Discussion of weapons

Ok we're starting to get into the detail now, for those of you who are new to the game, I now recommend you take a look at the deathmatch tutorial which can be accsessed via the community menu, it covers very basically the general mechanics of the game.


As most of you will already know, under normal circumstances (ie with no mutators or third party game types) players will spawn with two weapons, the Shield Gun and the Assault rifle. The Assault rifle will be, by default the weapon that players begin the game playing, with the shield gun in reserve, however these guns are generally weak, and players stand little chance without other firepower, allthough I will discuss methods to use these weapons to your advantage as much as possible if there are no alternatives. Viewing the "weapon bar" down the bottom of your screen will show you which weapons you currently have in your possesion, with weapons you don't have appearing as a shadow. The amount of ammo you have for each weapon is also graphically displayed as a yellow bar under the weapon, a full bar means that you cannot hold any more ammunition for that weapon.

The starting and maximum ammo of weapons differ, however no weapon begins with full ammo. There is a general rule that the faster the rate of fire is for a weapon, the less damage each individual round/ammo will cause and the more ammo the weapon will start with and can hold in total, however other factors such as the accuracy of the weapon and its speed or trajectory mean that weapons that seem to be statistically favoured, (eg due to higher possible damage per second) are not unbalanced.

Each weapon also has its own unique ammo pack, meaning that picking up ammo for the minigun will only give you ammo for the mini gun. These ammo packs also give a set amount of ammo depending on the rate of fire and damage of each round. If you pick up an ammo pack for a weapon you do not have, and then pick up the weapon some time later (without dieing of course) you will have a starting ammo equal to the normal starting ammo of the weapon plus the ammo from the ammo packs you have picked up, however if you have ammo for a weapon without the weapon, the yellow ammo bar under the weapon in the weapon bar remains empty, so there is no visual cue on the screen to recognise how much ammo you have for weapons you are not holding. It is important to memorise which ammo packs are for which weapons.

Furthermore, each weapon makes a unique sound when it is picked up, both by you and by other players in the arena. The only exception to this is the bio rifle and the flak cannon, which both make the same sound. These sounds are especially useful in duels, as you can use them to pinpoint the location of the other player at a certain time, which can help you to predict where they will be in a matter of seconds and prime a shock ball ready to explode at a corner should your theory be correct. Weapon ammo packs also make a unique sound.