I know the pneumatic assault rifle and pneumatic bolt rifle got reduced in potency recently. Does anyone have recent experience with them? My world’s timeline has advanced to the point where shocker brutes and hulks are showing up, and I’d like to kill them with something a little faster than a longbow and steel arrows, preferably without getting swarmed by a horde.
My options are:
Kel-Tech Sub 2000 with homemade suppressor and laser sight
Kel-Tech KSG
IAR-27 with homemade suppressor and laser sight
AKM with homemade suppressor and laser sight
AR-15 with homemade suppressor and laser sight
some .22 LR that I always forget I have
and I can craft the two pneumatics but don’t have any built.
The IAR-27 is kind of heavy for an emergency gun; the Sub 2000 is kind of puny. Are the pneumatics an improvement on any of these? Are they enough of an improvement to bother crafting?
They’re pretty good, but my expanded archery mod would give you some more options, and improves things a bit.
The main advantage of the pneumatics is that their ammunition is reusable and easy to craft (for the bolt driver) or ridiculously easy to craft and made from actual rocks (for the assault rifle). While most of those guns will easily out DPS them, they all need rare(ish) ammunition.
I found where I was stashing the 2L tanks and stopped using them to store gasoline, then went ahead and built both the pneumatics and a .308 pipe rifle because I have scads of .308 lying around.
In the baseline game, it’s very much a mixed bag:
Keltec Sub-2000++ loaded with 17 rounds of 9mm FMJ with homemade suppressor and rail laser sight: 7.5 lbs, max 32 tiles, careful aim: 5 tiles @ 7 seconds, precise aim: 10 tiles @ 9 seconds, damage 22 AP 4
penumatic bolt driver with 8 steel crossbow bolts: 10.7 lbs, max 26 tiles, careful 7 tiles @ 13 seconds, precise 22 tiles @ 15 seconds, damage 40 AP 10.
pneumatic assault rifle with 15 bearings: 9.6 lbs, max 30 tiles, careful 7 tiles @ 12 seconds, precise 24 tiles @ 14 seconds, damage 21 AP 1.
pipe rifle with 6 rounds of .308: 5.33 lbs, max 60 tiles, careful 7 tiles @ 8 seconds, precise 19 tiles @ 9 seconds, damage 55 AP 2.
For an emergency gun, the pipe rifle is surprisingly attractive: light weight, high damage, good accuracy. It reloads faster than anything other than the Sub-2000, and is the fastest aiming gun.
Pneumatic assault rifle with ball bearings are pretty nice, as I could smith 1000 of them pretty easily. Though the attacks are pretty weak, they’re silent and the ammo is cheap. Full auto makes it better.