Handheld Rifle Takes Down Blocks Faster Than Missiles

Alright, more information. The rifle is overpowered against light armor at visual range. ie; if I can see the grid well enough to shoot at it (0-300m), the rifle is a better option than the rocket launcher (at least in the handheld category) If we broaden our range to include ship-to-ship combat (a topic which I have another post about) then the Gatling turret is the best option against anything you can throw at it, because it takes down light armor on small ships in one hit, and light armor on large ships in 13, not to mention it can track anything, even at the speed limit, at any range. The handheld rifle (which I think is chambered in 5.56mm) shouldn't even be able to do damage to ships, let alone cut through a 2.5m block. The rocket launcher should be the only option for handheld-to-grid damage, and the rockets should be able to turn (track, home-in-on, etc...) their targets. (preferably just whatever they're nearest to) If this option is implemented, there would be better grounds for implementing ship-to-ship cannons and torpedoes. I haven't done any testing of the rifle against characters, so I don't have that data. The only reason I can see for having a rifle do that much damage to grids is to incentivize single-person boarding where one engineer flies in below turret fire, shoots through the hull of the enemy ship (but you have a grinder, so why would you do this?) and board them. Of course, this strategy is easily and instantly countered by interior turrets, which are much better at shooting engineers than even the Gatling turrets (at least without mods (there are some that make Gatling turrets insta-headshot players from 800m)) And frankly, boarding should be done via frigate, like in Homeworld, not via jetpack human (as it is implied in Halo is done by ODSTs sometimes)

Realism wise a steel plate, which is a component of every block, weighs 20kg. I dont know its dimensions or thickness, but if you shoot at a 20 kg plate of some 200 mm thick in RL with 5.56 you wouldnt damage it much.

Still there are too many unknowns, i think handheld weapons are 5.56x45mm, we dont know what grade the steel is or its chickness. Or what ammo variant does the weapon use, concidering the ammo is made of iron and magnesium, i doubt it has the penetration of a tungsten core armor piercing ammo.

So much about a game that is advertised as based on realism and stuff, it lacks a lot of basic realistic info.

I actually forgot about the shoulder fired rocket launcher when writing earlier and was instead thinking about the small grid rocket launcher block... But all launchers use the same ammo anyway. I'm not sure if that means the missile behaves exactly the same once fired (damage, range, etc), but I'd like to think so. Anyway my worry is when and if these things undergo some attempted "rebalancing", it could go either way. Combat in this game is weird at best and underwhelming or unfair at worst. When I first started playing this game I was actually shocked to find out that missiles fired by turrets don't track targets and they're actually just dumb rockets, despite gatling turrets being able to target incoming missiles. There is a lot to be desired with all these mechanics, but I'm just afraid it could get a lot worse if not thought about very carefully and with a good realism/gameplay balance perhaps. All these years, people's scenarios and strategies have evolved around the current combat mechanics. If anything is to be rebalanced, it would likely require touching everything at once (rifles, launchers, turrets, munitions, warheads, armor...).

Then again Warfare 2 is likely coming in hot, so I guess right now is better than any other time to be thinking about all this...

There are milions of ideas about what they could or should do, and many of them are great, but in the end what we actualy get is not worth hoping for. Whatever the update, solely based on my previous experience, i expect to be disapointed.