack, but with good conditions (and puttng wheels on your Wolfram!) you are more likely to get two Charge Attacks with the Ji than two normal attacks with the Pickaxe on your turn, and Charge has a pretty large accuracy bonus.

Heavy Gauss Rifle - A nice early sniping weapon. A bit low in ammo, but its raw power and Accurate helps compensate for that. At some point you'll want to replace it with a better ranged weapon but it's a good option to have on a lancemate.

Arena Cannon - A crowd pleaser! Just one less burst value than the Dielancer's Heavy Railgun, but with better reach. For some reason using Aim from its Accurate attribute makes it shoot just one shot though, which is a waste, making it not much better than the Shaka Cannon when used in that mode. Just always use its normal attack for the burst.

Beam Scourge - A good utility weapon, serves as a backup melee weapon for your charge mecha, while also providing Intercept. You're better off with a Wrecking Ball and a LAS-5 Intercept Laser, but this is a good holding weapon until you can get those. The high accuracy and penetration are a bit wasted since it deals very pathetic damage, and you'll quickly run out of MP using Fast Attack with this.

LAS-5 Intercept Laser - Another utility weapon. It's a bit hard to decide which of Beam Scourge or Intercept Laser is better: you'll almost never use the Intercept Laser offensively, whereas you might actually use Beam Scourge offensively until you can get a Wrecking Ball, but the LAS-5 is much lighter. All Intercept weapons, however, are probably somewhere in the mid to lower Tier B range, because they give very good protection against Missiles: they mostly compete on weight and non-integralness.

Phoenix Rifle - Like a baby Arena Cannon. Nice ranged weapon with fairly good accuracy, and has burst as well.

Storm Pistol - Disappointingly underpowered compared to GearHead 1. Still, a bit middle in Tier B, because of the Linked Fire. The purpose of Linked Fire is not damage: the purpose is to overwhem the opponent and drop their evasion. Buy two Nova Storm Buru Buru and put four of these in a single mecha, and you can quickly reduce your opponent's evade by -12 for just 5 MP, while also dealing some damage to the target.

L-Cannon - Nice haywire effect and great range. Too bad it tends to miss if you try to take advantage of its range. I tend to favor the Phoenix Rifle when I'm fielding the Phoenix; you have to get near enough to the opponent to hit it reliably with the L-Cannon anyway, at which point the higher raw damage and accuracy of the Phoenix Rifle edges out the nice Haywire effect of the L-Cannon.

Beam Sword from Zerosaiko - A reasonable melee weapon, and the better of the two weapons the Zerosaiko has. Solid damage, Defender, good accuracy, Drains Power.

Pickaxe from Wolfram - A reasonable melee weapon. Tends to miss a good bit compared to charging with a Ji, but its raw damage when it does hit compensates for that.

Rocket Hammer from Haiho - A reasonable melee weapon. Smash means it gets better chance to hit than the above Wolfram Pickaxe, but spread out over more modules, so it's really less powerful than the Pickaxe. However like the Wrecking Ball it's a good counter to Stealth mecha, and is longer-ranged than the Wrecking Ball. so it's still barely in the mid-lower end of Tier B.

Repeater Cannon - Good damage and penetration, Burst 3. Lacks accuracy somewhat, but still better expected damage and more shots in its magazine than the Shaka Cannon in Tier C. Definitely on the low end of Tier B though.

Pulse Rifle from base Chameleon - Good damage and accuracy, Burst 4. You could in theory fire it with single shots but why would you limit your damage that way? Definitely at the lower end of Tier B though.

Ironbreaker Longsword - Reasonable melee weapon. Good damage and acuracy, but awful penetration. You have to slowly strip off the armor of the opponent with this weapon before you can start actually dealing damage to its innards. It's only slightly better than the Mecha Sword due to its greater damage and accuracy.

LAS-10 Laser Cannon - Reasonable ranged weapon. Too bad it's a bit underpowered compared to melee weapons, and can be shut down by Drains Power melee weapons (not that your opponents will often wield such weapons).

Mecha Sword - Reasonable melee weapon. Sort of like a LAS-10 in melee form. Could drop this (and the LAS-10) down to the higher end of Tier C though.

Tier C

PHS-8 Phase Cannon - Disappointingly underpowered compared to in GearHead 1. Sure, it has nice accuracy and range and penetration, but Damage 2 is a bit too pathetic.

Shaka Cannon - a lot like the LAS-10, but with an ammo limit and less accuracy, making it strictly worse than the LAS-10, and well in Tier C.

Shield Spike from Secutor, Phalanx Shield from Phalanx Buru Buru - Similar charging weapons, both mounted on shields. Nice in that they come on a shield, but they're more for getting yourself into melee range quickly rather than the raw bonus damage and accuracy of charge.

Leveler Missiles - Or any Heavy Missiles with Blast 2. You're mostly shooting them for the crowd control. But usually spellcasting (from skills or EW programs) is better crowd control than actual missiles, so these are definitely in Tier C.

Guided Missiles/Strike Missiles - Missiles tend to be underpowered in general (they miss a lot, and Intercept is an almost perfect defense against them). The guided/strike missiles versions have boosted accuracy though, so they make it into Tier C, barely.

Tier F

I would claim that anything I don't mention is probably Tier F, and probably either needs to be removed from the game, or boosted up in power.

A few items are awful enough to be mentioned here.

Nova Cannon - Not enough raw damage for what it does. The Storm Pistols it is paired with have about the same damage but better accuracy, multi-attack, and Linked Fire. Nova Cannon should have been something like a slightly weaker beam version of the Heavy Gauss than what it is currently.

Missiles in general - Intercept seems to be too effective against missiles.

Mass Driver from Zerosaiko - the Zerosaiko is nice. As a mecha. Its Mass Driver is ridiculously underpowered for the Zerosaiko's position. The only reason a stock Zerosaiko is a threat is beause it's really tough and hard to hit with its Defender Beam Sword and its Shields and its high mobility and its nice Advanced armor, and a Flame Urumi takes care of 3/4 of those defenses and reduces the Mass Driver limited ammo even more. The Zerosaiko's Beam Sword is definitely its better weapon.

LAS-5 Combat Laser and almost all Mining Laser - Who even bothers to shoot them?

[AmkG]

I suggest others to also post their tier lists, or to debate this tier list. It would help to get more samples.

[AmkG]

The recent Charge nerf moves the Iron Lance over to the mid-lower range of Tier A, the Giant Drill and Ion Lance over to the upper end of tier B / lower edge of Tier A. The Ji is now about on par with the Pickaxe it's based on, which makes it a nice starting variation rather than the "definitely always start with a Ji Wolfram" in previous versions. The shield-based charge weapons don't move, since the Charge nerf only affects damage and you're fielding the shield-based charge weapons for their ability to close in to targets quickly.

A thing I have been mulling over is to remove the Accuracy from the PHS-8 and replace it with Linked Fire. My best memories of GH1 were pumping Initiative and Speed and shooting heads off enemy mechs while riding a flying Savin with a 6-pack of PHS-8s, and that gameplay is most closely emulated by Linked Fire in GHC. Then change the PHS-25 to be a stat clone of PHS-8 with the addition of BurstFire3, which matches well with its numeric designation 8*3 = 24.