Farbourne
Rear Admiral
Count me in the camp of people who stopped caring about the different guns after they had too many (circa WC3 on). Except when flying a Banshee or something in Prophecy with a charging mass, standard operating procedure pretty much became to start every mission with F and then CTRL-G.
I thought the developers had a nice balance in WC1 and WC2. Lasers did small damage but had long range and medium fire rate, neutrons did large damage but at short range and slow refire, mass drivers split the difference, but made up for being "shorter than a laser and weaker than a neutron" by having a high refire rate.
Then WC2 introduced the particle cannon, which really gave the game a feeling of technological advancement--most of the guns were the familiar ones from WC1, but all of a sudden we had this new uber-gun which definitely made it feel like the game was in the same universe but about ten years later.
But then they were in a trap. Neutrons and lasers were essentially both obviated by the particle cannon, which left them with really only two guns, while (I understand...haven't actually played it) Armada introduced a whole slew of new guns that had to be maintained in the universe somehow. One thing I didn't like as much about WC3 was how all the guns ran together in my mind. Some of this may have been all the new types, some may have been the energy bolts from different guns looked so much more similar to one another than the little balls from WC1 and 2, but it just seemed like after WC2 the gun differences ceased to matter. In WC1, the Rapier's loadout felt different from the Raptor's because having lasers instead of mass drivers (in addition to the neutrons that both carried) gave it more range, but less damage and slower refire, so you had to be more of a marksman and change your flying style, but in WC3, all you knew was that the Hellcat did more damage than the Arrow, the Thud did more than either, and the Excalibur did the most of all..
I thought the developers had a nice balance in WC1 and WC2. Lasers did small damage but had long range and medium fire rate, neutrons did large damage but at short range and slow refire, mass drivers split the difference, but made up for being "shorter than a laser and weaker than a neutron" by having a high refire rate.
Then WC2 introduced the particle cannon, which really gave the game a feeling of technological advancement--most of the guns were the familiar ones from WC1, but all of a sudden we had this new uber-gun which definitely made it feel like the game was in the same universe but about ten years later.
But then they were in a trap. Neutrons and lasers were essentially both obviated by the particle cannon, which left them with really only two guns, while (I understand...haven't actually played it) Armada introduced a whole slew of new guns that had to be maintained in the universe somehow. One thing I didn't like as much about WC3 was how all the guns ran together in my mind. Some of this may have been all the new types, some may have been the energy bolts from different guns looked so much more similar to one another than the little balls from WC1 and 2, but it just seemed like after WC2 the gun differences ceased to matter. In WC1, the Rapier's loadout felt different from the Raptor's because having lasers instead of mass drivers (in addition to the neutrons that both carried) gave it more range, but less damage and slower refire, so you had to be more of a marksman and change your flying style, but in WC3, all you knew was that the Hellcat did more damage than the Arrow, the Thud did more than either, and the Excalibur did the most of all..
