Unlike the first game, which had four categories (Light, Heavy, Laser, Sniper), we'll differentiate a bit more along the lines of real life weapons this time.
The weapon types are all different in effectiveness, speed,equipment capacity cost, availability, magazine capacity and firing modes.
- Equipment capacity (EC) limits what items a character can equip, the higher the cost of the weapon the weaker armour and items have to be.
- Availability simply means that not every class can use the weapon category, trough there are two universal weapon classes.
- Magazine capacity limits how many shots can be fired before the weapons needs to be reloaded. Actions have different costs, which can become quite high for full auto.
- Fire modes limit what actions can be performed with the weapon. Only weapons with the full auto mode for example can lay down cover fire. The modes are: Single, Semi, Burst, Full, Special so far
- Handgun
- Low effectiveness
- High speed
- Low EC cost
- Available to all classes
- Small magazine
- Only semi automatic mode
- Can be dual wielded
- SMG
- Low effectiveness
- High speed
- Low EC cost
- Available to all classes
- Limited magazine
- Semi and full automatic mode
- Assault Rifle
- Medium effectiveness
- Medium speed
- Medium EC cost
- Soldier exclusive
- Medium magazine
- Semi and full automatic and burst mode
- Sniper Rifle
- High effectiveness
- Low speed
- Medium EC cost
- Scout exclusive
- Small magazine
- Only single shot mode
- Accurate from cover
- MG
- Medium effectiveness
- Medium speed
- High EC cost
- Guardian and Soldier only
- Big magazine
- Only full automatic mode
- Heavy
- Very High effectiveness
- Low speed
- High EC cost
- Soldier exclusive
- Small magazine
- Only special mode
- Needs special ammunition
As you can see the soldier has access to nearly all weapon types with two exclusive types. While the assault rifle is an all round weapon that's usable in nearly any situation, heavy weapons are specialist weapons for the use against though targets. These two exclusive types are also the focus of the soldier class.
Guardians have the option to use the big MGs at the expense of heavier armour and medikits or to go with the smaller SMG and gain more durability.
Scouts have access to the sniper rifle, which is the slowest weapon group in the game but allows the scout to deal with foes that would simply ignore small arms fire. It doesn't leave room for much armour or items though.
Psionics only have access to the basic weapons, and not much focus on weapon use as a whole. Still, with a SMG they can offer support and ease the Guardians load.
We don't have any fixed values at the moment, which is the reason for the slightly unspecific categorization. And as always it's just a working scheme. I'm interested in you input before we spend the nights to hammer out the specifics.
PS: I know that these are tangential to reality at best, the current selection was mostly formed by gameplay considerations.